Chapter 81

He finally decided that he would just have to pick a card a move it, and not worry so much about what could happen later on in the game.  It wasn’t like it would really matter in the bigger scheme of things anyway whether he won or lost this game, and it was also unlikely that any move this early in the game would be an absolute move one way or the other.  So, he grabbed the first two that he saw and he moved it to the open space.  He then looked at the other positions that were supposed to be filled with twos and tried to see if he could move any of the cards that were in any of those positions.  He wasn’t sure at first, but he thought he could clear another one.  And, sure enough, when he tried to clear that position he was able to do so.  But, this time around, one of the twos was after a face card, so he was reluctant to move that one.  But that still left two other twos to look at and he wasn’t sure of which one to move.  So, he looked over them both briefly and followed his earlier resolution to just pick one and move it.

He tried once again to clear one of the two spots.  He wasn’t able to do that, but, in the precess of trying to clear another twos spot, he cleared a spot after one of the twos that he had already moved.  Unfortunately for him, that three was after a king, so he would have one less space to move cards into.  But, really, when he thought about it, even if he didn’t move the three card after the appropriate two.  He would still have one less space to move cards because he couldn’t move anything else into that spot even if he didn’t move the three because it was the only card that could go in that particular spot.  So, he moved the three and looked at the remaining openings that he had left.  He didn’t really know what he should move next, so he just stared at the board for a little while.  But, eventually he saw a potential move sequence and started to move those cards.  And then he continued to move the cards as he saw fit until there were no cards left for him to move.

Chapter 80

So, he started moving the cards as he had planned, in the hopes of opening up one of the left hand spaces.  He worked methodically, slowly moving the cards in a series of moves that followed one another in a predictable sequence that progressed through the plan that he had set forth for them to go through.  When he had completed the series of moves, he was rewarded with an open space on the left hand side of the board.  He was happy that it had worked out the why that he had planned, at least so far as opening a left hand space was concerned; he would still have to check to see if the rest of the board was still favorable to moving any of the twos.  But the nature of the twos was such that they would still be where he had last seen them, so things shouldn’t end up being too bad on that front, even if some of the cards they were next to might have changed.  With that in mind, he looked at where the twos were, and tried to see if anything major had happened to change what was around them.  He wanted to see if any of them stood out as the one that he should move.

Unfortunately for him, none of the twos was in a position that made it superficially obvious that it should be moved; he would have to look deeper to find which one was the one that should be moved, if there was even one that actually would be better to move at that point in the game.  Or, that it would be obvious at that point in the game which one was the best one to move.  Sometimes, it was only obvious after one of the cards had been moved that it would have actually been better to have moved another card.  And that wasn’t even obvious a lot of the time, especially this early in a round.  Too many cards would likely be moved before a deadlock would occur, and all of the open spaces would have changed so much that only someone with near perfect memory could remember that far back and know that any one move was the wrong one, the one that had lost the round, the one that had changed the whole course of the game.  And even that was likely to be speculation, because once one chance is theoretically made, the rest of the moves afterward would, by necessity, change as well.

Chapter 79

Before he found the threes in question he realized that he was over thinking things a little bit.  Until he actually had a space open there was really no point in trying to figure out which two he should move.  The game was fluid, in  that cards got moved around all the time, and he didn’t know for sure that the cards he was looking at would still be in the same places after he cleared a spot as they were at this point, while he was assessing them.  If he tried to plan too far ahead, the cards he was planning to move wouldn’t be where they were when he was planning.  Or, at least, the could be somewhere else.  It had happened to him before, when he’d played.  It didn’t happen all the time, but it could happen.  And it usually happened at the worst possible time, when moving the wrong card could mean the end of the game; or, at least, the end of the round.  It could be very frustrating to make a plan of attack and then have it all fall apart.  So, it might be best if he just tried to clear a spot on the left hand side of the board and then worry about what two to move where when he got to that point.

