It seems as though the rook game keeps growing and growing. People I would never have expected to play the game I find out randomly play. Not only do they play, but they play well! The more and more people I find that play the game, the more I realize, I there are a number of different strategies and methods to go about tackling a win in the game of rook. For this reason, we have come to the realization that getting away from playing only with your one or two typical opponents can help expand your game into new and great places.
We are like the typical rook playing couple. We have two friends that we have played against over and over again. Not only do we play together a lot, but we keep a running tally of our total scores. Last I recall we are somewhere around 83 – 84 wins each team. While we love this, it is rare when we actually get together with other players or actually make a rook tournament to play with more than 8 players.
The last rook tournament we played was great! I have expressed how I felt we got unlucky with the cards we were dealt, however, there is for sure a portion of our loss which was attributed to this being the first time we played against some of these opponents.
There were two aspects that I noticed threw our typical play off a bit.
- The Bidding: I found that bidding with different players is the hardest to handle the change with in a short period. Some people start the bidding at their maximum bid, leaving no room or manipulating. Some stop bidding really early rather than risking losing. Others can be very tricky and focus more on setting their opponent rather than taking the bid themselves. So they may fake the strength of their hands by passing early.
- The way trumps are played. With my close opponents, we are very used to controlling the trumps. This usually means that we will play trumps until they are all gone. On the rare occasion trumps may last in an opponents hand until the end. It creates a very different style of play when trumps are not led hardly at all. Instead, a significant amount of trumping and overtrumping occurs. I don’t know if I recommend this strategy all that often, but I will say that it is extremely unpredictable. Sometimes it works, some times it doesn’t.
All of this being said, it is great to see the different strategies take place. They have brought to light a couple of different things. One, I am glad to incorporate a variety of new strategies in my style of play. Two, it allows you to be able to pick up on a person’s strategy at the table more quickly. So if you realize a person is trying to set you, play accordingly. As with anything you are trying to improve on, the more you play, the more experience you gain. The more experience you gain, this will ultimately lead to a larger wealth of game history. The trick is making sure you learn from your game history to lead your game play.
