Counter strike
October 20th 2006 09:12
Trying to communicate some non-teamwork pleasures of Counter Strike...
1. Craps is just rolling dice, and only retards sit around rolling dice all day. The obvious answer as to what makes it attractive is Money, and the apparent ease of making money. But money is symbolic as well as pragmatic: you don’t go into the game cold, it’s not just about calculating the probabilities and making a buck: you go in with emotional investments. There’s a huge buzz factor involved. You feel better about yourself when you’re on a roll; there’s an orgasmic kick in winning a high stakes game; and, once in a million, there’s nothing better than when you, the underdog, break the house. Finally the gods are smiling on you, maybe your whole life is going to take a turn for the better. The crowd is cheering you on, your luck becomes something you’re praised for, there’s a sense of power and unstoppability, and all you’re doing is rolling dice.
2. The difference between craps and poker is that you’re playing against people, not Lady Luck or the house, and there’s distinct elements of skill and cunning involved. When you get a good hand or a bad hand, you have to control yourself. When you win, the rush can often partly come from the fact that you've genuinely proved to yourself, and to others around you, that you are skillful, you have bluffed properly or read the tells properly. Moreover, the rush partly comes from beating everyone else: part of what you want to do is send the other person into utter, bleak despair {1}. Your triumph is heightened by the extent of their defeat: imagine what it’s like to beat someone’s good hand with nothing more than a pair or a high card.
3. Poker has the inexhaustible complexities of human behaviour, but chess has trying to calculate ten moves ahead and keep track of different lines of play (attractiveness of the mental challenge -- wrestling with logical strength). In poker you’ve got elements of outsmarting the other person, predicting what they’ll do, tricking them, and these are present to the same or greater extent, but in different ways, in chess.
4. Golf, like tennis, involves the same shots over and over again, but with subtly different variations; and part of the skill or the intuitive magic is in the moment of making the shot: the question is whether it’s going to be executed as perfectly as it was last time. And there’s endless ways to rework and change your golf swing or your tennis forehand, though the basic outline is so easily grasped. Normal sport attributes, like height and strength, don’t make as much difference in golf except at the top levels, and the principles of the game revolve around everyday actions (hitting stuff with sticks) and everyday physics. There’s a strong mental element: longer-term strategies, self-control, analysing your mistakes. There’s moments of surprise, daring, innovation, drama and amazing skill. There’s certainly a luck element. And I suppose there’s also a sort of "beauty": something in the patterns of the game, in the perfect golf swing, in the perfect placement of a ball.
Note 1: "There is no such thing as a friendly poker game, at least among players of any sophistication. The idea behind poker is to defeat everyone else at the table, sending as many of them as possible home in so advanced a state of despair that they will question the judgment of their parents in conceiving them." -- Joseph Epstein, "Raw Deals: The Seductive Brutalities of Poker", The New Yorker, 18 March 2001
1. Craps is just rolling dice, and only retards sit around rolling dice all day. The obvious answer as to what makes it attractive is Money, and the apparent ease of making money. But money is symbolic as well as pragmatic: you don’t go into the game cold, it’s not just about calculating the probabilities and making a buck: you go in with emotional investments. There’s a huge buzz factor involved. You feel better about yourself when you’re on a roll; there’s an orgasmic kick in winning a high stakes game; and, once in a million, there’s nothing better than when you, the underdog, break the house. Finally the gods are smiling on you, maybe your whole life is going to take a turn for the better. The crowd is cheering you on, your luck becomes something you’re praised for, there’s a sense of power and unstoppability, and all you’re doing is rolling dice.
2. The difference between craps and poker is that you’re playing against people, not Lady Luck or the house, and there’s distinct elements of skill and cunning involved. When you get a good hand or a bad hand, you have to control yourself. When you win, the rush can often partly come from the fact that you've genuinely proved to yourself, and to others around you, that you are skillful, you have bluffed properly or read the tells properly. Moreover, the rush partly comes from beating everyone else: part of what you want to do is send the other person into utter, bleak despair {1}. Your triumph is heightened by the extent of their defeat: imagine what it’s like to beat someone’s good hand with nothing more than a pair or a high card.
3. Poker has the inexhaustible complexities of human behaviour, but chess has trying to calculate ten moves ahead and keep track of different lines of play (attractiveness of the mental challenge -- wrestling with logical strength). In poker you’ve got elements of outsmarting the other person, predicting what they’ll do, tricking them, and these are present to the same or greater extent, but in different ways, in chess.
4. Golf, like tennis, involves the same shots over and over again, but with subtly different variations; and part of the skill or the intuitive magic is in the moment of making the shot: the question is whether it’s going to be executed as perfectly as it was last time. And there’s endless ways to rework and change your golf swing or your tennis forehand, though the basic outline is so easily grasped. Normal sport attributes, like height and strength, don’t make as much difference in golf except at the top levels, and the principles of the game revolve around everyday actions (hitting stuff with sticks) and everyday physics. There’s a strong mental element: longer-term strategies, self-control, analysing your mistakes. There’s moments of surprise, daring, innovation, drama and amazing skill. There’s certainly a luck element. And I suppose there’s also a sort of "beauty": something in the patterns of the game, in the perfect golf swing, in the perfect placement of a ball.
Note 1: "There is no such thing as a friendly poker game, at least among players of any sophistication. The idea behind poker is to defeat everyone else at the table, sending as many of them as possible home in so advanced a state of despair that they will question the judgment of their parents in conceiving them." -- Joseph Epstein, "Raw Deals: The Seductive Brutalities of Poker", The New Yorker, 18 March 2001
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Comment by Damo
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I'm thinking there's similarities with allowing yourself to be the less dominant during sex, and letting your partner take you on a trip.