Six friends gathered around a table on a sunny but cold Saturday afternoon... with six (and not 4 or 5) and no desire to split into groups, we eschewed Settlers, Puerto Rico, et al. I'd brought Zertz (exactly two players; you could think of it as Go with training wheels, except that I'm still terrible at it, having only had a chance to play on one occasion) but again, none of us wanted to split into groups if avoidable.
Carcasonne: The other game I'd brought, and I didn't even realize one of the expansions included a sixth color (gray). In a very abstract sense, things you do to succeed in Carcasonne resemble things you do to succeed in business: Find something that helps you but also helps someone else (so you're both motivated to help each other); play moves that accomplish two or more seemingly unrelated things at once...
Of course you can't make this too literal. I'm not sure there's a real life situation where the rule of thumb should be anything like "Wait until the geography is stable, then put your big dude on a pasture and let the (f)arms race begin."
For that matter, I don't know if 6-player games should use the big dude, at least not without removing some little dudes. Meeple scarcity was a non-factor. Maybe just as well. Wide disparity of Carcasonne experience among the players. I won easily, though nontrivial good fortune contributed to the "easily" part and maybe even the "won" part.
Canadian Fish
(This game and the one below it are described here.)
All six of us were relatively new to this one, unless someone was hiding it really well. Even comparatively I was terrible at it. Fun, but very taxing.
Napoleon
Bidding to win all 16 face cards is fraught, if it turns out the kitty has enough face cards that you have to discard two trumps just to keep all 16 face cards available. Sure, I could have switched the trump suit from hearts (KQ obviously the A would be secretary) to diamonds (AKQ), with the slight problem that it's impossible to win 17 face cards if there are only 16 in the deck.
Then two people had to leave and the remaining four were 30-45 minutes away from having to leave, not quite enough time for a well-played strategy game.
No-limit hold em
Always with the poker. Details in the Extended Entry, maybe. What intrigues me here is that now when we think of poker we naturally think of money. I don't think anyone considered putting hard currency on Carcasonne or the other card games (would it even feel right), and yet for the poker it made perfect sense for four Lincolns to assemble for allocation to the winners.
Long story short we completed a four-player no-limit "tournament" in 16 minutes. (60 chips/player, blinds starting at 1/2 and going up at regular time intervals.)
Several hours and a totally different set of friends later, at a dinner party...
The '80s Game
Interesting premise but literally the worst set of trivia questions I've ever seen. Naming music albums or the actors who played minor characters is fine, but you shouldn't have in the same set a question that asks "This legislative body..." and mentions the president and the Supreme Court in the text of the question. We took to renaming the Events category "Congress."
I know people who could write much better '80s trivia than this. IP law is even favorable if you're careful, but then I suppose card stock is costly if you lack economies of scale.
More on the poker: Player to my left raised me all-in with (it turns out) an outside straight draw on a Kxx flop. I called him immediately with KQ suited, placing him on a worse kicker. (He raised a bit too nervously to have AK or better.) We might have both had running flush draws but the last two cards didn't change anything and I had him covered.
Player who'd been across from me (and now to my left) is someone I've never been in a pot with in a larger tournament. I perceive him to play tightly and I'd never had good cards in a larger tournament on a hand where he bet or called. (Also we'd never both been part of an endgame of three or fewer players; there was that time we were in the top four together, but the other two were the big stack and a player we both thought was really bad.)
Anyhow, this setting was the perfect time to get in some hands with him, and raise him all in whenever he bet, precisely because he'd bet. (I don't mean do that with nothing but... well, if you care enough about poker to be reading this at all, you sort of know what I mean.) And no nervous pauses before the raise - you really have to channel Norm Macdonald's impression of Burt Reynolds as a celebrity Jeopardy! contestant and raise all-in very brusquely.
K8x flop (king-high flops were the theme of the day apparently), I raised him all-in with second pair and a flush draw; he folded.
Later, K98 flop, I raised him all in with 98 and he called with Kx. Nothing helped him.
Then the showdown hand was my 3's vs. Ax (x > 3) and no help.
Posted by Matt Bruce at January 23, 2005 11:52 AM