Top 10 Gambling Games - with Chris

0:00 Hey everyone, I'm Chris and I'm here to talk about my top 10 favorite in gambling games. Now, this is a little bit of a compendium video that goes along with a video that was filmed live at Dice Tower West, our convention in Las Vegas, where Tom Zee and Mike did their top 10 favorite gambling games. And there was also a little bit of like a game show and audience participation game element to it. So, it's a very fun video. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend one because of the fun gaming gambling little mini-game aspect to it, but two because it's a good top 10 topic and I like their lists. But, I've got 10 games here that weren't included on theirs. So, let me go ahead and get started.

0:51 My number 10 favorite board game that uses those elements of gambling, kind of bluffing, deduction, the big win-loss payout, and everything is a game called Agent Avenue. Agent Avenue is a fun two-player exclusive game wherein a player is going to, on their active turn, going to play a card face down and a card face up on the table and say, "Take which one you want." The other person then has to sit there and go, "Okay, well, they put a good card face up, so they probably put a worse card face down, but they think that I'm thinking that, so maybe I won't actually go for the face down card because it maybe it's actually better than good. It's a mystery box. It could be anything." And I love that element to it, of course, and then there is that gamble because as you collect different sets of the types of cards in the game, your little character's going to be moving around this circular board and you're trying to catch each other. And so, one point you're the pursuer and then the next thing you know, you grab a couple of wrong cards, the other person is now on your tail about to tag you. It has some cute artwork, so it doesn't feel like such a gambling game per se as it's cute like anthropomorphic foxes.

1:54 Foxy foxes, interesting choices. But, Agent Avenue, a great game that really cuts to the heart of the decisions of those types of bluffing and gambling type games. That's why it's my number 10. Number nine is a push your lucky game simply titled Push. This is one where on your active turn you flip over cards and you try not to bust. There's plenty of games that fit that description that could fit on a gambling type of a list, but I think that this one really sets itself apart with a few different elements. One, when you are going you can create up to three different piles. You can't repeat number or color in the same pile. And so at some point you feel like, well, if I if I can't place a card, I already have green in all three columns. If I draw a green card, I'm going to bust. Yeah, that's good and all, but when you choose to stop, you grab one of those columns of cards and you're going to gain all the points of the written values on those cards. Then the next two players after you are going to be able to grab one of the remaining columns. So you have this gamble where you're taking more card draws, but it's also going to benefit the other players unless you get the dreaded die card. It shows a little picture of a die a dice on it. And when you place on a column, whoever takes that column has to roll a die and lose all of the cards they've collected of that color. Roll blue, you lose all your blues. Now that sounds really punishing and cruel, but on your turn you have a choice. When it's your turn to be the active player, you can either flip cards, which is fun and can get you a lot of points, or you can flip over entire stack of cards you have. Say all

3:24 the green cards, I have too much value in green. It's not worth the risk of possibly losing it. So I'll take a turn, flip that, and now it's locked in. I'll never lose green. Or you could kind of gamble and you can just say, no, I'm going to keep going. I'm just going to keep flipping cards. Surely no one will stick me with one of those dice cards and force me to roll that die and lose my green pile. I think Push has layers of pushing your luck stacked on top of each other in a brilliant way that feels like such a risk and a gamble every turn that you take. That's why it's my number nine. Number eight, Lure. Lure? Lier? It just depends on how you pronounce it. Uh if your name is Tom Vasel, you pronounce it four different ways in the same video. Lure is a game about trying to go fishing. You put out a display of cards and how do you collect those fish? Well, you're going to kind of bet with a number of dice in your hand and then once everyone has done so simultaneously, they'll reveal.

4:17 How many dice do you have? Whoever has fewer dice are going to go first and you have to roll those dice and try to get numbers equal to or above the value of the fish out there so you could collect them. You are kind of gambling putting fewer dice in your hand for this reveal because you're hoping to go first, but you're also gambling you're actually going to roll the numbers you need to catch the fish. If you just hold on to a huge fistful of dice, yeah, you're going to probably roll whatever number you want, but you're probably also going to go last. The lake might be already fished straight through. So, neat little set collection getting points and stuff with dice rolling, but of course that little extra bit for priority to go first feels like a nice gamble. That's why it's my number eight. Number seven, Cockroach Poker. Yes, it has poker in the name, but it doesn't have anything to do with poker. This is just purely on that bluffing side of things. You place a card face down on the table, you point at someone and you say, "Jared, this is a spider." And Jared can either say, "That's not a spider." and flip it over. If he's right, you're stuck with the card. If he's wrong, he's stuck with that card.

