Now, I want to preface this rant by assuring you that when my oldest daughter was a child, I “threw” heaven knows how many games of Candyland, Go Fish and Chutes and Ladders so that the impressionable young child would win, boosting her confidence.

I tell you this because for the last 18 years she has repaid my parental largess by whipping me dozens and dozens of consecutive games in a card game called Dutch Blitz.

It’s an outwardly simple game for up to four people somewhat similar to double Solitaire, Spit, Pounce and several other card games. It takes hand-eye coordination and the ability to multitask.

It’s not that I’m bad, it’s just that she’s too good for her own good.

She knows I have a competitive streak and she pushes my buttons by trash-talking and chest thumping when she wins. Explains why she’s a psychologist.

Whenever we get together, we whip out a deck with those goofy sketches of wooden buckets, buggies, water pumps and plows and I pony up for a whupping.

“I associate Dutch Blitz with getting to see your worst temper tantrums,” laughs Allison when I ask her about our one-sided relationship with the game.

“You almost never lose your cool but I know if we play Dutch Blitz you’re going to get mad. That makes me happy.”

Glad it makes somebody happy.

But it’s true. Dutch Blitz has a strong following among church groups and missionaries. But it’s a most unholy setting when daughter yells “Blitz” for the umpteenth time and wins the hand.

I say bad words. I yell and I accuse my first-born of cheating. Sometimes, I even demand to shuffle her cards. It’s quite pathetic, actually.

I’m not alone, however. Melissa, alias BlitzBabe on a Dutch Blitz Internet forum I visited, describes the chaos when she and her friends play: “tables shake, screaming happens, accusations of ‘hovering’ over certain piles, people’s hands get hurt — you know, the regular Dutch Blitz stuff.”

Melissa, from Regina, Saskatchewan, where the game is apparently a fixture, says her spouse refuses to play with her. So do some of the eight families she bought Dutch Blitz decks for one Christmas.

A little background: Almost 50 years ago, a German immigrant and ophthalmologist from Newtown fashioned a card game to teach his children colors and rudimentary numbers. Friends told him he was really on to something and urged him to try selling the game.

So Werner Ernst Mueller got an artist friend to develop some Pennsylvania Dutch images on the cards. Marketing didn’t work out at first. Then, Frank Burke from Flourtown, Montgomery County, bought the rights.

Burke would head off to Lancaster County and other nearby locales to pedal the game from the trunk of his car.

Things went slowly until a distributor for Christian book stores took a deck with him on a trip to Hawaii. It rained the whole time but the man came back a Dutch Blitz addict. The game has been a fixture in Provident Bookstores and others ever since.

Now, the Internet has given Dutch Blitz a cult following.

In a rating of the best card games of all time, the BoardGameGeek Web site ranks Dutch Blitz 23rd, ahead of Canasta and behind Rook.

“It’s just a fun game,” says Mary Fisher, a Dutch Blitz Game Co. representative who spends a lot of her time sending out free cards to people who are frantic because they have worn theirs out.

She had just sent out some free decks to a missionary who wanted to introduce the game to an orphanage in Russia.

My daughter is trying to find a Dutch Blitz tournament somewhere to see if she’s really as good as she thinks she is.

“I feel like a champion when I play,” she confides. “I get all charged up and if I just concentrate enough I can beat anybody.”

Fisher thinks one reason for the game’s enduring popularity is that it’s a game where kids can beat their parents.

Yeah, well, Allison, you’ve had your empowerment since you were 10. Now, get over it and let your old man win a few games before he heads to the nursing home.

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The Voices column is written by a rotating team of New Era staffers. It appears Mondays.

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