February 03, 2021

Horse 2806 - The 7 of Bananas

It must be said that I really like playing games. Sport, field games, board games: I just love games. Games have obvious objectives and obvious sets of rules; which together make it obvious when you win. They also create a rare environment where within the confines of the game at least, perfection is possible. The rest of the world is far from perfect and together we've made a pretty good job of messing it up royally but inside a game, unless the game is so badly designed that it doesn't work, then all of our messing up simply disappears within the confines of the game. 

The thing about games and models generally, is that if you strip things down to the fewest number of components, then what you end up with is a truth which is unobscured. 

Possibly the purest of all games are card games because they resolve to logic and chance. Games like football which have very few components resolve to physical agility and ability but card games and games like chess, only have rules and logic to define them. They are like playing football but only having the laws of the game. 

Contained within the material of card games are a microcosm of societal prejudices. Those things are also worth questioning and some games like Rook and Uno even go so far as to strip away those societal prejudices and cultural overlay so that all that you get are colours and numbers.

In card games where the rank of the cards is equal (think of games like Rummy or Uno), then the rank of the cards serves only as a directional element; for instance, there is no inherent reason why a King is better than 4 in a game of Rummy. However in trick taking card games such as Bridge or 500, or games like Poker where the rank of the cards is highly important, then it follows that the more powerful cards are more highly sought, except perhaps in a hand like Misère in 500 where the order is reversed.

In a standard deck of playing cards there are 13 ranks and depending on what the game is, the power of those ranks is different and even within the confines of some card games, that might also be subject to change.

In Bridge the ranks of the cards run from A-2. In 500, they also rank from A-2 except in the suit of trumps where the Joker outranks all, then the two Bowers, then A-2 (minus the Jack of trumps which has become the Right Bower). 

I personally think that this is crazy-bananas-absurd. For a start, I do not know why an Ace outranks a King in most circumstances and I find it even more crazy-bananas-absurd that in 500, the ranks of the cards go Joker, +Jack, -Jack, Ace, and then King. What sort of poor kingdom is it where the King is only the fifth most important person? I am prepared to accept that an Ace might be that suit's flag or god, wherein even the King realises that he is subject to the laws of the land but when you have Bowers rising up and taking charge and following after some Joker whose only qualification is that he's handing out promises like candy, then you really do not live in a very good country. In fact, you live in a country led by a clown; where the whole world is afraid of you and thinks that you are a crazy-bananas-absurd joke which isn't even funny.

In all of these card games where rank is important, the teeming majority of cards who are reduced to nothing more than being a number, are for the most part, unloved. In a K-A order, the 7 is bang in the middle as the 7th most powerful card. In a A-2 order, it is reduced to being the 8th most powerful card. In a 500 hand where trumps have been called, it gets reduced even further down the order of power to being only the 11th most important card. The poor 7 is nothing more than a number which is called upon in a coalition of the weak to bolster the power of the clown in charge.

Almost never does the 7 take a trick and when it does, it is because everything above it has already done so. Roughly only a quarter of the time is it part of the coalition in charge and the clown at the very top only ever seems to care when there is a bidding war and an election to find out who will be the special ones.

I want to stand up for the 7. I want to make it throw off its suit and adopt the colours which truly reflects reality. In a crazy-bananas-absurd system which is beyond a joke, the various Kings, Queens, Aces and Jacks who are always running the show, could in theory be overthrown at an instant if the ones who are only ever reduced to being a number, all banded together. 36 of 53 is 67%; which is easily more than a majority. The 7 of Bananas knows that the entire game is rigged against it and refuses to wear the colours of the red/black divide which has plagued these games for too long.

Of course that does immediately present the problem that if everything is bananas, then anarchy reigns and the whole game is ruined. Maybe if the cards were to throw off their suits and ranks then they'd be happier but as Rook and Uno prove, even after that has happened, there are still things that nobody wants to be on the end of and there are cards of black suits with the power of immense punishment.

Maybe that's the underlying lesson that card games should teach us. It doesn't matter what the rules of the game actually are, there is an implication that they will be enforced and by someone who has the ability to exact that force. That's kind of why the world is messed up. Everyone wants a say in how the rules are written but it mostly falls to whomever can muster the most force. Objectively, that makes for a worse game.

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