#028: Acey Deucy, or Whatever You Want to Call It

Release Date: July 1973

Platform: Mainframe (BASIC type-in)

Genre: Card Game

Developer(s): Bill Palmby

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

We're back to the simple text games after foraying into some more complex ideas in Drag and Taxman. Also a good way for me to get back into the swing of blog writing.

First thing when dealing with Acey Deucy (also spelled Acey Deucey) is defining which Acey Deucy we're talking about. There's two different games that share the name - one is a variant of the board game Backgammon, the other is a card game. This game is based on the card game, which is also commonly called In-Between. It also has a host of other names, including but not limited to Between the Sheets, Maverick and Red Dog. Why it has so many names - many of which make little sense - is beyond me.

The rules at least make the names In-Between and Between the Sheets self-evident. The dealer will deal players a hand of two cards, left face up. The dealer will then give a third card. Players can choose to place a bet if they believe that the third card will be in between the first two cards. If it's in between, they win. If it isn't, they lose. Simple, eh? However, if the third card is the same as one of the first two, then the player loses double their bet. These are the basic rules - there are others, but I won't go into them now.

The cards are ordered in rank, with 2 being the lowest, and Ace being the highest. This is apparently where the name Acey Deucy comes in, as receiving a hand of A-2 is the best possible hand. The only way to lose with this hand is if the third card is another Ace or 2.

Our computer implementation of Acey Deucy for this article comes from Bill Palmby, a high school student who attended the Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Prairie View, Illinois. There's another Acey Deucey (spelled that way) from 1973, from Andrea Barsh and Duff Kirkland, which was written for one of the UNIVAC systems. Unsurprisingly, due to its platform, that one is lost to us. Palmby's is not, however, as it was written in BASIC, and included in David Ahl's 101 BASIC Computer Games. Palmby's game doesn't have a release date online, but July 1973 makes the most sense, as that's when the first edition of Ahl's book released. 

Acey Deucy from the Microcomputer edition of the book.

As for Palmby himself, unfortunately there is no information about him I could find anywhere. This is his only game credit according to MobyGames, and searching for him online only leads to the game he authored, or other people sharing his name.

The only question left to ask now is how Palmby went about putting this card game into digitised form. A helpful reader noted on my article on War that that game didn't translate all the rules of the card game over, which is why I went over the proper rules of Acey Deucy at the start of the article. I want to make sure I know what the card game is supposed to be before looking at a video game interpretation of it.

Amusingly, the first thing I noticed was that the game title is misspelled. It says Acey-Ducey. Whoops. Not off to a great start, there. The original edition of 101 BASIC Games also makes this error.

It's the only typo, at least.

Anyway, the game is as I suspected it might be - a pared back interpretation of the card game, with most of the rules not implemented. The rules present are only the most basic of Acey Deucy: if the third card is in between the two in your had, you win; if it's the same as one of the cards or not in between, you lose. You don't lose double your bet if it's the same. Other nuances, like what happens if you're handed two aces, are not included, either. That's a rule where the two aces are split into two different hands, with extra cards drawn to make them up, and you choose which hand to bet on. I don't think Palmby's game can have two of the same card appear.

This is the game. All of it.

I played for about three minutes all up, according to my OBS timer. This is one of those games that can almost be boiled down to being an RNG simulator, along with the likes of War and Slots. At least this, unlike War, has some player agency, as you can choose whether to bet on your hand or not. My quick search online to learn the rules for Acey Deucy recommended passing if there weren't at least a gap of 8 between the cards in your hand. Mind you, that never prevents the game from screwing you. I got an Acey Deucy at one point, and the game drew another ace as the third card and I lost. Predicably, I put a significant bet on that hand. Luck of the draw, eh? I'm not a gambler - never have been, especially in my video games. I prefer certainty over unpredictability, or at least a way to plan around bad luck.

The dealer rigged that one, I'm sure of it.

You can keep going for as long as you like with this game - you can't break the bank, so the only way for the game to end is if you go bust. Or just turn it off, whichever happens faster. The latter occurred for me. I can't really see you going bust unless you intentionally try to, or get horrifically unlucky.

This game's not going to get unlucky with it's scores - it'll go bust by its own efforts.

Time Played: 5 minutes

Difficulty: N/A

I can't give a difficulty score, as Acey Deucy is inherently an RNG-based game.

Gameplay: 1

As much as I wanted to give it a zero, I can't, because the player does have the tiniest bit of agency. There's one choice you can make - whether to bet or not, and there is the most basic of basic strategy surrounding that choice.

Controls: 5

No issues with controls, it's all standard for text-games.

Visual: 1

It's as plain and basic as a text-based game could possibly be. I'm not docking points for the typo.

Functionality: 5

There's very little that can go wrong with such a tiny game.

Accessibility: 3

Pretty much the same as most every other text-based game I've played so far. It's inherently less-accessible for being a text game, although this one has less text, which theoretically makes it easier to get into.

Fun Factor: 0

I can give it a zero for fun, though! Shouldn't be much of a surprise here. I kind of mindlessly drifted through playing the game. It's a pretty pointless one, and doesn't even include all the rules, which could've made it slightly more interesting. Slightly.

