https://www.engineeringnews.co.za
Health|System|Technology
Health|System|Technology
health|system|technology

You are in bad shape if you think poker is only a game

15th May 2015

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy

  

Font size: - +

Many of you will not have seen the film Mash. In the film, a young surgeon named Donald Sutherland is concerned about the health of a friend of his. He asks another doctor how bad his friend is. The doctor says, “Well, it is as bad as this: he said the other day when he was not doing very well at the card game, ‘What the heck! Poker is only a game’.”

Sutherland immediately understands. How the situation is resolved is not for a family maga- zine. I love playing poker but I do not like to play Texas hold ‘em. I like to play five card draw. I find that Texas hold ‘em is too much of a game of chance. Anybody who thinks that five card draw is a game of chance does not know how to play five card draw.

My other favourite card game is contract bridge. I have been playing bridge since I was 30. In that time, I have left behind me a whole lot of frustrated bridge partners. I have done everything wrong that a bridge player could do. I have played out of turn. I have trumped my partners ace. I have played trumps when the game was no trumps. I have had any amount of white-lipped bridge partners fling their cards down and stride purposefully to the door.

Once, when I was playing in a competition, I played a suit when, in theory, I did not have any cards of that suit. The woman who noticed this had to be helped from the room and was given a number of shots of brandy to recover.

Now things have changed. I have acquired an iPad Air. And I can play bridge day and night. My computer partner plays well and does not criticise me. The people I play against are all over the world. By the miracle of the Internet, we can see exactly who plays better than who. And it is no surprise to me to find that I am 70% worse than everybody else even though I have been playing for 30 years. Good bridge players need years of experience. Not luck, not people skills . . . play the cards in a certain way and you win. Another way and you lose. Every time.

During the war in Afghanistan, American forces suffered heavy losses when they tried to take over a mountaintop for reconnaissance purposes. An Air Force drone had indicated that the top of the mountain was not occupied because there were no signals on infrared scanning cameras.

What the Americans had failed to realise was that the Afghanis had dug a trench into the mountaintop and covered it with a canvas tarpaulin, which they then covered with snow. The infrared signal from the people in the trench was not visible to the drone. The Americans landed troops from helicopters who were immediately fired on and the aircraft shot down. A rescue heli- copter was also shot down. With further loss of life, all troops were rescued after a week or two.

In the same war, the British were not free from making errors. They designed a system of infrared night sight goggles and infrared illumination so that their convoys could travel at night undetected. What they did not realise or understand was that infrared, while not visible to the human eye, is visible to a cellphone camera (just look through the camera while using a TV remote). Consequently, the system was flawed.

What we can take home from this are three things. Firstly, to be a good bridge player, you need to have experience. The same applies to being a good engineer. Your skin colour is immaterial. Secondly, computer technology does not beat common sense. If you stick too carefully to computer technology and not common sense, then you are a bad engineer and bad things will happen. Thirdly, if modern technology seems to be the answer to a problem, very often there is some other technology that will render that answer meaningless. Good engineers try tried technology first. And , when you think poker is only a game, you are in bad shape.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

Comments

Showroom

Booyco Electronics
Booyco Electronics

Booyco Electronics, South African pioneer of Proximity Detection Systems, offers safety solutions for underground and surface mining, quarrying,...

VISIT SHOWROOM 
John Deere (Pty) Ltd
John Deere (Pty) Ltd

In 1958 John Deere Construction made its first introduction to the industry with their model 64 bulldozer.

VISIT SHOWROOM 

Latest Multimedia

sponsored by

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION







sq:0.158 0.215s - 147pq - 2rq
Subscribe Now