Card games have the merit, compared to games of pure chance such as dice or games of pure strategy such as Chess, of mixing the elements of luck and skill. Luck gives any player the chance to win, but skill elements mean that better players will win more often. Among card games, these elements can be mixed in a variety of ways. The act of shuffling and cutting distributes the cards in a comparatively random manner. Games are then more or less strategic depending on the extent to which the lie of the cards can be determined and when.
More strategic games provide more information sooner.
Some popular games and their characteristics along these lines are given in the table below. Bidding conveys information. The extreme example of this is Bridge where the goal of the bidding is to convey to one's partner as precisely as possible the exact configuration of one's hand. In Skat, the bidding is by number so that the exact cards held are not always clear, but one gains information on the cards held and the intended game by where the bidding stops. More strategic games have fewer players.