Luck of the Draw

Friday, 13th. Playing cards is a game of luck. It’s easier to curse the draw than to play the hand that’s dealt.

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First, let’s be clear on one thing…I’m no authority on games of chance. Not that I don’t believe playing cards is an entertaining pursuit for wiling away the time. But most of us are long past the days of strip poker where keeping score actually meant something.

Keeping score cuts both ways…good and bad. Scores are kept on everything, from cards to spousal compliance. My score has been written more than once on the house calendars. The last one read, “What was I thinking?” It was written next to a crude sketch of a skull and cross-bones.

My wife and friends are addicted to duplicate bridge. They get high for hours discussing conventions, bids, no-trumps and sartorial selections. Such arcana breed boredom. But to their credit, their discourses are decorous, unlike boastful golfers with beer breath.

Bridge players are like Bobby Fischer, the iconic genius chess player who liked to play a computer. He said he remembered every play he ever made, in every game he ever played. He often sat on park benches, talking to himself and drooling. He died at 64. Bridge players should take this to heart.

Ok, I hear the chorus tuning up, refuting the ‘waste-of-time’ refrain. It’s a cerebral game, they preach, brain food, fosters social relationships. Perhaps, but it hardly trumps watching presidential debates, which affords lunacy a public podium and affirms the Netflix drama, House of Cards.

I’m not qualified to argue with the bridge lobby. I’ve only tried the game once. The experience reminds me of that infamous day when I was three years old and stuck in the back seat of a car with my grandparents. I was forced to ‘hold it’ for four hours. For some things, once is enough.

There’s more to my aversion to cards. Frankly, luck seems too improbable to calculate with any degree of certainty. I never trusted it. It requires risk. I flunked statistical analysis in college. Playing poker all night with a bunch of fraternity-house drunks had no future. Sorority houses offered superior options with better odds.

Risk has its downside. An innate element of euphoria is attached to it, the seductive whisper of Satan, “I dare you!” Endorphins surge into the brain’s mental receptors and nothing’s off limits. Sorta like the paroxysm that adrenaline produces when getting caught with your pants down in the wrong place. Speaking vicariously, of course.

My first recollection of cards was Old Maid. A fun game, no score kept. The sole purpose for the hours spent at the kitchen table was to avoid being left holding the Old Maid. According to reality TV, it seems a lot of people played this game. Many got left ‘holding the bag,’ so to speak. Self-fulfilling prophesies are a highly probable algorithm.

I admit to having played Solitaire. I had my reasons. While assessing a rapidly declining cognitive state, I kept no score. I can truthfully say I never lost. But even if I had, private failure is preferable to public ridicule. I recommend it for those of low self-esteem. Cheap therapy.

Once I played ‘Liar’s Poker’ at Harrison’s, a pub on Peachtree Road. A horrid mistake. A $10 ante. The pot swelled. Dollars were shuffled. We would soon bet the serial numbers on the bill we’d been dealt. Winner takes all. Nobody leaves until the dealin’s done. But there was alcohol involved, which often sends things sideways.

Before the game begins I announce, “Now boys, one game for me. Wife says be home. OK?” They shrug in difference.

“Deal,” someone shouts. The bluffs begin. I get lucky, seize the loot and sprint to the parking lot, chased by nine drunken gamblers. Look, the risk of bodily harm is never worth a measly $100 pot.

Life deals its own cards. Some get aces, others get deuces. But we all have a choice in how we play the hand.

Kenny Rogers sums it up in song, “You got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run.”

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Life is a gamble with incredible odds; if it were a bet, would we take it? But we had no choice. So, ante up, see another card. And I dare you to raise the bet.


Bud Hearn
November 13, 2015