Card games are popular in India and many kids learn to play games like Rummy, Joker, and Bluff among others and play with family and friends. Rummy is certainly the most popular card game in India and is a game of skill (I recently learned that this game is legalized by the Supreme Court of India!). My favorite among these would have to be the game we called Bluff (also known by other names – Cheat is one alternate name).
The rules of the game are simple:

Wikimedia

• Usually played with at least one pack of cards (minus the jokers) and with at least three players.
• Shuffle and distribute the cards as evenly as possible between the players
• Place the Ace of Spades in the center and have one player start the game. The first player has to lay down any 2s he/she has face down and say the number of 2s being put down.  The player can bluff and put down any other card instead of 2s as well (and in some variants, choose to pass his/her turn)
• The next player puts down the next rank – 3s, in a similar way (or pass) and this can go on until Ks and then restart with As of another rank (in case of one pack of cards).
• If at any point in the game a player thinks another is bluffing, he/she can say ‘Bluff’ right after the cards are set down. If the challenged cards were not what the player said they were, the player who bluffed must take all the cards from the pile. However, if the player didn’t bluff, the challenger must take all of the cards from the pile.

We normally ended up playing this game at weddings or other family events or summer vacations when the whole gang of cousins would meet up (and we were 19 of us) along with some of the elders sometimes joining us and other extended family members as well. We played with an unknown number of cards (many sets in which some were invariably incomplete which meant no one really knew how many cards of each rank/type were really there and we included the jokers as well!) and with anywhere between 10-all of us playing at a time and needing help to hold all the cards that each of us had :)It was a whole lot of fun, dreading to call out bluff but enjoying taking the risk (oh for those risk-taking-times again!).

Q to the reader: Have you played the game of Bluff? If yes, what is your favorite Bluff memory? If not,  what is your favorite card game
And what about the game I mention below – carrom?
Let me know in the comments…
 
Carrom – hours perfecting moves by myself and with a partner for when we played as a team with my bestie. With my mom who is both a card and carrom buff. Landing the Queen for ourselves was always an achievement and hours of carrom would mean bruised fingers many a time in some way or the other – but always worth it. We now own a carrom board at home here but have not got around to playing it as often as we like but writing this post is reigniting the passion for carrom and card games too 🙂

Image attribution: wikipedia

Signing off on the letter C as I continue on the #AtoZChallenge and the #UltimateBloggingChallenge again, a little later than planned but now a little closer to catching up…