An Ode To Bill Gates, Games, Thinking Mathematically, And "Gifted" Women

             I have told the story of when I knew I was going to commit my life to social justice – as a kindergartener when my teacher collectively punished the entire class and I recognized in my heart and soul that this was wrong. But it was not always my idea to be a lawyer, in fact it was an accident because in middle school, I was deeply into the arts. I was the lead in my 8th grade play, and sung in a professional children’s choir, and I had intended to try out for the performing arts program at my high school. But I never even made it to the try outs. The school distributed a form about extracurricular activities, and it listed debate. I checked the box, and the rest was history. I went on to finish third in the country at the Tournament of Champions in high school, and was recruited by multiple colleges, but picked Dartmouth for both debate and academics. (Also, why did my high school print this picture of me? CPS what were you thinking. I don’t look professional.)

            But there is something else I’ve always been good at – like Bill Gates - namely games. I’m reading Bill Gates' autobiography right now and in it he has a chapter called “Tray” where he recounts how “Gami” his grandmother taught him to play cards as a woman and yet she defeated young Bill Gates consistently in all the games he played until he was a teenager. In fact, Gami attempted to help Bill beat her, and she would give him “advice” for which cards to play. (Bill are you sure she wasn’t cheating? Just a thought but I’ve played with people who know how to read hands, meaning illegally look at them, and when I personally lose in most card games it’s either because a) I let people win so I’m not a know-it-all jerk or b) somebody cheated.) I’m not the best card player of all time, but like Bill Gates' family growing up, my family is also really into games. (And wait a minute, there are people who can beat me in games, usually new ones, like one of my former physics tutors and his wife.) 

            But within my own family, when I’ve played games with them like monopoly, as a tiny kid, I’d bankrupt them. This resulted in many fights. My now deceased aunt-in-law imposed a handicap on me as a child and eventually banned me from the game because I was consistently beating the adults. And there’s my favorite game of all “time” known as “Set,” which is a pattern recognition game I’ve never lost to anyone on the planet. I haven’t played it consistently in years, and I’d be overjoyed if I could find someone who could beat me because winning is no fun if I don’t have a fair game, and by fair, I mean it’s sometimes more enjoyable to lose, and I like to play with an evenly matched person or group of persons. (I also am terrible at word/language games, and the games I’m really good at I “count” as math games.)

            One of my favorite games where I don’t always win is poker because I’m bad at reading people and can’t tell if they are bluffing. I don’t know how I’d stand up to von Neumann or Nash, who also played poker and many games as hobbies and invented games of their own. (Nash’s game was so *** I’m not even going to print it; Nash actually had a really dirty sense of humor.) I also used to have a women's group of poker, and I had so much fun with it. We didn't play for money, and there were other women who were really good at the game, but eventually I was banned for unknown reasons from this group.  (To my future colleagues, trust me, I'm rusty, and there are many types of poker I still don't know how to play, and I also now prefer cooperative games as opposed to competitive games because it's more fun for everyone, and this is the entire point of my theory of games to play cooperatively and not competitively and not be adversaries, so let's find some fun new games where everyone wins. Or we can make up fun new games. I mean, if I'm going to take on von Neumann and Nash, who both made up games, shouldn't I also have to make up my own game? Maybe you can help me, and as "scholarly development," I can have you over for a game night and we can have a lot of non-alcoholic fun and be silly and play collaboratively? Only women are invited, sorry.)  

            In any event, I do think the world of Bill Gates, with whom I share an interest in nature and in card games, and apparently in altruism. Bill Gates and I may have other stuff in common, like the math skills. Bill Gates codes in his head and wrote one his best programs on a hike, and I see math in my head the way the protagonist from The Queen's Gambit does, though my math visualization occurs without any medical assistance; I don't know how I cultivated these abilities, they came to me once I seriously started studying math. One day I just "had them" and I don't have the problems she did. I'm a very boring person, and live a pretty boring life.  I don't even drink alcohol, and gave it up years ago.

        P.S. Even though I have math abilities, I've found lawyers, many of them, are innate mathematicians because to be a good lawyer, one must conquer logic and logic games to get a high LSAT score, so most lawyers tend to be really good at games.  That's why it helped to do law before I went into math/physics. If you are like me, you literally find problems with the LSAT like the amazing paralegal played by Rachel Zane in Suits who finds problems with many LSAT questions and ironically has difficulty with standardized tests. I relate to her. But I had to stop watching Suits after the lawyers committed malpractice and it distressed me so much I to turn off the TV because I could not even bare to see malpractice on TV. I've quit so many lawyer shows because of this, and immediately bail on any lawyer show the minute malpractice happens, including my favorite lawyer show ever, The Extraordinary Attorney Woo, a Korean lawyer TV show. That's how much against malpractice I am, it distresses me so much I can't even watch it on TV. Not that I'm watching TV except for on the weekends to make time for my blog. Let's just say she and I have different interpretations of a "sunflower." And that the protagonist is one of my favorite TV protagonists of all "time."

            P.P.S. The most gifted woman mathematician of all time I am aware of is Katherine Johnson in Hidden Figures, who could do topology in the 4th grade, which I certainly couldn't. She's amazing and in my view should have won the Nobel Prize in physics for putting Neil Armstrong on the moon, but her story was buried by time. Who knows how many other countless women have these abilities, but it has nothing to do with race, and who knows how many other Black women mathematicians who likely have to be four times as good to succeed there are? I only know I've met some of them and seen their math, so shout out to amazing Black African women in math, whose math I've personally seen pictures of. You inspire me!

-Cortelyou C. Kenney (9/24/25, 8:30 am PT)