p.5-6 Property is exchanged, but no goods are produced. What is more, this
exchange affects only the players, and only to the degree that they accept, through a free decision remade at each game, the
probability of such transfer. A characteristic of play, in fact, is that it creates no wealth or goods, thus differing from
work or art. At the end of the game, all can and must start over again at the same point. Nothing has been harvested or manufactured,
no masterpiece has been created [JLJ - I disagree, certain famous games of chess qualify as masterpieces, to those who re-play
the games played by others], no capital has accrued. Play is an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity,
skill, and often of money [JLJ - yet, when recovering from a hard day of work and preparing for another, how exactly is play
a waste of time? If we emerge refreshed, relaxed, energized and share time with others, how exactly is this a waste?]
p.7-8 An outcome known in advance, with no possibility of error surprise,
clearly leading to an inescapable result, is incompatible with the nature of play. Constant and unpredictable definitions
of the situation are necessary, such as are produced... in chess, each time one of the players moves a piece. The
game consists of the need to find or continue at once a response which is free within the limits set by the rules.
p.8 The one who plays chess [or other games]... by the very fact of complying
with their respective rules, is separated from real life where there is no activity that literally corresponds to any of these
games. That is why chess... [is] played for real. As if it is not necessary... This awareness of the basic
unreality of the assumed behavior is separate from real life and from the arbitrary legislation that defines other games.
p.58 Play... creates and sustains the spirit of inquiry
p.85 The taste for competition, the pursuit of chance, the pleasure
of simulation, and the attraction of vertigo certainly seem to be the principal effects of games, but their influence
infallibly penetrates all of social life.
p.163 Play and Art are born of a surplus of vital energy,
not needed by the adult or child for the satisfaction of his immediate needs, and therefore available for the free and pleasant
transformation into dancing.
p.163-164 Play is a creation of which the player is master.
Removed from stern reality, it seems like a universe that is an end to itself, and only exists as long as
it is voluntarily accepted as such.
p.167 In a general way, play is like education of the body, character, or
mind, without the goal's being predetermined. From this viewpoint, the further removed play is from reality, the greater
is its educational value. For it does not teach facts, but rather develops aptitudes.
p.167 However, the proper function of play is never to develop capacities.
Play is an end in itself. For the rest, the aptitudes it exercises are the very same as are used for study
and serious adult activities.
p.173 Herein lies the irreducible element in play, inaccessible to mathematics.
For one does not play to win as a sure thing.
p.173 Whenever calculation arrives at a scientific theory of the
game, the interest of the player disappears together with the uncertainty of the outcome... In chess, the player gives up
as soon as he becomes aware that the outcome is inevitable.
p.174 Mathematical theories that seek to determine with certainty,
in all possible situations, which piece to move or which card to put down, are not promoting the spirit of
the game but rather are destroying its reason for being.
p.174-175 The mathematical analysis of games thus turns out to be
a game in itself which has only an incidental relationship to the games analyzed... It can and must develop independently...
It does not have the least effect upon the nature of the game itself. In effect, mathematical analysis either ends in certainty,
and the game loses interest, or it establishes a coefficient of probability which merely leads to a more rational appreciation
of the risks assumed or not assumed by the player
p.175 Play is a total activity. It involves a totality of human behavior
and interests. Various approaches - from psychology to mathematics and, in passing, history and sociology - by reason of their
special biases have been unable to contribute anything too fruitful to the study of play. Whatever the theoretical or practical
value of the results obtained by each of these perspectives, these results are still without true meaning or impact, unless
they are interpreted within the context of the central problem posed by the indivisibility of the world of play. This is the
primary basis for interest in games.
p.201 Complicated adult games have also attracted the attention of psychologists.
Studies are especially numerous on the psychology of champion chess players... Like those works devoted to the psychology
of chess players (which explain, for example, that what chess players see in the bishop or castle are not determinate figures
but oblique or rectilinear forces), these studies explain the player's behavior insofar as it is determined by the game, but
not the nature of the game itself.
[back cover] Within limits set by rules that provide a level playing
field, players move toward an unpredictable outcome by responding to their opponents' actions.
