#iotdbf blogging

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still thinking about that post about high schoolers becoming obsessed with chess this past month and it's making me so emotional to think about how people have been playing a version of this same game for 1300+ years, like how it's connected to our history and our present in a way that few things are. there are teens playing chess in the school i walk by each day, and there were teens in france 500 years ago playing chess, there were teens in spain 800 years ago playing chess, and there were teens in iraq 1200 years ago playing chess. people are playing a game of chess right now that has never been played before and never will be again, but there's also people playing a game with the exact same moves that someone has played before. al-suli wrote a book about chess openings around 900 CE and someone made a youtube video about chess openings yesterday. we created this game to entertain us, to challenge us and to connect us to other people and it still does!! it connects us to even more people than it ever has before! there's just something so intrinsically human about the desire for play, and it lives in us through the games we've carried across generations

#iotdbf blogging #chess #do not come @ me about shatranj and chess being different games #i can tell you every single difference i can tell you common openings #but sit down and play it and tell me it doesn't feel like playing chess #it's just like the beta version of chess #anyway sorry for being insane about chess! as if i'm ever not

[wingodex]

okay so in season 2 of good omens they bring up this book called the expert at the card table and i've posted about this book before because i am extremely not normal about it for a bunch of reasons i cannot hope to articulate here (if you wanna read it. for whatever reason. houdini donated a copy to the library of congress and so it's just freely available online for everyone). but like the person who wrote it was almost certainly a professional card cheater so obviously they didn't publish using their actual name. so there's this big mystery around it and there's a bunch of theories about who the author actually was including the possibility that it's e.s. andrews, aka s.w. erdnase backwards. and in the show, aziraphale says that his copy is signed by erdnase using his real name, and it's one of those things where like. i did lose my mind a little bit when this whole scene happened because it was literally written as a fun little reference for me, or at least people who have the exact same specific crossection of interests that i do so that's fun. HOWEVER i was a little pissed about the whole thing also because the mystery of who erdnase is sooooo central to the experience of the book itself. like the author's concealed identity is not a hidden fact, the author literally tells you he's lying to you, and it's so everything to me. and it has me thinking about the Real Book which is this collection of jazz sheet music that was compiled by a couple of students when they were in school and then illegally distributed for years among jazz musicians that it became a fundamental tool of jazz musicians all over the US. like to the point where if you were studying jazz in college or whatever you were instructed to go find some guy selling photocopies of the Real Book because you would need it for lessons. and the two students who compiled it remain anonymous to this day and it's very intentional. a reporter managed to get in touch with one of them a few years ago through encrypted emails and shit like that and the guy literally said that he would never reveal his identity because that's part of the Real Book's allure. like the mystery itself is part of the fun. and the expert at the card table is very much like that for me. the mystery is so much a part of the book that the idea of that mystery ever actually being solved is so unappealing. you gotta understand that when this book was first published, it fucking blew up the gambling world. nobody had ever published something so bold as instructions for literal actual card cheating techniques before. it's so iconic in the exact same way that the Real Book is, in their audacity and innovation. and in their mystery!! that's part of the fun

#wings.txt #iotdbf blogging #sorry this post is so. ughdndkfn i'm trying to stop myself from posting my crackpot s3 theory #also also you cant really use the expert at the card table to learn how to cheat anymore #for a lot of different reasons but like those techniques just aren't as effective for modern play #which is entirely erdnase's fault for publishing the damn thing #same with when thorp published beat the dealer in the 60s #when you teach people how to cheat people will now also know how to try to combat those techniques :/ #the real book is similarily both a negative and positive tool for reasons that i'm not musically inclined enough to explain properly #but yeah the parallels between these two books is very interesting to me #this isn't really even about good omens so i didnt bother to tag it #it's about the inherent appeal of the unknown!!!

[wingodex]

wow i love when people write articles literally for me specifically

#iotdbf blogging #just like. lol? hello?? you wrote this for me??

[wingodex]

favourite types of characters in no particular order: person who is otherwise perfectly nice and friendly and also inexplicably cheats at cards, person who thinks cheating at cards is extremely funny, person who cheats at cards to swindle people out of money, person who cheats at cards because they want to win, person who cheats at cards to spite one other particular person who is also cheating at cards, person who cheats at cards because they think it's really cool, person who wants to cheat at cards and is so extremely bad at it. are we seeing a pattern here

#wings.txt #literally nothing but respect for the old monte dealers that have mostly been forced out of business 😔 #yes they were literally just distracting you from their pickpocket accomplice #and setting you up to lose all your money #but the showmanship of it all #iotdbf blogging #sorry i have something very specific that is wrong with me

[wingodex]

it's been awhile since i practiced cardistry and it's honestly so embarrassing how many times i've dropped cards today. and doing really simple stuff too!! i'm gonna have to get back into it, i dont wanna let all my hard work just go

#wings.txt #maybe i'll keep working on my second deal again to see if i can get it all looking better #i've been so distracted by art lately!!! #and don't get me wrong #it's really fun! #i love art #but i'm about to spend the next year making art like exclusively about cards and games #so maybe i should like. keep working so i can be my own reference. you know #the go episode about magic made me so fucking angry so now i'm jumping back into it i guess #out of partial spite #iotdbf blogging

[wingodex]

Four years later, in Kansas City, another aggrieved bridge-playing wife, Myrtle Bennett, shot her husband to death shortly after he failed in his attempt to make a contract of four spades. At her trial, Myrtle was represented by James A. Reed, a former Kansas City mayor and United States senator. Remarkably, she was acquitted, and is said to have collected on her husband’s thirty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy. After reconstructing the final deal, the bridge expert Ely Culbertson concluded that Mr. Bennett could have made the fateful four-spade contract after all.

