The Art Of Playing Cards

The Art of Playing Cards is your tour guide to a standard deck. This handbook covers the classic games, tricks, and skills you'll need to become an expert card shark. There’s something about opening a new pack of cards. It doesn’t matter whether you buy them at a filling station to while away a few hours on the road or if they’re a classic deck of Bicycle cards bought specifically for a poker night—they smell the same. There’s the same whiff of possibility, of hands to play or chances to take, of bets to win and of fun just waiting to be had. THE GAMES: There are thousands of games we could have included, but along with some of the most popular, we’ve also chosen those we think are the most fun, the most challenging, and the most exasperating. Also, much of the beauty of card games is that they vary so much, and we’ve included plenty of tips for trying something a bit different. Of course, when faced with so many variations and different games, it would be impossible to include them all here; we only hope that you like the ones we have squeezed in. THE SKILLS: Shuffles, cuts, ribbon spreads, fans, flourishes, false cuts, forces, false shuffles, finger lifts, double lifts… they’re all here, explained in a simple step-by-step fashion that makes it easy for anyone to pick them up. THE TRICKS: Here we’ve concentrated on tricks we think are easy and approachable because there are few things more frustrating than trying to do something that’s simply out of your league or utterly beyond your physical abilities. Thus, you won’t find any magician’s glue or funny specialized decks of cards; there are few props, and no fiendishly complex sleights and palms… and there are definitely no cards up anyone’s sleeves. We hope the result is a book that you’ll be able to come back to again and again, whether it’s to brush up on your shuffling or because you want to learn a new game or a new trick for the holidays. If you do that, then this book has served its purpose. Oh, and always remember, it’s not the cards in your hand that count, it’s how you play them.

Play with art like never before in this exciting new activity book from the best-selling author of the Let's Make Some Great Art series. Marion Deuchars has created a surprising and engaging range of activities and games organized into seven sections of Drawing, Color, Shapes, Paint, Paper, Printing, and Pattern. Each section is not only a great opportunity to play, but also helps to shape and form artistic ability and confidence. Discover the joys of making your own marbled paper. Create your own language in pictures. Providing hours of endless fun and exploration, Art Play will bring out the artist in everyone.

Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible. Written by one of the world's top game designers, The Art of Game Design presents 100+ sets of questions, or different lenses, for viewing a game’s design, encompassing diverse fields such as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, puzzle design, and anthropology. This Second Edition of a Game Developer Front Line Award winner: Describes the deepest and most fundamental principles of game design Demonstrates how tactics used in board, card, and athletic games also work in top-quality video games Contains valuable insight from Jesse Schell, the former chair of the International Game Developers Association and award-winning designer of Disney online games The Art of Game Design, Second Edition gives readers useful perspectives on how to make better game designs faster. It provides practical instruction on creating world-class games that will be played again and again.

Famed puzzle expert explains math behind a multitude of mystifying tricks: card tricks, stage "mind reading," coin and match tricks, counting out games, geometric dissections, etc. More than 400 tricks. 135 illustrations.

A tongue-in-cheek look at the newest method of self-defense details the history of card-throwing, exercises to improve your throwing ability, and fantastic stunts

A dazzling selection of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, as well as some lesser-known masterpieces, many drawn from the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Nearly 130 years after his death, Vincent van Gogh continues to exert a powerful fascination over viewers and historians. This superb book offers readers a selection of the artist’s most unforgettable canvases, as well as some lesser-known examples, many drawn from the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The volume explores the works in the context of Van Gogh’s short but brilliant career, in which frequent spells of isolation were paired with lively engagement with his peers and the popular ideas of his time. Additionally, Van Gogh’s continuous stream of letters written to family and friends—one of the most important archival resources of nineteenth-century art—provides a narrative thread around which this study develops. In the text, art historian Belinda Thomson considers Van Gogh as a cosmopolitan figure who combined his art experiences and native traditions absorbed in Holland and in Victorian England, and later succeeded in making his mark upon the painting scene in France at one of its richest periods. This book will be a welcome resource for art lovers, offering a different take on one of history’s most interesting artists.