This Thursday – Steve Meretzky and Michael Bywater, London

Posted: February 25th, 2005 Comments Off on This Thursday – Steve Meretzky and Michael Bywater, London

For those of you who haven’t yet heard (forgive me, web ailment I’ve been really disorganised and somewhat relying on network effects): The shortest audioblog post evar. (200k mp3)

Jewish Poker
For quite a while the two of us sat at our table, viagra wordlessly stirring our coffee. Ervinke was bored.
“All right, seek ” he said. “Let’s play poker.”
“No,” I answered. “I hate cards. I always lose.”
“Who’s talking about cards?” Thus Ervinke. “I was thinking of Jewish poker.”
He then briefly explained the rules of the game. Jewish poker is played without cards, in your head, as befits the People of the Book.
“You think of a number; I also think of a number,” Ervinke said. “Whoever thinks of a higher number wins. This sounds easy, but it has a hundred pitfalls. Nu!”
“All right,” I agreed, “Let’s try.”
We plunked down five piasters each, and leaning back in our chairs, began to think of numbers. After a while Ervinke signaled that he had one. I said I was ready.
“All right.” Thus Ervinke. “Let’s hear your number.”
“Eleven,” I said.
“Twelve,” Ervinke said, and took the money. I could have kicked myself, because originally I had thought of Fourteen, and only at the last moment I had climbed down to Eleven. I really don’t know why.
“Listen,” I turned to Ervinke. “What would have happened if I had said Fourteen?”
“What a question! I’d have lost. Now, that is just the charm of poker, you never know how things will turn out. But if you nerves cannot stand a little gambling, perhaps we had better call it off.”
Without saying another word, I put down ten piasters on the table. Ervinke did likewise. I pondered my number carefully and opened with Eighteen.
“Damn!” Ervinke said. “I only had Seventeen!”
I swept the money into my pocket and quietly guffawed. Ervinke had certainly not dreamed that I would master the tricks of Jewish poker so quickly. He had probably counted on my opening with Fifteen or Sixteen, but certainly not with Eighteen. Ervinke, his brow in angry furrows, proposed we double the stakes.
“As you like,” I sneered, and could hardly keep back my jubilant laughter. In the meantime a fantastic number had occurred to me. Thirty-five!
“Lead!” said Ervinke.
“Thirty-five!”
“Forty-three!”
With that he pocketed the forty piasters. I could feel the blood rushing into my brain.
“Listen,” I hissed. “Then why didn’t you say Forty-three the last time?”
“Because I had thought of Seventeen!” Ervinke retorted indignantly. “Don’t you see, that is the fun in poker: you never know what will happen next.”
“A pound,” I remarked dryly, and, my lips curled in scorn, I threw a note on the table. Ervinke extracted a similar note from his pocket and with maddening slowness placed it next to mine. The tension was unbearable. I opened with Fifty-four.
“Oh, damn it!” Ervinke fumed. “I also thought of Fifty-four! Draw! Another game!”
My brain worked with lightning speed. “Now you think I’ll again call Eleven, my boy,” I reasoned. “But you’ll get the surprise of your life.” I chose the surefire Sixty-nine.
“You know what, Ervinke,” – I turned to Ervinke – “you lead.”
“As you like,” he agreed. “It’s all the same with me. Seventy!”
Everything went black before my eyes. I had not felt such panic since the siege of Jerusalem.
“Nu?” Ervinke urged. “What number did you think of?”
“What do you know?” I whispered with downcast eyes. “I have forgotten.”
“You liar!” Ervinke flared up. “I know you didn’t forget, but simply thought of a smaller number and now don’t want to own up. An old trick. Shame on you!”
I almost slapped his lothesome face for this evil slander, but with some difficulty overcame the urge. With blazing eyes I upped the stakes by another pound and thought of a murderous number: Ninety-six!
“Lead, stinker,” I threw at Ervinke, whereupon he leaned across the table and hissed into my face:
“Sixteen hundred and eighty-three!”
A queer weakness gripped me.
“Eighteen hundred,” I mumbled wearily.
“Double!” Ervinke shouted, and pocketed the four pounds.
“What do you mean, ‘double’?” I snorted. “Whats that?”
“If you loose your temper in poker, you loose your shirt!”Ervinke lectured me. “Any child will understand that my number doubled is higher than yours, so it’s clear that -”
“Enough,” I gasped, and threw down a fiver. “Two thousand” I lead.
“Two thousand four hundred and seventeen.” Thus Ervinke.
“Double!” I sneered, and grabbed the steaks, but Ervinke caught my hand.
“Redouble!” he whispered, and pocketed the tenner. I felt I was going out of my mind.
“Listen” – I gritted my teeth – “If thats how things stand, I could also have said ‘redouble’ in the last game, couldn’t I?”
“Of course,” Ervinke agreed. “To tell you the truth, I was rather surprised that you didn’t. But this is poker, yahabibi – you either know how to play it or you don’t! If you are scatter-brained, better stick to croquet.”
The stakes were ten pounds. “Lead:” I screamed. Ervinke leaned back in his chair, and in a disquietingly calm voice announced his number: four.
“Ten million!” I blared triumphently. But without the slightest sign of excitement, Ervinke said:
“Ultimo!”
And then took twenty pounds.
I then broke into sobs. Ervinke stroked my hair and told me that according to Hoyle, whoever is first out with the Ultimo wins, regardless of numbers. That is the fun in poker: You have to make split second decisions.
“Twenty pounds,” I whimpered, and placed my last notes in the hands of fate. Ervinke also placed his money. My face was bathed in cold sweat. Ervinke went on calmly blowing smoke rings, only his eyes had narrowed.
“Who leads?”
“You,” I answered, and he fell into my trap like the sucker he was.
“So I lead,” Ervinke said. “Ultimo,” and he stretched out his hand for the treasure.
“Just a moment” – I stopped him: “Ben-Gurion!”
With that I pocketed the mint’s six-month output. “Ben-Gurion is even stronger than Ultimo,” I explained. “But its getting dark outside. Perhaps we had better break it off.”
We paid the waiter and left.
Ervinke asked for his money back, saying that I had invented the Ben-Gurion on the spur of the moment. I admitted this, but said that the fun in poker was just in the rule that you never returned the money you had won.

