From Deleuze The Logic of Sense.
Tenth series of the ideal game.
"The games with which we are acquainted respond to a certain number of principles, which may make the object of a theory. This theory applies equally to games of skill and to games of chance; only the nature of the rules differs,
1) It is necessary that in every case a set of rules pre exists the placing of the game, and, when one plays, this set takes on a categorical value.
2 ) these rules determine hypotheses which divide and apportion chance, that is, hypotheses of loss or gain (what happens if ...)
3 ) these hypotheses organize the playing of the game according to a plurality of throws, which are really and numerically distinct. Each one of them brings about a fixed distribution corresponding to one case or another.
4 ) the consequences of the throws range over the alternative "victory or defeat." The characteristics of normal games are therefore the pre-existing categorical rules, the distributing hypotheses, the fixed and numerically distinct distributions, and the ensuing results.
...
It is not enough to oppose a "major" game to the minor game of man, nor a divine game to the human game; it is necessary to imagine other principles, even those which appear inapplicable, by means of which the game would become pure.
1 ) There are no pre-existing rules, each move invents its own rules; it bears upon its own rule.
2 ) Far from dividing and apportioning chance in a really distinct number of throws, all throws affirm chance and endlessly ramify it with each throw.
3 ) The throws therefore are not really or numerically distinct....
4 ) Such a game — without rules, with neither winner nor loser, without responsibility, a game of innocence, a caucus-race, in which skill and chance are no longer distinguishable seems to have no reality. Besides, it would amuse no one.
...
The ideal game of which we speak cannot be played by either man or God. It can only be thought as nonsense. But precisely for this reason, it is the reality of thought itself and the unconscious of pure thought.
...
This game is reserved then for thought and art. In it there is nothing but victories for those who know how to play, that is, how to affirm and ramify chance, instead of dividing it in order to dominate it, in order to wager, in order to win. This game, which can only exist in thought and which has no other result than the work of art, is also that by which thought and art are real and disturbing reality, morality, and the economy of the world."
