I cpuple of games I like to play that I forgot to mention are Yahtzee and Cribbage.
Which games can you play?
- Thread starter Miss Chicken
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Same here, except for a lot of Backgammon. I used to play chess a lot as a teen, but once I met my future wife and discovered that she could kick my ass at it I kind of lost interest (male ego and all).
When I rented my first house I didn't have a TV, so there was almost always an epic Risk game accompanied by a couple of cases of beer on the screened in porch every night. Two or three years ago my wife bought me a brand new Risk game from 1957. It comes in a nifty big wooden box and all the pieces are made from wood as well. The map is also pretty damn cool.
Being from the pre-internet age, I've probably played everything mentioned so far in this thread more than a few times. Some more than others.
Monopoly
Chess (My niece gave me a glass set like the one in X-Men, but I have nowhere to display it
)
Checkers
Poker
Black Jack
Trivial Pursuit (And several of it's sub games.)
Risk
Battle Ship
Connect Four
Apples to Apples
Cranium
Scrabble (I'm just not a good speller. Thank God for spell check.)
Life
Sorry
Operation
I know there are more, but I can't think of them now.
Chess (My niece gave me a glass set like the one in X-Men, but I have nowhere to display it
)Checkers
Poker
Black Jack
Trivial Pursuit (And several of it's sub games.)
Risk
Battle Ship
Connect Four
Apples to Apples
Cranium
Scrabble (I'm just not a good speller. Thank God for spell check.)
Life
Sorry
Operation
I know there are more, but I can't think of them now.
I played a lot of Pit when I was in high school.
I also had a huge run of beginner's luck the first time I learned how to play poker. We were in the stands at one of our HS basketball games.
I also had a huge run of beginner's luck the first time I learned how to play poker. We were in the stands at one of our HS basketball games.
I'll just comment on the original list
Chess - yes
Chinese Chess - Chinese Chess, never heard of it
Chinese Checkers - yes, but I might need a rules refresher
Checkers - yes
Backgammon - yes, but also could use a rules refresher
Go - no, but I want to learn how
Scrabble - yes, but I suck at it
Cards:
Canasta - no
Euchre - no
Euchre 500 - no
Rummy 500 - yes
I'll add Hearts. It's my second favorite card game after Rummy, but it's next to impossible to find people who want to play it. At one point I knew how to play Bridge and Spades, but I've long since forgotten (I never really had the scoring down for Bridge anyway).
I see there's a little NYC mini-meet forming up for Scrabble. I'm not joking when I say I suck at it. Definitely fun to play and I love when I get great words, but half the time I feel like I'm stuck with useless letters and drawing a blank on a great word.
EDIT:
I'd love to learn how to play Italian card games, so maybe some day I'll buy an Italian card deck as an excuse to learn how.
Chess - yes
Chinese Chess - Chinese Chess, never heard of it
Chinese Checkers - yes, but I might need a rules refresher
Checkers - yes
Backgammon - yes, but also could use a rules refresher
Go - no, but I want to learn how
Scrabble - yes, but I suck at it
Cards:
Canasta - no
Euchre - no
Euchre 500 - no
Rummy 500 - yes
I'll add Hearts. It's my second favorite card game after Rummy, but it's next to impossible to find people who want to play it. At one point I knew how to play Bridge and Spades, but I've long since forgotten (I never really had the scoring down for Bridge anyway).
I see there's a little NYC mini-meet forming up for Scrabble. I'm not joking when I say I suck at it. Definitely fun to play and I love when I get great words, but half the time I feel like I'm stuck with useless letters and drawing a blank on a great word.
EDIT:
I like cardgames and board games quite a lot.
Using Italian cards, Trevigiane in particular, I like to play Scopa and Briscola the most.
I'd love to learn how to play Italian card games, so maybe some day I'll buy an Italian card deck as an excuse to learn how.
I guess I am under-skilled when it comes to playing games. I don't really hang out with folks on a regular basis or have family that plays games, which probably explains it. My favorite game is Stratego. I've also played Chinese Checkers, Battleship, and Scrabble. I have actually never learned to play any card games.
