Ask HN: boardgames or (and not) card games?

I love card games—which will here be defined as any of the thousands of folk games that can be played with a somewhat standardized (according to region) deck of playing cards. And I know that there's a lot of geeks out there of different stripes that are avid poker players. I've even met a couple (terrifying) alpha male hackers and stock-optioned developer types who play Bridge at the highest levels with their scary hacker brains.

But in a general sense I don't see a lot of interest in the wider world of card games and that confuses me. It would seem to be perfectly suited to the Hacker Mind: thousands of different systems, made up of the same or similar parts, each with their own logic. Certain techniques are isomorphic across every family and sub-family.

I know tons of hackers love board games—which have always left me cold in general. I have tried my hand at, say, Carcassonne and Starfarers of Catan, and I can see how there's more _play_ involved than something like Chutes and Ladders, but board games still seem so much more removed and arbitrary than card games. Not to mention more expensive, and more dependent on specific materials.

So, are there any hackers out there who think that card games in general are a worthy field of interest? And for those of you who love board games and not card games, why so?