Six Generations: A Genealogy Card Game

The following is an announcement from Six Generations Publishing:

The monarchic structure of standard playing cards with King, Queen and Jack is now breaking apart by an Alaskan game designer who invented a new "democratic" deck with a 64-person family in six generations. When Ted Soloview, a graphic designer from Alaska was searching his genealogy with the roots of Russian, German, and Ukrainian ancestors, he caught an idea that anybody's triangle-looking family tree could be used to create a new card game.

After a year of research and choosing a universal match for parents and children, husbands and wives, lifestyle and clothing, names and countries for the European family of immigrants to America, his idea has generated an innovative card game, "Six Generations."

"The amount of our ancestors is doubled in each older generation," Ted Soloview said. "We have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. In six generations we get 62 ancestors. It's a perfect amount for cards in a deck, since we need to shuffle them easily. That's how I stopped at number six."

Ted Soloview did not think twice to name an immigrant from Austria -- "Arnold." A man from England was "Charles," from Germany -- "Karl." All first names were taken from the bureau of vital statistics to display the most popular from the times they were from. Generation #1 in the game consists of the siblings Emily and Jacob -- their names keep the record popularity for newborns in the U.S. since 1996."

The surprise came later, when this solitaire-type card game was already printed by Carta Mundi, a U.S. game manufacturer, in September 2004. After making the first sales, Ted has realized that this genealogical deck was not just a single game "Six Generations," but a modern-looking pack of "democratic" playing cards.

"My customers asked me the quick explanation of this game. I told them, it's like playing cards. But instead of three characters of King, Queen and Jack, in my deck each card is a costumed member from a non-monarchic family. Here we match husband and wife, children and parents, but not the boring numbers anymore. It's not a fight between four suits; it's matchmaking and creation of the family."

Some other card games, like "21," were easily adopted with new playing cards. But to play poker, Ted Soloview wrote new rules, calling the game "Genpoker." The website he designed, http://www.sixgenerations.com, has the new rules and details.

"Six Generations" is opening the door for other game inventors to create dozens new card games, or converting the old ones. It might take some time before Las Vegas will accept this new deck to play poker in their casinos, but the time could come.

Amazon.com is the major reseller of Six Generations card game in the U.S. The price is $8.97.

For more information, contact:

Six Generations Publishing
Ted Soloview
907-563-9999, FAX 907-522-9433
soloview@gci.net
http://www.sixgenerations.com

Comments

[Ted Soloview]

Dick, thank you for posting information about my card game "Six Generations".

Ted Soloview, the publisher.