Austen often features card games and parlor games, such as whist and backgammon. One might think that she would use these games to illustrate strategic thinking, as do other game theorists (such as Binmore 2007). Instead, Austen uses these games to illustrate the tendency of excessive decontextualization, of focusing in so closely on the inconsequential that one loses sight of the larger social context. Austen emphasizes that strategic thinking is about much more than the triviality of “winning.”

Austen’s characters who like card and board games are generally not good at strategic thinking in the social realm. “Lovers of games in the novels . . . are more often than not selfish, irresponsible, or emptyheaded” (Duckworth 1975, p. 280).