East-West

East-West is a precursor to Schotten Totten and Battle Line played with a traditional deck (or a modified short deck). East-West is its own interesting and distinct game. It might even be better than its more famous related games! In East-West, each player draws a card from a short deck and commits it to one of three shared central cards in an attempt to build better poker hands to win three contested spots. Variant rules improve the game by adding a doubling cube, cards in hand, a full deck and five contested areas instead of three. The basic game is played with a 32 card deck (7 to Ace in four suits) with three active areas in which players build competing poker hands (using one shared card in each of the areas). A player wins the game if they win at least two of the three hands. Alternately, the game can be played to any point total one wishes. At the end of each game, a player would win 1 point for winning with two of the three hands, or 2 points for winning all three hands. The winner is the first to reach the agreed-upon points total. —user summary Played with a standard deck of cards, published in Reiner Knizia's book Blazing Aces!: A Fistful of Family Card Games.