There are two wonderful books by Sackson on the subject of games that are still in print, very inexpensive, and well worth seeking out. (I think you can get the pair for not much more than a ten spot.)  Click on the book titles or the pictures of the covers to order them from Amazon.com! A note of warning, though... don't judge his games just by reading the rules. He often will just lay out the game simply, without elaborating on the complexities which only become apparent when they're played.  In addition to A Gamut Of Games mentioned above, he also wrote a great compilation called Card Games Around The World.  This book collects the best card games from all over the world, in addition to containing a few wonderful Sackson originals like CARD STOCK MARKET (which was sold in Germany as BLACK MONDAY but which can be played using a standard deck of cards and the rules in the book).

Some of the games outlined in A Gamut of Games have been also marketed on their own.  PROPERTY was totally reworked and came out as NEW YORK, the terrific SOLITAIRE DICE game was issued under the name of CHOICE, and the very challenging DOMINO BEAD GAME was issued as WU HSING.  Funagain Games often has some or all of these in stock, so if you're interested, click on the photo to check.  Here's a wonderful computer version of SOLITAIRE DICE (aka CHOICE), again thanks to George Crawshay.  Download either the QBasic version, or if you don't have QBasic, here's a compiled version that's self-contained.

Also, here are great Javascript versions of SOLITAIRE DICE (aka CHOICE) (try and beat my high score of 810!), and BOWLING SOLITAIRE which you can play online, both from Gamut of Games!

The list of Sackson games in Gamut of Games is:

• ALL MY DIAMONDS
• OSMOSIS
• PATTERNS
• SUIT YOURSELF
• BOWLING SOLITAIRE
• CARD BASEBALL
• SLAM
• POKE
• COLOR GIN
• FOCUS (aka DOMINATION)
• NETWORK
• TAKE IT AWAY
• HOLD THAT LINE
• CUTTING CORNERS
• PAPER BOXING
• LAST WORD
• PATTERNS II
• PROPERTY
• SOLITAIRE DICE (aka CHOICE)
• DOMINO BEAD GAME (aka WU HSING)
• HAGGLE
• CHANGE CHANGE

And in CARD GAMES AROUND THE WORLD, there's:

• CARD FOOTBALL
• CARD STOCK MARKET (aka BLACK MONDAY)

Also, there's a great book by R. Wayne Schmittberger called New Rules For Classic Games, and in it there's a Sackson game called FIELDS OF ACTION, which was inspired by Claude Soucie's LINES OF ACTION as described in A Gamut Of Games.

More books...

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