Define: Bad Luck

Query retrieves the following definition:

1. Me

Some of you may remember my firey entry regarding my resolve to win the next game of Monopoly I played. Some of you may remember that I resolved to use every power I had to that end. I only managed the latter.

Oh how I managed it too. Using my skills, I piled up a ton of cash, netted myself three monopolies for the cost of giving my opponents one a piece, and built up fully said monopolies with plenty of money to spare. The remotest chances of my losing required one of the following two scenarios.

1) On my first turn after arranging this, I land on Park Place, followed by rolling a two to land on Boardwalk, followed by rolling an eight, landing on chance, and drawing the "Take a Walk on Boardwalk" card.

2) One opponent dies on the other, who begins to reap the slow rewards of the monopolies gained and, landing on my property once in a blue moon, continually gains more and more cash until his power rivals mine, at which point I either will land on his or her property continually or will have already been whittled down to nothing.

The latter happened.

When the deal ended my closest opponent, Hiro, had only enough cash for three houses on Boardwalk and Parkplace. That isn't an insignificant number, but he had very little cash remaining in his bank after doing so. He only needed to land once on any of my properties to have to pull back that number. Given that I had the deep Purples, the Violets, and the Oranges all lined up to snare him, it seemed likely.

Instead, the dance began, my Okaasan gave me loads of more cash before going out on Hiro with loads of morgaged property. I thought, "Fine, he doesn't have the cash to build on them." Then he landed on Free Parking a few times. "Fine," I thought, "He still hasn't even maxed out Boardwalk and Parkplace, and I have plenty of cash. If you know me, you know I stand up when I get excited. I did not stop standing up when after five times in jail, Hiro rolled nothing but twelves and escaped the deadly trap I had set up each time.

Then finally, he landed a huge jackpot of nearly two thousand dollars from Free Parking, and the Hotels appeared. I landed on both Pacific and Pennsylvania, followed by Boardwalk, all Hotels.

I lost.

I've come to the conclusion that on occaision, an unstoppable force plays around with us mere mortals. When this force, hereby referred to as "Luck", begins to affect something all ideas of strategy and skill become irrelevant. Regardless of any other factors, "Luck" calls the shots and the affected can only ride the wave or dig their grave.

Mine's pretty deep.

I could analyze that game a billion times, and I tell you I did, but I would still come to the same conclusion because there was no other way given how awesome I set myself up.

In any case, I'm not terribly upset that my Otousan won. If anything it is sort of nice to be consistantly beaten. However, I am entirely shocked at the incredible ill-fortune that was mine.

I think Shigeru Miyamoto probably tried to warn me about this in the dream I had last night. So again let the moral be that if Shigeru Miyamoto tells you something in a dream, you darn well better write it down.