You Know Uno, Don’t You?

Last weekend I enjoyed a family holiday in Charleston, South Carolina, kind of a three-day weekend. In between visits to the pool, walks on the beach, and a couple of fun meals dining out, I played games with my now seven-year-old nephew, about whom I’ve written here before.

He got himself a big, thick deck of Uno cards at some point in the last year, and on a couple of occasions now we’ve played, including on this trip. It might be the first card game I’ve played with him in which he doesn’t make up new rules along the way, but sticks to the actual rules of the game. That said, he has invented some sort of postscript-type game involving three cards and picking one which he breaks out at the end of every Uno game, so he’s still adding to the standard game with this one, too.

If you know Uno, you know the goal of the game is to discard all of your cards before your opponent does, with “Uno” being the word called out when a player is down to just a single card. The deck is comprised of four colors (red, green, blue, yellow) with the cards numbered, and there are a few special cards thrown in as well that reverse the order of play, skip a player, force an opponent to draw extra cards, and function as wild cards enabling the player to change the current color.

This video spoofing Anime actually does a good job capturing what a game with my nephew is like:

I believe players are supposed to start with seven cards, but my nephew likes to start with many, many more. We began with 26, actually, and that picture up top shows how difficult it was to hold that many at once (and that’s with adult-sized hands). I joked on Twitter that he likes “deep-stacked” Uno, and it’s true that starting with more cards does mean the game will go on a bit longer (ensuring there will be “more play”).

In a game last weekend, I managed to get down to “Uno” twice but each time was thwarted by my nephew playing a card requiring me to draw. Then eventually he got down to one card while I only had 4 or 5. The upcard was a blue four, and I had both a blue card and a red four, meaning I could either keep it the same color or change it.

I managed to talk myself into keeping it blue, and sure enough he had another blue card and won the game. When I showed him my red four he insisted I should have played it and changed the color, although I think he was just being results-oriented, knowing that had I done that he wouldn’t have won (not then, anyway).

Thinking afterwards, I decided it probably was a better play to change the color, as it often happens in Uno you play several cards of the same color in a sequence until you run out, then work on the next color -- meaning the chances were probably slightly better that he had another blue card in his little hand than not.

I think he’s probably about ready to learn about the rankings of poker hands. We’ve played War before, but no poker games. Simple five-card draw would have to be the best place to start, I’d think.

That’s the game that has been on my mind lately, and is the first poker game I learned, I remember... probably when I was about his age.

Getting Creative with Card Games, and Remembering Benny Binion

Happy Xmas, all. Has been a busy day here running around seeing family, including my five-year-old nephew -- or “five-and-a-half!” as he points out -- who appeared to have the best day of all.

He and I continue to play cards whenever we get together, having now evolved from our default game of War into a new one of his invention. It’s kind of a version of concentration whereby he takes four cards (or sometimes five), shows them to me face up, then turns them over and slides them around rapidly as though he were a three-card monte hustler.

After a couple of minutes of that I was charged with guessing which was the highest card. If I’d been paying closing attention, I’d be able to pick out the ace or king (which was usually the highest one), although it wasn’t always easy to keep closely trained on the cards.

Before that we’d played some War, and even there my nephew was introducing variations. Same goes for the game of golf we played in the front yard with the plastic set I’d given him, where instead of trying to hit the ball into the little colored ring that represents the hole, he’d race around holding the golf balls instructing me to say “Yay!” at which point he’d drop them for me to strike them one by one.

Speaking of constantly wanting to tinker and innovate, you no doubt saw that announcement from the WSOP this week of the dates for next year’s Series, including a couple of interesting additions to the schedule. They’re also keeping some ideas from last year, too, about which I’ve seen a lot of debate over the last couple of days on my Twitter feed.

Today’s actually the 25th anniversary of the death of Lester Ben “Benny” Binion, who passed on December 25, 1989 at the age of 85. Among the many things Binion is remembered for, of course, is having been there along with his son, Jack, to start the WSOP at the Horseshoe back in 1970.

