Many people know Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) as a father of modern taxonomy who classified many species. What many people don’t know is that Carl Linnaeus helped to keep a piece of knowledge about a fascinating game of Tablut.
Continue reading “Tablut and Linnaeus’ contribution to the world of games”
Among the games known India, there are many checkers-like games, that don’t resemble checkers at first glance. These games use interesting triangular or circular boards, and pieces move not through squares, but along the lines and their intersections. What’s more, one similar game was known to Native Americans who live rather far away from India. Pretwa, Gol skuish or Egara-guti are some examples of these games. You can learn their rules in a minute but you can play for hours.
It happens that one man creates an almost perfect game. George Howard Monks, who developed a game called Halma, was certainly one of such people. Halma gave rise to other interesting games, but it’s really great without any modifications. It requires relatively simple equipment, the rules are simple too, but you could devote your whole life to study its strategy.
Summer holidays are coming! This means a lot of spare time for parties, beer, family barbecues and other pleasures like… games! But you need a right game, well suited for playing with friends. Kimbo is just perfect. It’s a contemporary game, though a bit forgotten and worth the reminder. Continue reading “Kimbo – put up your fences and go around others”
Imagine that games are treasures of different nations, countries, and continents. India had brought Chess and many other games to the world. Go and Mahjong may be seen as the great wealth of China. Europe has developed Checkers and Chess in its modern, western form. And what Africa gave to the world? Mancala of course! A real jewel of Africa. Extremely beautiful. Raw and sophisticated at the same time.
Matador is a domino game, typical and unique at the same time. Typical because players use tiles to build a line of play and the goal of the game is to get rid of all bones from hand. But matador is unique thanks to the unusual rule of combining tiles and thanks to the existence of special tiles that can be added to the line of play at any time.
Continue reading “Matador – double-six domino based on sevens”
In my previous posts on draughts variants I described diagonal draughts, orthogonal draughts, draughts on enlarged boards and “twisted” draughts. But still I’m far from describing all checkers variants. The next chapter of this story is a game of Towers (called Bashni) and modern game called Laska.
Have you ever heard about Backgammon? Even if you do not know the rules, maybe you just know what it is. A game with dice, played on board with “teeth” on which players move their numerous pieces. This game is really extraordinary, so it’s good to know its rules and rich history.
I love trick-taking card games in which you have to win certain cards to earn points. They are popular in my part of Europe – Thousand in Poland and Ukraine, and 66 (or Schnapsen) in Germany and Austria. Both games have a common ancestor, an old game called Mariage (in Polish: Mariasz).
Continue reading “Mariage – the ancestor of Thousand and Sixty-six. How to play this game?”
In previous parts of my Othello tutorial I wrote on strategy basics and quiet moves. This is very important in the middlegame but in this part I’ll tell you something about starting the game.
Continue reading “Othello tutorial, p. 3 – How to begin well and not end badly?”
Bona Ludo 