Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Game Review: Digging Graves

An interesting find in the 2024 traditional deck contest, a vying game with an unusual mechanic. In Digging Graves you bet on having the highest single card in your hand. Players ante, cards are dealt, then two betting rounds where betting consists of discarding a card first then staking. Highest card wins, ties broken by suit so the pot is never split. Whenever you discard a spade you are given another card.

How can you make a single card showdown interesting? The same way poker did: having more cards available for each player. Unlike most forms of poker in this game hand sizes can get uneven though having more cards isn't doesn't matter in the showdown. More cards does mean more bluffing power in the betting, so do the discards you make.

Discards are open information so you can do even more bluffing with what you discard, not just using it to get rid of low cards. The adding up of information for each round doesn't take a lot from betting, remember that the cards do not lie but the player can.

If you need a quick betting game for dealer's choice, this one works great for three rounds of betting.

A couple of variations are given, one is by comparing pairs and the other is where if you discard a spade you must keep discarding until your discard is no longer a spade. These give way different approaches to betting.

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