So it's not quite bust for Acey Deucy... but's it's leaving with a hefty dent in its wallet - a pitiful score of 15, the same as Horserace down at the bottom of the F-tier. Yeah, it's that bad. Though, "bad" is not necessarily the word to use, as there's not much wrong with Acey Deucy... there just isn't much of any merit-worthy substance. It's just a basic simulation of a basic card gambling game. That being said, I like it more than Horserace, so that's that tiebreaker decided. I hate Horserace. Acey Deucy is just more of a nothing-burger, landing itself in 41st place currently. That's out of 45 games on the tier list so far, for reference, making Acey Deucy one of the worst games reviewed thus far.

Next time, we move from a card game that has several different names, to a board game that has several different names.

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Prehistory XXI: War

Release Date: 22 September, 1970

Platform: Unspecified Mainframe

Genre: Card Game

Developer(s): Unknown

Publisher(s): DECUS

This wasn't meant to be the next game on the list. I was working on Hangman, until I realised that the game listed in my 1970 group was not actually the game in BASIC Computer Games - that would be the 1973 MobyGames listing Game of Hangman, which simply goes by Hangman in the book, hence the confusion. The 1970 Hangman description didn't match what I was playing, either, so that's another indicator that the game I was playing wasn't the correct one.

Therefore, I've had to shelve the Hangman post that I was previously working on, and start on this one, as it's actually the next game on the list that's in BASIC Computer Games (and is the same between both versions of the book.) Hence the unintended delay between posts. My desire to get these posts out more regularly is being regularly impeded either by life or lack of information on the games on my list.

On first glance, you might think that War actually has something to do with war - perhaps this is a port of Civil War, or a variant of it (this isn't helped by the book's illustration on War's page in the original version.) But no, War is a card game. A very, very basic one, at that.

The author of War is, unfortunately, unknown. All that BASIC Games tells us in its entry on the game is that it simply appeared on on a DECsystem-10 one day, and no one knows where it came from, or who put it in the system. As a historian and someone who loves information, I always find it a real shame when we don't (and most likely can't) know who put these programs together. At least we can be thankful that the game itself has been preserved, as that can't be said for most games developed prior to at least 1970, potentially later.

Circling back around to War, it is a card game of the most basic proportions. The premise is as follows:

• The deck is shuffled, and one card is dealt to each player.
• Whoever has the highest card wins.
• Repeat dealing cards until all 52 cards in the deck are used.

That's it. Highest card wins. It could basically be the card game equivalent of rock-paper-scissors.

I have nothing witty to say for this game's captions.

My playthrough only took a minute to complete. Literally one minute, I'm not exaggerating. There is only one decision (technically two, but the answer to both is 'yes' or 'no,' so it's really only one decision) that you need to make in the game (this is barely a game), which is whether you want to keep playing. The game automatically deals the cards and declares the winner (or a tie). The game is over when all the cards have been dealt.

The end. It wasn't fun.

And that's it. No, seriously. That's the game. It's so simple and brief that there's almost nothing else to say. I just spammed 'yes' to get through the deck to see what would happen once all the cards were dealt. Logically the scores should be close to even by the end as it's effectively the equivalent of making 26 coin flips in a row. In this instance, one of the coin flips resulted in the coin landing on its side, with the other 25 landing properly.

I can at least say that I appreciate the formatting and writing to a small degree. Three exclamation marks for declaring the computer winning seems a bit excessive, though. The way the cards are listed as "suit-number" makes a lot of sense, so there's no confusion there. I'm grasping at straws for what to say here, honestly. I want to give an in-depth review and assessment, but there is genuinely nothing to review here. Let's stop wasting words and get onto scores, then.

Time Played: One minute.

My recording of a complete playthrough is 70 seconds long, to be precise. This has the potential to be the shortest complete game I'll ever play for the blog.

Difficulty: 0

No challenge as it's a completely luck-dependent game, nor is there any problem in typing 'yes' or 'no'

Gameplay: 0

The only gameplay decision you get to make is whether you want to keep playing or not.

Controls: 10

As long as you can type 'yes' or 'no' (caps lock on), you're good.

Visual: 2

I can detect a small amount of effort put into making the text formatting look presentable.

Functionality: 5

Hardly anything that can go wrong with a game like this.

Accessibility: 3

One positive I can think of is that this would be a good introduction to text-based games for either children or someone completely unfamiliar with the format due to the simplicity of the game and the need to only input 'yes' or 'no.' It's still a text game, so it's much harder to get into than graphical games, and thus I won't be giving it extra points.

Fun Factor: 0

Zero is the only score that can be given here.

War earns a score of 20, which ties it with Digits  in the E-tier on percentage (28.57%). My tie-breaker rules mean that War ends up below Digits, as I gave the latter a Fun Factor score of 1.

[Add.] Upon completing the rescore project, this trash lost 2 points down to 18/70 (25.71%). Still not in the F-tier, even though I think it deserves it.

Well, at least this was a quick one to smash out. I only have 7 games left for 1970, meaning we're very close to wrapping up the Prehistory series. Exciting times ahead!

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