My group had about half an hour left so I decided to introduce everyone to Pairs, a push your luck card game from Cheapass Games. Note, we played the Continuous Pairs version but there are many different sets of rules for different games using the same deck of 55 cards. The deck consists of numbered cards with 1x1, 2x2 and so on up to 10x10. Everyone starts with a card in front of them and has to choose on their turn to either fold or hit (draw a card). If you fold, you take the lowest card on the table as penalty points and discard any cards in front of you. If you hit, you add a card to those in front of you and if it pairs up with a number you already have, you lose and take one of the pair as a penalty. Once somebody exceeds a certain number of penalty points, they lose the game and EVERYONE ELSE WINS. A good game for racking up Hall of Fame points at the end of the year.

It's a lot of fun for such a simple game and choosing whether to hit or fold is a nice puzzle. As the game progresses, folding when you know you're not going to go over the end-game limit is always tempting but you're only likely to get to do that once. Unfortunately for John, he misjudged things and zoomed past the 13 point limit, leading to lots of cheers from the rest of us.