Pounce

For those of you who are not familiar with the topic of this blog entry, you may know this fast-paced card game by "Nerts" or even some Italian version of the game. It is hard to describe for those who have not experienced the game, so about the closest thing is Skip-Bo mixed with Solitaire, but playing against other people.

I was first introduced to this game in high school by my friend Lauren and her family. They used Rook cards as they provide four different colors/suites without using face cards. So that is how I learned how to play. When we got to BYU, Lauren and I taught it to all of our roommates, who taught it to all of our friends, who taught it to their friends and soon we had a group of about 15-20 people who would get together and play it on Sunday nights. It was crazy fun!

After our freshman year, our group of friends broke-up a little and we didn't have a whole group who would play much, so we maybe played once a month or so. Then, when we were all no longer roommates, we kind of forgot about the game. Then we got together in December and played again for the first time in years. It was the introduction to the game for Pret, and Sarah's husband, Eric, had only played a few times, so it was fun to have them play for the first time. Pret really enjoyed it, so it was on our minds for the next few weeks.

We next played it around New Year's with a group of friends and were able to introduce it to many of them, this time using face cards, as Rook cards were not available. They all enjoyed it and we will have to play it again with them. We were talking about it with my cousin Jordan and his wife Alison as well as my sister and brother-in-law, Shannon and Michael. Jordan and Alison have played a version before as Nerts, but we quickly converted them to our way of playing Pounce as we taught it to Shannon and Michael and we have been getting together monthly since then to play it--forgoing all of the other games on Shannon and Michael's "Wall of Games."

Finally, we got together with some friends, Ariana and Jordan, last week and were planning on playing games. We happened to bring up Pounce, and they were unfamiliar with it by name, but had played the "Italian name" version (sorry I don't remember it...), and we altered our version to play theirs for a bit. We ended up playing much past our bedtimes, but good times were definitely had by all!

Anyway, thus ends my narrative on Pounce, but I hope it doesn't end the fun of playing the game. I am sorry that this is another boring entry with no pictures--I will try to take some the next time we play--maybe even a video of the game in process. (Hopefully we won't have to edit any language or actions--it get to be slightly violent and vulgar. But all words and bad feelings are left at the table.)