So I have been thinking of a system to hold poker games at shelters. I was thinking I would carry 2 rolls of pennies. Then for a buy-in of one delicious item from your food bag, I give you 20 pennies as chips. The winner gets the before mentioned food items.
Any other shelter-boredom passing ideas?
Nokia
Hmm…well, I can certainly think of a few shelter-boredom passing ideas, dear. 
Lady Longlegs
You won’t often find people who want to do much besides eat and sleep. And two rolls of pennies won’t make it out of Georgia. You won’t want to carry the weight.
The shelter game that tends to work best is chess. You can get light magnetic boards at most outfitters. Poker sometimes works if you’ve got down time in town.
0101
I will carry the weight of 2 rolls of pennies. I’ve trimmed my pack down to 12 pounds base weight just for the very occasion. I carried a lot more crap that I NEVER used last year. Lady LongLegs should be working, not reading trailjournals:)
Nokia
Two of my favorite shelter games were dice and Pigs. Both very light weight to carry. I also enjoyed the occasional cribbage game. We used to add points on paper instead of carrying a board. When I was hiking in the Grand Canyon we would play cribbage while we hiked. The dealer would walk in front and pass cards back. The crib would be stuck in the waist pocket of the dealers pack. We would keep track of points in our head providing both mental and physical excercise at the same time.
Big B
The best shelter game I know involves no extra weight on your back, in fact it relies on your food so by playing the game you actually lose weight. Fart tennis anyone? I have a list of comprehensive rules if anybody is interested.
Cheers
Cheers
I was hiking with a group called the Lazy A$$ Hiking Society
in 2004 and we had some pretty great Uno games. It was the highlite of the day for awhile.:cheers
jalanjalan
You could cut out circles from one of those foam sheets for the pennys. Tomcat did something like that last year for a handmade backgammon board and pieces.
socks
i would like the rules for, sigh, “fart tennis”. this may be an all time low for me, but i would actually like the rules.
matt
matt
Mancala was my favorite. We draw the boards on our sleeping pads with Sharpies and would just have to scrounge up 48 pebbles in order to get a game going.
Just remember to scatter the game before going to sleep…
Squish
I don’t think I played any “games” when I hiked 
, but the mancala idea is pretty good. Although, with the way my memory works on the trail, I’d be like, “How many pebbles are we supposed to have? 32? 18? 3.7?” Kind of like the mileage descrepencies on those signs for those two shelters in the Smokies…
Lady Longlegs