A normal play convention in a game is the method of determining the winner that is generally regarded as standard. For example:
- Preventing the other player from being able to move
- Being the first player to achieve a target
- Holding the highest value hand
- Taking the most card tricks
In combinatorial game theory, the normal play convention of an impartial game is that the last player able to move is the winner.
By contrast "misère games" involve upsetting the convention and declaring a winner the individual who would normally be considered the loser.
Famous quotes containing the words normal, play and/or convention:
“Dada doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo. Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease: selfkleptomania, man’s normal condition, is Dada. But the real dadas are against Dada.”
—Tristan Tzara (1896–1963)
“Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only, we die in earnest—that’s no jest.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?–1618)
“No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)