I am saying this with a Poker Face…It’s the perfect time for day #4 of Gift Giving Notes!
The Gift of the Game
One of my best memories is of playing board games at the family cabin. Whether it was Christmas, Thanksgiving or just a visit without a holiday, we always found time to play board games. It tells you something about the people you might not ever discover otherwise. I discovered some people just could not pay attention for very long at all. Others were highly competitive in certain games, and not in others. The quiet ones were usually the most dangerous players. Some were sticklers for the rules. I mean REAL sticklers, others couldn’t have cared less. As a matter of fact often times they wanted to reorganize the game with new rules. “let’s play with just 3 cards each.” “Let’s use 4 die instead of 2.” or my favorite, “Let’s play the game backwards!”
Poker
If I ever came across a person like that again I would definitely recommend them playing something like Poker instead of a board game. Poker has so many variations. When they were young I taught my daughters how to play poker using penny stakes. It was great fun and they had a blast learning the game. It was very simple 5 or 7 card draw. I remember once watching poker on TV and I didn’t have a clue what they were playing. It certainly wasn’t Texas Hold ‘Em, I knew that much. Since the variations are endless the type of person who likes to change the rules up can just play a different version and voila, the rules have changed!
Mixing It Up
Even if you play the same game, you can always mix things up and try different strategies or approaches. I do that online with the various types of games I play; backgammon, Scrabble, Mancala. You can do it even more in Poker or other card games. If you do like playing cards, check out this lesson on how to mix up your card game in Poker. The site is Poker Junkie and while you can’t play there, you can learn a lot! If I hit Las Vegas soon, which I might to attend a conference, you can be sure I will take a look at Poker Junkie to see what I can learn (which is a lot!)
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Drawing, quote and commentary by Marty Coleman,
In collaboration with Elizabeth Bridges of Pokerjunkie.
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This is the first of your cartoons I have forwarded to my sister about our Scrabble playing. We play several days a week online. She lives in Cape Coral FL and I in northern California. Were it not for the Interwebs, she and I would not have our precious times together. Thank you for illustrating it so losely. She’s a blue-eyed redhead; I a green-eyed brunette.
Lynda, that’s very cool. I hope she likes it!