Statistics

• Popular Game Pages
• Pages with Recent Interest
• Editor's Choice
• Recently Added Pages
• Difficulty, Popularity and Trend in Pagt panels
• Notes

Popular Game Pages

These are the game rules pages that had most visitors in each of the last three months - see notes for further details. The top 5 pages for the most recent month are listed on the home page.

Pages with Recent Interest

These are pages that have had a notable increase in visitors in each of the last three months, relative to the average number of visitors in previous months - see notes for further details. The top 5 pages with increased visits in the latest month are shown on the home page.

Editor's Choice

Recommendations from the editor (i.e. me - John McLeod). These are games that I have enjoyed playing, and which you may find worth trying if you are looking for something different to play.

Calabresella

Italian three-player point-trick game with bidding. The main aim is to capture aces (the third highest cards of the suits) and take the last trick, which is difficult to guarantee since there are no trumps.

Literature

This six-player team version of Authors or Happy Families was probably invented in southern India. It demands a high degree of coordination between team members and an excellent memory.

Ocean's Eleven

An ingenious two-player game by Eliott Adkins in which each player has a supply of 52 cards drawn one at a time and the object is to win the best of 11 poker hands.

Briscola Chiamata

A popular and entertaining 5-player version of the well-known Italian card game Briscola, in which all the cards are dealt out. It is played in alliances of 2 against 3: the high bidder chooses trumps and selects a partner by calling a trump.

Open Face Chinese Poker

Although this rather new game is based on poker hands and became popular with poker players in 2012-2013, there is no bluffing or escalating betting. Players compete to build poker hands using cards that are seen by all players.

Getaway

In this unusual Punjabi game for 4-8 players, the aim is to get rid of cards. If anyone is unable to follow suit, the 'winner' of the trick has to pick up the cards played to that trick. There is scope for skill, but it also works well for a group that includes inexperienced card players.

Twenty (2)

A skilful adding game for 2 players, also playable by 3 or 4, in which players take turns to play cards totalling each number from 1 to 20. Contributed by Brian Stovel.

Doppelkopf

This popular 4-player game from north Germany is played with a double deck of 2×24 cards. The players with the queens of clubs are partners, but you only find out who your partner is during the course of the play.

Cucumber

A Nordic game for up to 7 players in which the aim is not to win the last trick. When playing to a trick you must either overtake or play your lowest card.

Bagchen

Tibetan domino game for 4 players using a double set of Chinese dominoes (64 tiles). Tiles are played in tricks, singly or in groups, and the main aim is to win the last trick.

Perlaggen

This Tyrolean trick-taking game featuring combinations, wild cards and bluffing has been recognised by UNESCO as an item of intangible cultural heritage.

Big A (打大A)

A double deck Chinese climbing card game for five players in which the holders of two identical Aces are partners against the other three players.

Recently Added Pages

These are the new pages most recently added to the website. See also the what's new page for a periodic survey of major additions and modifications to the site, and the site map for a complete list of pages showing when each was last updated.

Difficulty, Popularity and Trend in Page Panels

Some pages of game rules have a panel in the top right containing a brief description, some links to help find related games, and some 'ratings':

• Difficulty. From 1 to 5 stars ⭐representing the subjective assessment of the editor combining two factors: how difficult or complex the rules are, and how difficult it is to learn to play the game well.
• Popularity. From 1 to 5 hearts ❤️. Games are ranked in order of the average number of people (actually different IP addresses) per month who visited the game rules page in the last 6 months. Top 10% get 5 hearts, next 10% 4 hearts, next 20% 3 hearts, next 30% 2 hearts, bottom 30% 1 heart. (The top 6 games under this ranking are also listed on the home page as 'most popular games'.)
• Trend. From 1 to 5 flames 🔥️. The number of visitors in the most recent month is compared with the average per month over the preceding five months, and the significance of the change is estimated using a statistical technique described below. The pages are then ranked in order from most significant increase down to most significant decrease. The top 10% are given 5 flames, the next 20% 4 flames, the middle 40% 3 flames, the next 20% 2 flames and the bottom 10% 1 flame. (The 6 games or pages with the most significant increase are also listed on the home page under 'recent interest'.)

Notes

The tables of popular pages and pages with recent interest on this page are based on the number of visitors in a month, estimated on the basis of the number of different hosts (IP addresses) requesting the page. The 'popular pages' table includes only English language pages containing game rules, while the 'recent interest' table covers all English language pages that have existed for at least six months. Shortened versions of these table showing only the top 6 games also appear on the home page.

To find pages that have recently become more popular, the expected number of visitors per month is estimated on the basis of the previous 5 months, and compared to the number for the current month. The calculation is as follows:

1. For each English language page, for each month, the number of different hosts visiting the page (h) is divided by the total number of hosts visiting pagat.com that month (t). This normalisation is to correct for seasonal fluctuations in the total number of page views: it probably does not make much difference to the result.
2. We model visits to a page as a Poisson process, and use the average of h/t for the previous 5 months to estimate its rate.
3. Assuming this Poisson process, we use the Chernoff bound to estimate the probablity that h/t for the current month is greater than or equal to the observed value. Thanks to Niall Cardin for drawing our attention to this approximation.
4. We rank the pages in order of this probability. The lower the probability, the more remarkable it is that so many hosts visited the page in the latest month.