monkey nonsense

so i played kemps last night for the first time in a long time.  i love kemps!!  it’s one of my all time favorite games.  it’s really simple and easy to learn.

everyone starts out with 4 cards.  the object of the game is to get 4 of a kind and then somehow signal to your partner that you have 4 of a kind without tipping your hand to anyone else.  your team wins if one of you has 4 of a kind and the other partner successfully acknowledges it first by yelling “kemps!”  another team can win if they notice your team signalling and yells “cut!” (actually, the way we played as kids was to yell “schemps” but that’s ’cause we forgot what it was we were supposed to yell) the game starts when everyone turns over the “pot card” (cards in the middle that everyone is going for to complete their 4 of a kind).  with the scramble to get cards, things start to get hectic.  so it’s easy to toss in a signal somewhere in there.

the way my high school friends and chinese school friends play, even MORE confusion occurs because everyone is trying to give fake signals to get fake calls of “cut!”  some of my all-time favorite kemps moments involve ridiculous signals (both fake and real) like knocking the card out of the person to the right, abruptly standing up and looking around, belching outloud a certain number of times, running to the bathroom in the middle of the game, and slapping the person next to you on the back.

last night, people seemed to be more subdued than my high school/chinese school friends so signals were a lot more discrete.  it was a different way to play that i was not used to (i think i confused the crap out of the people sitting next to me by rubbing their heads randomly in the middle of the game… hey!  at least it threw them off from picking cards).  because everything was less outrageous, it was pretty interesting and hard to guess when people had kemps.  still a lot of fun.  and that’s the best part of kemps.  the game changes depending on the people playing.

who wants to play?!!