How Do Fix a Python Card Game Not Displaying a Card

I’ve been working on a Python card game project using Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), and recently, I hit a frustrating wall my game wouldn’t show any cards after the user chose a team and started playing. No errors at first glance, but nothing showed up where I expected the card to appear. Eventually, a deeper look revealed both a logic flaw and a misuse of OOP design that I want to walk you through.

If you’re working on something similar or are curious about OOP-based games in Python, I hope this blog helps save you some debugging time!

A Simple Red vs. Black Card Game

In my game, the user is asked to pick a team Red (Hearts and Diamonds) or Black (Clubs and Spades). Once they pick, the game shuffles a deck and randomly draws a card. If the card belongs to their chosen color, they gain points.

Sounds simple enough, Here’s how I structured it:

The Code

Card and Deck Classes

These handle card creation and shuffling:

import random

class Card:
    def __init__(self, name, suit):
        self.name = name
        self.suit = suit

    def show(self):
        print(f'{self.name} of {self.suit}')

class Deck:
    def __init__(self):
        self.cards = []
        self.build()

    def build(self):
        for s in ['Hearts', 'Diamonds', 'Clubs', 'Spades']:
            for v in range(1, 14):
                self.cards.append(Card(v, s))

    def shuffle(self):
        random.shuffle(self.cards)

    def draw_card(self):
        return self.cards.pop()

Game Class

This manages the player’s hand and drawing logic.

class Game:
    def __init__(self, player, score):
        self.player = player
        self.score = score
        self.hand = []

    def draw(self, deck):
        card = deck.draw_card()
        self.hand.append(card)
        return card

    def show_hand(self):
        for card in self.hand:
            card.show()

Main Game Loop

Here’s where things started to fall apart initially:

print('Welcome message')
username = input("Please enter your name: ")
print('Your starting score is 1000')

team = input('RED or BLACK\nYour team: ').lower()

if team == 'red':
    print('Great, you have chosen Team Red (Hearts and Diamonds)')

    input('Press ENTER to play...')
    deck = Deck()
    deck.shuffle()
    print('Shuffling complete!')

    input('Press ENTER to draw your card...')
    
    game = Game(username, 1000)
    card = game.draw(deck)
    print("You drew:")
    card.show()

    # Check for team match
    if card.suit.lower() in ['hearts', 'diamonds']:
        print("Nice! That’s a Red card — you gain points!")
        game.score += 100
    else:
        print("Oops! That’s a Black card — you lose points.")
        game.score -= 100

    print(f"Your new score: {game.score}")

What Went Wrong?

When I initially tried to run my original version, nothing was displaying. No card, no error until this happened:

TypeError: 'str' object is not callable

It turned out I had made two key mistakes:

Reusing the variable user improperly

At the beginning, user held the player’s name as a string:

user = input("Please enter your name: ")

Later, I overwrote user with a Game object:

user = Game(user, 1000)

That’s not inherently wrong, but it became confusing and prone to misuse. When I accidentally did something like:

player = player()  # <-- This threw the error because player was a string

Python thought I was trying to call a string as a function, hence the error.

Use clear, separate variable

Instead of user, I used username for the name and game for the Game object. That solved a lot of confusion.

Calling a method without parentheses

This is subtle but fatal. At one point, I had:

game.show_hand  # ← This just *references* the method

What I meant to write was:

game.show_hand()  # ← This actually *calls* the method

Without the parentheses, Python doesn’t execute the function it just returns the function object.

Final Working Version

Here’s the simplified and corrected code:

import random

class Card:
    def __init__(self, name, suit):
        self.name = name
        self.suit = suit

    def show(self):
        print(f'{self.name} of {self.suit}')

class Deck:
    def __init__(self):
        self.cards = []
        self.build()

    def build(self):
        for suit in ['Hearts', 'Diamonds', 'Clubs', 'Spades']:
            for value in range(1, 14):
                self.cards.append(Card(value, suit))

    def shuffle(self):
        random.shuffle(self.cards)

    def draw_card(self):
        return self.cards.pop()

class Game:
    def __init__(self, player, score):
        self.player = player
        self.score = score
        self.hand = []

    def draw(self, deck):
        card = deck.draw_card()
        self.hand.append(card)
        return card

    def show_hand(self):
        for card in self.hand:
            card.show()

print("Welcome to the Red vs Black Card Game!")
username = input("Enter your name: ")
team = input("Choose your team (RED or BLACK): ").lower()

deck = Deck()
deck.shuffle()
print("Deck is shuffled!")

input("Press ENTER to draw your card...")
game = Game(username, 1000)
drawn_card = game.draw(deck)

print("You drew:")
drawn_card.show()

if team == "red":
    if drawn_card.suit in ["Hearts", "Diamonds"]:
        print("You picked a Red card! +100 points")
        game.score += 100
    else:
        print("You picked a Black card! -100 points")
        game.score -= 100
else:
    if drawn_card.suit in ["Clubs", "Spades"]:
        print("You picked a Black card! +100 points")
        game.score += 100
    else:
        print("You picked a Red card! -100 points")
        game.score -= 100

print(f"Your final score is: {game.score}")

Final Thought

Debugging this simple card game taught me an important lesson OOP in Python is powerful, but small oversights in object handling and method calling can break your entire program. Variable naming, function calls, and understanding object references make all the difference between a working game and silent failure.