We were a game-playing family. Not just on holidays, but almost anytime we got together. Board games, card games, dominoes, all sorts of games. When I was the youngest in the family, I think I started playing as soon as I could hold my share of Old Maid cards in my hand.
I progressed to Go Fish, which has a little bit of strategy, before going on to spades, hearts, and the domino games that had even more. Daddy taught me how to play and how to arrange my hand. He didn’t have to teach me to be competitive, as I had gotten that from him at birth.
But we weren’t the only ones with a competitive nature. My sister Linda was, too, and so was Aunt Mozelle, who was Mother’s older sister. Mother wasn’t very competitive in this regard. If a game was particularly close and those of us playing were getting particularly serious about it, Mother would be likely to exclaim, “Good Lord, it’s only a game.”
She told me that she spoke to Daddy when I was very young, saying he should let me win. His reply was to the point. “He’ll win when he learns how to play.” And so I did. I knew when I won that no one had given it to me, and I think Daddy didn’t mind losing to me quite as much as he did to the others. Especially Mother, who was not at all gracious when she beat Daddy in a game, as it meant so little to her and so much to him.
Even today, I don’t much care for these jacked-up computer games, preferring to play spades and hearts at the same website I have for decades now. Over time, I’ve come to realize that playing cards is a metaphor for life itself.
Take hearts, for example. Probably most of you know how it’s played, avoiding catching tricks with hearts in them, and particularly avoiding the Queen of Spades. The game is over when someone breaks 100, and lowman wins.
The game begins with the dealing of the cards, and what you get is completely by luck. If may be a good hand, and mediocre one, or totally lousy. You have no power over the hand you are dealt. Then, you can pass cards to improve your hand, over which you have complete control. But there are incoming cards over which you have no control.
So you begin to play the hand, with whatever strategy you can muster to do as well as you can. But the other three players are using their own strategies, which may conflict with yours. You do the best you can, making a decision to improve your chances when you can, and sometimes being forced to play a card that you’d rather not play. Sounds a whole lot like life to me.
Years ago on the website, players would sometimes acknowledge that they were on a losing streak. They wouldn’t usually say whether it was bad luck or bad playing, just that they were losing. But recently, I’ve noticed that some players will accuse the site of having an algorithm—we now know about algorithms, don’t we?—that is causing their losing streak. Maybe that’s true, I wouldn’t know. But whatever it is, they’re blaming something external because it simply can’t be their own fault. Sound like anybody you know?
Now, this website where I play has a rating system, and it goes something like this for hearts. If you win, you’ll get about 10 ratings points. If you come in second, you’ll get maybe 3 points. If you land in third, you’ll lose those 3 points. If you’re the one who busts 100, you lose your 10 points to the winner. Get it?
That system drives behavior, too. If it’s a close game, everyone targets the lowman. But if it’s not, something interesting happens. When lowman is so low that the player is almost sure to win, the other three are more likely to target each other to try to finish in second. You don’t win, but you at least get your three points.
So while these three are jockeying with each other, what do you suppose lowman is doing? If you say targeting whoever’s closest to breaking 100, you would be right. Whatever lowman’s strategy was to begin with, and regardless of how much luck favored that strategy along the way, going after the weakest link is the best way to break the chain and win the game. Sound familiar?
Like the songwriter said, “Life’s a game, but who can play it all alone?” I suppose it’s really all in the cards after all.
