Pit

I see from Deb's comment that, to my shock and disbelief, not everyone is familiar with the card game Pit. Pit is an old game - not sure how old, but I DO know that we learned how to play it when we were little kids with the old deck at my grandparents house. I know of people who've played Pit that think it's an "ok" game - they've obviously never played with my family. Let's put it this way, my family (meaning my siblings & I) are about the most non-competitive people you could ever find, until you put a Pit game in front of us. Then blood will spill. To help you understand the bizarre hold the game has on us, we (no lie) played the game the night of my mother's funeral. It's based on the stock exchange. Pit has 9 cards each of 8 different suits (corn, barely, wheat, etc) and you have to trade cards with the other players until you have all the cards of one suit in your hand, then you yell Pit and that hand is done. Each suit is worth a different number of points ranging from 50 to 100. If you're not the winner, you don't get any points, UNLESS you end up with one of the two specialty cards, the bull or the bear, which is where WE's struggle comes in. He ALWAYS ends up with either the bull or the bear, because each of those cards are worth -20. There are a few other rules, but that's the basic jist. It's the trading of the cards that gets everyone excited, because you have to call out the number of cards you want to trade and find someone else who wants to trade the same number of cards. It sounds complicated, but it's actually a rather easy game to play and SO much fun (at least if you're playing with my family it is). Here's the Wikipedia entry explaining the game.