ROUSES_MayJun2019_Magazine-Print

There is something so quintessential about family game nights. A certain kind of bond can only be formed over cards or board games. People you know and love and live with and work with are suddenly put in a mild and amusing form of jeopardy, and you get to see how they respond.

A BLESSED RESPITE WITH BOURRÉ

After a raucous round of Pedro, players swapped out and they decided to play Bour- ré (pronounced: BOO-ray), also a trump or trick-taking game. “I knew how to play this before I knew how to play Pedro,” says Tim. If Pedro is the 1040 long form of card games, Bourré is the 1040EZ. More so than Pedro, Bourré is a betting game and, before each round, players ante up. “When I was a kid, I used to play Bourré a lot with my grandmother,” says Lee. “And she would play for money — I’m not talking about a lot. We played with pennies. She always made sure your money went in the pot. But when it came time for her to put in her money, she would mysteriously have these mental lapses of old age! You had to watch her!” “It’s the grandmothers that are the craftiest,” says Ali. “She was the sweetest, soft-spoken like Ali’s grandmother. Amazing how she nev- er seemed to remember to put money in the pot.” Ali says, “My grandmother had a little jar of change she kept, and when we would come and play, that would be our antes so we could ‘play for money.’ I don’t think we ever took it home.” In Bourré, five cards are dealt to each player, and the dealer turns his or her fifth card face up. That will be the trump suit. Clockwise from the dealer, each player declares if he or she is in or out. Those who remain discard however many cards they choose, and an equal number of cards are dealt back to them by the dealer. By the end of this, everyone’s hands should be back to five cards. The winner of each trick, starting with that initial face-up card by the dealer, begins the next trick. Any suit may be played, and play- ers must “follow suit.” If you lack the active suit, you may play a trump card. The highest card of the trump suit — or absent a trump, of the suit that led that play — wins the trick. You must win the trick (i.e., play a card higher than that which is currently winning) if your

hand allows it. If you lack an active suit or a trump suit, you can “throw off” with any card you like. The player with the most tricks each round wins the pot. (If there is a tie, no one wins the pot.) If you have won no tricks at all, you have gone bourré. Your ante for the next round is the entire value of the pot just won. (In other words, if there were $10 in the pre- vious pot, your ante for the next is $10.) The player to the left of the previous dealer is now in charge; he or she shuffles the deck, and the process begins again. There are nuances to the game beyond the scope of this simple explanation. After all, haven’t you read enough rules by now? That’s what Google is for. As I left that day, I was struck by the memories shared over the course of an afternoon. It is a near certainty that I got some of the rules of the game wrong here, but it doesn’t really matter because that’s not really what I learned. There is some- thing so quintessential about family game nights. A certain kind of bond can only be

formed over cards or board games. People you know and love and live with and work with are suddenly put in a mild and amus- ing form of jeopardy, and you get to see how they respond. Inevitably, you learn something of their craftiness, or of the joys we bottle up or sometimes never otherwise get to experience or share: a small victory, a rally from behind. Even in defeat, there is joviality and relief. You might already know what it looks like when a family member ex- periences a significant loss in life. So here is what it looks like when the loss need have no consequence. Take my pennies. I’ll get more! The games go on. And across decades, it all melts into a single fond memory, uninterrupted, pure and shared across generations.

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