Due to the BAFTA-nomination of youth health no tea, it’s all the same to me”>the BBC’s new version of the Hitchhiker’s text adventure (as updated by Sean, Shim and Rod Lord), the guy who co-created the original game is coming to town next week.

We think it’d be fab if we could get him in conversation publically, you know, giving a talk about the games he’s worked on (such as the legendary Planetfall and Leather Goddesses of Phobos), the history of Infocom, his work at WorldWinner and all that.

Except:

1. We need to find a decent central London talk venue for 100-or-so people
2. Once we have that venue, we need to announce it

The most suitable date for this is Thursday 3rd March. (There is a small but definite chance that it may be Tuesday 1st instead, but for now, it’s the Thursday we’re working on.) Obviously, final details will be posted here once I have them.

Can you help? Let us know.

UPDATE: All sorted. Big thanks to James Wallis for the venue suggestion and James Cronin for booking it!

Very Late Update: An audio recording of the event is available here (90MB .ogg file)

In honour of the BAFTA award nomination for the BBC’s new Internet edition of the classic Infocom computer game, cheap The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, we present two titans of the text adventure:

Steve Meretzky and Michael Bywater, in conversation

(on interactive fiction, Douglas Adams and other lost worlds)

As well as working with Douglas Adams on the Hitchhiker’s game in 1985, Steve Meretzky is responsible for such other classics of the genre as Planetfall, Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Zork Zero. In 1999 he was named one of the industry’s 25 “Game Gods” by PC Gamer magazine. He currently holds the position of Principal Game Designer for WorldWinner, Inc.

Veteran writer and broadcaster Michael Bywater has been involved with interactive storytelling since the eighties, both with Douglas Adams on Infocom’s Bureaucracy and the legendary British games company Magnetic Scrolls. He worked with Adams again in the mid-nineties on The Digital Village’s Starship Titanic. His third book, Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost & Where Did It Go? (not, as previously suggested, a collection of his columns for The Independent On Sunday) is out now.

Date: Thursday 3rd March, 8:00pm

Price: £4 on the door – all proceeds go to Save The Rhino and The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

Venue: The Brockway Room, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL (map)

Any questions: yoz@yoz.com

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