I'm more interested in what the lesson is supposed to be. Any ideas?
I guess it was useful to know people are alike enough to be predictable, but I don't think he was trying to teach me that necessarily.
Unfortunately I also have to interpret everything through the lens of, "He's an insecure narcissist, so he might just have been trying to keep me in line by proving he was smarter than me." Things changed a lot after this event. He intensified his efforts to isolate me from other people, even convincing my own mother I was so much smarter than her that she would never understand me. I was a three-year-old child. I don't care how smart you are when you're 3, most of what you need at that point is basic and common among all humans. But this gets back to seeing me as a threat to his own sense of safety, thus trying to make sure I felt small for the rest of my life.
When I began playing chess, he was my opponent for many, many games. Until I won a game at 9 years old, which was the last game we ever played.
I've always been a bad study of people, though. I wish I could have seen through my father the way you seem to have always seen through yours. I was in my 30s by then.
By the time I was 10, basketball, pool, ping pong, darts, air hockey, and foosball were all on the list of things to stop playing as soon as dad started. I can't even relate to how insecure you have to be to beat an 8-year-old girl at "horse" by making shots from far enough away that she can't possibly have the muscle strength to throw that far. I get making your kids earn their wins, but what fun is it when you make it impossible??
Fortunately my mom eventually figured it out and left him, and we've had the chance to build a very strong relationship, so I tend to try to spend my time focused on the things I can do to keep improving that.