The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: wdm1219inpenna on December 14, 2024, 09:34:09 AM
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I've been trying to brainstorm every game show that has ever aired in the United States involving the use of playing cards.
This list will not include pilot episodes such as Jim McKrell's "Split Decision" or Jim Peck's "Suit Yourself" nor will it include game shows that may use playing cards as part of an entire show (e.g. Hit Me / Card Game on Price is Right or any Vegas themed type deal done by Monty Hall during the 1976 season of Let's Make A Deal). Obviously this list also will not include international versions of game shows involving playing cards...the one that springs most readily to my mind is Bruce Forsyth's "Play Your Cards Right".
Here's what I came up with.
Pay Cards (Syndicated, 1968-69)
Gambit (CBS, 1972-76)
Card Sharks (NBC, 1978-81; CBS 1986-89, Syndicated 1987-88?, 2001 (ugh) and the Joel McHale ABC version from I believe 2019 - 2021.
Super Pay Cards (Syndicated, 1981-82). I know this version was taped in Canada but I'm not certain if the show aired at all in the United States during its initial run. I myself do not recall ever seeing it until the advent of the internet.
Las Vegas Gambit (NBC, 1980-81)
Catch 21 (GSN, 2008-2011 & 2019-2020)
I'd love to flesh out more about these game shows but first I wanted to check to see if there are any other playing card game shows I overlooked.
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"Top Card" on TNN.
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I knew I was leaving at least one out! I'm even playing an online version of that very game too!
Thank you.
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Strip Poker, USA, 1999-2000. Don't worry, I wish I had forgotten about it too.
On a related note, given how red-hot Texas Hold 'em became back in the early-to-mid '00s, I'm surprised no one ever tried their hand at a legit poker-based game show around that time frame.
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Super Pay Cards (Syndicated, 1981-82). I know this version was taped in Canada but I'm not certain if the show aired at all in the United States during its initial run.
It aired in a handful of U.S. markets. Richmond, Va. was one and I believe NYC was another…WOR I wanna say.
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Super Pay Cards (Syndicated, 1981-82). I know this version was taped in Canada but I'm not certain if the show aired at all in the United States during its initial run.
It aired in a handful of U.S. markets. Richmond, Va. was one and I believe NYC was another…WOR I wanna say.
Also aired on 39 Houston during that time, IIRC
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So essentially, there have been four.
In a genre that goes back to the earliest days of television, isn't that odd?
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Very interesting indeed. I think that applies to many forms of gambling. Dice are ubiquitous in board games, but are similarly under-represented in game shows. There's High Rollers and Yahtzee, and dice that played a comparatively smaller role on Monopoly, Big Showdown and Dealer's Choice. Even if you count applications like Dice Game on TPIR, I'm in Matt's camp of "essentially..." there are few.
I doubt producers all stood around and said "we need to keep gambling to a minimum!" But I imagine there's an aversion to it because there's less control over the payouts and/or the house edge in the base games makes their use as TV games less compelling.
-Jason
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Jack Barry would not have been there since two of his most in famous properties are fairly well linked to gambling.
A show like High Rollers allows Bob and Merrill to have a rough idea of how often they’ll will give away $10,000 or the car, but they can’t change that except with the insurance markers. Card Sharks allows a certain number of changes, but the willingness of the contestant to have a punt drives the payoffs.
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In practice most card games that are not gambling games are difficult to impossible to adapt for TV game shows because hidden information (the cards a player is holding) is essential to meaningfully playing the game, and it's difficult to convey this to a TV audience. So this basically leaves gambling-style games.
/Wonder if Championship Bridge with Charles Goren would count for our list.
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In practice most card games that are not gambling games are difficult to impossible to adapt for TV game shows because hidden information (the cards a player is holding) is essential to meaningfully playing the game, and it's difficult to convey this to a TV audience. So this basically leaves gambling-style games.
/Wonder if Championship Bridge with Charles Goren would count for our list.
I would indeed include that as it was a show about a game involving card playing, and they made the home viewer aware of who had which cards. Good obscure one there! I actually watched a few youtube vids of this series a while ago.
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In practice most card games that are not gambling games are difficult to impossible to adapt for TV game shows because hidden information (the cards a player is holding) is essential to meaningfully playing the game, and it's difficult to convey this to a TV audience. So this basically leaves gambling-style games.
/Wonder if Championship Bridge with Charles Goren would count for our list.
I would indeed include that as it was a show about a game involving card playing, and they made the home viewer aware of who had which cards. Good obscure one there! I actually watched a few youtube vids of this series a while ago.
I also was introduced to this through YouTube about a year ago. I likened it to "World Series of Poker" or "World Poker Tour" of the 1950s.
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I really got a kick out of the Celebrity Poker Showdown that ran a few seasons on Bravo, sort of bucking the trend that the celebrity format kills the game show.
