I had a lot of fun playing Spoons as a kid, though usually somebody would get hurt. We didn’t play to four-of-a-kind, we played to three-of-a-kind. And we had to make it a rule that you have to lay your cards out before reaching for a spoon.
Often it was possible to lay the cards out and take a spoon and just wait while the other players are pretending to switch out cards to throw off your count. But then suddenly, two people would notice the round was over at the same time – mercy Katie-bar-the-door.
We played spoons in elementary at the playground using rocks. We had to hide under this slide/pavillion type toy because if the teachers saw us rabidly fighting over the rocks, we got in trouble. I was the best stealth spoon grabber our school ever saw.
In addition to the Stealth Grab and the Fake Grab, it is quite easy for the dealer to pick up a wad of cards and sort through them for the ones he’s looking for since no one else is paying attention to anything except their cards and maybe the spoon pile. But that’s probably cheating. Also, when you’re sitting on the pool deck all day, you’ll use just about anything for this game if you don’t hae spoons handy, including pop tops, pennies and the like. All very hard to pick up off a cement pool deck. Bloody knuckles were common.
As for Egyptian Rat Screw, we always played J=1, Q=2, K=3, A=4. Lots of times if someone walked up in the middle of a game, one of the players would be gracious enough to give him a single Jack and then he’d end up winning. A veteran ERS player, such as myself, is able to remember which players have which pairs in their piles so you can be ready for them the next time they come around.
