One of the things that makes rook so fun is challenging the same opponents over and over again until after many nights of repeat play, one team takes the overall championship. Last year, my wife and I took on a challenge to battle two of our good friends in rook with the first team getting to 100 wins would get a dinner purchased by the losers (a win would be getting to 500 pts). Over the course of many nights of play, we got all the way up to 88 wins, by the leading team and 83 wins by the losing team, but one of the teammates had regular life get in the way and had to move out of town. So we were left with a void to complete this epic series.
How disappointing! Only 20 more matches or so and a winner would be revealed. Truthfully, a free dinner was a fairly small prize for how much winning needed to be done to get to the finish line.
So now on to 2012, and in steps a new partner and a new match. With our eyes set on a smaller number we have 1 win down in our chase to 25 wins. Hopefully this time regular life will allow us to complete the series and crown the ‘dinner is served’ champion!
A group of 16 men play in the Bigsby Creek Rook tournament every December. This year marked the 40th anniversary. It is possibly the longest-running tournament in the history of the game. Four or five of the original members are still playing.
First, let me say it’s great to find someone that feels the passion for the game that I do. We have the same problem. We used to play couples and it finally dwindled and we don’t play much anymore. Then we got some buddies together and started playing once a week. But, real life got in the way and some don’t have the passion for it, more of social thing. Now, we barely play once a month. My friend Rod and I will be celebrating our 20th year of being partners in this great game this year. We don’t play for money, or dinner’s, etc.
You say you play with 57 cards, we play the Red One variation, that we call High Octane rook. Take out the ones, twos, and three’s except for the red one and use the bird. Started out on the original game, we called vanilla rook. We understand the long running rook battles. David, where is this Bigsby Creek tournament? Can anyone enter? When is it? and what version of rook do you play? We live in Iowa and can’t find any tournaments up here.