The summer 2023 issue of the U.S. Army War College Quarterly: Parameters has a very interesting article on Clausewitz and card games. Nicholas A. Murray writes in “Geniuses Dare to Ride Their Luck: Clausewitz’s Card Game Analogies”1 that, “Scholars have been using the wrong card games to analyze Carl von Clausewitz’s analogies in On War, which has led to errors in understanding his ideas.” Using the wrong games, Murray argues, leads to a misunderstanding of what Clausewitz thinks war is. Murray admits that Clausewitz doesn’t name many card games, but Murray notes that many common cards games wargame practitioners are undoubtably familiar with are wrong examples because they simply were not around when Clausewitz was writing:
This lack of specificity has led scholars and commentators to use bridge, poker, or blackjack as examples of card games mimicking war; likewise, game theory uses games like poker and chess as the “fundamental unit of analysis.” The problem with using these games to understand the role of chance and player interaction is that they were not invented or played in Germany until after Clausewitz’s death, and they do not closely resemble the games mentioned in his writing. Thus, examples like poker, bridge, or blackjack are wrong given the context, and, therefore, the conclusions drawn from such analyses will not match his intended meaning.
Murray 79
Personally, I think western, and in particular American, military thinkers are too tied to sports and game analogies and that fetish bleeds into wargame designs. How many times have we heard a desperate battle called a “Hail Mary” operation? Or how many times has the American Way of War stumbled because of an apparent need to “huddle” and call a play (extensive set-piece planning) rather than organically flow from offense to defense and vice-versa like world football (aka “soccer” for those same Americans). For that reason at the least Murray’s arguments resonate with me. As I read on, I also found an interesting discussion of luck and cheating that may be of interest wargame practitioners too.
Not blackjack…
If blackjack and poker are not good examples of card games, what are? Murray names a few games I had barely heard of:
This article identifies faro, skat, and ombre as the gambling and card games Clausewitz references and considers what this choice, and the effect of cheating, means for understanding his ideas regarding luck, chance, the “paradoxical trinity,” and war and strategy. Furthermore, if war resembles a card game where cheating is routine, these games must involve far greater chance and luck and far less control and predictability than the games often found in analyses of Clausewitz’s writing. Thus, there is a disconnect between how we think Clausewitz understood the problem of war and how he actually understood it.
Murray 80
Murray makes the point that later card games, like poker or blackjack, are just too predictable to fit the theory of war Clausewitz discusses:
Therefore, games like blackjack cannot represent Clausewitz’s depiction of war, given that something as simple as card counting allows blackjack players to alter the odds in their favor. One of Clausewitz’s key points is that war is not predictable or is so difficult to calculate that “Newton himself would quail before the algebraic problems it could pose.” If one of history’s greatest mathematical minds would shrink before the probability problems war would pose, then mere mortals have no chance of successfully calculating its odds. The odds of accurately predicting success in war would more closely resemble the odds in a game of faro.
Murray 82
Clausewitz’s cards
Murray names three card games, faro, skat, and ombre as either contemporary with Clausewitz or mentioned in On War. Faro is an interesting game, especially given Murray relates that, “Clausewitz’s contemporaries would have understood…faro was a game of almost pure chance with lots of cheating” (Murray 83). The second game Murray discusses, skat, requires luck and daring to play as a nineteenth-century description of the game relates:
Very few hands, and those of very rare occurrence, are absolutely certain to win a given game; while, on the other hand, a concurrence of lucky accidents may enable you to bring a very poor, indeed a downright hopeless-looking hand, to a successful issue, and overthrow one which seems to be all but certain of winning.
Murray 84
The third game, ombre, Murray describes as:
Ombre rewards “ambition, boldness, and cunning,” and its “strategies typically rest on creating risk, even ignoring risk. . . . In many ways the play of ombre closely resembles a military campaign, with two players temporarily allied to defeat a common foe.”
Murray 85
Cheating
In an interesting twist, Murray comments on cheating at cards and how that context likely influenced Clausewitz:
Furthermore, in Clausewitz’s time, gambling and cards were rife with cheating, which is rarely addressed when discussing his ideas about chance, luck, and emotion. Omitting these contextual factors is a major oversight, given Clausewitz’s emphasis on situating theory within the historical context from which it emerged.
