Nicholas A. A. Murray – “Geniuses Dare to Ride Their Luck: Clausewitz's Card Game Analogies” 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. This podcast identifies the games Clausewitz discusses, allowing for a more accurate interpretation of his original meaning for the study of war. Since Clausewitz’s ideas underpin strategy development within service education systems, it is critical his ideas are fully understood in context. Read the article here. E-mail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil to give feedback on this podcast or the genesis article. Keywords: card games, luck/chance, genius, gambling, daring, probability, trinity, cheating Episode Transcript: Geniuses Dare to Ride Their Luck: Clausewitz's Card Game Analogies Stephanie Crider (Host) You're listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on national security affairs. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. I'm talking today with Dr. Nicholas Murray. Murray designs and runs war games for the Secretary of Defense Strategic Thinkers Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Professional Military Education. He also translates the works of Carl von Clausewitz and other theorists. He's the author of “Geniuses Dare to Ride Their Luck: Clausewitz’s Card Game Analogies,” which was published in the Summer 2023 issue of Parameters. Welcome to Decisive Point, Nick. Nicholas A. A. Murray Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure. Host Your article asserts that scholars have been using the wrong card games to analyze Clausewitz’s analogies on war, which has led to errors in understanding his ideas. Please expand on that. Murray The reason I got into this . . . I think a bit of background might help . . . is the card games we use, which are typically blackjack, poker, or games like chess and bridge and things, didn't seem to line up with what else I was reading and finding in his histories in terms of how he understood luck. And so, as I dug into it, the question struck me, which was what games would he have actually been familiar with, and what would he have played? And except for chess, the other games weren't popular or even invented at the time of his life or writing. So, I started to look into that. What I found was that the games that he had in mind and actually discussed often—sometimes explicitly—were different stochastically in terms of luck. And they were different in terms of player interaction. And they were different in terms of things like cheating, which was an inherent part of almost all the games with which he was familiar. Taking that into account, it meant that contemporary analogies, using, say, blackjack, where one can card count, you can change the strategy of playing against the casino in your favor, for example. That simply didn't exist. And so, he wasn't thinking about something like that. He was thinking about something far more chance ridden than we have in mind. Host Which card games was Clausewitz likely talking about? Murray The three I've been able to identify, along with something called würfel, which is a version of a variety of different dice games, which is simply you roll a dice and bet on it. Sort of like craps, I suppose. But the three main ones are games called faro, skat, and ombre. And these were games that were familiar to Clausewitz. He explicitly references two and implicitly references skat via phrases that occur within that game. These card games are much different from the ones we would think about in terms of blackjack or poker.