Having decided that, he had to look over the cards again to find his place, to re-establish in his mind where he wanted to start moving cards to begin the cascade effect that he hoped would open up a left hand position.  It took him a while to retrace his planned on steps, and he was less sure about them than he had been when he first noticed them, but he decided to forge ahead anyway.  What was the worst thing that could happen?  Sure, he could mess up the round, or even lose the game, but did that really matter in the grand scheme of things?  Not really, he knew;  he was mostly just playing to waste time anyway, so it wouldn’t be a big lose if he didn’t win the game.  It was just a game, after all.  And people were always saying that it didn’t matter if you won or lost, it was how you played the game.  And he planned to have fun playing the game, so the rest of it shouldn’t matter to him.

Chapter 78

He looked for a promising opening; one that would lead to the opening up of one of the left hand spaces.  Nothing immediately stood out to him, so he tried to look a few moves ahead.   But, that didn’t shed any promising results either, so he tried to look a few more moves ahead.  And he finally found something that looked like he’d be able to open up one of the useful left hand spaces.  But now he had to figure out which two to move.  The first one he saw would open up another space after a king, so he didn’t want to move that one.  The next two he found was pretty close to the right, so he didn’t really want to move that one either because it wouldn’t really help fill out the board.  The third two that he located was in the middle, so it was better than the other two, but not by much.  And he couldn’t locate the fourth two right away, so he looked over the board again, trying to find it.  It ended up that it was after the second two that he had found, so it kind of made sense that he’d visually skipped over it.

The fact that there was a two after another two made for an interesting choice.  If he were to move the second two in the set, then he could move the two that came after the first one right away.  But, the two and the three still wouldn’t be in the right place, so he’d have to collect them when he ran out of moves for the round.  So, it kind of depended on where that three was.  If it were in a place that he wanted to clear out, then it would be good to move the second two, but if it were in a place that he didn’t particularity want to move it from, then it wouldn’t be good to move the second two after all.  Also, that three could be in a place where it wasn’t immediately obvious if it would be good to move it or not.  So, he’d be taking a chance, if he moved it if it were in that kind of position.  He could clear a needed space, or one that was detrimental to that round of the game.  But first, he had to find the three in question, so that he could attempt to make an assessment.

Chapter 77

He double-checked that his bedding was flat and then started to carefully place the cards onto his bed spread.  One by one he set the cards down, tentatively looking for patterns as he went.  Oh no, he thought, one of the aces is after a king; dang it; that’s going to make it that much harder to play.  He knew that having an ace land right after a king was a terrible bit of luck because it limited his options from the onset.  He would only have three slots to work with instead of the usual four; it wasn’t devastating, but it was annoying, and it would almost definitely restrict how much he could get done in his first round.  But, he could probably make it up in the subsequent rounds, so it was more an instant response than a game changing situation.

He could always hope that something good would happen to counterbalance the ace coming after the king situation.  One good thing that could happen was for a two to land in a first spot so that he could build off of it without having to clear the space first; this was also beneficial in that the two would stay there when he had to pick up the cards after all the spaces were after kings even if he wasn’t able to add anything to the run.  Another, at least somewhat, good thing was for a three to be in a second position; this required the first spot to be cleared, but it still helped to build a run if the spot before it could be cleared.  Still another good thing would be if an ace landed in one of those spots because it made it easier for him to start the building process.

As he continued to play the deck, he didn’t notice any of those good things, but he didn’t see any more aces being after any of the rest of the kings either.  So, on the whole, he wasn’t too concerned about it.  He then collected the aces in a particular order as to remind him which round he was in, and then began to survey the board.  He saw several moves that looked promising, but he held off moving anything until he gave each possibility some thought.  That included looking ahead a few moves to try to figure out which moves would be the most advantageous to begin with.  He didn’t want to jump the gun when it came to making his first moves; it could determine the direction of the whole game, or at least the whole round, so he wanted to be somewhat careful.