011: seven games and a frozen fish
Debut poem! For more fish talk, take a look at fishlore from a few newsletters ago.
Then, I write a bit about a book I read recently that charts seven games and the programmers that tried to create supercomputers to beat the best human players at their own game.
- a flower is not a flower—My dad froze his favorite fish when it died
- forms/fragments—Seven Games: A Human History
I don't write poetry often. And I rarely talk about my family in my art. Obviously, my personal relationships trickle into my art in the way that all things are connected, but it's usually not so explicit. There's no specific reason, I think I have a pretty good relationship with my parents, I love my mom and dad dearly. But there's always been a distance, a gap in language, politics, culture, way of life. My mom loves being nosy, so inevitably we still talk—and debate, and sometimes argue, about capitalism, nuclear families, the usual. I don't really talk with my dad about any of those things, or much at all, but I got my love of fish from him. My dad would spend hours of every day watching the fish in his aquarium. And he would spend those same hours watching me as I grew up. (And occasionally he would fall asleep and stop watching and then I would throw around CDs like frisbee ruining his music collection.) Then, I would start spending hours watching the fish. And watching my dad watching the fish.
my dad watches his fish
what does he see?
beauty, bounded
i watch my dad watch his fish
what do i see?
beauty, bounded
For folks in Chicago, we have a Chess Club, feel free to reach out to me if you want to join 😃
At first glance, the subtitle almost looks like a misnomer, while author Oliver Roeder spends a chunk of the book working through seven games—checkers, backgammon, chess, go, poker, Scrabble, and bridge—and how the best players in each play, a large portion of the book is actually about AI and computers. From AlphaGo to Deep Blue, and the many programmers behind each computer, Roeder is fascinated by how each of these computers tried and—for the most part—succeeded in besting the best players at their own game. What does that mean for the game? And what does that mean for humanity?