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| We can define chess as the most well-known board game of all times. But chess is a skill game too, actually chess is a game of 100% skill and there is no luck involved. Let us take another example: checkers. Although checkers are played on a board too, checkers belong to the skill games category. Besides these two games, in the following part of the article I will present a few things about two other famous games: Mahjong and Dominoes. Both of these games are skill and board games, so they enter the same categories as the two previous games. |
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Let us start with the most well-known game, chess. Probably one of the oldest games in the world, the origins of modern chess date back to the 15th century, but there are much older variants of the game. Since this is not the place to discuss the origins of chess, we will stop here. Chess is a game for two players, thy play it on a board with 64 squares, arranged in an 8X8 grid. One of the players controls the white pieces, and the other one controls the black pieces. The two players have the same number and shaped figures, only their color is different. The pieces are the following: one king, a queen, two rooks, knights, bishops and eight pawns for each player. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent’s king. Checkmate is a specific word used in chess and it means that the opponent’s king is under immediate attack, and he cannot move away. A few more interesting things about chess: while a common game lasts somewhere between 10 minutes and an hour, a tournament game, played by professionals can last up to six hours!
Another very well-known board and skill game is checkers. The game has nothing in common with the other game called Chinese checkers. Checkers are also called draughts in British English. The board of the game is 10X10 in the case of international draughts, 8X8 in English draughts, but there are many other variations. The number of players is only two and they are allowed to move their pieces in diagonal and they must capture the enemy’s pieces. The pieces are black and white, and their shape is very similar to the pieces used for backgammon. Just like chess, this game is a very old one too, it is played in Europe from around the 15th-16th century, but other variations of the game existed even before this time.
Mahjong is game originated in China. Although nowadays you can play it on a computer, originally it was designed as a board game for four players. The real game differs a lot from the variant played on the internet. Each player gets 13 or 16 tiles in his hand. The number of tiles depends on the exact variation of the game. Then each player will draw a card and discard one. The goal is to make four of five certain set of tiles, called melds, and one pair. A player will win if his hand is complete. You can see now that it is very different from the game which can be played on the internet and where the goal is to connect all the tiles.
The last game we will discuss here is dominoes. Domino is the only game from this list which is not a board game, although you might want to categorize it as such, because you need a table or a board in order to play. A pack of dominoes has 28 dominoes, usually called bones or tiles. Each end of the tile is marked with a number of spots going from zero (the tile will be blank) to six. There are several types of dominoes, but the main goal is usually a common one: you have to empty your hand, as in put down all your tiles and block the other player from doing the same. There is another variation, where you have to draw a tile from the stock before you play one. The game originated somewhere in the 1100s, but modern dominoes were introduced by China. Some say that Mahjong originated from dominoes.
Now you see that not all of the games are board games from the four listed above, but they are all skill games for sure! In case of skill games it is not enough to learn the rules by heart; you will have to play a lot until you develop the necessary skills to win a game of chess for instance. Bu this is true to all games listed here: if you want to be a winner, you will have to exercise, exercise, and exercise. Most skill games do not involve luck at all (like chess), some of them involve some luck (like Mahjong), but what they all have in common is the fact that you can not win if you haven’t prepared yourself. So good luck exercising! |
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