Card Shark Collection is a collection of solitaire and traditional card games. We are always working hard to add new games and further improve existing content. Here, you can find links to detailed rules for each supported game, a FAQ answering CardShark-specific questions, release notes, and information about development in progress.
If you enjoy Card Shark, please consider posting a user review. This is a
great way to show support and ensure continued frequent updates. If you're
having a problem that isn't addressed in the FAQ, please contact with the "contact author" link at the bottom of this page.
(22 Mar 2021) It's been a crazy year - I fought off an unpleasant bout of COVD-19 but am fully recovered. Ths iOS port of Card Shark has been updated to version 10.0 (others to follow). This includes a handful of changes including:
New "card spacing" option currently under Options -> Customize. This allows default gap between face up cards to be increased.
Bug fix for for "autopanning" feature, where camera zooms out when a pile would otherwise start stretching offscreen.
UI layout adjusted to acommodate larger iPhone screen size.
Fixed server backend for statistics import/export feature.
Fixed online links for sample custom decks, custom card backs, and custom table browsing.
One issue that has been annoying folk is dealing with the "home bar" Apple draws near the bottom of the screen. This is the black (or white) horizontal bar drawn near the bottom of the screen. By default, upward swipes starting near the bottom of the screen are consumed by iOS as a gesture to exit apps. This can be very annoying if you're actually trying to drag a card near the bottom of the screen. I will be releasing a fix to minimize this, but there are a few workarounds that can be used in meantime:
Avoid starting an upwards drag from too close to the "home bar." There's usually room to start dragging from a given card, but still sufficiently above the home bar. In moost cases, Card Shark's "smart drag" feature means youo can start drag from anywhere in a stack of cards, and not have to worry about having to precisely start dragging from a specific card.
With Orientation (Any) selected, you can temporarily go to portrait mode by rotating phone. In most cases, this will make stacks end well above the home bar, avoiding problem.
This is an interesting option worth trying: there's an "Accessibility" shortcut called Guided Access that can be enabled at runtime under Settings->Accessibility. This provides a way to "lock" the screen to a specific app, i.e. to safely hand a device to a child and not having to worry about them switching apps. But what's nice about it, is that this also completely removes the annoying home bar! In this mode, swipes and touches near the edge of the screen instead go directly to the app without ambiguity. Once this iOS feature is enabled, you can get in and out of this mode fairly easily, by triple clicking the power button on the side of your device. Unfortunately, Apple requires a password to be configured and entered to exit Guided Access mode, but you can set it to something simple like all 1's.
https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/remove-home-bar-bottom-iphone-screen-3795165 for more details.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to remove cards in Kings Corner Solitaire?
Starting with 7.3, Kings Corner gameplay is implemented more faithfully. First deal cards to fill all open spots on the table. Once all cards are played, you can tap on a ten to remove it, or drag a number card onto another number card to remove pairs totaling ten.
How to speed up trick-taking games (Hearts, Euchre, etc.)?
Tap the trick pile to immediately advance to the next trick.
Landscape mode isn't working on my iPhone.
Check if you've inadvertantly locked your device to portrait orientation - this affects all apps, not just Card Shark.
To correct: Swipe up from the bottom of the home screen to bring up the Control Center. Look for the icon that resembles an arrow encircling a padlock. Touch this icon to enable/disable rotation lock on your device.
How do I move fewer than the maximum cards in Klondike? Card Shark
incorporates "smart dragging" to compensate for the iPhone's small touch
screen and minimize chances for human error. Rather than requiring the user to
drag specific cards within a pile, the set of cards that are moved following a
drag-drop gesture is inferred based on the piles involved. For example, if you
draw a 10+J+Q onto a same-colored Q, the 10+J will be transfered and the
dragged Q will fly back to its source pile.
How can I quickly win a game? I don't want to have to drag every card to
the foundation pile. Touching a foundation stack causes compatible cards
to be rapidly auto-played from tableaus to foundations.
How can I switch between left and right handed stock placement? The
options screen shows a face up and face down pile of cards at the bottom of
the screen. The face down pile represents the stock. Press the "layout" button
to switch positions. This is supported in most of the solitaire games, but
note that this setting is currently only applied at the start of a new deal.
How do I make melds in Rummy 500?
You can make melds in two ways: You can drag cards one at a time to the table. Alternatively you can select multiple cards by touching them - any selected card pops slightly out of your hand
(as in this screenshot - showing the leftmost and three rightmost cards selected).
Once a collection of compatible cards are selected, you can place them with a single touch on the table.
How to I pick up more than one card in Rummy 500?
Touch the topmost card of the spread-out face up pile at the start of your turn more than once to draw additional cards up to the next meldable card. Note that you will be required to meld that deepest card.
