Indoor Games and Sports - Board Games

Board Games

Many different kinds of board games are played throughout the world, and many of them have been popular for hundreds of years. A few board games are decided by chance or luck alone, but most require some amount of skill on the part of the players. Games of pure chance are usually ‘race’ games, such as the children’s game snakes and ladders. The winner – the player who reaches a certain square first – is decided by throwing numbered dice, over which the players have no control.

Games such as Monopoly and backgammon are a mixture of chance and skill. Even though luck (usually the throw of dice) plays a part, choices made by the players in the course of the game also help to decide the winner. Backgammon is one of the oldest board games that people still play. Its name comes from the Saxon (it means ‘back game’ because sometimes pieces have to go back to the beginning), but the Romans played this game too.

Luck plays little or no part in games of skill – the outcome is decided by the players’ ability to make the most advantageous moves available. Such games are often ‘war’ games, which involve capturing an opponent’s pieces. The most popular of all such games today is chess. Chess is a game of great skill that calls for the ability to plan moves and recognize threats several steps ahead. Each player has an ‘army’ of 16 pieces with which to fight a battle. There are six different kinds of piece – king, queen, bishop, knight, rook and pawn – and each has its own special way of moving about the board. If a player moves onto a square occupied by an opposing piece, that piece is captured and removed from the board. The object of the game is to trap (checkmate) the enemy king by putting it in a position where it cannot escape capture.