The card game Truco , popular in Argentina and Uruguay, originates in Spain, specifically in Catalonia and Valencia. Some authors, with considerable imagination, have proposed legends of a more remote origin linked to Muslims, perhaps because the four-suited playing cards, which entered Europe from the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt (1250-1517), may have derived from a trick-taking game with a peculiar card hierarchy similar to that of Truco . During the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain, various card games emerged. Some, like Flor , were predominantly games of chance and associated with betting; others, like Truc or Truque , were trick-taking and more social, prioritizing intuition and strategy over luck. From the times of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata up to the 19th century, a card game developed and became popular in these lands, combining the strategy of Truque and the chance of Flor: Truquiflor . The South American gauchos expressed, through this game, their character and temperament, transforming it into a dialectical game, full of sayings and verses. Truco , which today is played with or without the flor, optimally embodies certain traits of the criollo character—most notably, an irreverence in the face of objective and indisputable adversity, capable of “scaring the devil himself.”
In the autumn of 1933, two young go players, Kitani Minoru and Go Seigen, launched a revolutionary change in the game’s opening style. Initially controversial, shinfuseki as the style came to be known, attracted amateur and professional players alike and helped to reshape the way that the game was played. This has come to be seen as a modernist revolution, stressing speed, scale, and the center of the board over slower, more piecemeal approaches which had predominated. However, I argue that database analysis of the games which were played at the time, as well as textual analysis of contemporary writing, reveals a more complex trajectory. While shinfuseki can indeed be seen as a strategic part of a broader modernization of the game of go, interpreting it requires nuance. Firstly, Kitani and Go’s innovations were built upon a foundation of other players’ experiments: while 1933 was certainly seen at the time as a moment of dramatic change, it was one that had been some time in coming. Secondly, the aim of their experiments was cast not in terms of speed and scale and the center of the board (as has since tended to be the prevailing interpretation), but balance and harmony and by reference to an East Asian classic, the doctrine of the mean. Ultimately, the significance of 1933 as a turning point was less grounded in specific moves than in the emergence of a greater sense of freedom to experiment.
This study examines a group of graffiti board games found in the public areas of Stratonikeia, one of the important cities of the Inner Carian Region in the Late Antique Period (Late 5th and 6th centuries AD), and Lagina, which was politically affiliated to it, and aims to contribute these games to the existing literature. This game, known as “ ludus duodecim scriptorum” or “duodecim scripta” during the Roman Imperial Period and resembling backgammon, continued to be played under the name alea in the Late Antique Period. The 5 examples of alea identified in Stratonikeia and Lagina show less prevalence compared to other graffiti games documented in the city – three-in-arow, nine men’s morris, and mancala. These games were created by carving them practically and carelessly into the marble surfaces of architectural elements, rather than using specially produced luxury gaming tables. Four of these games are located in the public areas of Stratonikeia that are open to the public, while one is located on the stylobate of the Hekate Temple in Lagina. Although a decline in pagan beliefs was observed with the collapse of the Roman Empire and the acceptance of Christianity as the official religion of the state, it is understood that board games continued to be played in many cities under Imperial rule. In this context, this study conducted through the examples of Stratonikeia and Lagina aims to reveal how the religious and social transformations experienced in the Late Antique Period were reflected in leisure and entertainment practices—especially board games—through archaeological data.
Sophus Tromholt (1851-1896) is remembered mainly as a northern lights explorer and for his photographs of Sámi people in northern Norway, now on the UNESCO World Heritage List. His long publication list also contains popular science books, travel literature and puzzle publications. Moreover, he was also a keen inventor of board games, playing a role in the early history of the board game company Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg. After a short biography of Tromholt we present a history of his games Mona , Samson , Rocco , Yum-Yum , and Rococo .
