Yu-Gi-Oh! aptitude

Benjamin likes the collectible card game Yu-Gi-Oh! and indeed there are now many more such cards than people in the world. I am okay with games like Magic: The Gathering and I usually do well with complex systems of rules but Yu-Gi-Oh! overwhelms me with tedious detail: there are so many cards each with their own special rules and interactions with other cards that the optimization problem of deck-building seems thorny indeed.

I have wondered if this suggests any future career for Benjamin. The larger challenge is probably that of finding something that interests him sufficiently but I do think that it may be important to note if it is the kind of thing where Benjamin's facility with sizable rule systems affords him unusual advantage.

English soccer teams' diverse players

On the one hand many soccer fans seem fiercely loyal to some local team. On the other hand, teams seem to have managers and players drawn from all over the continent, even the world, rather than their being of largely local origin in any sense. I wonder why fans so identify themselves with a team whose main link with them is just that their current players happen to play together locally.