Ryan lely/Sonoma Valley Sun
The key to Liars dice is being able to decieve and detect your opponents deception.
So a couple of years ago a balding, well-dressed man in his 50s walks into my bar and says he’d like to play Liars dice for a drink. This is totally acceptable if the bartender is not too busy, or like me, always hungry for a little competition. I made sure all of the other bar patrons had drinks in hand and we were off.
I consider myself a fairly accomplished dice player in general. My grandfather, Pop, taught me Liars using dollar bills when I was nine or ten years old at a Coney’s outside Detroit. Craps is the only table game I play in Vegas, and I understand the rules and odds to games like Boss, Ship Captain Crew, and 5000.
Most of my life, the Dice Gods have been kind to me and these are some old, finicky gods. The oldest writings on dice stem from about 3000 B.C. at the Pyramid of Cheops, where a tablet tells the story of the god Ra (creation) playing dice against Thoth, the god of wisdom. Ra was angered at Nut, the god of sky and heaven, and would not let her bear children. At stake was 1/72nd of the moon’s light, or five more nights, enough time for Nut to bear her children (Osiris, Set, Isis and Nephthys). Thoth won and we now have five more nights a year. Back to the real story.
We shake our cups, slam them on the bar and begin. We are playing Kick Out Liars, which means that each time someone is called out for lying they kick out a die till all the dice in one cup are gone and the other player wins. Each player starts with five dice and the first call always seems to be the bartender’s. I believe this rule is in place because the dice just seem to fall better for the man behind the plank. Due to space constraints, I won’t go through all the turns. He creamed me. A complete mauling, like a polar bear versus a puppy in a barbed wire cage match. Moments later, two other bar patrons challenged the newcomer for drink chips.
We play for drink chips because gambling in a bar for money is illegal in the state of California. That being said, I managed to supplement my income in the lean winter months playing 1-4-24 and Liars against drunk tourists in town for off-season (read: cheaper) weddings.
The three of them get to playing a little Liars dice and the outcome is the same, all bear claws and sad puppies. The losers want a chance at redemption and so do I. The four of us get into a game and before too long the stranger has a tall stack of drink chips piled in front of him.
Before the dust has a chance to settle, in walks a pretty 50ish woman fresh from a spa treatment holding a fistful of bags. She walks right up to the stranger and yells “Gil! You give those people their money back right now.” He looks up sheepishly, shrugs his shoulders and begins to argue his case that these people are adults and he won the drinks fair and square. She drops her bags next to his feet and storms out.
She returned with five copies of his book, “Best of the World’s Best Dice Games”, by Gil Jacobs. Turns out that Gil is an ex-champion dice player and all-around dice expert. We were sharked by one of the best in the world. As a parting gift, he signed and gave us copies of his book but kept all the drink chips. He inadvertently taught me the most important concept in Liars dice: lie and lie often.
