Stand Back, I'm a Professional

A couple weeks ago, my friend Jenn (of the Ash Family Blog I follow) invited me to a Bunco tournament a friend of hers was throwing. I had heard of Bunco clubs and several people I know are in such clubs but I didn't really know what it was. Bunco is a dice game played at tables of two pairs of people. Basically you roll three dice multiple times for a specific number. In the first round everone is rolling for ones. The round is over when the head table has rolled 21 ones. Then everyone moves on to twos. A bunco is if you roll a three of a kind in the number you want, for instance 3 ones in the first round. They are worth more points. The person who has won the most rounds win.
Needless to say it is a fun and mindless game so you can chat with the other players and after each game you switch partners. To join the game I had to pay $5 and bring $5 gift. At the end of the night the winner got one gift and the loser got four gifts. I came in third and got a couple old dvds. Not bad for my first time playing a game of luck :)

Then, this weekend Jenn invited me to a Hand and Foot tournament at her sister's house. Hand and Foot is similar to Canasta so you know I was all over it. The biggest difference is that you have a hand-11 cards that you play from, and a Foot-11 cards you have to play after you play your hand. Mind blowing I know! The change I had to get used to was that you can't pick up the discard pile, which of course changes your entire discarding strategy.
Now some of you may remember that the summer after freshman year of college I was hired by my high school art teacher to come over in the afternoons and play Hand and Foot with her 93 year old mother for $5 an hour. It was a super sweet deal since her mother a) drank vodka like it was water and b) suffered from slight dementia so she was willing to play for four hours straight but as the time went on she started to forget what she was doing.

This summer experience has come in handy during ice breakers and parties because no one would ever believe i have been a 'professional card player.' I barely remembered the rules so I had to laugh that I was actually going to play Hand and Foot again. It was super fun and surprisingly my partner and I won the tournament! We didn't win any prizes but we do get bragging rights- which is a big deal to the group I was playing with. The last champions have been bragging for two years since the last big game.

It has been a fun couple of weeks but I am afraid Jenn might stop inviting me to her friends' events it I keep doing so well. Luckily she is on the same softball league as me and knows I suck at that :)