Played pretty much everything under the sun. Which stems from having grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents and six younger siblings trying to beat me at anything and everything. Then just as a kicker I joined the Army and learned the games that everyone plays there(Spades...).
I have to say though, that Boggle, preferably Big Boggle is my personal favorite game, most of the time.
I have to say though, that Boggle, preferably Big Boggle is my personal favorite game, most of the time.
Here is a picture of a Chinese Chess board and pieces.
And here is a site descibing the rules of the game
In 1991, ny 13 year old son joined a chess club. He came home one evening with a borrowed Chinese Chess set and taught me how to play. He had to however return the set the next week. He told me he wanted me to buy him a Chinese Chess for his birthday. I started trying to locate a set. I went into a least a dozen different stores in the city that sold games. Most of them thought I was talking about Chinese Checkers and I had to explain the game and noone had a set.
Finally I caught a bus to the only Chinese gift shop I knew of. I went in and asked the old guy if he had a Chinese Chess set. He said he hadn't sold a set in many years but that he might have one in the storeroom. He went off to see and maybe 5 minutes later he came back with two identical sets. They were very dusty and the boxes were yellowing and torn and he told me he thought that they about 20 years old. THe old price tags on the boxes said $5 and he sold them to me for that. I was really pleased as I had budgeted $40 for one set. I spent the remaining money in his store.
My son was very pleased with his present and he and I played Chinese Chess many times.
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I learned yet ANOTHER board game today--Pillars of the Earth. Not a bad game.
I guess I'm the only one who plays the "hardcore" (six expansions, 20 pages of rules, etc) board games? I married a game geek and that's pretty much ALL he and his friends do: play board and card games. We go to "game parties" where all we do is play board/card games, eat and chat (while playing)--for 12,13 sometimes 14 hours straight.
I guess I'm the only one who plays the "hardcore" (six expansions, 20 pages of rules, etc) board games? I married a game geek and that's pretty much ALL he and his friends do: play board and card games. We go to "game parties" where all we do is play board/card games, eat and chat (while playing)--for 12,13 sometimes 14 hours straight.
^ I used to do the same, usually with conventional games like Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly or Risk. My friends and I would get together say on a Saturday night, order pizza, buy some snacks and cold drinks and just play for several hours in a row.
I really enjoyed it.
I really enjoyed it.
Tha sounds like a good idea for a meet-up, somewhere. A group of TrekBBSers getting together and playing nothing but board games - no Internet or anything. 
(And to be honest, having Internet access kind-of defeats the purpose of Trivial Pursuit... )
(And to be honest, having Internet access kind-of defeats the purpose of Trivial Pursuit... )
My stepmom is a Bridge fanatic. She has attempted to explain the game to me, but I can't figure it out. It looks absolutely massively complicated. There's no way I could learn that thing. 
If any of you people can play Bridge *and* explain it to someone who's never done it, I would welcome it...
If any of you people can play Bridge *and* explain it to someone who's never done it, I would welcome it...
Well, the basics of the game seem to be like every other trick taking game. I get the concept of winning cards and trump suits. I just don't quite get scoring, which means I don't understand bidding either. So, therefore, I don't actually get the game.
I understood the bidding a little.
The basics involve bridge being played with two teams of two players each, sitting opposite each other. Each player starts with 13 cards (from all 52) dealt out by the dealer starting with the player to his left (I think), and each player can see their own cards only.
From what I gather the bidding involves one member of the partnership announcing how many tricks they can win with one suit depending on which cards they have, then waiting to see their partner's response, depending on the strength of their own hand, and developing their own bid further, the other team of course responding with bids based on the strength of their hand, or, if they have no such luck with their hand, or declare "no bid" and play no further part in the bidding process. In other words, the bid one makes sends a message to their partner about how good their hand is.
