rone | let's say something!

Today i went to a beer keg party (as opposed to a milk keg party, say). I taught the assembled peoples to play cuarenta, the de facto national Ecuadorian card game. The trick is, once you get warmed up, to employ psychological warfare; you place a card down and tell the person to your left (who discards before you) that you are setting down the match for his next discard. When, of course, his next card is indeed a match for the one you put down, you turn it over and show it with a grin, before slapping it on the table with a flourish, and picking up the pair. After a couple of these, your opponent soon begins to doubt his ability to discard a card which you will not turn into some manner of points. My mother drove me insane, as i grew up, with her ability to command my cards in this way. I remember beating her for the first time EVER during a trip to Galápagos... definitely one of those "formative moments".