Abstract This article explores how chess, as both a game and a metaphorical system, functions as a tool for analyzing political and cultural dynamics. It moves beyond romanticized or simplified analogies, it critically revisits chess metaphors such as gambits, sacrifice, stalemate, and zugzwang through the lens of strategic decision-making under uncertainty. Drawing on Herbert Simon’s theory of bounded rationality, as well as later developments in decision theory by Kahneman, Schelling, and Thaler, the article situates chess at the intersection of rational planning and the limits of information in real-world governance. In parallel, it reevaluates Johan Huizinga’s classical play theory by engaging contemporary scholarship to position chess within broader debates in game and play studies. Through conceptual analysis, the article develops the notion of strategic imagination to assess how chess has shaped and reflected political narratives. The article contributes a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding how abstract game mechanics can illuminate, and sometimes obscure, the complexities of decision-making in political life.
This paper presents the findings of an ongoing research initiative aimed at the systematic documentation and analysis of ancient etched game boards across Maharashtra with a particular focus on central regions of the state. Recent explorations within the Gautala Wildlife Sanctuary including the Buddhist rock-cut caves of Pitalkhora and the Chalukya-era Shri Hemadpanthi Mahadev Temple have revealed both isolated and multiple etched gaming boards including traditional mancala variants. Additional fieldwork at the rock-cut caves of Aurangabad and active temples near the Lonar Crater Lake has led to the discovery of previously undocumented graffiti games and a potentially unique variant of supposed mancala not observed elsewhere in India. These findings contribute to a growing dataset that suggests a historically rich and regionally concentrated gaming culture. By combining new discoveries with previously collected data the study explores spatial patterns cultural continuity and the possible decline of these games. Through comparison with historical sources and ongoing dialogue with subject experts this research aims to reconstruct the cultural memory associated with these artifacts and proposes new directions for understanding regional play traditions in India.
Abstract The tension between the game of chess as strictly regulated by rules and the idea of freedom can be traced in three radidal examples separated by media and different periods of the twentieth century. The first emphatic employment of the concept of freedom is in the title of a chess journal issued by the Communist opposition of the central German working-class chess organization at the end of the Weimar Republic. In the journal Frei Schach! the radical subsection of “Red Sports Unity” asserts its claim for supremacy, demanding revolutionary goals in the class struggle. But this journalistic appeal to freedom was countered by the use of the same concept by the moderate alternative central chess organisation, and soon even by the National Socialists suppressing both working-class organisations. In the cultural scene after the second world war there was a distant, strangely depoliticized echo of freedom in chess. In the Austrian avantgarde dramatist Wolfgang Bauer`s version of Ibsen`s modernist revision of classical drama in the play Ghosts there is a farcical use of everyday objects as a replacement of chess elements. They function as a postmodern parody of the conventional structures of a conversation play. Compared to such highly idiosyncratic ludic transformation of chess games, today`s digitalized chess in which the computer is the final arbiter makes the game more accessible to the masses. The surface democratic appeal in which average players can turn into critics of the chess elite is accompanied by the complete subjection to digitalisation on a late capitalist agenda. However, this does not completely deprive the traditional game of chess of its promise of playful enjoyment for an increasing number of people on a global scale.
Abstract Dadu is a traditional board game exclusively played within the Muslim Dawoodi Bohra community in South Asia. Most households have their own hand-stitched cloth board, together with a set of wood-turned playing pieces and cowrie shells for dice. Though formally a two-player game, it is commonly played in large teams during family gatherings. Non-community members rarely take part and the game remains virtually unknown to outsiders. Descriptions of the game are absent from the scholarly literature and it does not find mention in any of the major game encyclopedias. Surviving boards and communal memory trace the game back to the early 20th century, but the hybrid nature of the game and the origin of the Dawoodi Bohra community in Yemen suggest that it may go back several centuries further. The present article uses ludemic theory to analyze the constituent elements of the game and demonstrate their affinity with elements in other games both inside and outside South Asia. The findings are contextualized within the wider history of the Dawoodi Bohra community, suggesting that Dadu may have resulted from the adaptation of a West Asian Tab game to a South Asian single track race game. A detailed set of rules gathered from interviews with members of the Dawoodi Bohra community is appended to the article.
