Magyar Kartya

Whilst in Budapest, last week, I saw an interesting sign in one of the restaurant bars.
It was a picture of three dice and had the legend "Fortune Dice" in bold letters across the top.

Further inspection revealed that for 250 Hungarian Forints I could roll the bones and, if I scored three sixes, my meal was free. How cool is that ? Of course, I had to have a go - even though my food and drink had already been paid for by the conference.

I tried to find out more about Hungarian gaming culture but it is so hard when you are a tourist and/or business visitor. I found a bar called "More Dice" but there were none to be found (although I suspect an illegal gambling den may have been out back judging by the clientele).

The tourist shops all seemed to be selling Hexagonal Chess sets, which seemed somewhat odd, but I could not find a Gorky Park full of old men playing it. Rubik's cubes seemed popular, too, with a number of variants on offer (a 2x2 cube for novices and a 7x7 for puzzle freaks).

In the market I did manage to find some Hungarian playing cards which seemed to be composed of four suits ('baubles', 'acorns', 'leaves' and 'hearts') of eight cards - but the lady, on the stall, could not tell me what games I could play using them.

Of course I bought a few decks - partly for curiosity but mainly because Magyar Kartya ('Hungarian Cards') sounded like "Magna Carta" and I fancied a game of Caylus.

Anyway, I will be Googling their usage over the next few days. Or, more likely, getting Stephen at the Spiel to do the research for me as I sent him a deck too.