Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 4-12 – 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: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/12/

Episode Transcript: Geniuses Dare to Ride Their Luck: Clausewitz’s Card Game Analogies

Stephanie Crider (Host)b>

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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. I think it’s worth the reader just having a quick understanding, if that would be helpful, I think, of what these entail. Faro is often described as little better than playing dice. It’s a banking game based on an older game called basset. Multiple players can play. The banker turns over a card, and you bet on a number. And if your number is matched by the card that turns up, you can win. And then the bets, depending on how you play, typically, you can win 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 times your stake, depending on the way the bank is set up. So, it’s enormously risky. It’s inherently wonderful for the banker. It’s typically known as one of the most fraudulent games . . . across cultures I found, as well, which is quite interesting. It’s all on the turn of a card. It’s essentially all about luck. There’s really no skill involved. And there’s no player interaction, either, which is one of the things that current scholars often, when they talk about card games, talk about the interaction between players. So, one of the main games that Clausewitz explicitly references has virtually no interaction with players and is almost exclusively luck based. It’s fundamentally different from often how we look at and interpret what he’s saying.

Skat is a trick-taking game that originated in Thuringia, just near where Clausewitz was living. It was popular at the time. It typically involves three players. Good luck or bad luck can overcome a bad hand or good hand, respectively, irrespective of the skill of the player. But skill is definitely required, as is a good strategy.

And then the third game, again, this is one of the two he explicitly references, is ombre, which was the (probably) card game of the seventeenth and early–eighteenth centuries. It requires an enormous amount of luck. Daring play is often celebrated and rewarded, even if it leads to losses. And so, it‘s the nature of the game, and how you play it is as important as the fact that it‘s a trick-taking card game, that’s inherently luck based. You can have a strategy, but players are celebrated for being exceptionally daring when they play, and that’s something to take into account when we’re thinking of context about how he and his contemporaries would have thought about what this means.

Host

Clausewitz writes about the relationship between risk and chance. Examining his writings through the lens of these card games you just told me about, how might this alter the meaning of previous interpretations of his work?

Murray

I think it’s profound. We tend to see and we tend to think about Clausewitz as, you know, making sure you understand what it is you’re getting into before you start anything. And I don’t think that changes, but it really drives home that if it’s as chance ridden as he is implying with the type of games he has in mind, then that behooves us really to emphasis that question, which is what is it you’re trying to achieve here? What do you think it’s going to take? Because chances are, as soon as you start, it’s going to be far more costly, far more difficult, and far less likely to match any of your preconceptions or ideas.

And so, when we think about it today, what we often see is, if we just do enough analysis (sometimes you’ll see if we’re using the example of whether it’s chess or bridge or things like this, if we count cards, if we play skillfully) we can pretty much guarantee X outcome or Y outcome. And what Clausewitz is saying is, “No, that may help us in terms of if luck is on our side. But in reality, luck plays such a big role, and emotion plays such a big role” particularly if the other side is cheating, and that’s something that’s often not taken into account when we think about this.

With the idea that if we can’t really predict these things, and one of the things that he tells us about this— and it gets often mentioned but ignored—is he talks about (Leonhard) Euler and (Sir Isaac) Newton, two of the greatest mathematical minds of the previous four or five centuries, I should think, and certainly the previous two centuries for Clausewitz. If they can‘t figure this stuff out, these are equations that are beyond them, as he puts, essentially, how are we meant to, sort of, as mere mortals actually figure this stuff out?

And so, one of the points that he’s driving home here is you’re always betting against the odds. And the bank essentially is the opponent or luck or whatever it is . . . fate. And he’s not necessarily always exactly clear about this. So, if that’s the case and we’re always betting against the odds, and luck plays a role, we have to be daring because we can make a series of small bets and hedge our bets or be cautious, but at the end of the day, we can make losses on each of those small bets and we’ll never win big. Even if we win the occasional bet, we’re not going to actually win the war or win that particular part of the campaign or whatever it is that we’re trying to do at that particular moment. So his argument, to a certain extent, is if you believe you’ve made all the right choices, you’ve amassed your force, you’ve done the things you’re meant to do, you need to commit and you need to dare to win, essentially.

So when he’s, then, looking at historical examples, he looks at Frederick. He looks at Napoleon. And he’s often sarcastic, as well, with both of them—but particularly with Napoleon. But one of the things he really highlights is how important daring is and the moral courage to make a bold decision. And he frequently excoriates those historical commanders who fail to do that. He’s absolutely scathing, “feeble minded beetles,” he calls the Austrian generals “scurrying around on the battlefields in 1796.” He’s really trying to drive home this connection between this moral courage, luck, and, obviously, his concept of genius.

Host

What do we need to consider, then, going forward?

Murray

It’s tough because I’m not necessarily 100 percent sure. Partly because, obviously, for me, I’ve been sort of in the middle of this, but also, I’ve been teaching PME (professional military education), and Clausewitz is fundamental to PME instruction, pretty much across the globe. The standard translation is the Howard and Paret translation, and it’s important because they downplay the role of luck. And they emphasize and actually enhance (far more than Clausewitz does) the role of rationality. There’s a number of reasons for that. A number of scholars that Professor (Antulio) Echeverria, Professor Hugh Strachan, and, I mean, a number of scholars, have looked at this and talked about these issues.