Abstract The Game of Cupid is a simple dice-based race game derived from the Game of the Goose in about 1600. Twelve different examples, covering the period to about 1850 and drawn from France, the Low Countries and Britain, are analysed according to distinctive markers that include rules, game board configuration and decorative elements, showing that the evolution of the game can be described by a single tree of descent. The forces governing this evolution are discussed. The results may be of interest to those investigating whether different aspects of a complex cultural trait – such as a board game that has rules, a board and decorative elements – follow separate cultural transmission processes.
Abstract Excavations in Israel of Byzantine and early Islamic sites have yielded some interesting gaming boards that are not always understood by the archaeologists who found them. Because they are organised in parallel rows of ‘holes’, most are presented as ‘mancala’ gameboards – which some may be, indeed; however, boards offering three or four rows of squares or depressions cannot reasonably be mancalas, nor can they be held as ‘senet’, the Egyptian game. So, what are they? Reviewing the relevant literature, this article will try in this article to disentangle these finds, the more so as they are often well dated to periods which have rarely been looked into.
The game of Gyan Chauper or snakes and ladders exists in many forms throughout history as a board game of varying size, structure, and game elements of snakes and ladders associated with various vices and virtues inscribed within the board. Here, three boards were analyzed via Monte Carlo simulation, including the 1998 Milton Bradley version, the 72-square Vaisnava board, and the 84-square Jaina board, with the goal of understanding the relationships between board design and associated behaviors and spiritual concepts. Game play on each board was simulated 100,000 times with variations that included individual removal of a snake or ladder, thereby quantifying the importance of that element towards achieving victory. Comparison of the weighted importance of each game element and associated vice and virtue then permitted analysis of their importance for the game designer and their associated culture.
Abstract Ludus Regularis is a board game with dice, from the 10th century, which came to our knowledge through literary sources. The rules of the game were kept by the historian Balderic, in the 11th century, in a book edited in 1615 by Colvener: Chronicon Cameracense et Atrebatense, and reedited in 1834 by André Le Glay, in Paris: Chronique d’Arras et de Cambrai. By studying the probabilities involved in the dynamics of the game Ludus Regularis, it is possible to advance that the author’s concerns were mainly centred on presenting a game that followed Catholic doctrine. Ludus Regularis is a carefully conceived game, using dice commonly inaccessible to members of the clergy, in a context of deep Christian religious symbolism.
Abstract The first profound ludemic studies are being done at the moment. Some projects are exploring the ludemic approach in video games and historic games. However, contemporary games known as modern board games are still underexplored. In this paper, the number one games, according to Board Game Geek since 2000, are analyzed according to a systemic approach. The authors propose exploring the game system and other dimensions of each game in order to find design patterns that help support a ludemic approach. By addressing ludemes, the authors seek to contribute to understanding the success of modern board games in an age of video game domination.
Abstract Merels (also called Nine Men‘s Morris) comprises a family of traditional board games with ancient roots. Between medieval and modern times, merels saw an interesting onomasiological shift: Several European languages took up a new name for the game. This new name is sometimes claimed to have originated in German, but the details surrounding this naming practice are still unclear. There are mainly two German groups of names for this game, the older names based on the number 9 (Neunstein, Neunten Stein, Neunermal etc.) and the younger based on the German word for “mill” (Mühle, Mühlspiel, Mühleziehen etc.). Relying on philological evidence (partly pulled from lexicographical data) this paper outlines the evolution of German terms for merels, focusing on the naming practices from the 15th to 17th century. Possible motivations of the name Mühle are discussed.
Abstract Despite many discoveries and proposals for rules for the ancient board game known as the Royal Game of Ur (RGU), no mathematical analysis has yet been performed investigating those rules. In an attempt to fill that gap, this paper presents an initial mathematical analysis of the RGU from an introductory point of view. The paper deduces the overall complexity of the RGU using a state-space and game-tree complexity analysis, allowing the RGU to be compared to the popular games Checkers, Backgammon, Ludo, Chess, and Go. The paper builds upon the fundamental laws of combinatorics and probability to improve the understanding of the game: what patterns should you expect, what moves increase your chance to win, and what moves should you avoid. The paper also presents theorems to predict the probability of future dice rolls and piece movements within the game, allowing basic inferences to be made about strategy in the RGU. The game is further examined by analysing three different influences when determining the best move: advancement and attack (beneficial to the player), and captures (detrimental to the player). These influences are used to deduce explicit equations for the advantage gained by playing each possible move from a position, which allows the formalization of a strategic algorithm to play the RGU.
