We always play that the two Distributors divide the cards simultaneously. We acknowledge that the second Distributor has something of a disadvantage, but don't feel nearly as strongly about it some other groups do. My feeling is that Alan and Aaron set it up like this to avoid the additional downtime of having two players divide separately each turn. However, if your group divides without too much delay, or if the downtime doesn't bother you, I don't see why you shouldn't let the second divider wait for the first pair of players to finish play. I imagine Steffan's preference to play this three-player places him among the majority of San Marco players. But I agree with Christopher that I prefer to play with four. The fact that the second chooser is at a disadvantage is one factor, although we use a variant that distributes this factor evenly among the players, rather than having it be decided by chance. But for me, the bigger issue is that I find dividing for two players much more enjoyable than dividing for three. It's much easier to get into your opponent's head when splitting into two piles, and predicting the sort of cards he'd want or want to avoid can be very rewarding (both intellectually and in helping you win). It still plays well with three, and since good three-players are harder to find, often gets played that way, but I really prefer to play with four players. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 8 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com