Card games have given us a simple yet flexible type of entertainment over their various centuries of history. This type of game arrived in Europe around the 14th century but its origins in Asia are less clear. What we do know is that the way these games were viewed changed very little from then until the start of the 21st century.
Blackjack Now Has Live-Streamed Dealers
Blackjack appears to have first been played around the 17th century, with France the most likely candidate as its starting point. It was adopted as one of the first gambling games when casinos began to spring up across Europe and the rules remained virtually unchanged since then until the emergence of online casinos.
These sites offer a range of games, as shown by the Paddy Power blackjack collection. Their live dealer games are based on the classic rules but crank up the atmosphere by live-streaming human dealers who deal physical cards on the table. The popularity of these live versions has led to features such as side bets and multipliers being added, with augmented reality also present in some games to blend the real and physical aspects together.
Balatro Has Given Poker a New Lease of Life
Poker has a shorter history than blackjack, as it’s believed that this game was first played in New Orleans in the early 19th century before becoming a worldwide favourite in the following century. Modern tournament play began in the 1970s and this ushered in a new era where fans across the world started following the star players in major events.
The chance to play online against others has helped make poker a global phenomenon, while the Balatro game released by Playstack at the start of this year has proved to be a major success. A roguelike deck-building game based on creating poker hands to earn as many points as possible, it sold half a million copies in just ten days and it’s now being reported that Android and iOS versions will soon be made available.
Set Can Help Predict Disasters
Throughout their history, card games have been regarded as an enjoyable pastime, but the research being carried out using the Set game and Google’s Deep Mind AI laboratory could help us see these games in a completely new way. The work carried out so far has been focused on using the combinations possible in Set to help work out the worst possible consequences in large groups of data.
Data that don’t follow a specific pattern can be almost impossible to understand, but by looking at the highest number of cards that can be drawn without containing a set of matching cards, researchers have seen how their findings can be applied to real-life situations using the power of AI to crunch the numbers.
Card games are sure to continue remaining popular in their original format, but these three examples show how they’ll also carry on evolving at the same as new technology is used to give us new ways of looking at them.