5:21 And you don't want to get four of the same animal type, otherwise you're the loser of the game. Now, the other thing that Jared can do in this situation is he could take that card and look at it or not look at it. He could just pass it to somebody else. And he could say whether it's a spider or maybe it's a a cockroach or a flea and he'll just he could look at it and say, "No, actually that's a cockroach, Jill. What are you going to do with it?" And so it's just this constant bluffing back and forth around the table. Uh and I think that it just has a good flow to it. It feels like such a risk because even if you are being honest most of the time, you know, the few times that you lie, when do you do that? I really like that bluffing element and because you lose once you hit four of a kind, it's really a gamble when someone hands you that fourth card, you know, it says hands you that card and says uh this is definitely uh this is definitely a fly.

6:12 You're like, man, if I'm wrong, I'm out. So, I like that element in Cockroach Poker, making it my number seven. Number six is a game that is farther feeling from a gambling game because the core of this game is actually a CCG, a head-to-head collectible card game called Overpower. This is one that Thomas championed for a long time and I've gotten the chance to play it a bit recently because of the new sets coming out. And while this is a collectible card game, you're fighting each other with different effects and and your different special characters out there, what is interesting is at the top of each round, you bid for how many of these location cards you're going to try to win. You play this game round by round, one turn at a time, one action at a time going back and forth, and whoever does the most damage to the other player wins their bid. So, you're sitting there looking at your hand of cards, you drop a fresh hand of cards, you say, I think I can bid two. Maybe I'll even bid three. And that other player can either keep going, right, call, raise the bid kind of a thing. And so, it can be a really wild game. You could have a round where you're playing for four of those locations or something. So, it is, yes, a head-to-head battling game, but it's all in service of this really interesting bid betting bidding system. So, Overpower, my number six.

7:33 Number five, Skull. Skull is a super light, clean, a rules light, super clean bluffing game where everyone has these coasters, four little cards basically, but they're like thick cardboard coasters, and you just place them down on the table in front of you, and you can either keep adding to your pile as it goes around the table, or you can say, "We're going to stop adding tiles, and I'm going to call out a number." Right, I'm going to say three. I bet I can flip over three tiles without flipping over a skull. Because everyone has three flowers and one skull. So, you want to try to call how many you think you can safely go. So, I say three. The next player after me says, "I'll go up to four." The next player says, "I don't know if I can go up to five. So, I'm going to call you out on four." And then that person has to reveal tiles until they can reveal four safely. And so, it's this fun element of of how much do you raise, when do you start calling numbers at all actually, and it has this feel of like Liar's Dice, but I personally like this one much more than Liar's Dice, a game that was on Z's list, but this is kind of my my pet version of this type of game. That's Skull.

8:40 Number four, sharing a word with the previous game, but a very different game, Skull King. Yes, this is a pirate-themed kind of rabble-rousing trick-taking game, and while there's other games that use bidding elements like Spades and everything, this is the one that feels most like a big gamble. You're dealt your hand of cards, everyone is going to shake their fist, pound on the table, "Yo ho ho!" And you hold out a number of fingers of the number of tricks you think you're going to win. It's has a fun little ramp up on the first round you're dealt one card, so you bid one or zero. On the second round, everyone's dealt two cards, so you either bid two, one, or zero, and it goes up to 10. Personally, I think it's a it's a tad bit long, so I kind of skip certain rounds, and I'll go up by two, but it's such a fun game, and it's it's one of those where there's a lot of special effects, so it does feel like a fun you know, I you bid three, and you're at three, and you're just hoping, "Okay, I don't want to collect this one. I have one of these sail away cards I can always play to just whoop kind of be out of a trick. It's so fun making those bids and then trying to hit them and trying to mess over other people. So, Skull King my number four.

9:46 Number three is the biggest game on the list, the most involved, has the least direct gambling in it, but has a huge gambling element and this is Western Legends. Western Legends is a big old adventure game, sandbox style where you're running around, you can rescue cattle, you can go rob the bank, you can go work in the mines to get gold to deposit at the bank and then once you deposit it, then you can pull out your gun and rob the bank. There's so many weird things you can do in this game that are a lot of fun, but I like playing poker. Poker in this game is super simplified. You basically play one card out, but you have a hand of these action cards, which are also poker suited suited and ranked cards and you can play them for really powerful actions for running around doing the map, doing all doing all the cowboy adventure stuff. Or you can hold on to them to go play poker and the higher cards that you play have stronger effects that you're giving up. So, instead of using them for like really important in-game effects, you're gambling with it to get that money that you can hopefully turn into points.

