Kings

What do you do when your kids pass around a 7-day virus that keeps them out of school for days? Play cards!

Grandma Linda and Grandpa Bob reintroduced us to the joy of card playing. We used to play a lot more before we had toddlers who would grab the cards and chew on them and preschoolers who would get into them and lose all of the face cards. But now, all of the kids can play one game or another and it's a good way to be together as a family or one-on-one with the kids. We try to emphasize logic and math skills, as well as good sportsmanship--but really we're just having fun.

Apollo's favorite game is Kings. Here's how you play:

Deal 4 cards to each player. There can be as many players as you want, but only about 3 players/deck. After that you need to add at least one suit for every added player. (No jokers).

Each player places his cards singly, in a square in front of you, with any 2 face up, and any 2 face down. No one knows what is under the faced down cards.

The rest of the cards are placed in the middle, the first one turned over (the start of the discard pile). Starting with the player to dealer's left, each player either takes a card from the deck or the last card in the discard pile; he can either exchange any of his cards with the drawn card, or simply add it to the discard pile. Face-down cards can be exchanged, but the new card must be placed faced-down as well. The point is to get the lowest score. Aces are low, Kings are zero, and all other face cards are 10. So the point is to get as many kings, aces, and low cards as you can.

The game ends by either running out of cards in the draw pile, or if a player thinks they have the lowest score, they can Knock (literally knocking the table with your fist). They do this instead of drawing a card. Then each remaining player gets to draw one last time. Score is taken by turning all of the cards over and adding up your score. Lowest score wins. If you Knock, and you are not the lowest (or if you tie) you must add all of the players scores together and add it to your own. If you Knock, and you are the lowest, you take the score of that hand and subtract it from your over all score. (Like if you knocked and your hand was 5 points, and you won, you'd add a -5 to your score). If there is a lot of people (4 or more) playing we usually play so that everyone deals twice and call it a game. If only 2 people are playing we usually play 5 hands.

If we are playing with the kids, we don't keep score for consecutive hands. Instead, Brian and the kids came up with this tiered system:

Hand 1--start as equals; winner is declared the winner

Hand 2--If winner from hand 1 wins again they are Top Dog

Hand 3--If Top Dog wins again, loser is a Wimpy Chiauau

Hand 4--If Top Dog wins again, loser is a Scared Kitty Cat

Hand 5--If Top Dog wins again, loser is a Blind Mouse

Hand 6--If Top Dog wins again, loser is a Dust Bunny (Paris came up with this)

The loser can win and work himself back up the chain, but the Top Dog is Top Dog until the loser has worked himself back up and then beaten Top Dog twice.

No, we don't play too much here.

BTW, Apollo is very good at his victory dance if he makes it to Top Dog. He stands up on his chair and wiggles his hips and then wags his behind in your facewhile singing/saying "Oooh,yeah. I won. Oooh, yeah." Thank you sports players for teaching my son this skill.

Of course, this is only when he feels cocky. At other times, he will throw the game for you. Somehow that is more humiliating than if you had just lost to him. (He is surprisingly good at this game).