John Barnes
United States Charlotte North Carolina
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There's nothing like a little gambling to liven up an otherwise dull Sunday School class party! The party had settled into small groups of idle chatter until I pulled out Wits & Wagers, which I had thrown in the back of the car on a whim. We soon had 7 teams of 2 gathered around to play the game, with me acting as host, game-show style.
For those of you unfamiliar with the game, it is a trivia game - but the catch is you don't have to know the answers yourself to win. You just need to be a good guesser. Teams are given a dry erase board and $80 in chips. There are 7 questions in the game, each with a numeric answer. After each question is read, teams/players have 30 seconds to write down an answer on the dry erase board. The answers are arranged from smallest to largest on the game map. Then teams/players get 30 seconds to place bets on which answer (or answers) they think is correct. The answers pay out differently depending on where they were placed on the board. The answer that is closest to the correct answer without going over is the winner. For the 1st 6 questions, teams are limited to bets totalling $10 or less. Question 7 has no betting limit - you can go all in if you desire.
Things were pretty even through the 1st 6 questions - everybody won a little and lost a little. Question 7 turned the whole game on it's head. Because everyone had a pretty similar chip count, most folks bet all or nearly all of their stack. When I read the correct answer, the room erupted with both joy and disgust. That was because nobody bet on the correct answer. The winning team ended up being the team that didn't bet anything.
The game was a huge hit with everyone and I had several folks ask me where I had gotten it and where they could get a copy. I was happy to point them to some of our favorite online retailers.
Kudos to the Northstar guys for designing this great game!
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