The Gin Game by D.L. Coburn

This winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Drama uses a card game as a metaphor for life. Martin is playing solitaire on the porch of a seedy nursing home. Enter Dorsey, a proper, self-righteous fellow resident. They discover they both dislike the home and enjoy gin rummy, so they begin to play and to reveal intimate details of their lives. Dorsey wins every time, and their secrets become weapons used against one another. Martin longs for a victory to counter a lifetime of defeats, but it doesn’t happen. He leaves the stage a broken man, and Dorsey realizes their self-righteous rigidity has led to an embittered, lonely, old age.