War (card game)
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War is a card game for two players. It uses a standard Western 52-playing card deck. It is most often played as a children's game, because of its simplicity.
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[edit] How to play
Each player is dealt half the deck, and both players play simultaneously. Each player shows one card, and whoever has the highest card takes both cards shown and places them at the bottom of his deck. Aces can be high or low, which should be decided before the game begins. In case of a tie, both players play three face-down cards and one face-up card, and these face-up cards decide who will receive all the cards. If there is another tie, the process is repeated, etc. In all cases of ties, face-down cards are exposed before being collected. In some variations, smaller numbers of face-down cards are played (for example, one card is placed face down, while the second is played face up). In one bloodthirsty variation, the number of face-down cards equals the pip value of the cards, with face cards being ten and ace eleven.
Whoever has no card to play when they are required to play one is the winner. In one variation, a set number of ties won will decide the winner of the game. This is commonly either three or five. Some variations will have the winner being the one who is able to get rid of all his cards last, or any combination of these variations.
[edit] Strategy
War seems to be a game of chance. However, a player with an excellent memory can improve upon his or her chances of winning by ordering the cards that the player wins in rounds.
This is best demonstrated with an example – suppose Alice is playing to beat Bob. The game begins with Bob beating Alice's 6 with a 10. Alice notices that Bob collects the two cards and puts them on the bottom of his deck with the 10 on top of the 6. In the next round, Alice beats Bob's 8 with a jack. Alice now collects the two cards and places them at the bottom of her deck with the jack on top of the 8 so that the next pass through the deck will begin jack beats 10 (Alice collects), 8 beats 6 (Alice collects again). If Alice had instead placed the 8 over the jack, the next pass through the deck would go 10 beats 8 (Bob collects), jack beats 6 (Alice collects), which is not as beneficial to Alice.
However, over the long-term, as the deck sizes change (as both players collect cards) and as more and more cards are revealed, it becomes extremely difficult—indeed, nearly impossible—to implement this strategy. Only a player with an extremely good memory and the ability to visualize extremely quickly card positions in both decks will be able to consistently implement this strategy over the course of a game.
Something analogous to natural selection occurs in war: if you have fewer cards they tend to be of higher quality. Conversely, as you accumulate cards, they become weaker. The rule for handling ties mitigates against this problem somewhat, however.
[edit] Computer war
There was an Apple II version of this game, contained in the game Little Computer People. In the game, the winner of each trick always put the cards on the bottom of the deck in the same order. Frequently, the game wound up cycling; that is, the same positions would repeat indefinitely with no winner.
A Java version appeared on the web in the late 1990s in which a user could watch the game played automatically at his or her choice of speeds. Whether or not this site still exists is unknown. However, it is possible that this example may be the one mentioned.
[edit] Statistics
After one million games were run with a computer program, the following results were achieved:
| Statistic | Value |
|---|---|
| Average battles: | 248.314 |
| Average wars: | 13.0305 |
| Average double wars: | 0.756801 |
| Average triple wars: | 0.042637 |
| Average quadruple wars: | 0.002265 |
| Average quintuple wars: | 0.000113 |
| Average sextuple wars: | 0.000001 |
| Most battles: | 2958 |
| Most wars: | 155 |
| Most double wars: | 12 |
| Most triple wars: | 5 |
| Most quadruple wars: | 2 |
| Most quintuple wars: | 1 |
| Most sextuple wars: | 1 |
| Fewest battles: | 9 |
(Presumably, the "Fewest battles" game was the game with the hexatuple war, which would have left the loser with one card. The loser of that war would then win a battle, then lose two in a row to eliminate all his cards.)
[edit] Multiplayer war & variants
War may be played with more than 2 players. A war occurs only when the 2 highest cards tie. The war may involve only those players, or all players. The main variant is adding jokers to the deck. If a joker is played, there is an automatic war. Alternatively, the joker beats all other cards. The casino variant of this game - Casino war is quite popular in many casinos though the rules are slightly different.
[edit] Related games
The game of Top Trumps is similar to war in that the highest card value wins. However, in this case a special pack on a particular theme is used such that the winner of the previous round can choose one of a number of categories for the value, increasing the complexity of the game. Egyptian Rat Screw is often seen as a variant of war that involves the strategy of Slapjack.
