July 6, 2010

Day 173 - Learn Piquet

Date: June 28th, 2010

I'm a huge card player.  Growing up, I learned how to play double-bid euchre from my parents, then pinochle, then various forms of poker.   Real, honest-to-goodness, strategic card games are my bread and butter.  That's why, when I stop and think about how little strategy the vast majority of two player games have, I find myself deeply frustrated.

On a note thusfar completely unrelated to card games, it had been way too long since I'd last hung out with Louis.  I was tired and/or sick the last two weeks in a row, making handball an impossibility.  We decided not to let my repeated illness get in the way of hanging out and having a good time so I got in the car and headed back to Ann Arbor for dinner at the original Cottage Inn and some card playing good times.

Learning Piquet was essentially exactly the same as the last card game I learned, but what I loved about it is that I now know a complex, fun, two-person card game.  I'd been looking for one for the longest time, albeit not that hard since I imagine Piquet is probably in most of the Hoyle books that grace my parents' bookshelves.

Piquet is a fantastic mix of bidding, tricks, meld and bluffing.  Not to mention pasta, atmosphere, and homemade sauce.  Wait, that was Cottage Inn.  See, I loved learning Piquet, not just because it was something new, but because I had a moment of serious nostalgia.  I used to love camping out at a table in an Ann Arbor restaurant with a book or a couple friends and a deck of cards and killing time as the world moved around me.  Ann Arbor is perfect for that kind of semi-brilliant, semi-lazy activity.  I missed it terribly and sitting at Cottage Inn with Louis brought that back.

I may have to turn back into a college hipster and start loitering at restaurants again on weekends.  Oh I miss it so.

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