Tales of a Tabletop Gamer

If you play as many tabletop games as I do, you are bound to encounter some surprising events in the course of game play. This one was totally on me.

I'm not a big fan of the game Pit, but I will play if called upon. On this particular day, I started the hand with multiple barley cards. So, no surprise, I went for barley. The surprise came when I actually filled my hand and went out.

Instead of acclaim, I received criticism. "You can't go out with the bear," I was told.

I knew that. "I don't have the bear, I have all barley," I replied. But when I fanned my cards better, I saw that I did indeed have the bear. The letter "B" in the corner of the card fooled me.

After an apology, we dealt again and started trading. I miraculously got a full hand (barley again), rang the bell, and went out.

This time the reproach came in a less-friendly tone: "You can't go out with the bear!" Sure enough, I had the bear card hiding among all that barley.

I apologized again and took up the cards to deal, determined not to make another mistake. As I dealt, I tossed a card to myself and saw it begin to flip face up. In that split second, I considered that it didn't matter if everybody saw one of my cards, we could still play out the hand.

Then the card fell. It was the bear, the one card that, if anyone knew who had it, the hand could not be played.

That darn bear.