Why bridge fails

What makes a game fun? Steven Johnson and commenters at BoingBoing offered up a lot of great opinions on that question a couple of weeks ago. Different people have different notions of fun, of course.

I like a game that involves a balance of social interaction and some strategy or puzzle to figure out. That’s why I often don’t want to learn a new complicated game: having to focus on learning new rules and figuring out a strategy cuts too deeply into the social interaction. The conversation and problem-solving can be tied together in a cooperative way as in Pandemic, or tied together in a competitive way as in the trading in Settlers, or disconnected as in pretty much any familiar game that doesn’t require constant attention. Any of those options work well for me.

Bridge may seem like it involves social interaction. Players work in teams, play strategy is described as involving communication between hands, and bidding is a stylized conversation. But none of that is really social interaction. The social interaction while playing bridge happens when the game is more in the background, when players can chat about other things, yet I’ve rarely found a bridge group that can sufficiently shift the game to the background. Getting comfortable with bidding conventions can take a long time, and even play strategy often requires a level of focus that isn’t amenable to free conversation if you’re concerned about making mistakes. Bridge contains interesting puzzles and frustrations for perfectionists, and I know a lot of perfectionists. And because bridge is a partnership game, there’s the added fear of disappointing a partner. This leads to a pretty tight focus on the puzzle-solving of bridge. At its best, even though both bidding and play involve cooperative puzzle-solving with your partner, true social interaction is not designed into bridge. If you want social interaction to be part of the game, you need to learn bridge well enough to not focus on it (and have everyone else at the table also willing to not focus on it).

Games back in the day

BibliOdyssey has posted a lovely collection of game boards from the past 500 years. I’m particularly taken with this round board of music notation:

Fed on the money

People defaulting on mortgages is an effect, not a cause. The major economic problem (other than sheer panic) is that banks are sitting on their hands, refusing to lend money. The bailout bill is a triumph of trickle-down theory: the premise is that if we give the banks enough money, they’ll feel comfortable lending money again. After all, isn’t that what banks do with money? 20 years ago that would be good reasoning, but today banks use their money to speculate in unregulated markets with no leverage controls. Giving the banks more money is just giving a fresh stake to someone with a gambling addiction living in a suite in Vegas and hoping that they’ll go pay their rent back in Poughkeepsie like they used to.

So the bailout bill didn’t actually reassure the stock market. The Fed announced plans today to enter the commercial paper market, meaning we the people will start doing direct short-term lending to large businesses. With Fannie and Freddie nationalized, we are already lending to homeowners. If 10% of the bailout bill had been steered to the SBA, we could have quadrupled our lending to small businesses. Keep the change—be the liquidity you wish to see in the world.

Eureka

Lisa and I were delighted yesterday to find a games and puzzles store called Eureka Puzzles. The store is in Coolidge Corner in Brookline, and they have quite an impressive selection. It was difficult to choose only a few new toys.

After a blissful 90 minutes in the store, we had dinner at Rani Indian Bistro a couple of doors down from Eureka. Wow. It’s great to find an Indian restaurant that has some different dishes on the menu in addition to the standard choices. We tried the cardamom-spiced chicken and the salmon with omum seeds, two tandoori-roasted dishes, and both were excellent. And the gajjar ka halwa—a custard-like dessert made of carrots, milk, butter, cardamom, and nutmeg, garnished with chopped pistachios—had me merrily eating carrots. That’s an accomplishment.

Gravely disappointed

The thing is, it hasn’t felt like the same team since week 9. The first 8 games, we won by 17 points or more every week. It was a joyful romp. I knew that I had never seen such a dominant football team, and never would again. And while we ended the season without a loss, 4 of the 8 games in the second half of the season were won by 3 or 4 points. There were still some lopsided games (including a masterful performance against Pittsburgh), but it was clear that 19-0 was hardly inevitable. It could happen, and with even a very small change or two last night it might have, but that impossible destiny would have to be earned and was not entirely in our hands.

I’m baffled and traumatized. I was a Buffalo fan for the four years they were my local team, and all four years they went to the Super Bowl and lost. Then I moved to New England and watched the Patriots lose the Super Bowl. I should find this all familiar emotional territory. But those teams weren’t anything like this team, and those seasons weren’t anything like this season.

Partly I knew that this may be my final season watching football, and it would have been an extraordinary conclusion to a well-nursed habit. After many years watching football alone or with strangers, I’ve had a wonderful companion for watching games with since the 2000 season. And I could not ask for a better team during that time or any time than the New England Patriots. They have had many moments of brilliant play and brilliant coaching, enduring stretches of proving the value of teamwork and hard work and follow-through, and a consistent image of caring about each other and caring about good sportsmanship. And they have had an amazing run, which has no reason to end now. The Giants won the Super Bowl, and they have earned the trophy and the parade. But if any year will see the losing team in the Super Bowl remembered better than the winning team, this was such a year.

Sic transit gloria mundi. This was such a season.

Monopoly: The Subprime Edition

Rule adaptations to traditional Monopoly:

1. All property prices are doubled.

2. When you buy a property, instead of paying for the property outright, you can pay 1/4 the purchase amount each of your next five turns (but not this turn). The banker must keep track of your upcoming payments on a separate piece of paper, and check each payment off when you make it. Payments are due before your roll.

3. If you do not make a payment on a property, the property is returned to the bank.

4. When a player pays rent on a property that is not yet fully paid for, half the rent goes to the bank.

5. If you roll doubles, all upcoming payments that the banker is tracking for you are doubled.