I'd count it as more of a game show compared to other televised poker, because it was produced as engaging television featuring poker, as opposed to passively observing people playing cards. It had more the air of poker-night poker (albeit with famous people) which was pretty entertaining.
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King of Vegas (Spike TV, 2006)
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Twenty years ago the Western Washington CBS affiliate ran a shorts series titled Tulalip Casino Night, hosted by sports reporter "Right" Gaard Swanson. Pairs of friends, relatives and the like competed in an Amazing Race-style elimination contest with the chance at a million dollars at the end.
https://www.heraldnet.com/life/tulalips-gamble-on-casino-reality-show/ (https://www.heraldnet.com/life/tulalips-gamble-on-casino-reality-show/)
I thought it was ok not great, and was re-upped in a celebrity format, but is the world really clamoring to watch people run around playing slots and roulette?
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I thought of another game show although it's not solely based on playing cards, "Dealer's Choice" hosted first by Bob Hastings and then Jack Clark back in 1974-75. They did play some card games on that show, including Blackjack I believe every episode but also other non-card gambling games as well.
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Super pay cards aired on WNEW as its OG version did, both being syndicated by corporate cousin Metromedia Producers.
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That's my old neck of the woods, Ewing NJ, I had the good fortune of getting both New York and Philadelphia stations at that time. I so remember WNEW, which became WNYW.
Fond memories. I even had the old Pay Cards home game. How I wish I had taken far better care of all of my home game show board games back then...it is to weep.
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Re: Championship Bridge, what does not make sense to me is the IMDB website classifies the series genre as "Sport."
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That's my old neck of the woods, Ewing NJ...
Greetings from Hamilton Township, neighbor!
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In a genre that goes back to the earliest days of television, isn't that odd?
I don't know that it is!
Ponder: rjaguar3's point about card games with hidden information not translating well to a flashing-lights big-money game-show format is pretty solid, which mostly reduces you at that point to open-handed casino games. And to the average Ammurican household TV viewer (particularly in the '50s through the '80s), there are exactly two of those: poker and blackjack. Gambit and its derivatives cornered the market on blackjack, which leaves poker, and there's pretty much only one way to play poker open-handed: basic draw poker. And even Pay Cards has SOME level of hidden information; they just made it part of the game by having the players draw their hands off of the game board.
If anything, give points to Card Sharks for coming up with a lasting format that was only BARELY derivative of an existing casino game...that was in turn then reimagined into an actual table game on its own.
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If you extend the definition of "based on playing cards" to include games without physical cards, you can include things like Give-N-Take and Say When, which are effectively Blackjack with prizes in lieu of cards. You also have Concentration, which I would argue is the most successful "card game" game show of them all. I would not say that Twenty-One is based on a card game but it's certainly evocative of one and probably was meant to be.
While I would not classify them as card-based, I can see how Lucky 13 and 10 Seconds might look like trick-taking games (assuming you squinted and had 20/200 vision to begin with).
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I would not say that Twenty-One is based on a card game but it's certainly evocative of one and probably was meant to be.
A foreign game, but Poker Face was the same thing. It could be a great game, though that title might seem like a bait-and-switch.
I’ve thought a game based on draw poker could work in which you answer questions (or something) for the right to change cards. I suppose that was Spin-Off, closer to Yahtzee of course but both with essentially poker hands.
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Re: Championship Bridge, what does not make sense to me is the IMDB website classifies the series genre as "Sport."
The Charles Schulz/Jim Sasseville sports-themed comic strip "It's Only a Game," which ran from 1957 to 1959, had one "bridge" panel every week.
(https://i.imgur.com/tFZskzv.jpeg)
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I would not say that Twenty-One is based on a card game but it's certainly evocative of one and probably was meant to be.
A foreign game, but Poker Face was the same thing. It could be a great game, though that title might seem like a bait-and-switch.
I’ve thought a game based on draw poker could work in which you answer questions (or something) for the right to change cards. I suppose that was Spin-Off, closer to Yahtzee of course but both with essentially poker hands.
Side note: I thought the original name of Poker Face that was used in Australia - (The) Con Test - was a brilliant name and wish they have had kept that for all versions.
R.
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Poker Face / Con Test was briliant (i know - i'm in the minority ) and wish it was tried here.... i think ABC was considering it at one point.
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I’ve thought a game based on draw poker could work in which you answer questions (or something) for the right to change cards. I suppose that was Spin-Off, closer to Yahtzee of course but both with essentially poker hands.
I've run this in large format (think 12 teams at a time) on a number of occasions for conventions. Players answer "Wits and Wagers" style questions to build poker hands, with the best answers getting more choices on card drafting and the worst answers getting whatever is left on top of the deck. Play a few different variants where stronger hands are more likely with variants in later rounds) and the score the teams, Pay Cards Style, after each round.
