Card games, as do most games played with imperfect information, carry a certain charm or appeal among those who play them. It’s almost as through the roll of the dice or the turn of a card we want to believe that we can somehow control the unknown and the uncontrollable.
In truth I figure that most games grow out from the chaotic seed of variance or chance, and therein lies the reason for our need to play them. For some games this element of apparent unpredictability is extremely evident, while for others you must delve deeper.
Intriguingly and definitely not all that surprising in my opinion, games were once seen as links to understanding the will of the Gods. Through chance and games which embraced chance, ancient peoples believed they could attune themselves to the will of their deities.
Nowadays I am sure that no one plays poker or gin rummy to get in touch with their God, but you still find a lot of superstition and false ideas about chance among those who play these games. You will find people who still believe that you can have such a thing as a lucky seat, a lucky deck, or maybe an unlikely combination of lucky cards. They also believe that for instance, since a certain number has not come out yet, that it is somehow due.
You get crazy talk like “I know it might sound crazy but I just had to play those two cards!” or “I had to play that last spin/roll because my number was just due to come out!”.
Obviously this is all nonsense, variance does not have a mind of sorts, and it owes nothing to nobody . When a stream of events is zoomed upon, such that only a finite part can be perceived, it's easy to fall victim to false impressions that might lead one to believe that the logical progression of things has been put on hold.
This is what then leads some players to chase their losses in the false hope that a win is due. In truth, if a certain combination of circumstances is not favourable, then it is useless butting your head obstinately in the hope of getting there, you will only end up breaking your head. Maybe it's simply that you are playing at a level that is too high for you, or just that you are not really feeling 100%. Whatever the reason, it only seldom has got to do anything with what is popularly understood by "luck".
Let me share a personal experience from the game of Gin Rummy. I love playing Gin Rummy, in particular the "knock" variation. There are days when I am all there, keeping track of all the cards dealt or discarded and when the right cards fall, I am quick to respond with just the right move. On those days I win hand after hand. Then there are those days were I am tired, when I play out of boredom or simply to avert my attention from some other brooding thoughts. On those days I just don't follow up on the discards too well, I miss on a number of good opportunities and inexorably I lose hand after hand.
It would be convenient to blame it all on some fictitious personification of luck, but I would be fooling only myself. You cannot control variance but it is foolish to believe that you cannot use skill to turn apparently random outcomes into favourable opportunities. This is in fact the real skill when it comes to games of imperfect information. By repeatedly focusing one’s thoughts on the dynamics of a particular game, it is possible to learn to perceive patterns where others will fail to see them.
This is not unlike a surfer waiting for the right wave in order to perform his favourite surfing manoeuvre. There would be myriad diverse waves racing towards the shore, but only one coupled with a surfer’s skill will result in an outstanding performance. It is also important to realise that even the best surfer or athlete or card player, achieve excellence by learning from their many failures not by winning. Indeed winning consistently comes much later.
This is not unlike a surfer waiting for the right wave in order to perform his favourite surfing manoeuvre. There would be myriad diverse waves racing towards the shore, but only one coupled with a surfer’s skill will result in an outstanding performance. It is also important to realise that even the best surfer or athlete or card player, achieve excellence by learning from their many failures not by winning. Indeed winning consistently comes much later.
In my opinion, our tendency to explain seemingly uncontrollable or unquantifiable phenomena as a consequence to a quasi-sentient manifestation of luck, lies in our inability to pursue thoughts on a far larger scale than would be necessary on a day to day basis. To be fair, our daily lives seldom require us to look that far into the future, or that deeply into things. Our behaviours are normally governed by short-term predictions based on past experience. For this reason, chains of events that show a tendency to normalise over large numbers of iterations would appear incomprehensible and erratic if seen in finite segments over a restricted number of cycles.
It is not easy to look beyond the immediate, the here and now, if I am losing during a session of poker or maybe at a backgammon table, I find it hard to think in terms of the big picture, the long term projection. Yet this is what distinguishes the pros from the amateurs. The professional knows patience because he can and will see events as making part of a bigger scenario. Using backgammon as our example, he will understand that over time, the number of doubles he or his opponent rolls will tend to even out, not because it is expected but rather because of a statistical probability that it will be so.
Yet how can a player, who has been at a gaming table for some time, learn to accept what he might consider lofty thoughts of a higher order, especially when he happens to be losing? Well maybe it would do that player a lot of good, if he just stood up and walked away. Indeed by doing so he might give himself time to think about what he might have been doing wrong, or alternatively to appreciate that he is playing well but that circumstances have not been favourable. If he rationally dissects his play he might also learn new ways to tackle the game, and more importantly he might learn new ways to control his own psychological state when faced with a string of losses.
This is definitely a topic that cannot be tackled in just one blog, so I expect to return to this subject some time soon. Until then I would really appreciate any materials you might want to share. You can send via email at your own discretion and rest assured I will go through all you suggestions, ideas and recommendations.
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