Perudo King

On a roll and dicing with bluffers

JOHN LINKLATER - The Herald

16 Oct 1995

With the arrival of Perudo in Glasgow, John Linklater throws himself into the game that encourages participants to lie in their teeth.

THE second most addictive thing to come out of South America is the way Stephen Fry describes it. He is a helpless aficionado. So is Sting and Richard Branson. Royalty play it. Supermodels play it. Perudo has some encouraging elements: deceptively facile enough for a novice to baffle a pro, a dice game that encourages you to lie through your teeth, as harmless as cribbage or as vicious as poker. A game of luck with the illusion of cunning, or a game of cunning with the illusion of luck?

The chance to shoot some Perudo came on Wednesday night. It was a first in Glasgow. The event was scheduled as a regional qualifier for the national championships to be staged later this year in London. The winner and partner would be flown down to participate. That was fine. The only preliminary problem was they had to teach us all how to play before it got underway.

We were fortunate in being coached by the man who brought the game to Britain from Peru in 1989. After six years of hustling it in fashionable London clubs and marketing his own version in expensive limited editions, Cosmo Fry has just sold Perudo to Parker Brothers, the world's biggest games manufacturer. That is like throwing five sixes.

Which may or may not be an advantage in Perudo. As we learned, it's not what your dice say that counts, it's what you say they say. Yours and everyone elses. It is about calculating the odds, backing a hunch to bid, brazening it out.

The original version, said to have been refined by Atahualpa in the sixteenth century and taught to Pizzaro, is called Dudo, from the Spanish for ''I doubt'', which is how your bluff is called in the game. When Cosmo Fry and his Peruvian partner Alfredo Fernandini tried to register it as Dudo, they ran into copyright problems with Cleudo and Ludo. Perudo adds a necessary syllable, and acknowledges the provenance.

''It's simple, there's no board,'' was the way Cosmo introduced it. ''It has a global appeal, no language problems. It lends itself to tournaments like this. It's not a cerebral game. It thrives on interaction and distraction and drunken loutish behaviour. It's a lot of fun.''

''Are you making this up as you go along?'' queried Tom Shields, who was really there to improve his Spanish. ''I used to,'' admitted Alfredo casually. ''Now it's all written down in the rules that Parker Brothers supply with the game.'' Jack McLean, another gamester, kept losing his dice. Under the table, beaten on the bluff, or just unable to keep score, it didn't matter. He went palafico, which means he was down to his last dice from five. Then he went out.

''You're too aggressive, Jack,'' was Alfredo's assessment of his game. Jack turned moodily on his whisky, throwing out some offending ice. Cubes with numbers on them, or cubes that ruin your drink, they don't stay long around Jack.

At the next table they hadn't quite got the dudo bit right. They must have been playing the Campdown Races version, with a Doodah! Doodah! ringing out with every challenge. Others were not to be drawn from their normal pursuits on the Wednesday games night at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut. A heated game of Mousey Mousey was in progress in one corner, and it has to be admitted that photographer Paul Hackett and I slinked off for a game of Subbuteo table football to check if any of the old skills were still there.

But the elimination tournament to find a national finalist got underway. We were depressed to discover among the competitors a fellow called William from Bogota. His first stab at Perudo, was the unlikely claim from Bogota Billy, evidently a consummate liar and therefore a rival to be feared. He made the final. The Herald's representatives, quite unable to dissemble or sink to the required level of mendacity, had the honour to be the first trio eliminated at their respective tables.

In a heated finale Ian Smith, a manager of a broker company, raised his arms aloft after seeing off all rivals to gain the first Scottish championship. His winning game plan: ''Roll the dice and bluff.'' He will be among 300 finalists in London, when the clatter of 15,000 dice will add percussion to live South American music as the socialites, stars, and trend-setters prepare to receive a challenge from a new wave of Perudo players.

They say it is a great game for gloaters, where the naive can humble the sophisticates. That never worked for us, but maybe it will work for Ian Smith.

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