Inspired by Dad’s Cooking Tonight’s post today regarding lost property, I give Sock Poker to the world…
A game for 2 or more players, somewhere public where you can see the socks people are wearing. Ideal for the train, buses, the tube, airport waiting lounges…
- Each player picks 3 people without looking at their socks first.
- Look at their socks
- Work out your Sock Poker
HandFoot. - Hierarchy of scoring
- No socks. (Shouldn’t have picked the holiday lot heading to the sun)
- All Odd Socks (no-one in your 3 is wearing a pair of socks and you can’t make any split pairs)
- Matching pair (1 person is wearing a matched pair of socks).
- Split Pair (1 matching pair out of all 6 socks in the hand. Or should that be foot?)
- 2 Pairs (2 people are wearing matching pairs, the 3rd isn’t)
- 2 split pairs (2 matching pairs out of all 6 socks in the foot. It’s officially a foot now, okay?)
- 3 pairs (everyone is wearing a matching pair of socks)
- 3 split pairs (6 socks, 3 pairs, but not on the same people)
- Flush (everyone is wearing the same colour of sock, more or less. Shades don’t have to match)
- Royal Flush (everyone is wearing identical socks)
- Primary Flush (1 red pair, 1 blue pair, 1 yellow pair)
- Other scoring combinations will be added as people suggest them in the comments below…
Winner gets 10 points. First to 50 wins. Or 100 if you’re in a busy airport and you’ve a lot of time to kill.
Bonus Points for…
- Loud and Proud: At least 1 pair features cartoon characters, stripes, checks, is actually Day-Glo. 2 extra points
- 3 Men on Class: socks of different lengths
- More as they come in the comments!
Strategy…
Picking your people is crucial. If you’re aiming for a Flush, maybe a Royal Flush, you’re best looking for groups in uniform. School kids are fairly reliable for a Flush or better. Businessmen, suited and booted as they may be, are a bit of a wild card as you never know when one of them will be expressing his personality through their socks. Rule of thumb: The louder the tie, the greater the chance of interesting socks.
For other games you can play on long journeys, you might want to consider Car Scrabble, though Sock Poker and Car Scrabble are incompatible unless everyone’s going to be changing their socks at random from The Big Bag of Random Socks (soon to be available through major retailers when Sock Poker goes global!)
2 responses to “Sock Poker”
Another excellent travel game, which has the advantage that it can be played on many forms of transport. It could even be played alongside Car Scrabble if you had the misfortune to be travelling by coach for any distance.
like the idea for socks with cartoon characters on, do they still make them, one matched up with a plain sock has got to be worth a more few points, extra if the owner is wearing a pinstriped suit.
What about same coloured socks but from different pairs? As I’m wearing – one lambswool, the other a cotton mix. Strangely enough, one foot is warmer than the other.