Eine Brücke zu weit

Thursday night, and Katy, Joe, Martin and myself (Sam) reconvened at my house again to revisit the bonkers German trick-taker that is Doppekopf. A reminder: there's two of every card from 9-Ace (no 2-8 cards at all) Diamonds are all trumps, but so are the Queens and Jacks, and the Tens of Hearts. Unless something changes the trump suit, trumps is all they are: you completely ignore any other symbol but the number. 10's are higher than kings, and each round - unless it's a solo - is played in temporary partnerships, with the two players holding the club Queens forming the Re team and the others the Kontra. 

One of multiple catches is that although you know which team you are, you don't know for sure who your partner is until that second Queen comes out. Meantime different cards are worth points, and the partnership with the most points wins the round (unless it's a solo). There's a point per round, plus a point for the Kontras if they win, plus two points for calling a win, plus points for mad things like winning a fox (Ace of Diamonds) winning a 'Charlie Miller' (taking a Jack of Clubs with the last hand) or even  doing a doppelkopf: winning a hand entirely made up of the big-scoring tens and aces. 

Even though it was our second session, we all needed a refresher from Martin and Katy insisted she was confused throughout the evening. As well as the weird order (rogue tens) and chaotic trumps (diamonds + others), players can also - in fact, must also, at least once - attempt to solo a round and win it by themselves. When you do this - hopefully because you have a good hand - you can either use the standard rules or change the trump: to a different (standard deck) suit, or make all the queens trump, or all jacks trump, or call no trumps at all. Solos are hard to win, but that didn't stop Katy trying one on the very first round. She failed. I did the same on the second - I had a lot of high trumps - and failed as well. At this point, we were both on minus points whilst Joe and Martin had three points each. That was as good as it ever got for Joe. 

After a duff start, things improved considerably for me. I managed to align myself with Martin and Katy when they had good hands, and Joe and and I even briefly flickered into life as a round-winning partnership, despite Joe's almost relentless parade of weak cards. Katy called Re and I, with a strong Kontra hand, immediately called Kontra off the back of it; Joe and I hauled in six points each. 

Then things began to fall apart for me. Katy was Re and I (secretly) Kontra, but Martin's early card-laying made me think he was Kontra too - I gifted him several high-scoring cards before his dastardly Re identity was revealed - I'd stiffed myself, and Joe too. From my leading two rounds earlier, Martin had now pulled level... and subsequently inched significantly ahead. Joe's solo ended badly, and now only Martin had a solo to play and two rounds to do it in. He called solo on the 15th round, made Queens trumps and beat us all by a single point! Disaster!!

Joe was now back in the points dungeon on -35. Martin set for victory at 19, with Katy on 7 and me 9. Triumph was still possible, as a five point win for me would also knock five off Martin, but it would have to be a big win. Katy and I partnered and we took the round, but for a meagre points haul, and it ended after 2 and half hours, Sally's apple pie and some concrete-hard ice cream, with Martin a deserved victor:

Martin 17
Sam 11
Katy 9
Joe -37

Joe had been shafted by fate all night and was understandably less enthused than the rest of us, pronouncing Bridge - of which he has some crazy all-night session looming - far less complicated and more accessible. He promised to teach us all soon. I was more forgiving of it, although there's certainly a tangible crestfallenness to receiving a hand of cards with clusters of points in it but very few trick-winners. But I like how nuts it is, and the tension of the partnerships: there's some deduction involved (which I wasn't very good at) when you know you're not with X person, for instance, but you don't know which of the other players are on your team. The earlier this information is given, the easier the round is to play for you, but you're also making it easier for the opposition. It's a funny one.