Let The Games Begin

By Nancy K. Crevier

With grocery bills soaring and heating bills on the horizon, families may be looking for alternatives to $10 movie tickets and $200 video games this winter to stay entertained.

Tried and true board games like Yahtzee, Scrabble, Monopoly, and Chutes and Ladders are always a good way to bring the family together, and card games played by two or more pass the evening with little pain to the pocketbook. Some may opt for dominoes and the domino game variations like Mexican Train or Tri-ominoes. Others may look to the challenge of games like Jenga or Backgammon, or lose themselves in a jigsaw puzzle.

For other Newtown residents, though, the fun of group games like mah jong, bridge, and Bunco have long been the answer to a cheap night out.

Between them, Mary Mattern, Barbara Wadleigh, Martha Simons, Helen Bellagamba, Phyllis Fives, Dorothy Bartlett, and Rosalie Piperis have more than 130 years of mah jong experience. For the past six years, the group has met at the Newtown Senior Center every Friday morning where they swiftly set up and set about concentrating on the Asian game that has been played in some version around the world since the time of Confucious.

Many versions of the game exist, but the Friday morning club follows the rules of American mah jong, with each player dealt 13 tiles, and each of the players passing three unwanted tiles across the table and around the table in a calculated pattern, to begin. The tiles resemble domino pieces in size, but there the resemblance ends. Instead of small black dots, the tiles are engraved with dragons, flowers, dots, and other figures with names like “craks,” or “bams.” Players take turns drawing and discarding tiles from a central pile and lining them up in front of them on a rack that resembles that used for Scrabble pieces.

The goal is to get one of several combinations of the different tiles, as selected from a card of Standard Hands purchased yearly from the National Mah Jong League.

The players decide swiftly if a tile suits them or not, and what seems like a random tossing away or change of suits lined up in front of the player is actually a calculated decision based on what the player observes others discarding or taking from the central pile of tiles.

Mary Mattern said that she has played mah jong for nearly 60 years, and Rosalie Piperis has played the game for 40 years. “I had played mah jong as a kid,” said Dorothy Bartlett, “but I just took it up again six years ago.”

Barbara Wadleigh is the new kid on the block for the Friday morning mah jong game. She took up the game just six months ago.

“I enjoy it very much. The more I play, the more I like it,” she commented, before turning her focus back on the quick moving game going on.

The Senior Center hosts other mah jong players, as well. On Thursday afternoons, a drop-in group of players gathers to match wits. Different players show up from week to week, but tables of four are set up to accommodate however many there might be. One afternoon last month, Lorraine Chernoff, Gloria Janofsky, Anita Quasha, and Delores Meehan spent the afternoon arranging the tiles in front of them. Another group of four made up another table nearby.

Mah jong is a combination of suits made up of colors, winds, numericals, and dragons, explained Ms Chernoff, and a mah jong is achieved when any of the combinations is achieved by the first player.

As they play, the tiles clatter onto the pile in the middle of the table and shuffle along the racks. “West,” “flower,” “three bam,” and “two crak” sound like secret codes, but to the experienced mah jong player, it all makes sense.

As with the Friday morning players, the skill levels of the afternoon groups varies. Ms Quasha began playing mah jong just six weeks ago, but knows that she can count on Ms Janofsky’s 50 years of experience to guide her when she gets stuck.

“We started playing weekly about a month ago,” Ms Chernoff said. Like Ms Bartlett, Ms Chernoff and Ms Meehan had also played mah jong years earlier, and had only recently returned to the game.

“It’s just a lot of fun, and fun to get together and forget about everything you are supposed to be doing for a little while,” Ms Janofsky said.

A Card Game                     Of Skill

It turns out, you can teach an old dog new tricks, but only if an experienced bridge player is on hand or the novice is willing to take lessons. Bridge is a card game of skill, and one enjoyed by many in town. Derived from the 1600s English game of whist, this card game has waxed and waned in its popularity throughout the years. According to US Playing Card Company, the particular form of bridge most commonly played today will celebrate its 83rd birthday on November 1, the invention of famous yachtsman Harold Vanderbilt, who incorporated new features such as premiums for “slams bid” and the decimal system of scoring, while on board a steamship from Los Angeles to Havana.

“The Mental Health Bridge Club” members have been gathering at each other’s homes for 30 years to play bridge. Currently, Anita Daubenspech, Joan Salbu, Marie Difilippantonio, Sylvia Poulin, Barbara Terkildson, Sandy Gould, Diane Rand, Jean James, and Linda Dale Mulholland are members of the club. Terms like “tricks,” “bids,” “trump,” “slam,” and “passed out” do not intimidate them. Most of them have played the game for two or three decades.

The game requires two sets of partners playing against each other. Seated on each side of the table, the players’ positions are designated as north, south, east, and west, with play always passing to the left once the game is underway. The players keep in mind the ranks of each suit and of the cards, both of which are vital in forming a good hand. To the uninitiated, it seems that the players are speaking a secret language, which indeed they are, admitted Ms James.

