8 Hard Card Games That Are Tough to Master – Pai Gow Poker, Contract Bridge, and More

If you ask ten people, “What is the hardest card game?” they might give you ten different answers. Some you’ll agree with, while others might surprise you that they find them to be among the hardest card games.

The truth of the matter is that not everyone will grasp the rules as well as you do. We aren’t all experts at first, and it takes a while to learn certain games.

As for hard card games, it takes a lot longer to get the hang of them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t worth playing, though.

Sometimes the journey to becoming an expert is the most fun part about learning hard card games. If you play some of the most difficult card games at the best online casinos, you can also make a good amount of cash along the way.

So, what is the hardest card game to learn? Truth be told, there are a lot of card games that can take a very long time to fully understand. It can take hundreds of games to finally feel like you are getting the hang of it.

Poker is a game that comes to mind, but you can take it one step further. There are some poker variants that can be very difficult to learn, with Pai Gow Poker being one of them.

I suggest reading a Pai Gow guide to help you understand how to play the game.

Like basically all casino games, Pai Gow Poker is much easier to understand the more you play. However, it can take you a long time before you are an expert.

The game is based on the Chinese domino game Pai Gow, hence the name.

To begin, you place your bets and are dealt seven cards. You then split your seven cards into two separate hands with five cards in one and two in the other. The five-card hand must have a higher value than the two-card hand.

If you are playing at a live casino and don’t do this properly, you will automatically lose your bet. In most casino games, you still have a chance to win if you don’t make the best decision. This makes Pai Gow Poker a little harder than other games.

Not only that, but it can be difficult to beat the dealer’s hands since you need to win both to make a profit.

I’m willing to bet that you’re checking out these card games because you’re looking for a real challenge.

As I mentioned, Pai Gow Poker, as well as regular poker, are quite difficult. However, you can win tons of real money if you can get good at them.

If you intend on making money from playing these games, you’ll need to sign up at Ignition Casino. Pai Gow Poker is not available at every online casino, but you’ll have no trouble finding it on their site, in addition to traditional poker games.

Ignition also welcomes you to their site with a 300% deposit bonus, which you can use to wager more than you are used to.

Admit it — you saw that one coming. As hard card games go, Pinochle isn’t particularly that difficult to play or master, but it can be a challenge to learn, as I noted above.

Pinochle usually involves four players split into two teams. There’s a cutthroat version for three people, which has no teams but is identical to regular four-player play.

Play starts after much bragging and passing of cards hither and yon, moves on to displaying of some cards to others, and a period where everyone ignores the others’ exaggerated clearing of throats, kicking of table legs, and other such “mess-decks indicators” as may be permitted or ignored.

Whoever won the bragging session plays a single card, and the others follow in a clockwise fashion with either a card of that same suit (if they have one), a card of the trump suit, or any card they wish to (if they don’t have ta card of the led suit.

I should point out here that the decks of cards used to play pinochle are not the same as regular 52-card decks. Instead, they are 48-card decks composed of two full sets of the top six cards in each suit: A-K-Q-J-10-9.

Four-handed play generally uses two specialized pinochle decks, often with the nines removed.

What is the hardest card game to play? Some might say that it’s cribbage, and they would have a strong argument.

Two people typically play the game, although up to six can play.

It’s a popular game on trips requiring air or rail travel, mainly because it involves nothing more than a deck of cards and a method for keeping score, either a pen-and-paper or one of the more popular cribbage boards—a small slab of wood with many holes drilled in it, which uses two pegs per competitor to keep track of.

According to Wikipedia — which knows everything and is never wrong — cribbage is “Britain’s national card game.” It is the only card game you can legally play in the pubs and clubs of the UK without getting the permission of local authorities.

It’s not incredibly difficult to learn, but neither is it intuitively easy, mostly because it doesn’t quite resemble any other card game.

For some quick tips on how to play, check out this guide on playing Cribbage.

Like Pai Gow Poker, Teen Patti is another poker variant that should be considered one of the most difficult casino card games to learn.

It becomes a simple game once you get the basics down, but that might take a while. In order to win, you must have a higher-ranking hand than your opponent.

That part of the game is pretty simple, but that’s not all there is to it. If you want to win a significant amount of cash, then you must master all of the different types of bets in Teen Patti.

To start, you place an ante bet, followed by the blind. The next three types of wagers are the See (Chaala), Raise, and Fold. After that, you can place one of many side bets. These include betting on which type of hand you will get and more.

Teen Patti is a game of chance, so placing more bets can be incredibly risky. However, only playing the ante bet isn’t going to win you that much money. That’s why Teen Patti should be considered one of the hardest card games to learn.

I suggest using these tips when playing Teen Patti. And if you think you can defy the odds, head over to DuckyLuck Casino to play now!

One of the original trick-taking games, whist is considered the progenitor of bridge, pinochle, spades, hearts, and euchre.

