If I ever get the hang of UNO, I am so learning Thirty One!

Duh! The first time I comment first, and I forget to sign in.

Okay - we are SO having game night after dinner tonite!

I'm confused.

This game is even riskier when you play with your laundry quarters. You lose, you smell.

You Poker
You brought her

Ok, that is too much fun..I hafta print this so I can play it the next time I'm with all my cousins; mix it up a little between uno, spoons, i doubt it (aka bs) and authors..

Oh my gosh, Laurie, you just brought back so many memories of sitting on my grandma's back porch, playing this game with my grandparents and parents and brothers and sisters. Granted, we played with pennies, and called it "Scat," but it's the same exact game.

That was a walk down memory lane! Thank you!

We play something similar and call it “Moleass”, as in “slow as Molasses.” We have a few Yankees, non-southerners, in our group of friends who had no idea what Molasses was or why it was slow. Calling it 31 would be more civilized but that is just how we roll. We play with a dollar bill and you get to lose 4 times or fold all four corners of the bill before you are on your honor. We always crumple our bill into the tiniest ball possible when we go on honor, just to tick off the winner. We love it because you can play for a long time, only lose $1 but could also take home the whole pot. I tried to play with parking tokens one time, instead of a real dollar and that just didn’t go over well. It is funny how games evolve in a group.

My grandma taught us to play this as kids ... but from reading your entry - she CHEATED.... we were never allowed to keep the money in the pot ... hmmm, conspiracy - I think so ...

Hey! We played this. Only we called it Tonk. And no body got to keep the money.
Well... my stepdad got to keep the money. Hey! I was robbed!

In less than a month I'm going to a big spinning/knitting gathering. Can one play with yarn instead of quarters?

This has nothing at all to do with cards.

Do you all think it would be weird if I just up and started writing bodice-ripper romance novels? Wouldn't that be fun? It sounds more fun than self-help. And, um, the genre *is* kind of helpy, in a way....

Not wierd, do it and write a few murder mysteries while you're at it. That would be theraputic for moi.

mmmm... murder mysteries, eh?

I just want to write something fun and trashy LOL. Is that so wrong??

Do what ever it takes for fun, you dirty, dirty girl.

Oh yeah! I've played this game! Except I think we all started with a dollar. If you lost the hand you folded a corner of your dollar. (Not losing does not result in you unfolding a corner.) Once all four corners of your dollar are folded, it goes in to the pot. You have one more hand to try and reclaim your dollar...if you succeed, you retrieve it (but again, the corners stay folded). Last man standing gets all the money! The only thing I miss about my estranged relatives is the card playing...it was soooo much fun.

You should write one. I went to a romance convention (for romance readers and writers) a few years ago and had a great time. Mind you, there were plenty of women there and few men. The bodice rippers are out of fashion now, but there are lots of opportunities for other romance types. I think I heard that the romances are the best selling books.

HA! I used to play this with my Grandma, but we called it Scat.
Fun!

Scat. A bunch of us get together about twice a month. We drink, we eat, and we cuss each other. Good times.

You probably already know this stuff but, here are some romance websites: http://www.rwanational.org/ The romantic times magazine (I can't get the website up) This is a book that I though was really good. It's old but good: http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?isbn=0451165314

Gee you look cute with those bangs!

This is one card game I might actually convince my husband to try. He doesn't play cards since he doesn't know how to play so he always looses and boy does he hate that! (so he just won't play MORE). No skill, no learning curve -- he would have a chance to win :)
Thanks!

This is the group card game of choice in my family too, except we call it "Scat" instead of 31. Also, only the first person our gets to play on their honor, which we call a "belly ride" as in 'first person out gets a belly ride' or 'they're on their belly this round'.

Also, we all put a $1 or $5 (now that we're older) into a cup to "buy" our 3 pennies, and last one in wins the whole pot.

It's a lot of fun - I'm a huge fan, especially since it's a game that even the younger kids can play (Wist and Pitch are usually too complex until the kids/cousins are in high school at the least.)

Oh, and 3 of a kind (three 2s, three 10s, three Queen's, or what have you) automatically equal 30. A risky strategy, but a fun twist on the rules I think.

That post brought back memories of playing this as a kid with a huge group of family on Thanksgiving in my great aunt's basement. We played with nickels back then.

