Apropos of nothing, really

I have long loved card games and have played a wide variety of them over the years. Some games are really good for large groups, not so much for small groups...such as I Doubt It, though I have seen probably a dozen names for this, most of them rather crude, perhaps referring to fecal matter. Great with a group, not so good with 2 people...

Cribbage, on the other hand, is an excellent 2 player game. It provides a fair amount of strategy yet there is enough luck involved that even the most incompetent player will occasionally win a game. I have had stretches where I had 5 consecutive hands of deadwood and no matter how I had played them the nobs did not help me. I have had other games where my toughest decision was choosing between throwing the J/5 in my crib and keeping the 7778 or being an idiot for 4 or 5 hands in a row. Still, overall there is enough strategy to allow the superior player to win 70-80% of the time.

500 Rummy is another very fun 2 player game. We typically dealt 11 cards and ruled you could not lay off on your opponent's scores until you had melded and to claim the discard pile you had to play the lowest card you were taking before you could take the others into your hand. I spent a lot of time playing this with an girlfriend in my younger days and have played a few times with Emily. This is a better strategy game as you have to consider what to discard and when, balancing your needs for keeping cards in your hand with their probable hands. If you have a good recall of the discard pile, by combining your knowledge of what they have taken with knowing what has been melded you often have a fairly specific knowledge of their hand. Woe betide the person who must choose between giving their opponent an Ace or a face card knowing either one will give your opponent a good scoring meld, but your own hand forces that discard. It is another game where skill plays heavily in the outcome.

At one point I played 2 handed Spades. Yes, there are rules for it...no, they are not as good as 3 or 4 handed. In fact, though this game is one that requires a great deal of skill as you strive to win the correct tricks to build your hand for the 13 counting tricks, it is not one of the best games. I did not like it much as, while there was a high skill factor, there was a low fun factor.

I have played Texas Hold 'Em heads up and find I do not care for it all that much. The nature of heads up means essentially every 2 cards are playable. As a result, too often it becomes "who is more willing to bluff" as there is really no effective means to consistently value where your hand stands in regard to your opponent. Good game multiple player, boring game once it gets down to about 4 players.

War is a classic but one I don't think all that highly of. It is the epitome of a skill-less game. As long as you can turn a card over and see which one is higher you have mastered the strategy. I am not a huge fan of games that revolve purely around luck.

Oddly, some of my favorite 2 player games I have not played in over 20 years. Way back when, in our house we were not allowed to have playing cards. However, because they were not associated with tarot as regular playing cards long were, we could use the Rook cards invented by George Parker. There were two separate games from that set I absolutely adored; Tennessee Over the Top and Kentucky something or other. It is amazing I remember that much of the name because I seriously have not played them since before Mom died. In fact, Mom was the only person I recall ever playing either game against.

And as good as I have always been at games, at those she was better. I would estimate I have won 75% or better of the cribbage games I have played and probably better than 90% of the rummy games I have played. For a long time I had a score book that I kept all the scores of all the games and it was pretty crazy. I would sometimes go weeks without a loss even when playing 4 - 5 games or more a night when we were babysitting the Allen kids.

Yet when it came to the Rook games, Mom was the master. I lost 80 - 90% of those games. Oh, she was good. On the last hand, no matter how many points she needed...if I bid 70, she bid 80...she could coerce me into overbidding, but I seldom could set her. She had a fine tuned sense of how much to bid. If she ever overbid she would inevitably get the cards she needed to make her bid from the middle. Oh, she was good. Her ability to bid exactly the right amount...she seldom went under but just as seldom went over...was so superior to mine...I seldom hit my bid exactly and left a lot of points on the table that way...was the difference between our records.

But I loved that game. I miss it still. Someday I am going to purchase a deck, find a group of friends and play some Rook. It just might be the best 2 player game around. Or maybe I just remember it that way.