Sporting . Aspects Games of Chance
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU
iviy mother, if she coulAave had her way, would have banned all games of chance. Like drink, Isadora Duncan, Socialism and Conservatism, games of chance came from the Devil. They were ituerdit. MY mother believed in banning things. She was -a Liberal with -a very large L. But what were games of chance ? My mother never mentioned such things as roulette. These were not games. Further, they just did not exist either for her or for her children —and if that is Liberalism I am a Liberal still. She played bridge with pleasure, and was rather annoyed when we tried to make it less of a chancy game by placing her before a mirror in which we could see her cards. She revelled in such really chancy games as vingt-et-un and, worse, racing demon, pro- vided that they were played for, if anything, matches. So I grew up wondering what these games of chance could be. I am still wondering.
My mother loved cricket. She had played it with her brothers in their first Oldham house, a house called Sunnyside, which, in Oldham, was a chancy enough name in all conscience. She played it again with us when were small—and the way a ball would turn on the particular Pennine spur where we lived was no more predictable than the number into which a roulette ball would tumble. But this was not serious cricket. If my mother had been born in Yorkshire, and therefore had understood serious cricket, she would have been appalled. For, of all games of chance, cricket is the most chancy.
It begins with the spin of a coin, and the way that coin comes down may easily decide the result of the match. Do you remember the Second Test Match at Lord's in 1934. when the rain came and Verity caught the Australians on a sticky wicket ? Shall I ever forget it ? Oh, the glorious uncertainty of cricket ! Do you remember how, when two up with three to go in 1936. England were caught on a "sticky does" at Melbourne and duly lost the match ? Oh the wicked capricious- ness of this flutter game. One might as well play pitch-and- toss.
It is not merely the spin of a coin that may give you victory. It is not only rain—for Blazo. you will remember, was overcome by heat. All sorts of unpredictable hazards interfere, at cricket, between your skill and victory. I once had an innings inter- rupted by a swarm of bees. and have never been the same bats- man since. Cricket is a game of chance, if ever there was one.
But what about football, eithfr rugger or soccer ? Rugger and soccer players both have to contend with the unpredictable elements. There was that occasion- what year would it be ?- when England were playing Wales for the last time on the Bristol ground and Percy Bush was the Welsh fly-half. Percy, for twenty yards, was the fastest man of his day, and on this day there was fog. Welsh and English players alike lost Percy in that fog, and when they found -him again he was sitting on the ball between the English posts. The referee cross-examined him for some seconds before awarding a try; and I often wonder whether in fact Percy had not imitated a famous Rugby League player who, also in fog, scored a try by running round behind the srectators on the touchline. However; this may be unfair, since, even on the clearest day, would-be tacklers were likely to lose sight of Percy. But the fact remains that rugger is a chancy game. Like cricket, it begins with the spin of a coin, and the wind you hoped to have at your back in the second half may drop, or—though this is unlikely—the sun which you were sure was permanently hidden behind snow-laden clouds may suddenly blaze into your eyes. As for soccer, you don't have to go further back than this month. At Highbury, in the Fourth Round of this year's Cup, while those gales were on, the Bury goalkeeper took a goal-kick and the wind carried the ball behind the Bury line for a corner; whereas, when the Arsenal goalkeeper took a centre goal-kick the wind carried it to the foot of an Arsenal forward, who scored with one kick,, without any other player on either side touching the bail. There is, in fact, on record a goalkeeper who kicked down wind from his goal-line and scored without any other player intervening. Rugger and soccer, clearly, are games of chance. If only she had known, my mother would never in her sixtieth year have stood for three hours with ma to watch the Calcutta Cup, nor sat so often in the stand to watch our beloved . Name excised; this team has been over-mentioned.—Editor, Spectator.] Then there is rowing. Her first visit to Oxford in the late 'eighties was enough to make my mother passionately fond of rowing. But what can she have thought of the Boat Race ? That, too, is begun with a spin of the coin, a spin which gives the lucky President a choice between the Surrey and Middlesex stations and, in some years, gives the unlucky President the virtual certainty of being swamped. As for those two years when both crews were swamped, how could she say that these races were in fact different from that Grand National— invention of the Devil—when only two horses finished, or that other race this month where not even one horse finished ? Surely rowing blues, like jockeys, are sons of Belial !
So what is left to us ? What are the games not of chance but of certainty ? Only those indoor games, which are not dependent on the weather or on a spin of the coin in any way— and- not all of them. At dominoes you draw your pieces while they are face-down. There is chance here. At billiards you string to decide who shall begin, and in stringing there is _great skill. Yet billiards is a game of chance—at least on my table. Ping- pong is chancy. at least until you get used to that jutting side- board at the far end. So you are left with chess. You get no advantage, so far as I know, from playing at one end as opposed to the other. But the colour of the chessmen with which you play is de::ided by the spin of a coin, and the man who wins white has, other things being equal, a 7-5 chance of winning the game. Anyway, though my mother approved chess in theory, in practice she enjoyed games with rather more action.
The perfect game for her in fact would have been the family whist we now play with rules laid down by my six-year-old son. It is played five-handed. There are no trumps. Eacli player counts his own tricks, and my son's hand must contain only picture cards. This eliminates all chance. If, by chance, another player gets a picture, card, my son upsets the table. This provides the action. My mother would have liked this game. But then, she would have liked anything her grandson liked—even horse-racing—so that is not a fair test.
The only absolutely certain game is poker as played by W. C. Fields. "Is this a game of chance," asks the shy stranger sitting down to poker in a railway-train. "Game of chance ? " says W. C. Fields indignantly. ".Not the way I play it ! "
Previous page
