Oh Hell!

My aunt and uncle were in town over the weekend, so after a nice dinner out, we sat down for a bit to play some cards. The game played was Oh Hell!. Oh Hell is a trick taking game played with a standard deck of cards. You deal out an even number of cards (in our case 10) to start and bid on how many tricks you are going to take - the stinger being that the dealer cannot bid an amount that will equal the number of tricks in play - thus at least one person each round will fail to make their bid. Now, the last time we played, my dad harassed my mother about hosing whoever followed her. Because I felt a little bad for her, I sat to her left on this night. It was me, Bruce Peterson, Steve Hasegaw, Linda Peterson, then Cathy Hasegawa. In the first game, Linda took a little bit to get in the groove and fell well back, but my uncle cleaned up. We played again, and this time I won by a good margin (which stopped my dad from picking on my mother for a bit). Our last game of the night saw Linda making all her bids for the win.
Oh Hell is a decent game, but there are a lot of variants out there - Canyon, Rage, Wizard, etc. that I'd rather play with gamers. This on is still a good for the family though.