slä-pē sɛkənds

as a thursday rolls around and i realise that i have not updated my blog for a while i recall that thursdays are the days i talk about games. and then i had a wee flashback. a couple of weeks ago i was interviewed by the lovely jay richardson for (scottish arts magazine) the list. he texted me to say that he was going to ring me slightly later than agreed because he was trying to get his head round "my insane card game post". oops.

i think one is supposed to use a blog for flagrant self-promotion but, while there will be a degree of that, i don't really see the point in not actually writing about anything but oneself. there is, of course, an argument that all writing is about oneself. my counter to this is "cat sat on mat". that's definitely about a cat. (he's on a mat in a sitting position). but, regardless of its stupefying effect on comedy journos, i will plough on regardless!

so, today i will be discussing another poker variant wot i made up. i made it up years ago (probably seven) with a friend called kerri. it's called sloppy seconds and it's monstrously silly. first of all you need to know how to play poker. if you don't, go away and come back after you are basically there. second, it is a five-card draw game. we all cool? ok... you look at your five cards and decide on which two cards (and only two) that you are going to pass to the left. then you reassess and swap two with the deck. twos are wild. can you see how mental this game is already? TWO mandatory swaps of TWO cards and TWO is wild. sloppy seconds.

on new year's eve, i made everybody play a hand of this for a fiver. bruce took home £35. brilliant. stupid, yet brilliant.

and on a shameless self-promotion front: my show in edinburgh.

abort and adopt (a card game)

a card game what i invented. with some help from my friend lewis and some refining from my friend evil. i invented it (with the above caveats) last summer when i was living in a warehouse (read "converted office") with eight or so people. so there was always someone with whom one could have a glass of wine with at night - and play cards.

the game itself is a sort of poker variant (i've invented one in the past - the inimitable (and very stupid) "sloppy seconds": five card draw, two swaps (one with the pack, one to the left), you must swap two cards both times, twos are wild). if the previous parenthetical text is confusing, i'm sorry. you might not get the rest of this. i'm not going to explain poker here. just this version.


the game can be played by two or three players - either has its merits - but no more as there are not enough cards in the deck. (i believe that lewis has played with two decks and five players). each player has a five column layout as above... so that's one card in the first column, two in the second etc. KEY POINT: everyone forgets this, even when i tell them that everyone forgets it. you must make a poker hand (five cards) from all five columns. that's one from EACH column.

play is as follows:

• turn over the first card (column one). examine the state of play. if betting, round one of betting is now. betting is strictly unnecessary.
  
• pick up the next two cards (column two). place them back down, one face up.
• examine the second column of the player to your left (the only other player if playing heads-up). choose one of them to be discarded, i.e. aborted. next round of betting.
• third column. two face up. abortion. betting.
  
• fourth column. two face up. (this round is called the "victorian terrace" because it is two up, two down). abortion. betting.
  
• fifth column. three face up. abortion... and then... adoption. examine the third, fourth and fifth columns of the player to your right (also the only other player if heads up). take one of these cards and add it to one of your columns.
• final round of betting. see who is the winner.

now. that makes it sound a lot more complex than it is. once you've played a couple rounds you get it. but, crucially, it is very difficult to be good at. mainly because of the baffling proliferation of options as the rounds go on.

if you do try it, let me know.