What this tells us, to a great extent, is, actually, that’s, in many respects, not only wrong, but fundamentally misleading that Howard and Paret have emphasized this. We understand why they did it. The Cold War was going on and they’re trying to de–risk catastrophic thermonuclear war, essentially. Or reduce the likelihood of it. But the problem we have for scholars is that we’re teaching service personnel to make decisions in the future using this. Well, if he’s not actually talking about something that’s fundamentally predictable in a way that we’ve often implied, if not explicitly stated, what does that mean for the types of decision making, the types of officers or officer education? And I think for the services, it’s profound because I think we really have to emphasize decision–making ability moral courage, which, to a certain extent, is an ethics question, as well, not just physical courage. We really have to emphasize that first part there, and that’s something I know that’s built into the service education systems.

But I also think we have to think about what does that mean for the way we conceive of prewar planning . . . prewar strategy in–war planning and in–war strategy? Do we hedge, constantly, our bets—as we’re often wont to do? But if Clausewitz is right, I’m not saying he is, but if he is, I do think we fundamentally need to reconsider how we think about those big, particularly prewar and planning, questions. Or certainly planning questions within a conflict and the way that we actually train officers and educate officers, right down through the entire decision–making command structure of the armed services in terms of what is it we’re trying to get out of this and what’s the best way of approaching this if Clausewitz is right? And I happen to think he probably is, which then means do we need to reconsider the entire education structure of the armed services in terms of what we emphasize within decision making, within the theoretical part of the courses the officers take—particularly JMP levels one and two And I think, with that in mind, we also need to think about do we provide enough context within the education system to explain what he’s getting at? And I’d argue with what I’ve learned in researching this is any indication, we don’t provide necessarily enough context for the officers and decisionmakers to actually fully understand what the philosophers or theorists were talking about for the officers to extract the most utility out of what they’re learning. And, that’s ultimately what we need them to do. It’s not just developing their brains. It’s extracting utility from their education as well.

Host

Do you have any concluding thoughts you’d like to share?

Murray

I do think we need to relook at the version of On War that we use in PME. There are other versions out there, whether they’re ideal or not I don’t know. Chris and I, who’ve done three volumes of Clausewitz, we’re working on a fourth, and I won’t give the names, but we’re already starting to retranslate and we’re finding a number of things like this within the new translation that come up that are not necessarily the same but similar to what I found with the issue with just the one question of card games.

I do think that going forward, we need to reconsider, as well, the use of decision exercises, war games . . . not necessarily ones that lead to practicing and exercise but ones that allow the officers to make multiple decisions in an uncertain environment against a live opponent. And I think in PME we have some absolute centers of excellence where that occurs, but I don’t think it’s built into the curricula in the way that it could or should be because I think having officers, in particular, and NCOs as well, practice decision making on a regular basis in an environment, ultimately, that it’s only ever little wooden blocks or pixel people that get killed, but allowing them to learn and grow from something that ultimately is low–threat in terms of actual life allows them to develop that ability to rapidly make and practice things like bold decision making, which, of course, comes with consequences.

And I’ll give a quick example. I had a board game about 12 years ago at Command and General Staff College. It’s the Battle of Battle of Frœschwiller from the Franco–Prussian War. One of my officers was doing exactly what he should be doing, which was being very bold and aggressive with the Prussian army attacking the French position and (this is from 1870) and after about two hours of fighting, in terms of game terms, he said, “I’ve lost several of these units. How many casualties is that doc?”

And I said, “Well, you’ve actually taken about 8, 000 to 10,000 casualties in about 2 – 3 hours of fighting.”

And he just paused and said, “That can’t be right.”

So I said, “No, no, that’s absolutely right. And if you keep pressing on, what you’re doing, actually, is incredibly successful. It’s incredibly bold.”

He did press . . . credit to him. Because I’ve had officers go, “I can’t do that,” even though they’re little figures on the table. Mentally, that’s sometimes too much. So, he pressed on, and he absolutely crushed the French even more catastrophically than what happened historically. It was one of the best results in terms of that particular battle of war game that I’ve seen, but it was one of those that that moment of sudden recognition. Now of course, we want that to happen in a war game. We don’t want that to happen in real life, but if it does happen in real life, we want it to lead to a devastating success. And so, that would be one of those things, I think, that perhaps if we could build more of that into the education system, I think it would benefit all of us.

(The web group has the wargame rule set for the scenario for the Battle of Frœschwiller. Owner Christoper Pringle is making this available for free for a limited time. There are many other free scenarios for war games here as well. https://groups.io/g/bloodybigbattles)

Host

Listeners, you can dig into the article at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 53, issue 2.

Nick, thank you for making time to speak with me today. This was a real treat.

Murray

Thank you.

Host

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About the author: Nicholas Murray, D.Phil. F.R.Hist.S., is the author of four books: The Rocky Road to the Great War (Potomac Books, 2013), examining the development of trench warfare prior to 1914, and three translations (with commentary) of Clausewitz’s histories covering the French revolutionary campaigns in 1796 and 1799–1800. He is currently working on further translations of Clausewitz and other theorists. He designs and runs wargames for the Secretary of Defense Strategic Thinkers Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and professional military education. He has advised and assisted the Office of the Secretary of Defense with policy regarding military education and wargaming, and he has received numerous awards, including the Exceptional Public Service Award—the office’s highest medal.

Keywords: card games, luck/chance, genius, gambling, daring, probability, trinity, cheating