Shabbat Games

Had over some gamers and semi-gamers on shabbat.

My friend David and I played Go on a 19x19 board. Go is still the Best Game Ever, but I am entirely inadequate with regard to playing on a board of this size. I still don't even comprehend the basics of tactics on the 9x9 board. I tend to give up nearly all of the edge space, which is most of the territory.

David and his wife Sharron played Scrabble one or two times, and my daughter played It's Alive and (what they call) Chinese Speed with their daughter.

I played Troyes with Abraham, Sara, and Nadine. It's bad enough that I realized that I was losing by round 2 out of 6. What made it particularly trying was the glacial pace at which the others took their turns. We started play at something like 3:00 and didn't finish until after 6:00. Nadine was far ahead of me, but she always thinks she is a) losing, b) about to be losing, or c) winning entirely due to luck, and has a compulsion to assert this endlessly, even when it is perfectly obvious to everyone that she is far ahead and playing well.

Abraham looked like he was her closest competition, so they concentrated on attacking each other (which is not so easy in Troyes), leaving Sara to scoot ahead of Abraham just a bit by the end of the game. Nadine ended with 46 to Sara's 38, Abe's 37, and my 30 points.

A fair amount of shabbat was spent discussing my ideas on the semiotics of games and play.