Ça va, cher. Pull up a chair. Not that one, that's Ronnie's, and he's particular.

My name is Roosevelt Carlucci. I'm fifty years old and I run a crane on an offshore platform out in the Gulf, seven days on and seven days off. Daddy's people came from Sicily to cut sugar cane, and Mama's people have been in Terrebonne Parish since before anybody wrote it down, so I came out half pasta and half gumbo, and I can cook both.

On my weeks home, me and my brothers and whatever cousins show up go down to the camp. It's a little place on stilts on the bayou below Houma that you can only get to by boat. We fish all day, we eat whatever we caught, and then at night we light the lantern, put the cypress-door table on the porch, and play bourré until somebody's wife calls on the CB radio.

My nephew put this page on the Internet for me, so if you're from someplace where they never heard of bourré, here's your chance. Read it careful. This game will take your money and laugh at you.

The deck and the players. One regular deck, 52 cards, no jokers. Aces are high, then king, queen, jack, ten, on down to the deuce. You can play with as few as two, but it's no good till you got four or five. Seven's the most we put at the table, because seven is how many chairs we got on the porch.

The ante. Every hand, everybody puts a quarter in the pot. That's what's in the middle of the table, plus whatever money got left over from the hand before. (We'll get to that. Oh, we'll get to that.)

The deal. The dealer gives everybody five cards, one at a time, going around to the left. His own last card he turns face up on the table for everybody to see. Whatever suit that is, that's trump for the hand. That card still belongs to the dealer. It's part of his hand.

Staying in or dropping out. Now everybody looks at his cards, and starting on the dealer's left, each man says if he's in or he passes. If you pass, you throw your cards in and you're done for the hand. You lose your quarter, and that's all you lose. If you stay in, you're playing for the whole pot, and you're also putting yourself at risk. You'll see.

The draw. The ones who stayed, going around in order, can throw away whatever cards they don't like and get new ones off the deck, as many as they want, up to all five. The dealer draws last. He can throw away the trump card he turned up if he wants, but most dealers don't.

The play. The first man still in on the dealer's left leads a card. Everybody else plays one card, going around, and the best card takes the trick. That's five tricks a hand. Whoever takes a trick leads the next one. Here's the part you got to get right, because it's the law:

• You got to follow suit if you can.
• If you can follow suit, you got to beat the best card on the table if you can. You can't duck.
• If you can't follow suit, you got to trump if you got a trump.
• If somebody already trumped it, you got to trump higher if you can.
• Only if you can't follow suit and you can't trump, then you can throw anything.

Who wins. Whoever takes the most tricks takes the whole pot. If two men tie for the most, say two tricks apiece and one trick to somebody else, nobody takes it. The pot rides to the next hand, and it gets bigger.

Here it is. Here's the whole reason the game is named what it's named.

If you stayed in, and you took no tricks at all, you got bourréd. And when you get bourréd, you have to put in money equal to everything that was in the pot. That goes in the next pot.

So say there's six dollars in the pot. I stay in with a hand I like. The cards don't fall my way and I don't take a single trick. Somebody else takes the six dollars, and I put six dollars of my own in the middle for the next hand. Now that pot's got my six dollars plus everybody's quarters, and if somebody else gets bourréd on that one, he's matching all of that. You see how it goes. A quarter game can turn into real money by midnight, and it has, many times, on our porch.

That's why you don't stay in on every hand just because you're feeling lucky. The cards don't care how you're feeling.

If you break one of the rules of the play, that's a renege, and at our table a renege is the same as getting bourréd. You match the pot. Every time. No matter how many tricks you took. Here's the ones that get people:

1. Not beating it when you could. Spades led, the queen is high on the table, and you play your four of spades holding the king. That's a renege. You got to head it if you can. People try to save their good cards for later. You can't.
2. Not trumping. You're out of hearts, hearts is led, and you throw off a little club because you want to keep your trumps. No sir. If you got trump, you got to trump.
3. Not trumping high enough. Somebody already trumped with the eight, and you go under him with the five when you're holding the jack. Renege.
4. Getting caught later. You can't take it back after the trick's turned over, and at our table we turn the tricks back up at the end of the hand and look, if somebody hollers. My brother Thomas can remember every card played for the last forty years. Don't try it with him.
5. Showing your hand or talking about it. No "Lord, look at this mess" before you drop. That's house rule, not the Hoyle rule, but at the camp it costs you a dollar to the pot.

Every table plays a little different. These are ours. If you play at your camp different, that's your business.

• Quarter ante, every hand, everybody, no matter how big the pot is.
• Ten-dollar limit on a bourré. No matter how big the pot gets, nobody pays in more than ten dollars when he gets bourréd. That's Mama's rule, from the night in 1979 when my uncle got bourréd on a pot that had gotten up past forty dollars and didn't speak to my daddy until Easter.
• If you hold the ace of trump, you lead it the first time you get the lead. Some camps don't play that. We do.
• If everybody passes but one man, he takes the pot without playing a card. That's why you don't want to be the only one to pass on a big pot. You'll be watching somebody else rake it in for doing nothing.
• If the deck runs out on the draw with seven at the table, the dealer shuffles up the throwaways and keeps dealing.
• Last hand is when Teresa calls on the radio. Not one hand after. One hand after is how a man ends up sleeping at the camp.

• Count your trumps before you say you're in. Two good trumps and an ace on the side, that's a hand. One little trump and a prayer, that's a bourré waiting to happen.
• Watch the turned-up card. If it's the ace of trump, the dealer's got it, and he's leading it the first chance he gets.
• Remember what's been played. There's thirteen of every suit. If you've seen nine trumps go by, you can figure out who's got the rest.
• Don't stay in just because the pot is big. The pot being big is exactly why you shouldn't.
• Don't play with my cousin Larry unless you brought a lot of quarters. You'll see why on the stories page.