piquet

Husband and I have recently learned how to play piquet. We like to play cards but unfortunately our favorite game (pinochle) isn't really suited for two players, and we don't know anyone here whose idea of a good time is hanging out and playing cards. Imagine that--our friends prefer the Bangkok nightlife to our apartment!

What is "nightlife" anyway? Is it going to a bar and sitting, or is there more to it? I've never understood. I like going out to eat, I like going to concerts, I like movies and shopping. All of these things can be done at night. But somehow I don't think this is really what is meant by "nightlife."

Anyhoooo,

We have been playing a lot of rummy. When we started to get sick of it I went online (sweet, sweet Internet) to try to find some new 2-player card games to try. After a couple of attempts at games we didn't particularly fancy, I found a web page that said something like "...and there are still some people who remember how to play piquet."

Intrigued, I looked it up. What a fun game! Card counting, arcane terminology, endless strategizing for very little apparent gain, a truly baroque method of keeping score. What's not to like?

I am devoted to spreading the piquet love. I am also hoping that someone who really knows how to play (as in, has learned how to play by experience instead of solely by reading a web page) will come across this post and leave me some tips in the comments thread so that I can end Husband's reign of terror.

Some fun piquet lingo:

• Elder Hand: the non-dealer
• Younger Hand: the dealer
• Carte Blanche: a hand of cards containing no jacks, queens, or kings
• Point: the largest number of cards in one's hand in a single suit (seven diamonds would be "point of seven)
• Repiquet: a bonus received for scoring 30 points before your opponent scores any, before any tricks have been played
• Piquet: a bonus received for scoring 30 points before your opponent scores any, including tricks
• The Cards: ten points awarded to the player who takes the most tricks
• Capot: forty points awarded to a player who takes all of the tricks; cancels piquet
• Crossing the Rubicon: what you say when your score passes 100 points

I don't know why but all of this arcana really appeals to me. The workings of the game are elegantly, needlessly complex. Everything must happen in a particular order. Scores can snowball: there are all sorts of bonuses that work out to being extra points just for being in the lead, and/or penalties just for being behind. Evidently this is because British gentlemen used to bet large sums of money on games of piquet, and the (also complicated) method of betting depended not only on winning or losing, but on the actual scores at various points in the game and at the end.

Here is a link that explains the game in detail; I set out to do that in this post, but stopped both because I'd be doing nothing but cribbing from this site, and also because boy, are there a lot of rules, and why should I type them when someone else has already?

http://www.pagat.com/notrump/piquet.html