Also known as Palace, Karma, China Hand and Ten-Two Slide.
Probably Nordic in origin — likely descended from the Swedish game Vändtia (“turn ten”), and a close cousin of Finland's Paskahousu.
Young travellers — backpackers of every nationality — carried it round the world in the last decades of the 20th century.
First appeared in London and New York in the 1930s.
It travels under many names: Oh Pshaw, Blob, Elevator (l'Ascenseur in France), Up and Down the River and Bust in Australia and New Zealand, Nomination Whist in Britain, German Bridge in Hong Kong, Kachuful in India.
In Turkey, Batak is a four-player game much like it.
One game, many names: Switch or Black Jack in England, Mau Mau in Germany, Pesten in the Netherlands, Prší in the Czech Republic, Makao in Hungary and Poland, Tschau Sepp in Switzerland, Mao or Bartog in the USA.
Turkey's version of Crazy Eights is Pis yedili.
WHOT!, patented in England in 1935, was perhaps the earliest of the special-pack versions; Uno is the best known.
Hearts first appeared at the end of the 19th century. In Australia the same game is called Rickety Kate.
One of its two probable ancestors is Reversis — first mentioned in France, as “Reversin”, in 1601, and more probably from Italy.
Turkey plays its own version, Maça kızı, with different rules.
Cheat in Britain, Bullshit in the USA, and I Doubt It in many books. In Fujian, China, a version is called chuī niú (“bragging”).
Nobody has a trusted date for where it began.
Invented in the USA in the 1930s.
For decades it was little known abroad, except where American troops were stationed — then, from the mid-1990s, online card rooms took it worldwide.
Also called 500 Rum, Pinochle Rummy or Joker Rummy — and it was originally played without jokers.
The western rummy family traces back to Conquian, first recorded in Mexico City in 1857.
Drawing and discarding to make sets appears in Chinese card games by the early 19th century; “rum” first shows up in print in the New York Sun in 1910.
Romania plays rummy with numbered tiles too; Pagat's rules for it come from the Romanian and Hungarian instructions sold with a set near Bistrița.
Turkey plays its own tile rummy, Okey, with 106 numbered tiles.
A children’s game with names all over the world: Schwarzer Peter (Black Peter) in Germany, Vieux Garçon or Le Pouilleux in France, Ekae in Thailand and Papaz kaçtı in Turkey.
Where the name is a man’s, like Black Peter, it’s a Jack that goes, and the loser is left holding the odd Jack.
Whist grew out of an older English game, Ruff and Honours, and was played widely in the 18th and 19th centuries.
It is first mentioned as “whisk” in 1621; Charles Cotton’s Compleat Gamester (1674) says it is called whist “from the silence that must be observed in the play”, and Edmond Hoyle published his Short Treatise on it in 1742.
In the 20th century Bridge took its place among serious players, but Britain still plays it at local “whist drives”.
A Chinese book on the origins of things says dominoes were invented by a statesman in 1120 CE.
In Europe they turn up in 18th-century Italy, perhaps Venice and Naples, then France early that century, where they became a fad, and Britain late in it, possibly brought by French prisoners of war.
The tiles are clearly Chinese in origin, but whether the European set came from China or was invented again is still debated.
A popular Turkish game from the rummy family, played with 106 tiles.
It has a bigger cousin, Okey 101: 21 tiles each, and sets go down on the table as you play.