help??? bridge players are wild

#iotdbf blogging #the woman who wanted to divorce her husband for trumping her ace is also an icon

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there's something so funny and also kinda heartwarming about reading the ratings on the royal game of ur on board game geek. just people casually reviewing a game from 4500 years ago

#iotdbf blogging

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It is a part of mankind to play games. We played in the Stone Age. We played in Roman times. It’s an escape from the everyday grind. Every day we work hard and we make mistakes and we are punished for those mistakes. Games take us to another role where you can make mistakes and you don’t get punished for them. You can always start another game.

feeling so normal about this

#iotdbf blogging #klaus teuber don't do this to me

[wingodex]

damn, i got 3 posts for the iotdbf tag today just organically on my dash, and they're all about chess. i love winning. must've been blessed by a chess deity for actually going out to a chess club today i suppose

#iotdbf blogging #i'm having fun #love contributing to the tag

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going through the cardistry tag is so evil because i just keep seeing my own posts. literally hate it here

#iotdbf blogging #whyyyyy must all the cardists be on intagram i hate using insta

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truly the most aggravating thing about learning card magic is how much time you have to spend just practicing holding the deck and then picking up and putting down cards. just rotating between different grips 😔

#wings.txt #iotdbf blogging #you just truly feel so silly doing it #at least with other things it can feel kinda cool to practice even if you're fucking it up real bad #nothing more embarrassing than struggling to pick up a deck of cards #i really should switch to a new deck the one i'm using right now is pretty worn out

[wingodex]

oh no, i should not have looked at the notes of that playing card post, the amount of people tagging them as cartomancy or tarot is killing me

#that one person who was like 'i bet they played mad briscola' i am kissing you on the mouth #i mean they probably also were not playing briscola im not sure that we have evidence of that game being that old #iotdbf blogging #im sorry i said i was gonna be normal again but i lied

[wingodex]

so i'm reading the magicians, like literally just started, and the charlier cut is described as being tricky and is meant to show off how good quentin is at magic tricks when it's literally like 101 cardistry. like maybe the second thing you learn.

#wings.txt #like this not a joke the first cardistry move i ever learned #tricky? come on #iotdbf blogging

[wingodex]

by the 21st century, most of the guard don't play chess very often. there are many reasons for this but the primary one is that nicky is obscenely and nightmarishly good at chess. this man has been playing chess for nine centuries and it shows. joe will occasionally play with him if given incentive, but joe prefers games that make him laugh and honestly he's never gotten over the way that the rules changed between shatranj and chess. shatranj games used to be huge social gatherings where people would heckle the players and spout off diss poetry at each other, and quite frankly modern chess isn't as fun. there's nothing quite like the way that a crowd would lose their minds when a shatranj player would claim a piece using a fil and joe firmly stands by that (this is actually a reoccurring argument between joe and nicky bcus nicky thinks chess is better than shatranj). andy only ever learned to play chess to woo women and no offense to nicky but he isn't her target demographic. during the late medieval period they played chess together so she could practice but after that fell out of fashion, she more or less gave up on it. booker lasted quite a while playing chess with nicky, but booker tends to prefer games with incomplete information more so while he likes chess he'd rather play something else. by the end, whenever nicky asked him to play chess booker would be like "let's play piquet instead?" and nicky (who never turns down any opportunity to play cards) is like hell yeah let's go, and chess if forgotten. nicky very rarely got to play chess because he can't exactly go out and play in chess tournaments even though he secretly really wants to get grandmaster status. which he obviously can't do because it would draw to much attention to himself. anyway, queue the launch of online chess websites (i.e. chess.com which was launched in 2007). knowing how much nicky liked chess but also not really wanting to play chess with him, booker sets nicky up with an account and shows him how to use it. online chess is basically the only thing that nicky uses the internet for. after booker is exiled, he makes an account on chess.com so he can play chess with nicky and it's like this small connection back to his family. nicky obviously has no idea about that, but when booker ends up rejoining them, he and nicky start playing chess together again :)

#tog blogging #the old guard #the fact that i have even more chess headcanons then this is like... get a new hobby #and my brain is like 'chess :)' #no stupid you already have that hobby #i think nicky has had multiple periods in his life where he's hyperfixated on chess #nicky likes being in countries where old men play games in the street #because then he gets to play games with new people!!! #chess is very near and dear to nicky's heart though because it was one of the first things he and joe had in common #also i didnt mention nile bcus im writing a fic and i dont. i dont wanna spoil it #so sorry nile youre not in this post because youre getting a fic instead #iotdbf blogging

[wingodex]

just spent the last 15 minutes listening to my mom and brother talk about their cribbage game. maybe love is stored in the crib board

#iotdbf blogging #i know that this is the whole point of the fic #and that ive literally written like two love letters to cribbage in the form of nicky and joe playing it #but every single time i encounter my own goddamn main theme irl it still takes me out #it's about the love found in the mundanity of wasting time together

[wingodex]

okay so thing is. i dont really think that nicolò di genova, as created by greg rucka, and then further fleshed out by gina prince-bythewood and portrayed by luca marinelli, was ever intended to be the kind of person who cheats at card games. in fact, if you asked any of them about it, im sure that they would probably say that he doesnt and that he's a completely honest man. however, i have decided to ignore that because the idea of nicky, who in literally any other situation can be described as incredibly kind, patient and compassionate, just incessantly cheating at every possible opportunity is unbelievably fucking funny

#tog blogging #iotdbf blogging #nicky in literally any other context: one of the sweetest most kind people youve ever met #nicky while playing any kind of game at all: I Am Here To Obliterate A Motherfucker #nicky is already the argumentative one let him be stupidly competitive for no discernable reason too #when i make nicky cheat at cards i want you to know that im aware that it's probably ooc #ive decided to ignore canon because this is funnier