I Beat Jack Sparrow At Liar's Dice!!!

Excuse, me, CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow!

hehe :D

Tommy came over today for a production meeting, only he's going to be out of the country for the last part of the month... So we covered all thing production related in about... 20 minutes, lol.

So Brian and I taught him Liar's Dice!!!

It was A BLAST!!!

I may have mentioned this last night, but the rules that came with Disney's "Pirates Dice" set are incomplete, so he & I had to sort of figure out the rules as we went along. Then I went to Wikipedia.org and discovered that we had figured out the CORRECT rules, lol! (Well, for one variation, anyway. The game has geuinely been around since the Age of Sail, so many variations have arrisen throughout the centuries.)

So when we played with Tommy, the third player created new questions that we had to resolve. It was a bit of a shaky start, but before long we had a stride and were laughing and play, and not long after that we were creating strategies, picking up on each others strategies, and adapting!

IT WAS WELL FUN, MATEYS!!!

OOH!

At one point we had to pause he game because MY SWEETY CALLED ME!!!

OMG! It was SO WONDERFUL to be able to just have a chat with her and catch up and hear her voice!!! It was a really nice conversation!!!

So eventually Tommy has to leave (he keeps Normal People Hours) and I played some more TOMB RAIDER ANNIVERSARY for a while while Brian made and then obscenely ate some Chicken Fajitas. (If you're telling me "There's nothing obscene about eating Chicken Fajitas," then you've clearly not been around Brian when he eats them.

Then I take a nap...

Nice lazy day!

Then I wake up to chat with my baby for a bit when she wakes up. She's taking care of her morning routine now, and so I'm looking for something to do...

I noticed, when I was doing my research about Liar's Dice, that the Disney PIRATES site has a Flash version of "Pirate Dice"...

Brian's asleep, so I can't play with him...

SO I PLAYED WITH WILL TURNER AND CAPTAIN JACK!!! :D

AND I WON!

It's interesting, too, because Will and I were the first to loose dice (in this variation you loose a die when you loose, and the last person to have a die or dice wins) and Captain Sparrow still had all his. So I realized I was going to have to start applying strategy (usually when I'm playing against a computer I'm just trying to remember the rules, lol) and I got Will out of the game entirely!

Then I went after "Witty Jack"...

He had 5 dice and I had 3...

I lost a die, but then I proceeded to take away 3 of his, until we both had 2 dice each...

Then I whittled him down to 1 die... THEN NONE!!!

I'm VERY clever, you see, hehe. :P

Which is good, too, because to enter the game you have to sign a contract stating that if you loose your soul goes to the Pirates of the Caribbean... so, you know... high stakes!

I currently retain my soul. But I don't know... I may play again soon, lol.

I'll keep you updated on the status of my immortal self.

OOH! HEY! If you decide to play the Flash version of "Pirate Dice" (I do the parenthesis thing because the REAL name of the game is Liar's Dice, by golly!) then let me give you some tips on strategy:

Whoever goes first proclaims that there are so many dice on the table showing a certain number. You start out with 5 dice each, and the Flash version is 3 players, so that's 15 dice all together.

Each successive player ups the bid, either by raising the number of dice showing a certain number, or by raising the number showing on the dice.

For example, let's say Jack proclaims there are 4 Twos (4 dice showing the number Two). If it's your turn you can either say there are 5 Twos (raising the number of dice) or you can say there are 2 Sixes (raising the number on the dice, but in this case actually decreasing the quantity of the dice showing this number). This continues until someone calls the last person to bid a Liar.

At that point the cups are raised, and if the Accuser is correct then the Accused looses a die. If the Accuser is incorrect then he loses a die.

With me so far? (It helps if you have 10 dice handy in order to sort of play some practice rolls and get a more substantial idea of what I'm describing. Or to have the game up so you can watch how the play unfolds.)

Now, the game is conservative and calls "Liar" quickly, you you only have a round or 2 before someone calls you or someone else a Liar. This bares consideration. When Tommy and Brian and I were playing, for the longest time it seems like Brian would just keep going until someone called someone else a Liar, lol! I think he was just enjoying seeing how many different possible configurations he could come up with based on his dice and what Tommy and I might have had.

But with the game, you want to stick more or less with what you have, because you might be called out on it immediately.

So let's say you've for 2 Ones (in the Flash game Ones are not Wild, though they are in the Disney version of the physical game), 1 Three, 1 Four and 1 Six.

If you've got 2 Ones, there's a decent chance that, of the 10 dice you can't see (your opponents' dice), there is at least 1 other One on the table. If each player happens to have 2 Ones each, then you can bid 6 Ones, be called a Liar, and win the round.

But 6 is a bit bold. Equal odds are that you are the only with Ones on the table.

In this case I might bid 3 Ones, hoping that at least 1 other player has a One if I get called a Liar right off the bat.

Now, if the next player bids 4 Ones, then the last player bids 5 Ones, you have to ask yourself if you think there are 5 Ones on the table. If you don't, you call "Liar" and see.

But if you think there ARE 5 Ones on the table you have figure out if there are 6 ONES (because you have to top the previous bid) or decide if you want to try upping the number showing and maybe bid, say, "3 Threes".

You could bid 1 Three, but another part of your strategy is to undercut your other players. If you have 1 Three and you think that your opponents might each have a Three, then this bid works in your favor one of 2 ways:

1) If there are only 3 Threes on the table and the next player bids 4 Threes and gets called out, then he looses, or
2) if there are only 3 Threes on the table and YOU get called out, then you win!

The danger, of course, is that there are less than 3 Threes on the table and you get called out.

But hey, this IS gambling, after all, lol.

Another gambit, if you are the first to bid, is to bid a low-ish number of a die you DON'T have. Thee is a tendency for the next player to bid one over whatever you bid. (Even when you're playing against the computer.) So if you have no Fives, bid 3 Fives. If the next player bids 4 Fives and he gets called a Liar, there's a decent chance there aren't 4 Fives on the table. If the third player calls 5 Fives, then you call Liar because if you don't have any there's an even better chance that he's going to come up short.

With 3 players -- particularly if the other 2 are part of a computer program -- the odds are quite good that at least one more player will go before "Liar" is called.

Unless you bid high.

Brian and Tommy and I discovered that when you're playing with 3 humans and your 1s are Wild, 7 dice showing any number is the if-y. That means that 2 players have to have 2 of that number, and the third player has to have 3.

But it also could mean that 1 player has 5 of that number, in which case the other 2 players only have to have 1 each.

With 3 humans playing, if someone bids 8 of any number, you can pretty safely call them a Liar.

Blah.

Am I going on too long about this, lol?

It's a FUN GAME! I encourage EVERYONE to play it! You don't even have to buy the Disney game! (Brian did because he and I are a bit obsessed with pirates, lol.) All you need is 5 dice and 1 cup per player.

In the movie (and the Flash game) the cups are slammed upside down onto the table and each player peeks beneath his cup. And that's how Brian and I played it last night.

But with Tommy, we found it was much more convenient to sit back comfortably and just peer into our cups, as the cups provide plenty of concealment as long as you're not all right on top of each other. So you don't even need a table to play!

And it's great fun!

Okay, if my baby is going to log back before work it will be about now. So PEACE!!! :D