10:50 Also, you need these poker cards in case you get into duels. And so, the higher ranked cards you're suddenly going, "Do I go play poker with this or do I hold on to this in case someone decides to have a shootout with me at the OK Corral?" So, yes, the the actual poker part is a gamble, but also the fact that you're playing poker with your resources in and of itself is a gamble. So, I really like Western Legends for that. That's my number three. Number two is a classic classic game. This is a game that you can play with a deck of playing cards. You only use certain ranks, certain cards from it. It's a two-player trick-taking game called Le Trouc. And this has the bidding and raising elements of classic games kind of like poker, but you play a three-card handed trick-taking game. You play a card, your opponent follows with another card, and you're just trying to win two out of the three tricks in this round in the two-player version of Le Truc. I prefer a two over four.

11:43 Uh there's different rules for each set. But with two players, you're just trying to win two of the tricks. That's all. And it's worth one point if you do. That sounds kind of dumb, right? But it uses the backgammon style of of bidding where you of raising where you can say, "Uh you know what? Looking at my cards here, let's raise this round to be worth two points instead of one." And your opponent can either accept that, and the bid is now raised to two, or they can just fold right then and there and say, "Nope. You know what? You probably got me. I fold while it's still only worth one point. You just get a point. Shuffle up, deal again." So, you can do this after you've played a card or two each, and you can say, "Raise to three. Raise to four." And so, you're sitting there with this agony of do you keep raising? Do you allow the other person to raise? Do you try to bluff them? It is like all of the elements of poker just distilled to a simple three-card in your hand at a time game. So, Le Truc, a classic game I adore.

12:42 And then the number one game that feels absolutely like rampant gambling is a tiny box All Play game called Fairy. Fairy is kind of ridiculous because you hold your scoring card in between your fingers, and you keep track by moving your fingers along, and you're trying to get to the You're trying to have the highest points at the end of the game, or you're trying to hit, I think it's 24 points, and then you immediately win. What are you doing while you're playing a modified version of higher or lower? You flip over a basic card from this 21-card deck, and it's the number seven. So, everyone at the same time has to now predict is the next card going to be higher, or is it going to be lower? But there's also three suits. So, one through seven are yellow, the middle seven are green, the highest uh seven are blue, and then three of the cards have fairies on them.

13:32 So, in in addition to higher or lower, you can also bid same color, or you can say, "I'm going to grab a fairy. I bet the next card has a fairy." There's only three of them in the deck. Every time that you're wrong, you lose a point. Every time you're correct on higher or lower, you gain two points. If you are correct on same color, you gain four points. And if you are correct that it is in fact a fairy that you're grabbing the next card, that's seven points. I have seen people who play games very conservatively and logically turn into resolute fairy-grabbing gamblers in this game. Just feeling like, "Well, the last two weren't fairies. Surely this next one will be. Surely this next one will be." And then they say, "Well, I'm I better change back. I'm losing too many points. I'll just go back to something safe like a lower bid." And that card's the fairy.

14:20 It's amazing. It's so fun when you see the excitement of people lighting up when they guess things correctly. Uh but also there is a good amount of logic and card counting to the game. And so, it does not say it's welcome. It's very silly. This was originally published as um uh Instant Celebrity in Japan. I'm really glad that this one got picked up. Has this nice approachable theme for everybody. If you like pure ridiculous unadulterated gambling, you should play Fairy. And that's my number one pick. So, there you go, folks. What games did I neglect to mention here on the list? Uh what games have not been mentioned between the live one from Dice Tower West and the one that I just did here? Share your favorite gambling games below. Uh these are of course board games that give the feel of gambling. I didn't include anything that's just actually like a gambling game. But uh yeah, go ahead and mention some of your favorites. Thanks for coming out to this top 10 list, everybody. My name is Chris Yee, and you have yourselves a great day.

15:18 Hey, folks. Thanks for watching another one of our videos. If you like our videos, if you like our channel, you would love to game with us at one of our conventions. Check out Dice Tower Cruise, Dice Tower East, and Dice Tower West. Fantastic conventions where we play games with wonderful people, a humongous library, and lots of other events and stuff. Also, don't forget to check out our channel, like and subscribe. I'm Tom Vasel.