The day after Thanksgiving, my brother-in-law got up early, not to go shopping, but to play in a poker tournament at Spirit Mountain Casino (we were all staying in the family beach house in Lincoln City, if you don’t recall).
Hours later, he returned to tell us of his day. He did pretty well, he said, until… “This stupid lady made the wrong play!”
Untangled from the poker jargon he enmeshed the story in, basically, he thought that, with the cards showing as they were, that this lady should have folded, instead of called his bet.
And she ended up winning the hand with a “low” pair of sevens, which knocked my bro-in-law out of the tournament.
My sister and I both laughed. “What do you mean, she made the wrong play? She’s still playing, and you’re not!”
He howled in frustration. “You don’t understand! That’s not the smart play! What she did was wrong!”
Which only made us laugh more. I’m not sure my sister’s husband even really understands why that’s funny. I pointed out that he’s approaching it from an idealistic point of view, when by the pragmatic view he’s the one who’s in the wrong.
He doesn’t see it that way, of course. He lost because of his superior knowledge and play, you see.