How do the game mechanics in Hearts work? At the start of each round,
when prompted to pass, select the three cards you'd like to pass to the
designated opponent by touching them. They'll pop out of your hand to indicate
they are selected. Then touch the arrow at the center of the screen to execute
the pass and begin the normal trick-taking phase of the game. Note that you
don't have to drag cards to the center to play them. You can tap a card in
your hand, then tap the center pile.
Does Card Shark enforce limits on the number of deals through the stock?
Not yet in all games. This makes Forty Thieves in particular much easier than it is
with strict rules. Enforcing this will be a user option in a future release.
How do the game mechanics in Gin Rummy work?
At the start of each turn, draw one card from the face up or face down pile.
You may then touch the "knock" button to see how many matches you have.
If you are able to shed one final card and go out, discard to win that hand.
The "Gin Rummy" bonus will be awarded automatically, if you've gone out with no deadwood.
Alternatively, press the "undo" button to pick up matches back into your hand, then discard to end your turn.
Note that every turn must end with a discard - there is not yet support for the "big gin" variation of this game,
where you can get additional points for making matches with all 11 cards.
How come in Cruel Solitaire, shuffling the deck sometimes has no effect?
As of 6.4.2, the in-game redeal behavior in Cruel Solitaire should match official rules - "When the player can no longer move any cards, he can pick up all the cards and place them into piles of four, without shuffling them." In Cruel Solitaire, the cards will end up in a different order only if you've managed to make at least one move in beteween redeals.
To view available gameplay options, touch the info icon
on the bottom right of the screen to visit the main menu, then touch the
"Options" button.
"Auto Flip" causes face down cards to be automatically flipped without
requiring the player to touch them.
"Table" allows you to select from available background art.
"Classic Sounds" plays an explosive sound when cards are moved to
foundation piles, as an alternative to the deafult "pop" sound.
"Allow Undo" enables display and use of undo/redo buttons.
"Vegas Score" displays current score at the bottom of the screen in
Klondike and Canfield. This score is cumulative in the Card Shark Deluxe.
"Neat Piles" removes the jitter effect on stacks of cards.
Under Development
Specific game requests are always welcome. Recent requests are listed below:
10 Point Pitch
3-13
500
66
Agnes Solitaire
Buraco
Carpet
Cribbage Solitaire
Belote
Bezique
Bid Euchre
Bridge
Carioca Rummy
Idiot Solitaire
Klabberjass
One Handed Solitaire
Manx
Miss Milligan
Pinochle
Pinnacola
Piquet
Pyramid Golf
Rook
Spit
Up and Down
Whist
Multiplayer support is working in a local build, but currently relies on GameCenter. For the folk that have inquired about this, apologies for taking so long - we want to make sure it's perfect when made public.
Release Notes
(24 Mar 2020) Hope people are holding up under the current scares with coronavirus! While it's been a while since an update has been been published (hope to correct this very soon!), wanted to confirm that Card Shark as currently available in the Apple AppStore is compatible with latest iOS 13.3.1, albeit with some minor letterboxing on newer devices. Will share an update here soon on upcoming improvements.
(29 Sep 2017) A 9.0.3 update for Card Shark has been approved by Apple, and should be trickling out now. It includes a small patch that should address two issues:
when suspending the app mid-game, with time display set to "elapsed time" the time would end up being frozen when resuming.
should also address a regression where statistics are sometimes not being updated.
Apple's optional "portrait orientation lock" feature is overriding Card Shark's Landscape-Only setting - the following workaround avoids the problem:
Swipe up from bottom of screen to open Apple's Control Center, then turn off Apple's 'portrait lock' setting.
Launch Card Shark and rotate phone to landscape orientation
Swipe up from bottom of screen to open Apple's Control Center (from inside Card Shark), then reenable 'portrait lock.' Card Shark will end up locked to landscape orientation, with other iPhone apps locked to portrait orientation.
Currently focused on the following priority recently-reported issues
A number of users have reported upgrade problems starting with 9.0.2 - some had to delete and reinstall to get the update. I think I've found the root cause and am confirming now.
On some devices (i.e. iPad Pro), the recently restored smoother animations are reportedly resulting in slower gameplay. Will add a new setting to work around.
(21 Sep 2017) Card Shark Solitaire & and Card Shark Collection have been updated to version 9.0.2
fixes a regression where all "multiplayer" games had stopped working. This fixes games like Crazy Eights, Hearts.
should fix an issue reported by some users where a sliver of glowing pixels could sometimes be seen at screen edge.
(19 Sep 2017) Notes from prior version 9.0.1
recompiled with Apple's latest tools to accomodate iOS11.
known issue: some options (time, vegas scoring) may need to be reapplied
preliminary new export/import feature, to allow transfer of statistics to other devices.
fix for sound loss during phone call.
Two new solitaire variants (Samara & Queenie) for full version - Card Shark Collection
Updates for Android and OSX coming soon.