Lucky us — hardly anybody plays it anymore, except at those weird reenactment gatherings where people say stuff like “d’ye ken?” and “dinnae fash y’sef” and “how much is that in new pence?”

While the game is pretty easy to learn, it is more difficult to play because winning is usually less a matter of good cards than a good memory for cards played throughout the game. The winning team is generally the pair of players with the best short-term memories.

So, if you’re going to play, make sure at least one of your opponents is Grandpa. Or you can simply play easy casino games for beginners, such as like baccarat.

Head over to Red Dog Casino to play Baccarat!

Euchre isn’t the most complicated card game to learn or play since it is similar in concept to most other trick-taking games. It’s popular throughout the English-speaking world.

Also, Euchre has been around long enough and popular in enough countries that there are as many versions of it being played today as there are barroom back rooms where it is being dealt.

The game is played with the top six cards of each suit (24 total) from a regular 52-card deck. Adding a joker is optional.

After five cards have been dealt with each of the four players, the remaining four cards (or fifth if a joker was added) are placed face down on the table. This is the “kitty.”

Lots of stuff happens while the table attempts to decide the trump suit, after which some cards become trumps while others become worthless, and you’ll have to ask the others at the table which is which.

Surprisingly, Bridge isn’t all that difficult to learn. If you’ve already learned pinochle or one of the other trick-taking card games, you’re already conditioned to think ahead and play as part of a team.

This is good because you will need that and years of experience to get to the highest levels of Contract Bridge.

But make no mistake — all that experience with Spades or Pinochle merely gives you a vague hint of the skull sweat you’ll have to expend acquiring any degree of mastery in Contract Bridge.

This is genuinely the hardest card game in the world.

The game starts simply enough (if you’ve already played other trick-taking games). After bidding (the auction), the bidding winner leads with a single card face up in the center of the table.

Each of the other three players does the same, playing a single card from their hand according to the basic rule that they must follow suit if possible.

The player winning the trick (the four cards in the center of the table at the end of the first round) is the one who played either the highest same-suited card or the highest trump card.

When each player declares their team will win x number of tricks. Not x+1. Not x -1. X.

It takes years of experience to predict the future accurately. Or You can use my shortcut: Guessing.

Rubber Bridge is the version of Contract Bridge you will find most often played at home. Duplicate Bridge is confined to tournament play.

The duplicate portion of the name refers to all the tables in the tournament (with two teams of two people at each) playing the same hand, and the competition here is to determine which team plays each hand best.

Contract Bridge, Pinochle, Whist, and Euchre are some card games like Spades, which you could also consider one of the most difficult card games.

5 Great Card Games Like Spades – Fun Alternatives and Real Money Options

Euchre is similar to Spades in many ways, but instead of going up to 500, it goes up to 10. Whist is arguably the easiest to understand out of these five Spades alternative games. Spades and Hearts share certain features, but the latter has a scoring system...

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We’ve reached the last of the poker variants on my list of the difficult card games to master. This one is known as Let ‘Em Ride Poker.

If you’ve played before, you might already know that this game is not that hard to play but rather hard to win.

Like most card games, you start by placing your ante wager. Three “community” cards are dealt face up, which you and the dealer will share. Two other community cards are dealt face down.

Depending on your confidence level in your three cards, you can raise or just continue.

In order to win, you must have a pair of 10s or better at a minimum. Everything lower than that is won by the dealer. Other card games allow you the opportunity to win even if you don’t have at least a pair. That’s not the case for Let ‘Em Ride, making it pretty difficult to win.

You’ll find yourself burning through a lot of hands and your bankroll at points, which can also be tough on you mentally. If your cold streak lasts too long, you might run out of funds to play with.

Let ‘Em Ride is not available everywhere, so make sure you sign up at a site like Bovada if you’re looking to give it a shot.

I recommend playing there because you also have a shot at their progressive jackpot at just $1 per hand.

These are eight hard card games that are extremely difficult to master. They all have different elements that make them challenging, but that doesn’t make them not worth playing.

In fact, I’d argue that any game that can win you real money is worth playing. Well, if they aren’t straight-up scams, which these games aren’t.

You can also practice enough to where these games are no longer hard to play for you. Truth be told, nobody is good at any card game when they first start playing. It just takes a little bit of practice and luck, and you can win big.

Of course, you could just play the best casino games for beginners, but maybe you are looking for more of a challenge. In that case, any of these eight hard card games will suffice.

Out of all of them, my favorite has to be Pai Gow Poker. You basically have to beat the house twice to make a profit, but it’s still very fun to play.

Teen Patti and Let ‘Em Ride Poker are two other games like Pai Gow Poker that are available to play at safe online casinos.

If you want to become a better gambler, playing the hardest casino card games is one way to do so. You can also read our online casino tutorial for more help.

Footnote:

• Euchre tutorials and strategies are courtesy of The Spruce Crafts.