BDS Software

Go Fish - Modified

Fullerton (pp. 29-30) describes this traditionsl card game:

This is a game for three to six players using a standard 52-card deck. The dealer deals five cards to each player. The rest of the cards are placed face down in a draw pile. The player to the dealer's left starts.

A turn consists of asking a player for a specific rank. For example, if it's your turn, you might say, "Chris, please give me your Jacks." You must already hold at least one card of the requested rank, so you must hold at least one Jack to say this. If Chris has cards of the named rank (Jacks in this case), he has to give you all of his cards of this rank. You then get another turn and can again ask any player for any rank that you hold.

If Chris does not have any cards of the named rank, he says, "go fish!" You must then draw the top card from the draw pile. If the drawn card is the rank you asked for, you show it and get another turn. If the drawn card is not the rank you asked for, you keep it, but the turn now passes to the player who said, "go fish!"

As soon as a player collects a book of four cards of the same rank, this must be shown and discarded face down. The game continues until either someone has no cards left in their hand or the draw pile runs out. The winner is the player who then has the most books.

Others have different definitions of the game. See for examples:

https://www.bigfishgames.com/online-games/22200/go-fish/index.html

https://www.ducksters.com/games/go_fish_rules.php

https://cardgames.io/gofish/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/778836/

My modifications to the game are as follows:

1. There are seven potential players: Alan, Betty, Charlie, Danielle, Eddie, Felicity, and you. You get to choose the number of players (3, 4, 5, or 6), and which of the seven potential players will participate. Each of the six named players has individual skills and a distinct strategy. That player's skills and strategy remain stable within each game, and also from game-to-game. You, of course, have your own skills and strategy.

2. You also get to choose which player is the dealer. After the deal, the player to the dealer's left (i.e. clockwise) starts.


-----

Notes:

● I used the playing card images from America's Contract Bridge League, but I used Corel Paint Shop Pro 9 to reduce them to 10% of their published size, and to add a black border to help them stand out from the background more crisply.

● To shuffle the deck of cards, I used the Fisher-Yates shuffle as described by Frank Mitchell.


-----

                                                                                                                                                                M.D.J. 2018/07/01


----------

References:

America's Contract Bridge League. 52 Playing Cards. http://acbl.mybigcommerce.com/52-playing-cards/

Fullerton, Tracy (2014) Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 3rd Ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Mitchell, Frank. The only way to shuffle an array in JavaScript https://www.frankmitchell.org/2015/01/fisher-yates/