Wall Street Journal report encourages more social card gaming

Family card games improve social skillsRecent reports from the Wall Street Journal suggest card games improve math, self confidence and memory, but that there has also been a decline in family card games.

Mr. P.J. Katien, the vice president for the U.S. Playing Card Company and the owner of the Bicycle, Bee, Kem and Hoyle brands, said “a whole generation of consumers didn’t learn to play cards the way an entire prior generation did.”

We live in a digital age where children are increasingly engrossed by video games, mobile phone games and movies, and are missing out on some of the benefits associated with playing cards with the family unit.

Some of the benefits to social card games include:

  • Memory skills
  • Strategic thinking
  • A sense of confidence
  • Mathematical learnings
  • Face-to-face play and conversation
  • Adhering to rules
  • Bonding with family and friends
  • Counting and matching practice for smaller children
  • Dexterity rom shuffling and dealing
  • Bluffing and poker-face skills for mature players

This is why it is important to maintain a strong desire to play cards in a social environment among family and friends, and not just online.

But Katien said there does remain an interest from parents to teach and enjoy classic card games with their kids, and that we may be seeing a shift back to more face-to-face games being played, with the sales of playing cards having risen by two per cent industry-wide over the past two years.

Some of the family card games which are highly recommended to play with friends and family include:

  • Crazy 8s
  • Go Fish
  • Gin Rummy
  • Oh Hell (also known as Oh Shoot)
  • 500
  • Spoons
  • I Doubt It
  • Go Boom
  • Bullshit

And some more advanced skill-based games include: Bridge, Spades, Hearts, Euchre, and Texas Hold’em Poker.

It is important to enjoy these types of games as a family unit when children are at a young and impressionable age in order to help built strong family ties and the desire to maintain a friendly yet competitive nature.

For older children, once they acquire the face-to-face skills from games such as poker, they can take those abilities and trial them within the online poker community, where games include live and even visual interaction with other poker players from around the world at gaming sites such as 888 Poker.

Setting aside a night to enjoy a certain card game with the family, or for older children, getting together to play a social game of poker (with the added incentive of some cash up for grabs) is hugely beneficial and something we hope does not go missing in a time of advancing digital technologies.

The rules and regulations of the above games can be found on this website.

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