What’s Called a “Game”
Originally conceived as brief remarks on tabletop games in general, a major revision 29 December 2022 reduced the scope to a rant on classical games like Chess and Poker. Remarks may include review, rules analysis, strategy, and cultural reflection.
Dialogue Between My Cousin and Brother
There’s definitely a barrier to enjoyment for sure. But I think there are some quick defaults to follow with the game that can move you from total horrible novice to actively strategizing and enjoying it. I think that’s one of the few enjoyable “head to head” app developments I’ve seen that improve everyday playing for people since it automatically pairs you with similar skill set players.
I guess my problem with it is that it’s not a game. I mean god tier playing is the realm of savants who are memorizing thousands of game board layouts and strategies from manuals. In that sense, it seems to reward the mentally ill.
But what I’m looking for in a game is making tough decisions (1). Chess is about memorization and progressively moving down on the dyslexia scale. All this stuff about being crafty and tricky or inspired is pretty minimal as compared with losing simply because you failed to compute, or don’t have the patience to stare at the board and think of every possible outcome. But often whoever you’re playing with will not have a problem doing that, though, and will make you sit there for fifteen minutes while they think.
In an apocalyptic scenario where I couldn’t get a hold of a deck of cards, I’d be happy with a travel chess set. I’m also willing to play if whoever wants to play is willing to do it on a clock — one or two minute turns. But sitting across from some dude for an hour whose been using his phone to teach him how to play so he can prove that his dick is bigger than mine is pretty much intolerable.
That makes it a great high school sport though and for those that are really good, worth pursuing after that. But it’s also like some odd form of wrestling with bizarre rules — Sumo or Greco-Roman. These styles are bound by a tradition and the much more sporty, variable freestyle form of the modern Olympics is going to have way more surprises, upsets, and inspired moments. It also encourages people from all traditions to play.
My play style in Magic: The Gathering is based on giving a reasonable amount of thought to computation, but only until I don’t feel like doing it anymore. Then it’s time for ACTION. Come what may. You never know what the other person has in their hand or what they’ll play next to counter your perfectly computed move.
Right. And it’s less punishing. You can go on intuition sometimes and do great, but it won’t lead to a win every time. Neither will methodical strategy. Modern games are more like “art” in the Kantian sense — the mind is at play — whereas Chess and to a much lesser extent Poker are work.
At this moment, though, poker still has upsets. There’s a guy that won the Las Vegas Open I think last year who didn’t play “game theory optimal”. People say he’s psychic — either capable of knowing your cards or inserting ideas into your head about the cards in his hand (2).
- Grant from The Player’s Aid YouTube channel
- The Player’s Aid Blog
- Lex Friedman and Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk
Remarks
It’s easy to have thoughts about a simple game as well as reiterate wisdom from others, of which there is a great deal because Chess is so famous and so old. The rules are simple. For this, the strategy is complex. We consider it a game of pure strategy and that’s why it is not fun. You rarely encounter someone who doesn’t have more or less experience playing than you. So if the former, you get rocked and if the latter, you rock them. Moreover, even if you’re good, you fall out of practice quite easily.
Games teach. Sports test. Chess is a sport because the only thing you ever learn when playing Chess is about Chess. Yes, there are distant abstract lessons about warfare and strategy, like, if you study it all the time you’ll devise better strategy than your opponent and win. The other thing you might learn (when you’re studying how to defeat your opponent) is the value of working hard. I already learned about that when I wrestled in high school, but alas, preferred to smoke and drink.
I have learned some things about Chess, though.
- Every time you’re aggressive and force your opponent to make choices, they lose a turn. But am I just stalling?
- Another is that controlling the center may be advantageous. Why? The center of an object has a route to it’s extremities, but each extremity must pass through the center to get to the opposite extremity without crossing vast distances. In the case of some game boards, the extremities are peninsular, so there’s no way but the center way. In other words, centrality offers a greater amount of choices. Choices, or possibilities, are another way of saying “power”.
- The significant game mechanic is geometric advantage. That is, power is determined by position. Obtaining geometric advantage involves assessing a black and white board with black and white pieces, which look the same, but are actually different. No I’ll wait — identify every single piece and every single possibility before making your move. I’ll be on the noose in the garage.
Some consider Chess a “game” because it’s a competition governed by rules (1). It is… a certain subcategory of game called a “sport”.
- Computers are good at Chess, but I think probably because games have rules, and rules are a computational framework — a program. Moreover, the advent of computers gives credibility to the idea that the Biblical notion of creativity, rather than the Greek notion of intelligence, is really what distinguishes humans from other animals and also human artifice. We may not able to beat a computers, but we did create computers. See Lex Friedman and Noam Brown: AI Vs Humans in Poker and Games of Strategic Negotiation for an exploration of how AI handles games with looser computational frameworks.
Poker
Poker is often considered in opposition to Chess. A “game of chance” it’s called. But philosophers take the word “chance” to mean different things, and this one’s got both. First, your advantage is determined by a random selection of cards. This is real chance, or ontological possibility. The selection is not governed by any rules, but an organic process that can only be controlled if the dealer is cheating. On the other hand, you’re playing against an opponent who was also subject to indifferent Fate. You play as if they could have any cards you don’t have, using their bets and checks as some clue as to what’s going on. I consider it in some distant way the ancestor of the fog of war mechanic apparent in many wargames since Stratego. But your opponent doesn’t have just any cards — they were dealt theirs at the beginning of the game as you were. But for slight of hand or alchemy, the cards did not change once the opponent received them. Besides, in both those cases, your opponent would be cheating.
