Cards

I've always been a card player. I grew up going to my friends' houses and playing Nertz. A family staple was Bid Tricks, and I spent many a quiet afternoon playing Solitaire. One of my claims to fame among my nephews is that I'm a fast card dealer - and when 14 people are playing Scum, it pays to deal fast. One of my favorite card-playing memories of all times involved late night laughter, "cigars", my sister-in-law, Up and Down the River, and the biggest comeback of all time! (Ask Karen about it, she would love to tell you!!)

Jeff, on the other hand, is not a huge card player. He plays Gin Rummy or Cribbage just to make me happy, but I get the feeling his life would be fairly complete even if he never owned a deck of cards. Every now and then, when he recognizes that we need some down-time together, he'll suggest we play a game or two before bed. Last night was one of those nights, so after a few rounds of Mancala, we pulled out the deck for a quick hand of Gin Rummy. He beat me quickly and soundly the first hand, so we dealt another. I had an epiphany as we began the second round, and I tried a new strategy.

To tell you the strategy, I have to explain a bit about the game. We call it Gin Rummy, but I may actually have the wrong name. It's a simple game of trying to be the first person to lay down all 7 of your cards in sets or runs. Each time it's your turn you draw a card and discard another. If you can "lay down" a set or a run, you do it on your turn. When someone plays all their cards, the game is over and everyone counts up how many points they have from the cards they laid down. The thing that makes this game interesting is that the discard pile is laid out accordion style so you can see the whole thing. When it's your turn to draw, you can either draw one card from a face-down pile, or you can pick up a card from the top of the discard pile. OR, you can pick up all or part of the discard pile, as long as you can immediately lay down the lowest card you pick up. Sorry if that's not perfectly clear, but it's the best I can do without having you across the table from me and a deck of cards between us.

Picking up the discard pile is a huge advantage, because you have so many cards to work with, and you can get many more points laid down. It's also a risk, because if someone goes out when you have all those cards in your hand, you have to subtract those points from what you have laid down. Despite the risk, it's always my goal to find a way to get that discard pile at some point during the game. My usual way to do this is to hang onto cards in my hand that have the potential for a set or run, and hope that someone else discards something I can use. Last night my epiphany was that if I wanted a better chance of being able to pick up the discard pile, I needed to "seed" the pile. I discarded cards that went with something in my hand, waited for more cards to accumulate in the pile, and then picked up the pile with the card I had intentionally laid down a few turns before.

The beauty of this strategy is that there are plays waiting to happen. I sit with a delicious knowledge of the potential sitting right in front of me and just wait for the right moment to collect my treasure and score all my points. The other advantage is that I don't fret so much over needing to discard a card I might want later. I just put it out there and see what happens. There is, as in every great move, a risk involved. It's possible that I lay my treasure out there only for Jeff to realize that he can also use it, and have him scoop up the pile and I lose my "seed." But there is also the possibility that I will be able to score big.

This time it paid off and I won big - but that's not why I'm writing about it.

I'm writing about it because I think it has some application to life. Sometimes "safe" is not the best decision. Sometimes we need to take a risk in order to gain the prize we're after. In relationships we risk personal investment before we see return. Financially we take risks when we invest in stocks or buy homes or give money to God's Kingdom. In our careers we take risks when we give up what we don't love for the opportunity to try what we believe will fulfill us. As parents we take risks in giving our children more independence and opportunity to succeed, or fail, on their own. All around us, every day, are opportunities to "seed" our areas of influence - corporate, family, church, personal, relational, educational - to risk personal investment before we are guaranteed of the results.

I'm not espousing reckless risk - I do realize that life is quite different from cards - but I am encouraging freedom to try something in a new way. And enjoy the journey!