Lucky Seven

Lucky Seven is a game of pure luck. No skill, and only a limited amount of intelligence required. And yet, like any good game of luck, it suckers you in. It makes you want to play. It gives you hope that this time you might actually win.

You get seven large discs that look and feel and are very much like beer coasters. Which is logical, given that its designer conceived the game "in a Zurich restaurant by writing numbers on and shuffling 7 coasters on the table."

That designer is Martin Samuel, of Games Above Board, and, oddly enough, this simple little solitaire-like game of just about pure chance proves to be Major FUN. It's a game you can play by yourself. It's a game kids can play. It's a game the whole family can play together.

Each of the seven coasters is numbered. Like all of Samuel's games, the coasters themselves are minor works of art. To play, the coasters are turned number-side-down, shuffled, and placed in a line. Pick any coaster. Turn it over. The number thereby revealed tells you what coaster (1 meaning the first on the left, 2 the second, etc.) to turn over next. The object: see if you can turn over all seven coasters before you reach a coaster whose position number has already been revealed.

Samuel suggests 3 different ways to play: "the most coasters turned wins the round, the most rounds won takes the game, or the number of coasters turned are accrued, and the first player to reach 50 (or 100, or....?) wins." Now, I'm not a gambling man, but I bet you can find even more absorbing, fortune-tempting, monetarily-rewarding ways to play this game, should you be so inclined.