A wise wife knows when to let her husband win.
My partner and I nodded sagely as she muttered this gem of wisdom, just as our husbands thrashed us two/one in a game of 500.
The two winning rounds seesawed perilously close to both negative and positive 500 scores and could have gone either way. The firm winning game (ours) was a brilliant piece of strategy, involving the laying down of an open misere hand.
My husband at this juncture had scoffed at this insightful and audacious call only to eat his words as he witnessed play that could only be described as sheer genius. To him, my laying down of the cards must have been accompanied by the forlorn hope that my opponent had better cards than me, whereas a hand of open misere by his truly was based on the certain knowledge of the lay of the hand.
As we relished in our successful subservience, the winning pair of men gloated about tactical moves and clever hands.
I do admit to a few hands going their way due to one or two small slips on our part. If our partners had not been so diligent about table cards, we could have swiftly gathered up our mistakes, rendering quite different results.
In the end the true genius was in letting the victors relish in their victory. Our finest strategy was to smugly give them their hollow win and smile.
- Linda Muller
