Monday, August 30, 2004

Straight to the Heart of Things

Hearts is not entirely a game of luck.  Fate, too, plays a hand.  And skill?  Skill is optional.  I should know, because I’m an expert.

Barry and Dave and Jon wanted to play and I wasn’t going to be the buzzkill.  I didn’t know the game, though, so they gave me a crash course and promised not to take undue advantage of me.  They rattled off the basic rules and I tried to absorb as many of them as I could.  The game involves everybody trying to win hands against each other and to avoid getting stuck with hearts - each one costs you a point in the end, and high score loses - just like golf.  Except with cards, and indoors.  Yeah, I didn’t get it at first either.

We started playing and I steeled myself against taking the competition very seriously, because I was clearly in way over my head with three of the smartest people I knew, all experienced players.... I lost the first hand, sucked up a heart.  And on the second hand, another.  Before I knew it I was pulling down hearts left and right and it looked suicidal.  It was.  I’d decided to play this little one-off game to its absolute hilt, if not beyond.  I was out to shoot the moon. 

This was one of those crazy desperate moves I sometimes make when absolutely nothing is riding on the results.  If any blowback could reasonably be anticipated, I’m typically risk-adverse.  But if it really couldn’t matter less what I do, I can be pretty aggressive with my doom.  I’ll push that goddamn button and see what happens.  It doesn’t have to suck.

That was my calm, rational decisionmaking process as I started playing to lose.  “Shooting the moon” meant somehow managing to lose every hand, to load up with every single heart, to acquire every possible point in the game.  If you do that, you win.  The scoring philosophy goes from golf to bowling - bigger is better. 

It took the boys a few hands to figure me out and then they started right in cooperating to stop me.  I don’t remember their weak little machinations; all I recall is that they failed and failed miserably.  I had the key cards and played them with Olympian wisdom.  My strategy was ruthless and instinctual.  At the end I had cleaned out every single heart and acquired them all as my own.  I had parried and feinted; I had looted and pillaged. I had literally cut out their hearts - a veritable Dr. DeBakey of cards.  I had shot the moon - a feat that had been explained to me before the game as so improbable an outcome as to render the strategy almost unworthy of serious discussion.

After completing this unlikely victory my friends were eager to play again and make up for the humiliation of losing so spectacularly to a rookie - nay, a mere novice, even.  I declined.  I’d risked it all to win that first game.  It was clear to me that I’d used up whatever quantum of heart karma I’d started with.  That victory would have to last me a lifetime.  I knew in my bones I didn’t have another one in me and I wasn’t going to play to lose.  Sometimes winners quit.