Murray 79-80
Murray discusses the importance of understanding cheating and how it relates to theories found in On War:
The role of cheating in Clausewitz’s thoughts is unclear, but his choice of games provides some indications. Skat seems to align more closely with his description of more limited war, while faro seems to match his description of war in its more absolute form. Faro was notorious for cheating, which may imply Clausewitz sees war’s ideal form as one where cheating increases fog and friction and changes the character of war in more profound ways. For example, finding out a game is rigged will likely upset players and cause them to seek recompense or even revenge. Alternatively, they might decide to cheat from the start, leading to an escalation of cheating by other players, or they might use violence as a deterrent, which could result in other players turning to threats or violence to protect their interests. Players may make their own rules and rob each other, having decided not to go through the motions of a dishonest game.
Murray 86-87
Wargame players (and even designers) deal with cheating all the time in games, albeit simple “rules lawyers” to outright wrong play from “willful ignorance.” Admittedly, the stakes for cheating at wargames are not as great as nations or organizations that cheat at war but it is nonetheless interesting to see it as a constant…even in war.
“Boldness is a virtue”
With a corrected view of the games Clausewitz uses in On War, Murray believes that great strength of character is needed for the best decision makers:
Therefore, Clausewitz’s “greatest wisdom” is the courage to act in uncertainty. This idea is significant because the games he references contain a far greater degree of chance, including cheating, which logically means the strength of character required for decision making is greatly amplified. Boldness is a virtue.
Clausewitz’s argument for daring relates to the need for commanders to make decisions despite the fog and friction of war and relates to the fact that luck will play a significant role. Readers should recall the considerable role luck plays in games like skat or faro and that there are no hands strong enough to guarantee success, making a daring strategy imperative— especially if one possesses a strong hand that might be the only opportunity to win big.
Murray 88
Murray writes that “luck is a foundational part of the trinity of war.” He goes on to state, “Furthermore, to make war without risk of accident presumes the ability to avoid chance and emotion” which Clausewitz sees as unlikely given a military genius in which “calm certainty and vision combine with the moral courage to make a decision despite the perceived uncertainty” (Murray 91). Should it not be a goal of every wargame designer to design games where the decision space rewards the virtues Clausewitz recognizes?
The game of war
If the role of luck is a great as Clausewitz describes (based on analysis of games like faro, skat, or ombre) then what does that mean to game theory? Murray concludes his article by asking the same question:
What do these findings mean for fields such as game theory? If game theory requires rational actors with a fixed card deck then it is not useful. If chance and luck in war are far more extreme than was thought and players struggle to make rational decisions because of the extreme emotions involved, scholars must revise how they might use game theory to model behavior. Furthermore, if there is no baseline expectation of honesty, then the role of luck and emotion is enhanced, and genius as Clausewitz describes it becomes critical. The games Clausewitz uses explained here, especially when including cheating, would allow a genius to rise above or even write the rules. After all, why cheat when you can just change the rules?
Murray 92
As wargame practitioners it is not our lane to “revise how [wargame designers] use game theory to model behavior” but it is appropriate to look critically at how luck, emotion, and motivations to cheat are present and accounted for—or even used—in wargame design. My personal key take-away from Murray’s discussion is that a wargame designer should find a way to embrace luck and emotion in the decision space of a wargame and recognize the impact of cheating on a game design. Perhaps we should focus on the penultimate line in Murray’s article where a proper recognition of luck, emotion, and cheating “allow a genius [designer?] to rise above or even write the rules.” I am not advocating allowing players to write their own rules (we all see enough house rules to make our eyes bleed) but designing a game where the decisions recognizing a balance between luck, emotion, and a control of cheating is certainly a noble goal.
- Nicholas A. Murray, “Geniuses Dare to Ride Their Luck: Clausewitz’s Card Game Analogies,”Parameters 53, no. 2 (2023), doi:10.55540/0031-1723.3224. ↩︎
Feature image Russia Beyond (Foto: Boris Sakic (CC BY-SA 4.0); Domain publik)
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See Appendix 5 of Phil Sabin’s book Simulating War where he discusses Kartenspiel, a simple abstract game that he ran for some Staff College students after his lecture on Clausewitz making that card game analogy. Contains full rules and is actually pretty interesting as a pick-up game.
Looking 👀…Thanks for the tip!