In my mind card games belong to childhood holidays with my grandparents. A time with no TV, no internet, no distractions. In the last 20 years I’ve admittedly played very few card games aside from poker, but today I was feeling full of cold and very sorry for myself and wanted the easy fun of a quick card game. As I soon discovered, there is no quicker card game than Speed.
Speed, sometimes called Spit or Slam, is a fast-paced card game where the aim is to get rid of all of your cards. I played this with my husband, but the internet tells me you can play with up to four people – I can only imagine how chaotic that would be.
Each person has a pile of cards, and places four, face up in front of them, and one face down above the four. When the game is ready to start, both players turn over their middle card (in the picture above the Ace and King) and then the fun really begins. You can place a card one higher, or lower on the middle cards, regardless of colour or suit, to get rid of your cards. You don’t take it in turns, and work through your respective pile of cards to go through it as quickly as possible. It is chaotic and fast, and a hell of a lot of fun.
I really enjoyed playing this and it definitely made me curious to discover some more card games. It’s nice once in a while to switch everything off and just play cards: I remember last doing it the night before I moved to Germany, when all the furniture was packed up, the internet was cut off, and we sat playing ‘Go Fish’ on the floor in my former living room. A very happy memory.
If you know any interesting card games for two players please let me know – I’m interested to find more!
New Day, New Thing 