Are card games particularly difficult for aspies?

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Our NT opponenents have have no clue how to read the Autistic face, whereas we can study NT faces. Also, since we tend to read patterns, I think that would give an advantage.

i think its quite the opposite. NTs read faces well, and we (I) cant do that at all. If anything you can really tell when I get a good card I will start to grin uncontrollably. I think we underestimate how well NTs can pick up the signs.

I have a lot of trouble with card games. You have to explain the rules to me every single time. Once I get into the game, however, I do pretty well. But the next time I play it it will be like the first time again and you have to explain the rules to me again. The exception to that is Solitaire. That I can play very well all the time and I have always been able to. It took me a long time to learn it and they had to explain it several times but once I got it I never lost it. Other card games, I lose after each time. But other than solitaire I play cards so infrequently that it maybe might be possible for me to retain the rules if I played more often.

I'm OK at poker, but only when I can remember the rules. I've never been able to memorize the different hands and what they mean, so whenever I play a good hand it's usually just due to sheer luck. I've never played against "good" poker players, so I've never really had to work at reading faces and reactions, though I was once told by an older cousin of mine that I have a good poker face. I sincerely doubt this though, because whenever I get a good hand I tend to light up and get a rather goofy grin on my face, and this can be hard to hide sometimes.

Blackjack is easier for me to remember the hands for, and in a casual setting I can actually be somewhat decent at it, though it gets really tricky for me once people start bringing in rule variations that go beyond the "vanilla" game.

As for other card games, I could NEVER understand the rules for cribbage, or most other card games, but I do enjoy a good game of "BS" (also known as "cheat" in more polite circles ).

Going beyond the scope of traditional card games, I used to be a big fan of Magic: The Gathering, and I was generally OK at it, even when it came to building decks. I found that over the past few years however, I haven't been playing it nearly as much, and as a result my skills (and interest) have vastly deteriorated. I take a LONG time to play my turns, and I suck at coming up with combos and strategies, so I often get so frustrated whenever I do try to play that I just shut down and give up. I don't feel as sharp as I used to be, and I think that if I had someone who could encourage me and give me a refresher on how to play, then I would enjoy it again.

As for Yu Gi Oh, how can anyone play that blasted game?!?! I know the general idea of it is like MtG, but I hate how it works. The rules are dumb, most of the cards have this long, microscopic text that you have to read in order to understand what they do (unlike MtG's convenient keyword system), and the whole thing just seems like a cheap ripoff of MtG aimed at kids and anime fans. I've only ever played it once, and I conceded halfway through the match.

Yes card games are difficult; for me, though, it's because they are games of chance instead of pure reason. You can be intrinsically good at them but still lose due to bad luck.

I excel at poker. But only games with a fixed betting structure. They are a math problem(is it a mathematically correct decision to call here?) and I can consistently win at them without much effort. No limit games destroy me. Too much reading people.

I haven't read this thread, but I may be a bit of a weirdo here.
I actually read people, especially their faces, like books.
It seem like this is an unusual trait for an autistic/aspie, but it's usually not really all that helpful.

Most of the time I try to ignore the distracting, almost painfully intense gestalt, and try not to look too close or often as well as deliberately not thinking about it or trying to take it apart at all.
Basically, it's usually just way too much information about the person all at once that I don't want and am not interested in knowing and I really try to ignore & forget about it as much as possible in most instances.

Because I can glean a lot of information by reading a person's gestalt presence as well as through observing how they play, though I always miss the subtle social cues anyhow, I excell at poker, especially the no-limit variety, which because of its visceral nature relies less on subtle, deliberate allistic social behaviors and mannerisms, and much more on gut feelings and intense thoughts and emotions, which to me are quite visible if I decide to pay attention to what I'm seeing because the phisiological reactions to those things are subsconscious, uncontrollable, and completely visible to me as part of the gestalt which can be analyzed to draw general conclusions that by and large are quite accurate.
Bad beats still happened, my play style could use some work, and like everyone I occasionally went on tilt, but I was almost never completely surprised at an in person game unless someone was cheating.
Unfortunately, I apparently have somewhat overactive adrenals and I can't deal with the intense rush followed by the hollow feeling & shaking that follows every time a bet is on the line, so I quit years ago.

I'm also great at Clue, never lost a game.
I watch what my opponents play and their reactions to everything, and that nearly always gets me the correct answers before anyone else is even close.

I'm quite good at games in general, actually.
I really loved poker and was sad when I realized I needed to quit.
Maybe one of these days when I have some cash to spare I'll take it back up again.
Who knows, it's been year, maybe my adrenals have gotten less twitchy about certain things.
I was even good at the online variety, 2/3 times moneyed in the tournaments I played in, and if you think reading people at a poker table is hard, try doing it with nothing but how you've seen them play to go on.

Are card games particularly difficult for aspies?

In my case, yes. But i know other aspies who have become quite good at, for example poker, so doubtful that AS is a 'blocker'. More generally, it seems that practice and experience form a large part of a successful card player. Intuitively, it would seem that not being able to read subtle cues is a disadvantage, but on the other hand the strategies developed to compensate for this may lead to the AS player picking up on behaviour that 'professionals' are not so well practiced at hiding.

I certainly find I have difficulty 'reading the situation / general state of play' and it seems harder for me to keep up in a fast moving game. Also, I will often take longest to realise when a situation changes (say the player next to me suddenly has one card left).

Doubt I will ever get much better though as I appear to have an extremely low frustration tolerance which applies uniquely to competitive sport. It's not so much loosing as feeling completely powerless to improve my situation. It seems incredibly humiliating. Strangely, I am perfectly fine even being completely demolished by strangers, but much less so people I know. Perhaps something like the concept 'loosing face'.

for me, this is not true, I don't have the working memory to map out probabilities in that way, and it takes more than enough of my concentration just to follow the game. I find most NT players are much better at that side of it. This is also my weakness in chess.