Games

I played a few traditional games with family and friends New Year's Eve and yesterday at a friend's New Year's Day open house.

• Rummy Royal -- We played for a couple of hours on New Year's Eve. It's been a long time since I've played this. The great thing about it is the variety of each round; you start with a chance to choose or bid on an alternate unseen hand. You can bet on an ace showing up in your hand. Then you play a poker hand by choosing five of your cards. Finally you play all your cards in a Rummy-like game. I pretty much broke even for the night.
• Scrabble -- This was about the worst game of Scrabble I ever played. At one point I had all consonants. I foolishly traded *all* of them in, and came up with all *vowels*. At this point I had three of the four 'u' tiles and two of the four 'i' tiles. Why didn't I keep some of the consonants? The biggest problem was the play went from the middle of the board down into the lower corners and none of is had a way to build upward.
• Sequence -- I had never played this game before even though my wife says we have it somewhere! This is a good game for adults and kids to play together. The rules are simple, the pace is moderate, and there's a good bit of chance, but opportunity for strategy to win out.

Some friends were telling me about "Speed Scrabble" but we didn't play. Next time; it sounds fun.