Background
Alfonso was likely influenced by his contact with scholars in the Arab world. Unlike many contemporary texts on the topic, he does not engage the games in the text with moralistic arguments; instead, he portrays them in an astrological context. He conceives of gaming as a dichotomy between the intellect and chance. The book is divided into three parts reflecting this: the first on chess (a game purely of abstract strategy), the second on dice (with outcomes controlled strictly by chance), and the last on tables (combining elements of both). The text may have been influenced by Frederick II's text on falconry.
Read more about this topic: Libro De Los Juegos
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