Many games were played aboard, against the tedium of long journeys. Checkers, morra, many games of cards.. and the best, dice games! we aboard the avventuriera have two favourites, i’ll explain to you a very nice one. Liar’s dice! or as we call it, Polipone (great octopus). All players have five dice and a cup, and everybody throws their dice under the cup. The first player states how many die with the same result there are IN TOTAL at the table, he can for example state that, amongst all players, there are (at least) twelve sixes. He’ll hazard a guess and pass the turn to the player after him. if the player wants to check, everyone will remove their cups and count. If the player was right (and lucky..) everyone but him will remove a die from their cup and set it aside, while if he wasn’t right he will be the one removing a die. if the next player wants, he can raise, without checking, but only calling for either a higher number of the same score (you call for four threes, i call five threes) or any number of a higher score (you call four threes, i call two sixes). or he can doubt, as above.
(example from the pirates of the caribbean – Davy Jones’ locker.)
Bootstrap bill: 2 2 2 3 3
Davy Jones 4 5 5 5 5
Will Turner 1 2 5 5 5
Bootstrap says Three 2’s (which he knows are on the table since he has them himself. Maybe there’d be more, maybe not). Jones raises saying Four 4’s, Will says four 5’s. Jones says seven 5’s. (which are on the table, so if he was called out he would have won) Will says eight 5’s, and would have lost if called out. Bootstrap, to save his son, does not doubt and raises an unlikely “twelve 6’s”, which is called out by Jones and he loses the round.