Spoons

Pig is a simple, collecting card game of early 20th century American origin suitable for three to thirteen players that is played with a 52-card French-suited pack. It has two very similar and well known variants – Donkey and Spoons. It is often classed as a children's game. It may be descended from an old game called Vive l'Amour. History According to Richard L. Frey, the ancestor of Pig was an old, four-player game called Vive l'Amour in which the aim was to be first to collect all 13 cards of one suit. The rules of Vive l'Amour first appear in 1821 and it continued to feature until the early 20th century. Despite the name it only ever appears in German literature. Later sources say that, on going out, the winner shouts "vive l'amour!" which explains the story that when the Patriarch of Venice, Jacques Monico was playing cards, he called "Vive Marie!" whenever the rules required him to shout "Vive l'Amour!"<ref>The North British Review (1854), p. 40.</ref> Frey thus sees Pig as a "modern simplification" of Vive l'Amour, its name being simply a "bowdlerism" of the earlier game. Pig is first recorded in 1911 where it is called "a rather noisy game" in which the first player to collect a quartet (four of a kind) laid their cards down "either quietly or violently, as he may choose" and the last one to put cards down became "Pig". The number of rounds was agreed in advance and the player who came last the fewest number of times was the winner or "Big Pig." Although intended for children, the game was also apparently played by adults with special cards in those parts of the US where standard playing cards were taboo.