Five stacks of high society...

There are certain immutable constants in the universe, such as all guys love the movie Rounders and playing cards. I just got back home from Sam's place... the old card playing posse of myself, Sam, Mel, and Chris got together to play Big 2 AKA 13 for money. Being that we're all poor, it wasn't exactly big money, but still a lot of fun. We played 10 cents a card, winner take all with a usual double, triple, and quadruple scoring system:

13 cards = quadruple = max -52
12 - 10 cards = triple = max -36
9 - 8 cards = double = max -18

So the most you could theoretically lose on a hand is $5, while the most you could win from one hand is $15. Like I said, we're all poor. I don't think I was too down to go play late at night (we didn't start until around 10ish) after having worked during the day, and hearing nothing from Chris during the whole day even after he said he'd call/ e-mail me at work... didn't get the call until well until almost last minute, around 7ish.

But since we aren't able to get together as much as we used to, I made an effort to get out there. We ended up playing for about 4 hours.

I think at one point I was in the hole about over $20, but by a combination of stubborn-ness, skill, and luck, I whittled it down to just owing $3.75. Not bad at all. Poor Mel was stuck with the weight of some early bad hands, so he ended up paying around $20.

On the other end, Chris at one point was sitting on a pot of $30, mostly on account of some obnoxious luck in holding 2s and face cards, but by the end off the night, it had been whittled down to I think around $10. Sam is an instinctively good cardplayer who does well most nights - our own Beacon Hill rounder. I think the zenith of his pot was around $20, but he ended up winning around $15.

I guess the nice thing about cards is even if your luck is crappy, there's always chance, no matter how small, of being able to play it out. Being able to read people / anticipate how they play given a certain set of circumstances is a pretty big factor too - certain strategies mark people's playing style, like playing a high 2 early to be able to dump weight like a straight or an ugly flush.

But as I've lamented many times before, the game of life rarely plays out as cleanly. Some people catch streak of bad luck / bad circumstances, and no matter how hard they work to overcome them, they're still in the hole. "Skill" at playing life always yields to divine sovereignty, for better or worst in our dim human perspective.

Wow, I can't believe the weekend is already here.
posted by G at 3:09 AM   |

in?scrip?tion (n-skrip-shun)n.
1. The act or an instance of inscribing.
2. Something, such as the wording on a coin, medal, monument, or seal, that is inscribed.
3. A short, signed message in a book or on a photograph given as a gift.
4. The usually informal dedication of an artistic work.
5. Jeremiah 31:33