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've run this in large format (think 12 teams at a time) on a number of occasions for conventions. Players answer "Wits and Wagers" style questions to build poker hands, with the best answers getting more choices on card drafting and the worst answers getting whatever is left on top of the deck. Play a few different variants where stronger hands are more likely with variants in later rounds) and the score the teams, Pay Cards Style, after each round.
Wow, with 12 hands at once? How many chances does each get to answer and draw again?
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Wow, with 12 hands at once? How many chances does each get to answer and draw again?
TBF, it wasn't done by draw poker, but by drafting.
Imagine a set of cards available in a draft row. Starting with the best answer a team pulls a card from the row and choose to either add it to their hand or to burn it for the top of the deck. (This is to allow meaningful draft choices even when none of the cards directly help you) There are only a limited number of drafts though, so the teams at the bottom of the order only get to top-deck blind.
It's very easy to set it up for later rounds to be worth more by doing things like adding jokers to the game or by increasing the number of cards available to teams. A typical round might be: each team gets dealt two cards blind, then there are three rounds of questions with community cards revealed in between question, so that each teams has seven cards at the end, but with teams who do better at the trivia having more control.
Because of the order in which rule variants are structured from round to round, a winning hand in the first round might be two pair, but a winning hand in the third and final round might be a full house or four of a kind. So that provides a natural ramp-up by simply making it easier to make bigger hands in later rounds.
I have a very large deck (something like 11x14) of cards for props and drawing, but once the cards are taken, they're represented in an on-screen display, so everyone can see everyone's hand at all times. It's all a pretty low-tech thing that I did over ten years ago. I've got a spreadsheet attached to a PowerPoint using the PowerShow add-on (https://officeoneonline.com/powershow/powershow.html). Normally when you embed a spreadsheet in a powerpoint presentation, the presentation doesn't update live when you update the spreadsheet. The add-on allows that to happen. So I have two tabs in a spreadsheet, one where I can enter something like "TH" in a space and another where a Ten of Hearts appears in a card deck font. And that second screen is embedded in the PowerPoint. So I type the rank and suit in a space and a card appears on the screen in the matching place for the right team.
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Doug Morris's Net Poker qualifies if we're moving beyond the realm of televised game shows. I remember it being a well-thought-out format which combined trivia knowledge with enough strategy and luck to make a compelling game.
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Very interesting indeed. I think that applies to many forms of gambling. Dice are ubiquitous in board games, but are similarly under-represented in game shows. There's High Rollers and Yahtzee, and dice that played a comparatively smaller role on Monopoly, Big Showdown and Dealer's Choice. Even if you count applications like Dice Game on TPIR, I'm in Matt's camp of "essentially..." there are few.
I doubt producers all stood around and said "we need to keep gambling to a minimum!" But I imagine there's an aversion to it because there's less control over the payouts and/or the house edge in the base games makes their use as TV games less compelling.
-Jason
As an aside, at first Video Village used a chuck-a-luck to determine the number of steps to take. It was not integral to the game and was later replaced with an electronic device, with Kenny Williams continuing to bellow out the numbers.
Shenanigans also used an electronic device for the same purpose, with Kenny Williams calling the numbers.
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Shenanigans also used an electronic device for the same purpose, with Kenny Williams calling the numbers.
Which was operated by one kid (later a pair of kids) who had nothing to do but watch the board flash. Often the presser would notice the pattern to the lights and stop the number generator at will. Thus foreshadowing Michael Larson's PYL incident a generation later.
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On a related note, given how red-hot Texas Hold 'em became back in the early-to-mid '00s, I'm surprised no one ever tried their hand at a legit poker-based game show around that time frame.
When I moved to Los Angeles in 1984 poker was a fad thanks to The Travel Channel so I pitched a poker game that involved trivia questions. No one was interested enough to develop it.
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When I moved to Los Angeles in 1984 poker was a fad thanks to The Travel Channel so I pitched a poker game that involved trivia questions.
The World Queries of Poker? *ducks*
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When I moved to Los Angeles in 1984 poker was a fad thanks to The Travel Channel so I pitched a poker game that involved trivia questions.
The World Queries of Poker? *ducks*
You kid but that’s actually pretty damn clever.
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I agree that is very clever indeed!
The premise for the show sounds really good too. It's Pay Cards! but involving trivia questions.
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The premise for the show sounds really good too. It's Pay Cards! but involving trivia questions.
Thank you but unlike "Pay Cards" there was no memory element involved. I alternated between calling the game "Square Deal" and "Double Deal." Briefly considered calling it "The Double Dealers."
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One show with playing cards that nobody has mentioned (and I can't believe I'm saying this)--Strip Poker from the early 2000s.