The Card Game

The History

Okay... so... Let's get down to Business. The Card Game began as a simple joke created by Max Hipp, a second year of Davidson Campus 2013 Term 1 at the time. Max and his RC group were sitting at a table for dinner one day when Max stood up and asked the table the following question: "Can you play The Card Game?". The obvious answer was no, but most of us were intrigued, we wanted to learn the key to The Card Game. Over the next twenty minutes Max continued to demonstrate the Card Game over and over again, and to his satisfaction, the secret of the game was not discovered. It is probably obvious to most you reading this that this riddle of riddles quickly spread across the campus and by the end of the day, large groups of kids gathered to try and find the secret to the game. Obviously, there were the select few who managed to learn the secret of the Card Game, but they were quickly sworn to secrecy by Max himself. This went on almost daily until the last few days of the term, when Max finally relented and chose to tell some of the more avid players the secret to the simple game. During the next year at Duke East Term 1, Max continued to spread The Card Game to the unknowing Tipsters, starting on the first day. He and his two close friends, Joseph Cochran and William Miltich, began to play the card game in the middle of Alspaugh commons, constantly passing the deck of cards around and baffling the onlookers. This activity continued all throughout the term, but it definitely did not match up to the chaos created at Davidson over it. Along with spreading The Card Game on the first day, The Card Game Trio made an agreement to explain The Card Game to those who were still interested on the last 2-3 days of the term.

Keep in mind that the game is very difficult to play without knowing the answer, and nearly impossible to figure out without hearing it in person.

The Guidelines

While the name may seems misleading, The Card Game does not use cards itself, it just uses the box of cards. While the secret behind the game cannot be stated here, there are a few details and guidelines that can be used to explain it...

-The player begins by holding a deck of cards that are put through a series of motions.

-Every time a motion is made, the player must say the words "Card Game".

-The player announces that they have finished playing The Card Game by stating "I can/can not play The Card Game, can you?".

-There is no known limit to the variety of actions that can be used on the deck during play. Some of the more unusual sessions have been known to include throwing, dropping, passing between hands, and even handing the deck to a bystander as actions.

-The player must and will always tell the truth about the outcome of their session of The Card Game. It is supposedly very simple to purposely lose The Card game for sake of example.

The Answer

The basis around The Card Game is to find the way to win and lose the game at will, to find the key to the game. While at Davidson this had been occasionally done legitimately, it was found to be very difficult. In the end Max began telling people which allowed for it to die down for a few days. It is been said that the answer is actually extremely simple and easy to find, but for this to be possible, the game must be seen played in person.