Someday I’ll explain why, a decade or so ago, I resolved never to learn another brand-new board or card game – indeed, why I came to loathe the very idea of new games.
Tonight’s post is about why despite (or perhaps because of) this loathing, I bought
The New Complete Hoyle, Revised (1991) at Goodwill.
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The book’s subtitle is: “The Authoritative Guide to the Official Rules of All Popular Games of Skill and Chance.”
All popular games. Of skill
and chance.
Is this a literally true description of the book? No.
Was it true in 1991? No. There were other popular games than those in
Hoyle.
The pretense of officiality also goes too far. See, for example, this admission:
The rules of Go differ somewhat in China, Korea, and Japan. Unfortunately they have not been codified even in Japan, where, in 1928, a championship tournament was interrupted and suspended for a month by a dispute over rules. A commission appointed to clarify the Japanese rules proposed a code in 1933, but it has not been generally adopted.
One might deplore the book’s exaggeration. On the other hand, one might admire its determination to establish a canon of games.
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Which brings me to what canonization is for.
Walk down any Walmart games aisle, or visit a specialty shop: new games proliferate like Hydra’s heads. This, at best, is a distraction from the sustained pursuit of excellence. At worst, it’s postmodern absurdity.
One is tempted to commit one of two opposing mistakes. The first is to renounce all gaming. This is the Charybdis of asceticism. The second is to try to keep up with new gaming. This is the Scylla of … well, probably not asceticism’s starkest opposites, wantonness and incontinence. It’s more like an arms race. Or like keeping up with the Joneses.
The sensible middle course is to choose just a few games and to stick with them. Here a canon of games is invaluable. It’s less good to practice something with no stock of wisdom built up around it. (I’m sure Alasdair MacIntyre would agree.)
Adhering to the canon ensures that one is communing, not only with today’s gamers, but also with those of the past, e.g. the Japanese who debated the rules of Go in 1928.
Hoyle is steeped in history, or aspires to be.
(Indeed, its stated pedigree is almost blasphemous:
The only truly immortal being on record is an Englishman named Edmond Hoyle, who was born in 1672 and buried in 1769 but who has never really died.
I imagine my pious grandfather, who refused to play cards, disapproving.)
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Suppose that one is nauseated by the uselessness of gaming and decides that total abstention is, after all, the way to go.
Hoyle still is invaluable. What better tool is there for understanding scenes of gaming in old books? I’ve never actually played bridge, but (in some moods) my favorite Christie novel is
Cards on the Table. Identifying the murderer in that book depends on knowing about bridge. Then there are the James Bond novels (
Casino Royale,
Goldfinger … ). Even Austen’s and Pepys’s people are card fiends. A confirmed teetotaller probably should know a little about boozing, if only for literature’s sake.