A word on family card games

Trafton B.

July 11, 2010 - 9:54 PM

When I was growing up, I knew it as either "Oh Heck!" or the clever alternative "Oh H-E-Double Hockey Sticks." But when you get down to business, the Bean Family card game never fails to live up to its real name. "Oh Hell!"

It's a simple game in theory. Highest card win the hand, and one suit is designated as the ‘trump' for each round. The dealer rotates around the table dealing out the specific amount of cards for each round. First round, every gets one card. Second round, two cards. Third round, three cards. Deal all the way up to seven cards and then start going down again, thus making it thirteen rounds in total. Each player looks at their cards and then must guess, or ‘bid', on how many hands -- also known as ‘tricks' -- they will take. The only catch is that the total number of tricks bid on can never be equal to the number of cards in everyone's hand. This means that at least one person will miss their bid every round. If you miss your bid you receive no points, and if you make your bid you receive ten points plus the number of tricks you correctly bid on. If that makes sense, then I'm you've probably played the game before. Regardless, though, continue reading.

My family plays this game at least a dozen times during every official or unofficial family reunion. It's originally an Anderson family game coming from my mother's side of the family. Thanks so my father, however, it has since crossed over to the Bean family. More importantly, however, it is a game that has withstood the test of time and has been passed from generation to generation. Just ask my Grandpa Bob. Every time he and I are playing, he leans over to me and bellows, "You know, the first time I ever played this game, Trafton, you were crawling across the table in diapers. Huh, huh, huh." I've heard that story about a million times.

I've found my mother with her siblings, Uncle Red and Aunt Judy, playing "Oh Hell!" early in the morning before the rest of the kids wake up. Usually the score to those games isn't kept on paper, but rather in their heads. They say they're keeping track, but I don't necessarily trust their honesty.
My grandfather Duane, mother's father, still holds the all-time record for lowest score with a whopping 11 points, which he made on the final hand of the game. Grandpa Duane passed away before I was born, to give you a sense of how long that record has been standing. Of course, regardless of who is playing and in what setting, there is always a fair amount of cursing and trash talking.

It's a stupid game, and I'm not the only one that thinks that. My mother and father were watching an interview with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg a few years ago, around the time Saving Private Ryan was released.

The interviewer asked them, "I hear that your two families are known to spend time together. Tell me, Tom, what happens at these Spielberg/Hanks dinner parties." He replied, "Well, we have this stupid little card game that we play called ‘Oh Hell.'" We like to think that they stole the game from us.

Every single cousin, aunt, uncle and family friend that's ever played the game absolutely loathe it, yet we still find ourselves begging to play it every time we see each other. We've played it in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Mount Hood. Whether in the comforts of our own home or embarrassing ourselves in public, we always seem to find time for one more game.