10
Jan

The Vintage Gamer #1: Rook (CG)

   Posted by: Jim   in Card games, Podcasts

In this episode, I discuss the card game Rook, originally published by Parker Brothers in 1906 and now available from Winning Moves (you can also buy the non-deluxe version from Hasbro).

Show notes:

  • Thanks to Mark Johnson and Rick Thornquist, hello to new listeners
  • Origins of Rook
  • Regular Rook
  • Tournament Rook
  • Other variants: Kentucky Rook, Red 1, Display Rook, Boston
  • Some thoughts on strategy
  • Arrivederci until next week

Links:

Final thoughts:
There doesn’t appear to be a shareware version of Rook for Mac OS X, sorry. And a note on Rook+: When I ran the installer it asked to overwrite some of my system DLLs. Since it appeared to be a Win95 installer I ignored them, and it runs fine.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2006 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Card games, Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 comments so far

ekted
 1 

I play Rook on and off. One of my favorite forms is 5-player. Everyone plays for themselves. Whoever bids the highest calls out a card he doesn’t have. The player with that card is their partner for that round. They share the result. Very fun and crazy, with interesting twists because of player position and shared scoring. For example, the player in the chooses a card in your hand, so you are his pertner. If you make the bid, he will win. So you have to TRY to go down. Hilarious!

January 11th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Jim
 2 

Yeah, I was quite pleased that there was a non-partnership version that supported up to 6 players, since that’s often the number of people who show up to our game night, and we usually like to play the same game. We mostly play Bohnanza or Bang! in that situation, so it’s good to have another alternative.

As a side note, my wife did get me another game for Christmas which is good for up to 8 players: Tsuro. I believe we played with 7 players and it went quite well. Very fun and quick (and a rare Wizkids board game), so I think we’ll be bringing out if only for a warm-up game. But it came out in 2005 so I don’t think I’ll be talking about it on the show.

January 14th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
The Vintage Gamer » Blog Archive » The Vintage Gamer #16: Origins 2006
 3 

[…] My review of Rook […]

July 20th, 2006 at 9:54 am
Kieron
 4 

Well researched – thanks for the post summarizing the podcast as well. I’m looking forward to listening to more (as you can see, I’m catching up).

I heard about your ‘cast on boardgamespeak…

August 31st, 2006 at 7:57 am
Rodney
 5 

We play a variation of rook with 2 decks and up to 7 players where each person is on a team by themselves although each hand is played with different players. My family loves it so much we rarely play with one deck anymore.

First card played of a number is high and rook is low trump. High bidder calls for two partners. Other rules are as usual.

Try it, I bet you love this new twist to an old game.

February 19th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Steph
 6 

Does anyone know where I can get the vintage 1943 Rook card deck (other than eBay)? If so, please email me at sonicatmd@yahoo.com. I would REALLY appreciate it! Thanks, Steph

May 8th, 2007 at 11:24 am

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