Kaivai

This morning I saw Anye and talked with her. We decided to check out Kaivai out of the library and try it out. Unfortunately for us, the rules translation was rather poor and we got a couple of important rules wrong. This gave us a lot of money and
made the island construction different than what it should have been. With the right rules, money would have been much tighter and the building would have been much tighter. However, even with the wrong rules, I felt that the game was meaty and had a
lot of strategy to it.

Kreta

I broke my rules again for the convention and played a game that I already own. But at least this time I had not played the game before. I chose not to fight for the first two areas which made me behind in the game. I was not worried about it since I
thought that I could catch up later on. However, I could not make that happen. Finally, I got fustrated and decided to call the scoring on my turn even though I was not in contention for the areas. You see, one of the perks of scoring is that you can
decide if the next number that is turned up will be scored or to discard it. I did this for two turns hoping to get the cards to be in areas that I had controll in. However, people were able to move pieces over on their one play and still be able to
take control from me. It seems that you need to start the arms race early and continue it for the whole game.

Texas Hold ‘Em Tournament

Jon and I went on a search for dinner. Unfortunately, the hotel where we are staying has really poor eating places around walking distance. You need to take a train or drive a car to go somewhere good. After I finished and came back to gaming Jon
presented me with a really tough choice. There was an open slot for Die Macher or I could play Hold em. Argh! I really want to play Die Macher at least once. But I want to get some Hold em experience (even though it is a tourney and not for real
money). Since I know that Tim owns the game here and he holds long game days, I decided to play the tourney. True to form, our table played slowly and I felt that we did not get a lot of hands in during the alloted time for the blinds. I played
tightly and was lucky on a couple of hands (a straight draw filling in on the turn). However, I was unlucky as well by betting my pocket 10s against someone’s pocket aces. I made it past the first break when they converted everyone’s money into the
higher denominations. However, after a couple of hands after the break, I decided to go all in with my pocket aces. Two other people called. They had A8 and AJ. On the flop came A x 8, so I was now a severe underdog. On the turn came J and I lost
one the river. At least I moved all my money into the pot when I had the best odds.

Tichu

It was now late in the night for me (11:00). Fortunately for me, Ed was not playing a game and he was willing to play Tichu with me and go find two other people. So we borrowed Derk’s Tichu deck (which he keeps in his pocket) and we off waving the
glorius red deck around. It did not take long to find someone willing to play the game (who came with an new person).
This was past my bed time again, but since we were going to play Tichu, I decided to stay up.

So Ed explained to rules to the new player and I wrote out a cheat sheet. The partner had played it before online. And he was aggressive in calling Tichu on marginal hands. Ed had better cards than I did and he was able to call Tichu. But sadly they left after a few hands.

Tichu

And now Jon shows up and he wants to play Tichu. Jon too was keeping a deck of Tichu in his pocket. Ed did me a favor and found two experienced Tichu players for us (Aaron Fuegi and Michael Weston).
This was now really past my bed time, but since we were going to play Tichu, I decided to stay up.

It was myself and Aaron versus Jon and Mike. Ed tells me that Aaron is an experienced Tichu player and has written an article on it on the geek. On the first hand, I called Tichu and we one-twoed. We started out in the lead but then
lost the lead. At the end, they had 950 points and they were about to win the game. So we needed to call Grand Tichu to win the game. We both look at our first 8 cards and try to decide who has the GT hand. I had an ace and a phoenix. Aaron clearly
did not have an obvious GT hand. Since I was not ready to call it, he calls it instead. I start to get worried when I get another ace and the dragon in my remaining cards. However, he was able to make it and we one-twoed for the win!

Tichu

Mike left and was replaced by David desJardins. I recognized David from his online posts (which is I guess is a form of celebrity). David also knew how to play.
This was now really really past my bed time, but since we were going to play Tichu, I decided to stay up.

I drew Jon for my partner and I was worried. After all, these are two experienced players and they seem to be more experienced than us. Once again I started off play by calling Tichu and making it. On the next two hands, our team was able to set
David’s Tichu calls. Later on, I made another Tichu call and really should have called Tichu for a hand. I hosed Jon by passing the dog to him when he was going to call Tichu. Towards the end, they started calling Grand Tichu. However, they were too
far behind and we won the game!

I went back to my hotel room at around 2 am in the morning! Gah!