My partner and I were playing gin rummy. At the end of a hand, after we had both laid out the cards from our hands and reckoned the score, she pushed her cards toward me as I gathered them to shuffle and deal for the next hand. "There are four aces here," she said, pointing to one end of the pile, "in case you want separate them."
It struck me as an odd thing for her to say. Not the notion of separating like cards -- canasta players are used to separating red threes before shuffling. But this was gin. An ace has no special status at all in gin rummy -- it's just another card that can be part of a run or one of set, just like any other card. Besides, she never had and probably never would point out a group of four jacks or four sevens or four of anything else.
It was because they were aces that she said it, underscoring the general attitude of card players toward aces. They are special, perhaps for many reasons, but fundamentally because the ace is, of course, the highest card in many games.
I wonder why that is. Could it be that in the evolution of card games over the centuries, people elevated the ace to premier status because of some subconscious desire to raise the fortunes of the lowly lowest number, the lonely singleton -- perhaps symbolically looking out for number one?
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