What's your favorite obscure card game and how do you play it?

Don't know how obscure it is, but... euchre.

Scat! Great bar game

Farkle

Bid Whist, by far. It sounds complicated but it really is not.

Works best with 3+ people but 2 is OK.

The aim of the game is to win hands. In a hand everyone puts down one card, with the first card dictating the suit. If you can't follow suit you can put another suit down but it won't win the hand (even if it's the highest card).

The exception to this is if you place a 'trump card' down. This is a card from the suit which was chosen as trumps before the hand - more on this later.

So for an example. Player one puts down the 4 of hearts. Player 2 puts down the 9 of hearts, taking the lead. Player 3 has no hearts so puts down a 2 of clubs. Player 2 wins as they put the highest heart down. If it had been decided that clubs were trumps before the hand, then player 3 would win. If there were a player 4 who also had no hearts, they could put a higher trump card down and then they would win (important to note that they can only use a trump card if they are unable to follow suit, i.e. if they have no hearts). If player 4 had no hearts and no trumps, they could just throw away another card from a different suit and lose the hand.

You each get 10 cards (usually, you can start with less if you want). You each look at your cards and decide how many hands you think you can win in the game. This is where you bid. Starting to the left of the dealer, each player 'bids' how many hands they will win. Whoever bids the highest number gets to pick which suit will be trumps (Important - the total number of bids cannot equal the number of cards each player has). These bids are recorded on a piece of paper. If 2 players bid the same amount, the player who bid first gets to pick trumps. If you have shit cards you can just bid 0 and try to lose each (reason will become clear)

When all 10 hands have been played, each player gets a points for each hand they won. If your bid was correct and you got that number of hands during the game, you get a 10 point bonus. So if player 1 bids 3 and gets 3, their total score is 13. If they bid 3 and got 4 their score would just be 4. This is why it may make sense to bid 0, you can still score 10 points at the end.

The next game starts with each player getting 9 cards. Each new game sees the players start with one less card, all they way to the last game where each player has 1 card.

Enjoy! There is so much depth and tactical play to be used, I have played this game for hundreds of hours with friends and it's always awesome.

Not obscure, but Sheephead