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War is a card game for two players. It uses a standard Western 52-playing card deck; aces can be high or low.
Each player is dealt half the deck, and both players play simultaneously. Each player shows one card, and whoever has the higher card takes both cards shown and places them at the bottom of his deck. In case of a tie, both players play three face-down cards and one face-up card, and these face-up cards decide who will receive all the cards. If there is another tie, the process is repeated, etc. In all cases of ties, face-down cards are exposed before being collected. In some variations, smaller numbers of face-down cards are played. In one bloodthirsty variation, the number of face-down cards equals the pip value of the cards, with face cards being ten and ace eleven.
Whoever has no card to play when they are required to play one is the loser.
War strategy
War seems to be a game of chance. However, a player with an excellent memory can improve upon his or her chances of winning by ordering the cards that the player wins in rounds.
This is best demonstrated with an example in which Player 1 is playing to win: Suppose the game begins with Player 2 beating Player 1's 6 with a 10. Player 1 notices that Player 2 collects the two cards and puts them on the bottom of his deck with the 10 on top of the 6. In the next round, Player 1 beats Player 2's 8 with a jack. Player 1 now collects the two cards and places them at the bottom of his deck with the jack on top of the 8 so that the next pass through the deck will begin jack beats 10 (Player 1 collects), 8 beats 6 (Player 1 collects again). If Player 1 had instead placed the 8 over the jack, the next pass through the deck would go 10 beats 8 (Player 2 collects), jack beats 6 (player 1 collects), which is not as beneficial to Player 1.
However, over the long-term, as the deck sizes change (as both players collect cards) and as more and more cards are revealed, it becomes extremely difficult—indeed, nearly impossible—to implement this strategy. Only a player with an extremely good memory and the ability to visualize extremely quickly card positions in both decks will be able to consistently implement this strategy over the course of a game.
Cheating
It is possible to cheat by taking advantage of an opponent who is not paying attention. Suppose the first player plays a Jack and the second player plays a Queen; the first player quickly reaches out and claims the trick before the other player really has a chance to look at the card. The reason that cheating in this way is easier in War than in many other card games is that the game of War plays very fast.
Computer War
Due to the length of a game of war, it is sometimes difficult to determine who among a group of people is the most skilled player. For this reason, modern computer scientists have developed a number of online war programs, which perfectly replicate the experience of playing the game. The foremost example of this sort of program can be found and played online, free of charge, at this site. Expert war players agree that this new form of the game has updated War for the 21st century.
There was an old Apple II version of this game, contained in the game "little computer people". In the game, the winner of each trick always put the cards on the bottom of the deck in the same order. Frequently, the game wound up cycling; that is, the same positions would repeat indefinitely with no winner.
A Javascript version appeared on the web in the late 1990's in which a user could watch the game played automatically at his or her choice of speeds. Whether or not this site still exists is unknown. However, it is possible that this example may be the one mentioned.
Multiplayer War & Variants
War may be played with more than 2 players. A war occurs only when the 2 highest cards tie. The war may involve only those players, or all players. The main variant is adding jokers to the deck. If a joker is played, there is an automatic war. Alternatively, the joker beats all other cards. The casino variant of this game - Casino war is quite popular in many casinos though the rules are slightly different.
Related games
The game of Top Trumps is similar to war in that the highest card value wins, however in this case a special pack on a particular theme is used such that the winner of the previous round can choose one of a number of categories for the value, increasing the complexity of the game.
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