Abstract Characterised by the presence of multiple depressions or pockets in a variety of arrangements, and, in some cases, the presence of a single, double, or triple ‘start line’ carved into horizontal stone surfaces, marble lanes in their variety of forms open a window onto ancient play that few have looked through. Thought to be a playing surface for some kind of throwing or rolling game which involved the use of glass or ceramic spheres, Roman marble lanes have received comparatively little attention in the recent upswing of scholarship on ancient play, partially as a result of the relative dearth of textual and iconographic sources discussing or depicting their usage, but these playing surfaces nevertheless represent a major corpus of ludic material. This contribution summarises past work on marble lanes before exploring the limited textual and iconographic source material related to playing with marbles. It offers a tentative new typology by which to categorise marble lanes and a non-exhaustive list of these playing surfaces recorded at archaeological sites around the Mediterranean. It then moves onto a discussion of the game/games that may be played on these boards, arguing that the wide variations in the different layouts for marble lanes may indicate that they were used not for one tightly-defined game, but more likely facilitated the playing of a loosely connected family of games, with implicaitons for how we think about communities of play in the past.
Abstract Traditional Maldivian chess rules are presented and their similarity to pre-19th century Turkish chess is discussed, with musings on the potential role of Ottomans in spreading the “new game” invented in Europe – but played in their own manner – throughout the Muslim world and beyond.
Abstract The present paper presents a die in its archaeological context, which is a rich grave in the region of Boeotia. It attempts to understand with what other items this gaming piece coexisted and why, as well as who was the person who played with it during lifetime. The Boeotian die is a solid cube made of clay that presents a peculiarity in its numbering system, for the face normally bearing six dots features twenty-five instead. The date of the die in the Archaic period and the sex of the deceased can be established from its associated grave-group which comprises 48 Boeotian (mostly bird bowls) and Late Corinthian vases, minor objects, such as spindle whorls, and gaming pieces from raw natural materials (such as pebbles, shells, a terracotta animal in secondary use, etc), as well as jewellery such as rings, bracelets, necklaces, brooches, pins, spiraled tubes, seals and rosettes attached on a -now lost- head cover. The age of the dead is estimated as young from osteological analysis, which situates our die and its gaming assemblage in the cultural context of the “mors immatura” in Archaic Greece. Dice among other gaming pieces are known from antiquity, yet undisturbed (and sexed) contexts of the Archaic period are rare. In the 6th century BC dice occur in sanctuaries; none is known from Boeotia, hence the significance of publishing one here in its assorted grave-group.
Abstract The assemblage of four cones (ivory, stone) and an astragalus marked with dots from Katsambas in Crete is so far the best evidence of gaming pieces uncovered in an Aegean tomb of the Late Bronze Age. A small faience animal associated with the same burial, that of a child, attracted however little attention, and raises the question whether it may be added as a possible game piece to this set. Although this holed piece was certainly used as a personal ornament or amulet, this paper gives the opportunity to review the functions of small faience, stone and ivory animal figurines in the Aegean, especially the couchant ones. It also introduces the notion of chance and fate linked to playing on the basis of cross-cultural comparisons in the Eastern Mediterranean. Additionally, the hypothesis that small standing terracotta quadrupeds may have initially served as toys before having functioned as votive or funerary offerings in Aegean cult places and tombs is further explored. Special interest is shown on Mycenaean funerary assemblages from Prosymna in the Argolid and Perati in Attica featuring small terracotta animals and cone shells, inasmuch as these objects may be seen as potential toys and gaming pieces.
Abstract Everyday tools such as dice and knucklebones are associated with gambling and divinatory books founded upon the use of Homeric epics. Papyrological documents about this practice date back to Roman Imperial times. Verses drawn from Iliad and Odyssey were currently assigned to a divinely inspired wisdom. The preface to Homeromanteia shows a link with religious and divinatory ideas current at that time (hilastic invocations, hemeromancy, cledonism).
