Card Golf Part 4: So what ARE the Rules?
We figured it would be good to look at all those apps for Card Golf games to see what the "core rules" really are. A developer isn't going to spend so much of their time just to code some weird, unpopular, unknown variation. There is definitely a pattern. There are 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10 cards layouts. We could just as easily deal out 12 like in Skyjo. Every app asks each player to flip two cards face up to start the game. A few start with a peek at the bottom row of cards. The ones with the peek are more likely to be memory games where you don't expose cards until you finally go out at the end. That is not a play style we enjoy, so we moved along. The default scoring is: Ace = 1, 2-10 = face value, J & Q = 10, K = 0. Jokers are -2 if included. If not, score the twos as -2 instead. Vertical pairs or triples (in the 9-card version) cancel out and score 0. The game flows better when you can discard without revealing one of your face-dow...