“You want to communicate to your partner what your hand is like, without letting the whole table know your hand,” she explained. It is a game of points, with the winning partnership the side with the most points scored by making its bid or by defeating the other partnership’s bid.

 “You can learn to play bridge reasonably well within a year,” said Anita Daubenspech, at whose home the club met most recently. “But then again, it can take a lifetime. There are so many levels of playing,” she said. She has her mother and an aunt, both skilled bridge players, to thank for teaching her to play.

“Everywhere I’ve lived,” said Ms Daubenspech, “I’ve played bridge. Even in college, I would play between classes.”

When she moved to Liberty at Newtown from Ridgefield three years ago, she found that bridge was a good introduction into the community. “I’ve met some awfully nice people playing bridge,” she said.

It was also Linda Dale Mulholland’s mother who instilled in her a love of the card game. “She taught my sister and me to play bridge and she taught my kids, too,” said Ms Mulholland. Like most of the others in this group, one of many in town, Ms Mulholland participates in other bridge clubs. “It’s a great game, and a great way to stay sharp,” she said.

Keeping track of what suits and cards have been played and mentally counting the cards is a challenge and good for the mind, agreed Ms Daubenspech, echoed by Ms Poulin, who said that the game was a great mental exercise, and by Ms Salbu who pointed out, “[Bridge is] a very constructive way to use your time. People who play bridge seem to be very dynamic and lead interesting lives, too.”

The social aspect of this club is important, as well, said the members. The intensity with which they scrutinize their hands and work to convey information to their partners is softened by chatter, and switching partners every four hands played allows the women to visit with everyone throughout the evening, or as they gather together during a break over refreshments. Sandy Gould finds that bridge is a way to connect with others, and Diane Rand readily admits that she likes the people she plays with more than the game itself.

A Dice Game                      Of Chance

If bridge is a game of skill, Bunco is purely a game of chance, and that is what one group in town that meets monthly to play the dice game loves about it.

Colette Ercole started a Bunco group four years ago “as a way to keep in touch with other field hockey moms after our girls had graduated.” She had belonged to a neighborhood Bunco group previously and loved the flexibility of the game.

“You can talk while you play the game, and Bunco gives us a good excuse to get together,” said Ms Ercole, whom her fellow players refer to as “our queen,” for her ability to coordinate the events and keep the group organized. She is joined by Cindy Datin, Karen Schankman, Nancy Metzger, Nancy Alberico, Linda Biscoe, Janis Solheim, Joan Salbu, Carolyn Dufner, Susan Corletto, Kathleen Renna, Claudia Kraich, Martha Frier, and Andrea Gaddis most months.

Bunco requires three or four tables with two sets of partners per table. One table is designated the head table. The head table signals the start of the game at each table with the ringing of a bell. Each person at the table rolls three dice, trying to get as many “ones” as possible during the first round, until the head table signals that they have achieved 21 points — a Bunco — and again rings the bell. The winning partners at each table then rotate to a new table for round two, in which everyone rolls for “twos,” and so on. Only the head table does not switch players during the game.

A mini-Bunco is achieved when a triple of any number is rolled, earning the partners extra points. If a player rolls three of the particular number being rolled in that round, an automatic Bunco is scored.

No Bunco game would be complete without lots of refreshments, a table groaning with finger foods, bowls of nuts and candies on each table, and prizes for most wins, most losses, most Buncoes, or for holding the Traveling Die at the end of the evening, earned by rolling 3 “sixes.”

While the game is all good, clean fun these days, it hails from rather shady beginnings. According to the World Bunco Association, Bunco was introduced into the US during the San Francisco Gold Rush by a serious gambler. Bunco gambling parlors quickly sprang up, and many hard workers lost their wages in these dice-rolling houses. The word Bunco soon became associated with any kind of scam, swindling, or confidence game.

By Victorian days, the game had been tamed and was a popular family and social pastime. But with the advent of Prohibition, Bunco gambling parlors popped up again, and the detectives who raided the speak-easies became known as “Bunco Squads.” After Prohibition, the dice game once again declined in popularity until the 1980s when, once again, it resurfaced as a family and social event.

The women agreed that Bunco is a simple game to learn. “If you can count, you can play,” promises Nancy Metzger. They readily admitted that any Bunco group with which they have been involved leans heavily toward socializing.

“I love Bunco so much, and these women are like sisters to me,” said Andrea Gaddis. Janis Solheim agreed, adding, “We all know that no matter what, we have each other’s back. I’d do anything for these other women.”

They go to movies together, hold luncheons and dinners outside of the monthly Bunco night, and arrange themes for Bunco night. But this Bunco group not only backs each other up, they lend support in the community, as well. They regularly collect food for the FAITH Food Pantry and plan to adopt a family for Thanksgiving this year.

“Even if we never played the game, I would come,” said Linda Biscoe. “But it’s an awful lot of fun.”