War!

Chainbeard pulled out a gold coin.

"We'll use this shillin' fer the coin toss. I'll let ye inspect it t' make sure thar be no funny business."

He handed me the coin. I looked at both faces and the sides and felt around the surface with my fingers. The weight in my hand felt right. It seemed to be just a normal coin.

"Seems real to me. Let’s get on with the toss." I said.

"I'll let ye flip the shillin'. Do ye wants heads or tails?"

"Tails." I responded.

I placed the coin on my thumb and flicked it in the air. It hit the table with a plinking noise and rolled a little. Eventually it settled on a face, which was... heads. Darn! It was his choice.

"You win. What game are you choosing?" I asked.

"War," he said.

"The card game?"

"Aye, but a shortened version."

War is a game played with a standard deck of cards. The deck is divided up between the players. Each player has their own deck that is kept face down. At the same time the players flip the card on the top of their deck. The higher value wins and the winner takes both cards and places them at the bottom of their deck. When players both draw the same value it is known as a "war" and both players place three cards from the top of their deck faced down and a fourth face up. The highest value then wins all the cards. If the cards are the same again, you place another three cards and a fourth up. In theory a war could continue until your deck runs out. The winner in a standard game is whoever collects all the cards.

I was hoping to win the coin toss. I would have picked a game like chess that is entirely strategy. This game was purely luck, so there were little to no variables in my control.

"What do you mean by 'shortened version'." I asked.

"In this version we shall put the winnin' cards in a separate pile rather than back into our decks. Once we run out o' cards in our decks. We'll determine the winner based on who won the most cards."

He tweaked the rules to shorten the game. A standard game could go on for quite a while until someone is able to collect all the cards. This will ensure it was relatively quick.

He pulled out a small wooden box from his Pocket and pulled the lid off of it. Inside was a standard deck of 54 playing cards (including jokers). He removed the deck from the box.

"Here, check the deck 'n shuffle it."

He handed me the cards. I sifted through to make sure there was nothing unusual about them. From what I could see they were just normal cards. I split the deck and riffle shuffled it. I placed the deck in the center of the table.

"Go ahead and deal out the cards," I ordered.

He proceeded to divy the cards up between us. Each of us now had a 27 card deck. We each shuffled our decks again.

"I be ready when ye be."

I nodded.

We both flipped. Our top card. I drew a seven of hearts and he drew a seven of spades. It was the same value, which was a war.

Both of us drew three more cards and placed them faced down. And drew a fourth that we placed face up. I had four of clubs and he had... four of diamonds, which meant another war. We placed another three cards face down and one face up... king of clubs and king of hearts...that meant a third war. I couldn’t believe we've had three wars in a row. Some might suspect cheating, but Captain Chainbeard has never cheated once in all the years I played with him. In fact, he despised cheaters.

"'Tis turnin' out to' be some game, ain't it, Arno?"

We set down another three cards. Both of us simultaneously flipped a card... A jack of diamonds and a jack of clubs… Next, two of diamonds and two of hearts...Then nine of clubs and nine of diamonds... Then finally five of diamonds and five of spades.

Six wars in a row. We each have two cards remaining, which wasn’t enough to do another war.

"Since 'tis an unusual game, how about fer the last war, we jus' set one card down 'n the other face up?"

"That's fine with me."

This was a statistically rare circumstance. For being a fairly simple card the stakes had become quite high. I would be lying if I didn't say I was feeling a bit tense.

We placed a single card down and lastly we placed our final card up and...

"Mr Arno you won!" Erika chimed in excitedly.

"What are you talking about, girl?"

"You ran out of cards. Isn't that how you win crazy eights?"

"Yes that is... but we aren't playing crazy eights… and I lost."

"Oh... Well... Um..."

She lowered her voice to a whisper, "I must have misunderstood. I'm sorry I just can't understand these guys' accents."

I was confident I won. I had drawn an ace of spades, but I forgot this was a 54 card deck. Typically an ace is the highest value card. Unfortunately in games where jokers are included, they beat aces. And of course Chainbeard drew a joker. He won all the cards. Meaning he ultimately wins the game. He truly had the Devil’s luck on his side.

Now that I lost this game, we had to make sure to win these next two. I was a bit concerned because now I had to rely on Erika.