If - A Europoem

If you can keep your king when all about you
Are removing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can draw red tiles when you need them
But make allowance for having no reds, too,
If you can fake frustration with your drawing,
Thereby inviting an external conflict,
Or being the attacker, choose your victim,
Carefully, to maximize what you inflict:

If you can plan-- but not make plans your master,
If you can think-- but not only on your turn;
If you can smartly strike with each disaster
And from a lost position still return;
If you can bear to watch a mighty kingdom
Broken into parts by all your foes,
Or watch the monument you sacrificed for
Taken by your enemies, with repose:

If you can make four heaps of all your vee-pees
And see them grow in equal colored counts,
And not expend a useless tile playing
For a color you don't need in your accounts;
If you deceptively can place a leader
Into a kingdom soon under attack
And lose it, thus removing several tiles
And keeping your opponent's kingdom back

From encroaching on your other leaders,
And still not think that any certain kingdom
Is every really owned by anyone;
If all the other players think you're losing,
When you know that you've already won,
And can control the end-game at your choosing,
Yours is the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
And--which is more--you'll win the game, my son!

--Reinard Knipling