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Chapter 15: Games as Systems of Uncertainty

Overview

It is true that every aspect of the role of dice may be suspect: the dice themselves, the form and texture of the surface, the person throwing them. If we push the analysis to its extreme, we may even wonder what chance has to do with it at all. Neither the course of the dice nor their rebounds rely on chance; they are governed by the strict determinism of rational mechanics. Billiards is based on the same principles, and it has never been considered a game of chance. So in the final analysis, chance lies in the clumsiness, the inexperience, or the naiveté of the thrower—or in the eye of the observer….

As for billiards, it can easily be transformed into a game of chance by simply tilting the table, outfitting it with studs that would cause the balls to rebound and swerve, and by placing the six pockets at the bottom of the table, or at other points, so that the ball would necessarily fall into one of them. Since we're not trying to favor skill, there would be a mechanical trigger and the ball would be shot up the slope by a spring that the player would pull with more or less force. This game of mechanical billiards is no less random than traditional dice.—Ivar Ekeland, The Broken Dice