Say, if they have a lot of cards of the Hearts suit, no matter what rank, they might open with "2 hearts" meaning they could easily win two tricks if Hearts were the trump suit. The number might be higher if they had several high-ranking hearts, of course.
If they had a lot of high-ranking cards with no one suit dominating, then they might bid say "3 no trump" meaning that they could win 3 tricks with no one suit acting as a trump suit i.e. the tricks would be won by the highest ranking card of a given suit being played only.
During the bidding, I think the suits are ranked clubs < diamonds < hearts < spades < no trump, and go up by 1 until all other players agree to "no bid", then the game starts with the player making the final bid trying to fulfil his contract of number of tricks (i.e. what his final bid entailed, be it "7 hearts" or whatever). (His partner then displays his whole hand to the table during the game, acting as a "dummy" for the main player for that game.) The other two players then have to use their skill to try and ensure that the main player's contract is not kept by winning tricks themselves.
Bluffing during the bidding process is considered cheating, from what I recall. Plus it doesn't really help your bridge partner.
The winning of tricks is pretty basic stuff - highest ranked card of a suit displayed by the opening player wins, unless trumps are involved in the contract for that particular game, in which case the highest ranked trump card wins the trick. And again, there can be no holding-back cards of a certain suit if played by the opening player during that round - if you have a spade if a spade is played at first, you must play it. As a result, trump suit cards are usually not played until the third or fourth trick, although in a no-trumps game crazy things can happen, with tricks won for low ranking cards simply because the other players can't match that first card's suit. (One funny game I remember involved one man trying to cheat by giving himself all the cards of one suit, and declaring "7 hearts" as an opening bid, to which his opponent replied "7 no trump". The cheater lost, badly.
)
The scoring I still don't know much about.
The basics involve bridge being played with two teams of two players each, sitting opposite each other. Each player starts with 13 cards (from all 52) dealt out by the dealer starting with the player to his left (I think), and each player can see their own cards only.
From what I gather the bidding involves one member of the partnership announcing how many tricks they can win with one suit depending on which cards they have, then waiting to see their partner's response, depending on the strength of their own hand, and developing their own bid further, the other team of course responding with bids based on the strength of their hand, or, if they have no such luck with their hand, or declare "no bid" and play no further part in the bidding process. In other words, the bid one makes sends a message to their partner about how good their hand is.
Say, if they have a lot of cards of the Hearts suit, no matter what rank, they might open with "2 hearts" meaning they could easily win two tricks if Hearts were the trump suit. The number might be higher if they had several high-ranking hearts, of course.
If they had a lot of high-ranking cards with no one suit dominating, then they might bid say "3 no trump" meaning that they could win 3 tricks with no one suit acting as a trump suit i.e. the tricks would be won by the highest ranking card of a given suit being played only.
During the bidding, I think the suits are ranked clubs < diamonds < hearts < spades < no trump, and go up by 1 until all other players agree to "no bid", then the game starts with the player making the final bid trying to fulfil his contract of number of tricks (i.e. what his final bid entailed, be it "7 hearts" or whatever). (His partner then displays his whole hand to the table during the game, acting as a "dummy" for the main player for that game.) The other two players then have to use their skill to try and ensure that the main player's contract is not kept by winning tricks themselves.
Bluffing during the bidding process is considered cheating, from what I recall. Plus it doesn't really help your bridge partner.
The winning of tricks is pretty basic stuff - highest ranked card of a suit displayed by the opening player wins, unless trumps are involved in the contract for that particular game, in which case the highest ranked trump card wins the trick. And again, there can be no holding-back cards of a certain suit if played by the opening player during that round - if you have a spade if a spade is played at first, you must play it. As a result, trump suit cards are usually not played until the third or fourth trick, although in a no-trumps game crazy things can happen, with tricks won for low ranking cards simply because the other players can't match that first card's suit. (One funny game I remember involved one man trying to cheat by giving himself all the cards of one suit, and declaring "7 hearts" as an opening bid, to which his opponent replied "7 no trump". The cheater lost, badly.
)The scoring I still don't know much about.
That's a great story.