Was reading a little today from the oral history Binion provided to Mary Ellen Glass back in 1973, available in two parts over on the UNLV Center for Gaming Research website here and here.

“The poker game here gets us a lot of advertisement,” Binion explained then while making the oft-quoted claim that “seven thousand newspapers” had reported on the previous year’s Main Event which had drawn just seven players. “This year we had thirteen,” he goes on to say. “I look to have better than twenty next year. It’s even liable to get up to be fifty. Might get up to be more than that; it will eventually.”

“We improve it every year,” he adds. Such has, of course, become a mantra of sorts for those who now run the WSOP. Might write a little tomorrow about a couple of the ideas they’ve already shared regarding the 2015 WSOP. None are as radical as my nephew’s innovations, but they’re intriguing nonetheless.

Going for another mug of egg nog now, though. Hope that like my nephew you all got what you wanted this year.

The Art of War

Enjoying a little down time here over the holidays, including spending some quality hours with my four-and-a-half-year-old nephew as I mentioned I would be doing last post.

He and I did manage to get in a few rounds’ worth of “War” when he wasn’t busy playing Skylanders. He mastered the rules for “War” very quickly, including sorting out how the face cards rank and how jokers were wild. He’s also figured out how to save out an ace or joker for himself to use at key moments, such as when “battles” arise, being very creative in the way he’ll innocently slide the card out from under the pile.

We laugh about his not-quite-allowed-within-the-rules strategy of choosing cards to play, both acknowledging it fully. It’s interesting, actually, to observe how besides being pretty quick to understand games, he’s competitive, too, wanting to win but seemingly a good sport when losing. A little later we played Tic-Tac-Toe on a stocking stuffer wooden game and I couldn’t help but laugh when he left me an opening to beat him once, then shot a hand down over the spot where I was about to make my last move.

Those who are parents know a lot more than I do about how this process of learning games works with children, including the usual milestones of understanding how to play them, what winning and losing is, and eventually what it means to play by the rules and the importance of doing so. My understanding is my nephew is still probably a year or two away from reaching that last stage, as that doesn’t necessarily come (for most) until kids get to be primary school age.

Was kind of marveling, though, at how the moment he noticed he’d left me that opening to make three across he slapped the hand down -- entirely instinctive, that, and something we adults can identify with whenever we make a mistake and think initially of trying to correct it.

I’m thinking it won’t be that long before my nephew and I start talking about poker hands and how three of a kind beats two pair. Then after that we’ll get out the chips, too. That’s when I’ll definitely have to watch out to make sure he doesn’t keep an ace or joker hidden in his tiny sleeve.

Comparing Cards, Brains

Am enjoying a quick vacation for a couple of days, spending time at the beach with family including my four-year old nephew. We arrived yesterday, and after discovering a pack of cards at the place we’re staying I had an idea to create a card game for the two of us to play.

I removed the face cards and aces, then dealt the rest of the deck to the two of us. We then would take one card off the top of our respective decks and turn it over, and whoever had the highest-ranking card would win and claim both cards. Basically we were playing “War,” although with a smaller deck and without the “battles” that would come if we both turned over equal-ranking cards (in which case we just kept our cards and moved on).

Soon, though, he wanted to include the face cards and aces, too, which we did, and he quickly figured how they rank, too. Then he had an idea that he would start with all of the black cards and I would start with the red ones, which of course meant we’d each be starting with equally-strong sets of cards as he had all of the clubs and spades and I had the hearts and diamonds.

We’d run through all 26 “hands,” then he showed me how high he can count by counting out how many he had when we were done. Woke up this morning and he had already found the deck and was asking me to play again. I think before the trip is done I’ll teach him “War” proper, as it’s obvious he’ll be up for it.

He’s pretty quick. He brought a trove of other toys and games with him, including this pretty cool learning game that involves answering all sorts of questions about the body and all its systems.

One question arose regarding which was bigger, the heart or the brain. He asked me and I said I thought the brain was bigger.

He had a studied look for a moment, and I thought perhaps he was looking behind me at something. Then he spoke.

“Maybe your brain,” he said.