Miscellaneous News
If you are an iPhone/iPad user and would like to sign up to receive an advance copy of future betas, please email us!. This is a good opportunity to get special attention for any issue or new game request.
I recently had the pleasure of welcoming a beautiful baby daughter, Nicolette, into my family.
Easy 8 Software recently published "You Against Me" an original board/card game for iPhone/iPad combining elements of Bingo, Gin Rummy, and Tic Tac Toe - with vs. Computer, Hotseat, and Online (vs. Human) modes.
What's New (8.0.3)
scoring patch for spades. There was an edge case involving the sandbag penalty and nil bid penalty, which could result in an extra sandbag penalty being incorrectly applied.
Texas Hold'Em now distinguishes between the hand winner and "side pot" winner
Euchre AI is now using the 3-2-1 point system to determine when to bid.
Canasta now announces hand winner - this avoids a confusing glitch when the computer opponent goes out with a final meld of black 3s.
fixes for portrait orientation on low-resolution (non-retina) devices
the mersenne twister random number generator is now "warmed" by discarding the first 1000 results
New game added: Penguin Solitaire (freecell variant)
New game added: StoreHouse (Canfield variant)
Support for higher resolution (2048x2048) custom decks.
What's New (8.0.0)
support for retina display on MacBook Pro - much crisper looking card art
patch for default options (affects first time install)
patch for Spades scoring; when penalized for nil bid fail sandbagging penalty no longer also applied
Known Issue: help is broken/missing in this update; this is fixed in an already-submitted (but not yet approved by Apple) 8.0.1 update
Known Issue: app is inadvertantly no longer compatible with older releases of OSX. A fix is being investigated, but in the meantime the 8.0.1 update has been flagged as being compatible only with OSX Mavericks (version 10.9), to avoid exposing users with older OSX installations to this problem.
What's New (7.3)
new option: lock for landscape orientation
reintroduced long-stack auto-panning
fix for Cassino layout
fix for Canasta red three scoring
new game: Eight Off
new game: SheepsHead (prelim)
new game: Kings in the Corner
more-forgiving handling for late slaps in Egyptian Ratscrew
fixed hearts trick-taking timing
added penalty explanations to Spades
What's New (7.2.1)
This is a follow-up patch release, correcting a layout glitch in iPad landscape mode causing cards on the sides of the screen to be cropped. This also fixes a 7.2 bug causing Custom background art to revert to the default table when screen orientation changes.
What's New (7.2)
workaround for IOS7 status bar presentation glitch
portrait support for UI and games (preliminary); useful for managing long stacks
simplified settings: eliminated need for "more options"; reintroduced "restart deal" on main menu
retina-friendly "freecell" icon
softened colors for redo/undo buttons
bug fix: sort order for game picker behaves more sensibly on iPhone5
more sensible hand-sorting UI; provides live feedback while dragging; easier to move card to left of hand
added explanatory text to favorites manager
new game: Vs. Concentration
new game: Australian Solitaire
new game: Egyptian Ratscrew (prelim)
smoother animations driven by rendered frames, rather than elapsed time
spider solitaire stack-complete animation
Euchre AI adjustments: defenders no longer lead with trump
new table art and card backs
What's New (7.0)
support for iPhone5's widescreen layout.
Misc fixes: Gin Rummy, Basic Rummy scoring.
Spider Solitaire run-completed animation fix.
Known Issues:
Game picker's alphabetical order isn't quite right on iPhone5.
What's New (6.2.9)
Added support for 3 new "Ultra HD" decks, taking full advantage of the new iPad's 2048x1536 resolution. New decks load slower, but look noticably crisper on older iPads and retina iPhone/iTouch devices, too.
Assorted improvements to older games, including Canasta AI, Gin Rummy scoring, and others.
Core support for dynamically adjusting camera (to accommodate long stacks)
Photos used for custom tables are now presented without distorting aspect ratio.
New games: President, Salic Law, Accordian
What's New (6.2.8)
New feature: Favorites Manager
Preliminary support for Spite & Malice, Chinese Solitaire, and Demons & Thieves
Card Shark supports custom decks. Here is a sample deck. The sample deck is 1024x1024 pixels.
Higher resolution decks at 2048x2048 are also supported. To install a custom deck on the iPhone/iPad:
Load the custom deck png to your photo library by opening the image in Safari, then holding your finger on the image until "save image" is presented.
Open the iDevice Photo Library to confirm that the image is present and selectable.
Open Card Shark, go to "Options" "Customize" "Deck" then click the "Customize" button.
Select the deck you saved in step#1.
Once a custom deck has been imported into Card Shark, it will be used by Card Shark until you select an alternate deck.
Tools and templates to simplify the construction of custom decks are available upon request.
If you are interested in contributing decks to distribute here for use with Card Shark, please contact me.
