The Tridge Player

An intrepid adventurous gamester
Endowed with sharp cerebral synapses,
To tackle a novel collection
Of royals, knaves and knights,
The long and the short.
Aligned in that critical order
Of troops wearing their suits,
Either forwards or backwards
To comply with ancient tradition.

He shuffles and skilfully shunts
Those triple pictorial threesomes,
To position the fixed and the floating
Or to anxiously await their arrival,
When play is gleefully chanted
Or his whisper announces a pass.

In battle he cunningly must
Without trepidation or fear
Trump, trick, trawl or tame,
Those double defending lieutenants
Composing the other two sides of the triangle
That visually block his victory path.

Triple, single or double, whatever the multiple
Of that fund and its bountiful widow,
Concern not his devilish disregard
With implausible lapses in bidding.
Or else he'll surely incline
To divide the might of the foe,
By the capture of sabres and logs
That surrender the chalice and gold.

Devoid of high calibre armour
Awaits the general scarcity of will,
to announce that minimal effort
that by the opposite route,
the summit can also surmount.

Unlike the state of abundance when
By holding all but a few
He ponders and halts at the sixth
Before he announces the action
That the limit he'll seek to achieve.