Thanks for posting the rules for 31. I'm playing it this weekend!

You should definitely write the romance novel. You could totally make it in your own voice and it would be fresh and new and everyone would like it and even people that didn't normally read them would have to start.

Melanie (who met you in Mission Viejo with her younger man, who passed the Menendez brother test, in tow.

A little different than my family's rules.
- We play with four quarters each. (or dollars, pennies, toothpicks.... we just love to play!)
- We also have a rule where three of a kind automatically wins. So if you had that dreaded 2 of spades, and then a 2 of hearts came up in the discard or pick-up pile on your turn: you may want to try for twos.

Yeah! I've been introducing this game to my friends and it's just so much fun!

you should write a bodice ripper. And a mystery. And maybe something from another genre too.
This game sounds like fun, educational for my children, and less noisy than Yahtzee. I'm totally taking their money!!

So, if I use all my quarters, I'm out, right? That's how you get down to two players, right? Sounds fun.

We never played 31, but we would play Euchre for dimes when I was a kid. And Michigan Rummy.

I'll try to get the family to look into this one. Sounds like lots of fun.

Maybe you could write a romantic mystery novel? Two genres at once!

This is almost identical to my family's rules for 31 - except... when you knock and get beaten you only have to put in 1 quarter. Its when one of your opponents gets 31 after you knock that you put in 2....

(And, we play with dimes. We are cheap, and risk-adversant)

Okay, this is truly weird but for most of my adult life, I thought this was something my French-Canadian grandmother made up. The rules were exactly the same, only we played with five pennies (!) and once they were all gone (into the "pot" which was an old saucer -- teacup long broken), you got one more hand on "relief" which was Nana's word for Social Security. But once your "relief" turn ended, you were "out"!

I suspect for the first twenty years of my life, we kept circulating the same fifty pennies over and over and over again. I wonder what happened to the saucer.

Thanks for bringing back old memories.

Curses for it being a toy monkey!

I was so imagining a real live monkey seated with the dealer and all hell breaking loose when Caberbnet and his chum Sauvignon got their feet under the table.

I think that monkey would probably have been wearing one of those green baize peaks and the arm gaiter/protector things like a telegraph operator from an old Western.

Curses for it being a toy monkey!

I was so imagining a real live monkey seated with the dealer and all hell breaking loose when Caberbnet and his chum Sauvignon got their feet under the table.

I think that monkey would probably have been wearing one of those green baize peaks and the arm gaiter/protector things like a telegraph operator from an old Western.

Oh! That is why your comments section yelled at me!

Sorry. I didn't mean to post the same thing twice!

We played that game too. But we called it Blitz! We played with 3 nickels but I guess with inflation and all.... Still a lot of fun no matter what you call it.

sounds like fun! we are homeschooling- maybe we can work that in somehow. math, right?

My family plays this but we call it Boats - because we play with a dollar bill, and we fold up the corners whenever we lose a round. Once you've got all four corners folded up, it looks like you've got a little boat, and you're floating! Lose a fifth time, and you're out - you sank your boat.

My family has been playing this for as long as I can remember (and I'm 42). We called it "Rap" (not to be confused with that hideous excuse for music). When we called, we would say "rap" or just rap on the table. AKA "knock".

It was tradition every night at the cottage to gather around the table and play several games before bed. Most of the time we used two decks of cards because we had so many people playing. We started with three pennies, then moved on to nickles, dimes, and quarters.

Now that we're adults, we "kids" still play, but we start with quarters, move on to loonies (Canada's one dollar coin), twonies (the two dollar coin), and then the brave ones go in with three five dollar bills. Now THAT'S a healthy pot!

If my mother approaches the sunroom while we're playing, one of my nieces will say "here comes Grandma" and we all cover the money and tell her we're just playing for fun. She would freak if she knew we were playing high stakes.

After paying our three coins we called it "free riding" for one hand. Three of a kind also counted as 30. After someone rapped, as long as you had more than 21 you were safe. Everyone under that paid.

Sorry for the length of this, but you brought back some great memories. Cheers.

We used to play this game a lot when I was a kid. Slightly different rules though, but that might be because I'm Dutch. We called it 'eenendertigen' which just means thirty-one-ing (or something...).

In our rules, the dealer gave herself two hands of three cards. She could pick one up and decide whether or not she liked them. If she did, the other hand went on te discard pile. If she didn't she would put the looked at hand in the discard pile and take the other hand, unseen.

