Sunday, November 9, 2008

Nerts Champion

Last night Maria, Marky Mark and I went over to some friends' apartment, and after some talking, laughing, eating, and watching of Bruno, we introduced them to Nerts. I've played a lot of Nerts in my life, as my sister can attest to, but I never thought of myself as "good" (cuz really, how good can one be at Nerts, it doesn't involve that much strategy) because my sister, who was my usual opponent, was just as good. But when I played with just Maria and Marky last month I won nearly every match. It was clear that I had some sort of skills.

Apparently there is some sort of strategy/skills involved, and mine differs from what Maria and Marky Mark do. And clearly mine is better because I'm always winning :) I simply choose to place and play a lot off of my four work piles, something they are wont to do as it ties up cards they could place in the middle. I never thought of it that way; I saw it more as giving me more to work with.

So last night we were playing with six people! Around an oval table! of which I was at the tip point instead of the flatter side and thus had to reach farther across the table to play cards. It was sort of frustrating and chaotic,as it is with lots of people as opposed to the two I usually play with. The new people did fairly well, even winning a few rounds, but I was the ultimate champion. And yeah, I felt good, because when it comes to Settlers of Cataan I've only won once!

I learned to play in grade school from a friend, Jenny Axford, and it was pretty simple. When I taught it to my sister I couldn't remember how to keep score so we just never did; we'd just play til we got bored. But there's apparently lots of different rules, and names, to the game, which I learned not only from playing with Maria and Mark, but also from googling nerts. Check them out here. Did you know that Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word "nerts" as slang: nonsense, nuts? I think that's a pretty good summation of the game last night!

1 comments:

NNA said...

Hi, I found your blog post through a search for “Nerts”. It is cool to see others that know about the game. I hope you don’t mind but I wanted to let you know about playnertz.com, the site for the National Nertz Association. There is a bunch of interesting Nertz information there and you can also find out how to play Nertz online there. I hope you will check it out. Feel free to join and also let your friends and family know. We welcome all Nerts champions =) Thanks

 

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