Morra Game

iPhone application for Morra Players.
Just shake your iphone!

Morra is a hand game that goes back thousands of years to ancient Roman and Greek times. It can be played to decide issues, much as two people might toss a coin, or for entertainment.

While there are many variations of Morra, most forms can be played with two, three, or more players. In the most popular version, all players throw out a single hand, each showing zero to five fingers, and call out loud their guess at what the sum of all fingers shown will be. If one player guesses the sum, that player earns one point. The first player to reach three points wins the game.

In another version one person is designated the "odds" player while the other is labeled "evens". Players hold one hand out in front of them and count together to three (sometimes chanting "Once, twice, thrice, SHOOT!" or "One, two, three, SHOOT!"). On three (or "shoot"), both players hold out either one or two fingers. If the sum of fingers shown by both players is an even number (i.e. two or four) then the "evens" player wins; otherwise the "odds" player is the winner. Since there are two possible ways to add up to three, both players have an equal chance of winning. This version of morra has been seen on a popular TV show, Seinfeld, in with the characters George Costanza And Jerry Seinfeld play to see who gets an apartment. In New York City and Long Island in the 1950s, the game was called "choosies," and would be invoked to resolve a playground dispute by one antagonist saying, "let's shoot for it." In Boston at about the same time, the term in use was "bucking up." In US Coast Guard wardrooms (officer's mess), players "shake out." It has also been referred to as "odds-on poke."

Some variants of Morra involve money, with the winner earning a number of currency units equal to the sum of fingers displayed.

Source: Wikipedia.org