In our game you could also play three of a kind, which would be worth 30,5.

We hardly played with money, mostly everyone had three matches or buttons or something. Still lots of fun, though if I were to play it again now (which I really feel like now!) I think I'd spice it up some and add the quarters!

this is one of our favorite family games when we go to my grandparents. we call it the same thing and everything, only we are a bit nicer about if you knock and have the fewest points... we only have to put in one quarter (well, we play for dimes or nickels, but still). i think that if we played where we had to put in two, my mom would be out of the game in exactly two hands. she isn't much for enjoying card games! : )

How many ways can you work yarn into a bodice ripper? Well, knitting needles are a better defense than a hairpin..... What will the heroine do to save (or find) her great-grandmother's lace, um, lace cap? No, her great-grandmother's lace wedding gown! Which of course she winds up getting married in. So that's one.....

I'm printing out the rules for 31 to give to my dad. He broke his hip back in December and is in a rehab facility, where he's complaining that no one else there knows any card games. He prefers poker, but this will probably interest more people.

I've already announced to the "Texas Hold-em Group" that this week we're playing "31" instead. I love cards games, ever since my childhood addiction to "Crazy-8s."

I love 31! It's what the grown-ups played when my Grandparents would come to visit us, although they played for nickels, not quarters.

Dad's favorite ploy was to knock on the first round unless he had a truly terrible hand. It seemed to work out most times.

My family plays solitaire. Perhaps this is the problem?

Laurie - I wanted to write my dissertation as a bodice-ripping smut novel, but alas my advisor said the committee would frown on that. I then suggested a soap opera screenplay, but she wasn't really down with that either. Alas. . .

Personally, I'm with psychomom on the mysteries. I love 'em!

We calls that skit skat and plays for nickels, which, if the person who is not the parent of the youngest child playing wins (didja follow that?), they give all the nickels to the youngest child.

Or their favorite child, but youngest player is traditional......

If you add a little wine to this game it gets even funnier...we started "knocking" with different body parts..elbows, knees, and my aunt used her butt! Maybe we should have cut off her drinking by that point...hmmm...Thanks for the memories! :)

Sounds like fun - I'm sending it on to my cardplaying buddies. Thank you!

We spent most of our senior year in high school playing this game. How to play 31 was all I leaned that year in Civics. Nice, huh? Talk about no child left behind! hee (I had my 20Y reunion last year, no I don't want to talk about it. I only have 2 cats (and a dog) so it's ok.)

Hey! We play that game at my house, but we call it Skit-Skat. So if you get 31, you say "Skit-Skat!" My five-year-old is very good. We play with dimes.

My family calls it Magoo! Not sure what the story is about the name. I have never won -- for some reason I inevitably choke about 2 or 3 rounds from the end.

i have played a variation on this game called Spoons. same set up except you place one spoon less then the amount of people playing in the middle of the table. then the first person to get 3 of a kind (not 31, hence variation) grabs a spoon. than havoc reeks and everyone grabs for a spoon. the last peson without a spoon is out. you keep going til there is one person with a spoon.

it is super fun, and gets funner the more you drink. one caveat, lots of elbows get thrown grabbing for spoons, so you'd better beware!

oh, and we play 31, but we call it Tonk. and we play Euchre, pinnochle, cribbage, poker, spades, heart, etc. we are a big card playing kind of family!

Our family calls it "Blitz". If you get '31', you yell, "BLITZ!!" and everyone throws in a quarter. (it used to be dimes when I was little)

Uhm sorry all, this game is called Scat, and I love this game.

Oh! How did I miss this the first time? Skimming at work, that's how. You should totally write a bodice-ripper that is also a mystery and also has a female Horatio Alger in it. Sort of a Barbara Taylor Bradford-Danielle Steel-Mary Higgins Clark stew. You write better than any of them. Sorry, that's damning with faint praise: you write WAY better than any of them.

(MHC writes straight-out suspense, but she also writes whodunit-suspense. I always figure out who not more than 1/3 of the way through the book. It's the nice guy who doesn't seem to have anything to do with the plot.)

Thanks so much. It is indeed the same. My grandmother loved to win the pennies and nickels off of us. No mercy to her grandchildren. Gotta start playing it again!