Shuffle, Deal, Design: Principles from Card Games

Whether to have a fun time with friends, or to come closer together as a family, card games are a beloved form of entertainment for people all around the world. The earliest instance in recorded history of playing cards dates all the way back to the 9th Century A.D., during the Tang Dynasty in China [1]. Since then, there have been hundreds of iterations and refinements on those early card games, as well as the invention of new strategies and unique types of cards.

Figure 1. A hand of four Aces. The same standard 52-card deck is used for hundreds of different games [2].

When considering modern card games and their designs, I have narrowed down their many characteristics to three important ideas that work together in all of them: scoring and progression, randomness and luck, and strategy through decision making. The interplay between them can teach us a lot about harmony that must exist between design criteria.

Scoring and Progression

Many great card games are built around either a scoring system or a way to progress toward victory. This characteristic can be summarized as the goal of the game. In some games, one wins by scoring higher or lower than one’s opponents. This is the case for card games like bridge and Five Crowns, respectively. In others, the winner is whoever reaches a certain point value first, like in the game cribbage.

Another common system that some games utilize is a progression through rounds or phases. This is the case for the game Phase 10. In each round, the players must collect a certain combination of cards to progress. The cards that one needs depend on the phase. The winner is the first player to make it through the tenth phase of the game.

In much simpler card games, this idea of progression is demonstrated when players are slowly eliminated and better players progress to the next round. Examples of this include fun party games such as Exploding Kittens or Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza.

Randomness and Luck

Another characteristic of good card game design is the randomness of the cards. This is essential to a good game that is entertaining to all of the players. Could you imagine if through the same series of moves, one player would win a game every time? It wouldn’t be very fun or exciting. These are known as “solved” games, and they do exist [3]. Thankfully, randomness is quite easy to achieve with a deck of cards by shuffling enough times.

Decision Making and Strategy

The last design characteristic to cover is strategy through player agency. There are more strategies in card games than could be covered in the scope of this article. Forcing an unfavorable play from an opponent, calculating gain versus risk, and reserving resources for maximum efficiency are just a few. In short, good card games hold players to rules that restrict their options, yet allow them the flexibility to make calculated decisions to give them an advantage.

Take the card game Uno, for example. A player must play a card that matches the color or number of the previously played card. This is a clear restriction to the options available to that player. However, there are often cards which are more advantageous to play based on the remaining cards in the player’s hand or the information gathered about the cards held by an opponent.

Figure 2. The popular card game Uno. Players must match the color or number of the previous card [4].

Harmony in Design Attributes

We can learn a lot from how each of these attributes work with and are influenced by each other. For example, the randomness in the cards each player receives can influence how quickly or slowly a game progresses. Likewise, the choice to give players more decision making power reduces the amount of randomness at play.

A good case study for how attributes are connected is the card game bridge. After each player is dealt 13 random cards, the players bid on how many “tricks” or rounds their team will win, and then they play cards to win those tricks. No matter how skilled a team you play against, it may be that the cards you and your partner are dealt are objectively better than the ones your opponents receive because of the randomness of the cards. This luck puts you at an advantage, making for an unbalanced game.

In order to solve this, tournaments use a style of the game known as Duplicate Bridge. Teams are given hands of predetermined yet unrevealed cards, and scoring is based on how well those teams play the hands they are given relative to other teams who play with those hands [5]. While this solves the first issue, it clearly changes the scoring and progression of the game; instead of a competition against one team, the competition is against all other participating teams.

This principle of finding harmony between design attributes holds true for engineering design. Between iterations of a product, an engineer might have to reduce its strength for a lower weight. Simplicity might lose out in favor of safety. Modularity may be sacrificed for manufacturability. But as these features are adjusted relative to each other, the product is refined and turned into the best it can be for its desired application.

Final Thoughts

While these games share design characteristics, designers take various approaches to implement them. The fact that there are hundreds of card games today suggests that there is no one “right way” to how a product’s design should turn out. Depending on the goal of the designer, a product’s features can be adjusted to meet it in a unique and exciting manner.

References

[1] "Card game." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Oct. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_game.

[2] "Ace Playing Cards Card Game Game Cards Black." PickPik, www.pickpik.com/ace-playing-cards-card-game-game-cards-black-70639.

[3] “UR Tech: Solved Games.” The Campus Times, 26 Mar. 2015, www.campustimes.org/2015/03/26/ur-tech-solved-games/.

[4] "Uno! (15694272224)." Wikimedia Commons, 13 Oct. 2014, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Uno!_%2815694272224%29.jpg.

[5] "Duplicate Bridge." Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/topic/Duplicate-Bridge.

To cite this article:
White, Dalton. “Shuffle, Deal, Design: Principles from Card Games.” The BYU Design Review, 3 November 2025, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/shuffle-deal-design-principles-from-card-games.