“How do you play this game?”
“Watch.“
“Can I play next?”
“Watch!“

I can’t remember learning this game. It is one of the many games I didn’t remember I knew until someone introduced it to me under a different name and — with shocking quickness — it all came back. Muscle memory from a thousand diners, bowling alleys, and kitchen tables.

I can’t tell you who taught me this game, but I know when I learned it. Everyone who learned this game learned it in early adolescence, that moment in our lives when the rules of countless social card games are imprinted onto our genetic code. A placeholder for the awkwardness that comes with not knowing how to properly talk to others. Connections and conversation is sometime easier with a scaffold. Sometimes, we play games: the lighter and more playful the better.

One of the best things about “E.R.F.” is that anyone who knows the rules can recognize it from across the room and anyone who doesn’t can pick it up before a single game resolves. A player can stumble across a group of total strangers playing and, through observation and cunning, not only join a game in progress — but win it.

Except, of course, I learned it as “Slapscrew.” I didn’t hear it called “E.R.F” until some other group of kids recognized our game from across the room walked over and slapped into my friends’ game. My friend, who was fastidiously proper in speech and manner, also wore a large ring for the purposes of playing this game. Whenever the need arose, he would rotate the ring on his finger so that head would be facing downward. If you were going to take that pile, you were going to pay.

I’m not sure if escalation is an inherent and invisible part of The Game of Many Names, or if it’s an ever present and inevitable feature of adolescence.

It’s one of those games that everyone learned under a different name. Apparently, some people — including my new acquaintance — learned it as “Snap!” It’s the same rules, only it involves yelling the word “Snap!” before you strike.

I think that maybe we need to examine what games need “yelling out words” as part of their ruleset. I am supported in this opinion, I am sure, by the wait staff at the Denny’s across the street from a strip club so degenerate that it needed a three-faith exorcism before a car lot could be built over its remains.

I learned the game during a summer retreat. I was part of a local program meant to bring together ambitious young “leadership types” from area schools to learn about teamwork, community participation, and communication. It culminated each year in a one-week residential summer program at a nearby university. Hundreds of teenagers, up all night playing card games in the halls of a dormitory long ago demolished and only slightly less storied than the strip club.

It was there I learned all the games I’d bring back to my regular friend group. Slapscrew — or whatever you want to call it — as well as “Real Spades,” “Bullshit!” and even the execrable Mao, although I kept that last one out of sight for as long as I could.

My new acquaintance learned her far more aggressive version, I believe, at festival concerts and bonfire parties on the other side of the world. “Snap!” is the kind of game that one can play while occupying any number of headspaces and it encourages strangers to run up on one another and interact.

I had forgotten all of this — including how much I despise the game Mao — until my new friend challenged me to a game of “Snap!” on New Year’s Day.

We were playing the “YouTube Game” and running through a list of card games we had in common.

“This one’s easy.” She said. “Just watch.”

She refused to tell me the rules in advance. We shuffled the deck and divided our cards. Card by card, we began to reveal our hands to each other. Slowly at first, as I tried to understand the game.

The confusion was evident on my face the first time she slammed her hand down on the pile and yelled “Snap!” Hers was the smile of a raptor seeing a mouse in the open field. I was so obviously out of my depth and she reveled in the coming bloodbath.

Seeing her hand covering that pair of fives, though, awakened something in me. My body remembered before my mind, but they were acting in concert soon enough.

The next double — a face pair — saw my hand on top of hers. The third set saw my hand under, but I forgot to cry out “Snap!” So, once again, I lost. But, I was learning. Remembering.

(Games shouldn’t require yelling things out!)

After that, the race was on. We lost ourselves in the game. We hovered over the cards, watching. Waiting.

We watched the cards, but also each other. Every flip drew us incrementally closer, and with every reveal the tension grew. Accusations were thrown, stratagems employed. We were predators, each probing the other for weakness.

Watching. Waiting.

This game fundamentally has three phases: the burn, the anticipation, and the strike. The heart of the game, whatever you call this game, is in the strike. It is what 19th-century military thinkers would call “the decisive engagement.”

A skilled player focuses on noticing that perfect moment and being the first to strike. That is usually good enough.

The exceptional player does not only watch, but anticipates. Such a player reads the deck, mentally bookmarking every strike — the hits and the misses alike.

The thing about this game — whatever you call it — is that it benefits the player to watch for patterns.

The mid-game is one of “back and forth.” Reading the cards, recognizing the patterns. What fencers would call “The conversation of the blades.”

That trio of tens I captured is coming up soon.

Or, at the next tier of play: A lot of space in the decks right now. I should play fast and burn cards.

No matter what, though, one must always be ready for that moment: The strike.

And, apparently, yelling out.

Fine, I’ll yell out. We yell in each other’s faces with increasing ferocity as the cards move with ever greater velocity. We are watching each other play. Watching and learning.

We each focus only on the pile and, if we can manage it, the cards we’ve captured from each other. We flip fast now, grinning like maniacs as a cascade of cards threatens to overwhelm us. The name “Egyptian Ratfuck” was new to her and she grew enamored of it.

She was still yelling, but now “Ratfuck!” instead of “Snap!”

The endgame of “Ratfuck!” is quite unique, in that it is one of the few games that allows for a skilled and observant player to turn the tides on their opponent. One can recapture the initiative no matter how radical the disparity. One deck might be almost exhausted, but if they have read the game and are watching — there’s always a chance to strike. Almost, anyway.

Watch for the tens.

Her deck began to overwhelm mine, which made her overconfident just as her deck became the most predictable. All it takes to turn the entire engagement is patience and one well-placed “Ratfuck!”

You absolutely, for sure, should not yell “Ratfuck!” when you play this game. The waitstaff at the Denny’s across from the Hellmouth Strip Club will ask you to leave. And they’ve seen a lot.

This game — whatever you call this game — is found in the endgame. The raptors dive. They claw at one another. Their decks are now wildly uneven, and control of the game careens between one player or the other. Patterns are memorized.

As the decks become uneven, and the final decisive engagement approaches, skilled players anticipate: Those three tens. That pair of red fives. A long run of face cards with no hits is coming soon. Read the signals.

The climactic moment arrives — the bias of the two decks has become too overwhelming. The inevitable end. No amount of patience or depth of muscle memory can thwart final victory. The final resolution calls forth all of the game’s mechanics: Dexterity, Pattern Recognition, and Patience.

There is one final strike. Afterwards, one person owns total control of the deck and the other is defeated. The game is ended.

The game of “Snap!” is a game of randomness organizing itself into predictability. A game that screams “Ratfuck!” to the laws of Thermodynamics.

Then the game is over. I reshuffle. A nervous habit. We decide to move on to learning a different game.

(One set of) Rules for “Snap!”