Let The Games Begin...

The Sweet Taste of Victory


Feeling the need to satisfy my competitive drive, the next two tasks I attempted involved a couple of games, one that everyone is familiar with and one that probably not many people are familiar with.

The First Game: Pool




I had "Beat someone at Pool" on my list because A) I suck at Pool and B) I kinda want to get better at it. Freshman year of college they had a lounge in the dorms with a Pool table and I would play every so often but I was never really that serious about it. I played in a couple little tournaments they put on but had little success. There were sometimes people who had their own cues!! Talk about taking it too serious! Anyway, I don't really like it when I'm bad at games like this so I was determined to beat somebody...


Fast forward to a Monday night in Irvine. There was a Monday Night Football game on TV and it was a pretty good game if I recall (Patriots vs Saints I think). Jim and I decided to go out and watch the game at a bar and, you know, experience other human interaction. We first went to The Yard House but it was way too packed. Apparently if you get there after a game starts, it's pretty much impossible to get a seat, even at the bar. So we decided to skip that and go to another place closeby called Champs. This place was the opposite of The Yard House, meaning there was nobody there. Not surprisingly, we later learned that it was closing down within a couple months. I wonder why? Nevertheless we sat down and had a couple beers and watched the Saints dominate. It was still early when the game got over so we decided to keep the night going a little longer and headed over to Dave & Busters. We'd only been there once before and it was nothing to write home about but it was pretty much the last place to go in the Spectrum Center. And guess what they have at Dave & Busters?? I'll give you a hint: it involves a pool table, balls, and wooden sticks. (If you can't get Pool from that then I just feel sad for you.) So we got the stuff to go play and I realized I could accomplish a goal if I beat Jim. Granted I was slightly tipsy when we played but I don't think that affected my play too much. Maybe it's one of those things I'm better at when I'm drunk haha. The game kinda went back and forth for a while until I finally had one ball left, the 8 ball!


This is the shot I had to make to secure the win:


I wouldn't be writing this blog entry if I hadn't made it so needless to say, I made it (without scratching) and beat Jim at pool on my first attempt!! We played a couple more games after and I actually won the second game too because Jim made the 8-ball when he had other balls left. Overall, my pool skills didn't really seem to improve but I got the win and that was what really mattered in my eyes. Therefore I completed goal

#62. Beat someone at Pool


The Second Game: Cribbage




I love card games. I play poker all the time, enjoy solitaire, waste away hours of my life playing freecell on my computer, and you guessed it, like to play cribbage. I learned how to play cribbage from my grandpa who recently passed away. He loved card games too and enjoyed passing them down to all his grandkids so I thank him for introducing me to this fun and interesting game. I'm probably gonna sound really nerdy now when I try to explain this so just be prepared...

The rules are simple once you get used to them. I'll give you a short overview if you ever want to lose to...I mean...play me :-P Each player gets dealt 6 cards. Then each player discards 2 and those discarded cards become the "crib" for the dealer. There are two parts to the gamepley: 1)Counting the points within your hand and 2) Playing your cards off your opponent's cards.

For the first part, the point is to keep cards that add up to 15 (7+8, K+5, 2+A+6+6) or cards that are in a row (456, JQK, A234). If you have any amount of cards that add up to a total of 15 then you get awarded 2 points. If you have 3 cards in a row you get awarded 3 points, 4 cards in a row = 4 points, etc.

The gameplay is started when the deck is cut and the top card is revealed for both players to use (so now each player essentially has a 5 card hand when counting up their points). For the second part of the gameplay, each player alternates putting down their cards face up one at a time, stopping along the way to award points when any 15's are reached or the cards add up to 31.

Here's an example: Player A puts down a 9. Player B puts down a 6 and gets 2 points because his opponent's 9 and his own 6 add up to 15. Player A then puts down a 10 and Player B puts down a 6 and is awarded another 2 points because 9+6+10+6 adds up to 31. Then the count starts back at 0 and you keep putting down cards until you have none left.

After this is over, each player counts up the points in their 5 card hand. The "crib" I mentioned earlier essentially is another 5 card hand given to the dealer that he adds up the points for in addition to his own hand. Here's an example of a good hand and how to count up the points: 7889 (5). The 5 was the community card that was cut that each player uses. (In this example, the 5 didn't end up helping the original hand and added no points.) So...

7+8=15 =2 points
7+other 8=15 =2 points
7,8,9 =3 points
7,other8,9 =3 points
pair of 8's =2 points

This hand = 12 points

The board that you see in the picture is just used to keep track of points. The first to 121 wins. The board isn't necessary but it makes it more legit I think.

A picture of a 16-point (really good) hand I had during the game



So now that I've thoroughly confused the hell out of you, those are pretty much the rules to the game of Cribbage. My grandpa was really good and he always seemed to know which cards to keep and which ones to play against his opponents during gameplay. The game does involve a little luck but if you're a good player you will win more often than you get unlucky. But beating him was a time to celebrate haha. The next step below my grandpa is my dad and since I couldn't play my grandpa, I was determined to beat my dad!!

When my parents visited me a couple months ago I was excited to set up the game. We ended up playing on the last night they were here and it wasn't really that close. I pretty much dominated. When you constantly get 16 point hands like the one I have pictured above, you have a pretty good shot to win. I beat my dad on my first try and quickly accomplished my goal

#60. Beat my dad at cribbage


And there you have it, I accomplished two goals in my Sports/Games category on my first try. Maybe on my next list I'll raise the stakes and say "Run the table on someone at Pool" or "Skunk someone in Cribbage" but for now I'm satisfied. It has been a while since my last post and I apologize to all my faithful readers lol. Hopefully this entry will motivate me to update my blog more often!! Stay tuned...