Cribbage and card games

While trying out a handful of card games over the summer holidays, I learnt about the common traits of card games I never knew of. Lots of games have a series of tricks that are played out, each player playing a hand as it goes round. Some have a limited amount of tricks, some play until all cards are out. Then there is Trumps, a suit that is higher than all the others, sometimes there is a hierarchy in which all suits have a value.

So I wanted to find out the differences of card games and the ones that stood out were 500, hearts, and Cribbage. Hearts was the easiest, Hearts is the trump suit - but the catch is that 'winning' cards of a hearts suit gives you minus points. So as you play the goal is to avoid 'winning' any hearts and make the other players get them. The saving grace for Hearts is the shoot-for-the-moon in which a player aims to obtain all the hearts and the queen of clubs (a special card that acts like a heart but gives -13 points, equal to all the hearts cards combined). If a player wins this, he is up a hundred points (or so).

Cribbage was my favorite, although I would have made a few changes to it. It has a nice tactile way of scoring by means of moving pins around a board, but I argue that it isn't necessary as pen & paper would work just as well (but not be as nice..) and the way in which you score was really awesome. You have a hand and try to make as many sets of runs, pairs, groups of whatever you can make to score, and every set you can make is worth points. It's a great puzzle that's really rewarding in making you feel like a genius.
It's the type of thing I can see making a good video game. Perhaps I should draw something up...