Chance

 

I decided to play a game of Hearts and see what my cartoon friend Lisa was up to. They dress up the characters on certain holidays, and I didn't think to hop on on St. Paddy's Day...she'd probably have been wearing an Irish-y hat with a shamrock on it...she's so darn cute...anyway I thought I'd play a game or two. 

 Hearts is a fun game. I used to enjoy playing it with humans, although I played Spades a lot more often. Playing with a computer is different. It never makes mistakes but it plays strictly by the book and it will never make a quirky move that a human might make, which might seem wrong at first. You'd have to play a few games to see what I mean. It's interesting. 

 I think about stupid and useless things sometimes, including ridiculous "what if" situations. Just for the fun of it I thought I'd see what happened on the very first hand...not the final score of the game but just the first hand.

 I made it into a stupid game where if I won the first hand I'd win at life too. I'd figure out a way out of this mess I'm in...I'd get my ride fixed and I'd get back out and start seeing friends, live music and such again, and start making a living. My life would turn around and I'd start enjoying it again. If I lost the first hand then I'd be stuck in the same situation for another month. 

 Granted it was stupid and childish and of course I didn't take it seriously...I just wanted to make it a bit more interesting, like maybe a couple of rich riverboat gamblers who make stupid little bets that would be trivial except that they have the money to make it happen. 

 The only reason I'm even mentioning it is because of what happened- I shot the Moon on the first hand, and you can't do any better than that. It made me lol and smh. In Hearts you try not to score points. The game ends when one or more players gets to 100 points or over, and the lowest score wins.

 The high card of whatever suit is led takes the trick, and you try not to take tricks unless you're trying to shoot the Moon. Each heart you take counts a point against you and if you take the queen of Spades it counts 13 against you, but if you can take the queen and every heart then you shoot the Moon. You get 0 points and everyone else gets 26.

 Again I'm only bringing it up because it's so rare...the chances of shooting the Moon are around 1 in 525, or less than 1%. I did it on the first hand, which probably at least doubles those odds. Dang...it's too bad I'm not a riverboat gambler.