Tag Archives: human interest

Long term rook battles

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!

Review of 57 Cards: Deck of Plastic Rook “like” Cards

Over the years, we have played many, many hours of rook.  So many hours that we have seen our fair share of rook decks come and go.  In early years, the rook decks were fairly sturdy and would last for many months of playing.  In more recent years, the rook decks found themselves to be less sturdy, and simply would not last very long before become a burden to play with. In came 57 Cards, the plastic deck of cards that are perfect for the card game rook.

57 Cards makes a deck of cards that are exactly like rook cards, but do not have the name brand rook written on them.  They are still composed of the same 1 through 14 and four colors of black, red, yellow and green.  The difference is their rook card looks like a tree (not sure why they chose a tree).

The Pros

The quality of these rook like cards are amazing.  Being fully plastic, they do not lose their smooth and sleek feeling when played with over time.

The cards last a long time!  We have rarely had a time when we found a 57 card deck cause us issues.  We house many tournaments and now exclusively use 57 cards to play our tournaments.

Even after many months of playing, they still feel like the first time we played with them.

The Cons

They simply are not rook cards.  We are so used to using the term “bird” or the “rook” and it is a little different when there is a picture of the 57 cards logo – the tree – on there.

There is also only one colored deck.  We would love to be able to have two different colored decks so that while one deck is being played with, the other deck can be shuffled.  With the same backs, there is always the possibility that the decks will get mixed together.

The 57 Card decks are also more pricey than a regular rook deck.  It is almost double the price to get a 57 card deck than a regular rook deck.  If you are an occasional player of rook, it may not be worth it to buy the long lasting plastic deck that 57 cards offer.

Final Thoughts

We really like playing with 57 cards now.   As we have stated, we are exclusively using 57 cards in all of our rook tournaments now.

Two color powerhouse


It’s rare, but every once in a while you get those rook hands that you would be willing to bid so high with. What do you do if you opponent has bid 170 though? Do you bid higher?

Well, looking at the above rook hand, you obviously want to take the bid.  You are going likely be of no help to your partner if they take the bid, or to even stop your opponent if they take the bid.   So it is absolutely essential to win this bid.  This particular hand, you are missing both the 14s in your suits, but you have both 1s and 13s in both the trump suit as well as your off suit.  You even have the 10 covered in green, so you are likely to only loose say 10 points per hand if you lose the 14s in both colors.

You are going to trump any other color that is played, so you really don’t expect to loose points elsewhere.  So really, I would be willing to bid up to 180 in a max 200 round, with the possibility of taking all the points if my partner or the kitty has 1 or both of the 14s missing.

Rook Strategy: Poor Trump Distribution

There are times when you make a bid and you know you do not have the strongest of hands, but you are hoping that your partner has some help for you.  Maybe some extra 1s or a bunch of your trump color.  With these possibilities in mind, you set out to win a round that you typically would expect to loose.

The next thing you know, you partner has already shown that they are out of trumps, and not only that, one of your other opponents has already shown they are out as well.  You count down the amount of trumps in your hand and you know the sad truth, one of your opponents has exactly the same amount of trumps as you.

Do not panic, just make sure you are paying extra attention to all the cards being played.   You are going to need to know if your are able to slough that off-trump 9 or keep it and hope that it is actually going to win a trick.

A few things are extremely important to help avoid the inevitable set:

  • Know that if you trump in, you may be giving your opponent the last trick of the game if they are able to get the lead and lead trump to pull all of the trump from your hand.
  • Try your best to keep your opponent that has trump from getting the lead without them having to use trump.
  • Focus on getting the last trick primarily as it not only takes the 20 pts automatically, but it also takes the points in the kitty and the points of the trick (usually there are some nice points in the last trick).
  • If you have a choice between securing the rook or securing the last trick, choose the last trick and let them take the bird.
  • Count, count, count the points that have been taken.  On rare occasions, the partner may not have a lot of points to give.  So even though the opponent has a lot of trump and takes a lot of tricks, they may not have taken a lot of points.
  • You are not going to lose by simply losing a lot of tricks.  You are going to lose if you do not try and minimize the losses.  Conceding well timed losses may be the key to staying on track and not getting set.

Final note: Getting set is not the end of the world.  It happens to the best of us.  If you get set, don’t give up on the round.   Who knows, the very next hand you may be shooting the moon!

Rook Cards: Finding Better Quality Cards

You know you are an avid rook player when you find yourself having to go back to walmart month after month to buy another new deck of rook cards.  The poor decks that you keep buying are nice for about 2 days and then you can already start to feel the cards starting to stick.  But the game is so fun, that we keep going back to buy another deck to replace our current decks.

Well, what if there were a deck of quality rook cards that you could buy that would last much longer than the regular rook deck of cards.  Thanks to plastic rook cards, we have found this deck of cards.  The deck of 57 cards is exactly what we are looking for.  We have found that this deck of plastic cards worked perfect for solving our issue of having to keep on buying new rook cards over and over.  The deck is great quality and very affordable.

If you are an avid rook player and find that you are going through deck after deck of rook cards, we highly recommend trying a deck of 57 cards.

Update 2013: There is still no better place to find top quality rook cards than what we have found in the past.