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French earthenware tray and board game, 172050 A board game is a game that involves counters or pieces moved or placed on a premarked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games can be based on pure strategy, chance (e.g. rolling dice) or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve. Early board games represented a battle between two armies, and most current board games are still based on defeating opposing players in terms of counters, winning position or accrual of points (often expressed as ingame currency). There are many different types and styles of board games. Their representation of real-life situations can range from having no inherent theme, as with checkers, to having a specific theme and narrative, as with Cluedo. Rules can range from the very simple, as in tic-tac-toe, to those describing a game universe in great detail, as in Dungeons & Dragons (although most of the latter are role-playing games where the board is secondary to the game, helping to visualize the game scenario). The amount of time required to learn to play or master a game varies greatly from game to game. Learning time does not necessarily correlate with the number or complexity of rules; some games, such as chess or Go, have simple rulesets while possessing profound strategies.

[edit] Psychology While there has been a fair amount of scientific research on the psychology of older board games (e.g., chess, go, mancala), less has been done on contemporary board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, and Risk.[15] Much research has been carried out on chess, in part because many tournament players are publicly ranked in national and international lists, which makes it possible precisely to compare their levels of expertise. The works of Adriaan de Groot, William Chase, Herbert Simon, and Fernand Gobet have established that knowledge, more than the ability to anticipate moves, plays an essential role in chess-playing. This seems to be the case in other traditional games such as Go and Oware (a type of mancala game), but data is lacking in regard to contemporary board games.[citation needed] Additionally, board games can be therapeutic. Bruce Halpenny, a games inventor said when interviewed about his game, With crime you deal with every basic human emotion and also have enough elements to combine action with melodrama. The players imagination is fired as they plan to rob the train. Because of the gamble they take in the early stage of the game there is a build up of tension, which is immediately released once the train is robbed. Release of tension is therapeutic and useful in our society, because most jobs are boring and repetitive.[16] Linearly arranged board games have been shown to improve children's spatial numerical understanding. This is because the game is similar to a number line in that they promote a linear understanding of numbers rather than the innate logarithmic one.[17] [edit] Luck, strategy and diplomacy Most board games involve both luck and strategy. But an important feature of them is the amount of randomness/luck involved, as opposed to skill. Some games, such as chess, depend almost entirely on player skill. But many children's games are mainly decided by luck: e.g. Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders require no decisions by the players. A player may be hampered by a few poor rolls of the dice in Risk or Monopoly, but over many games a good player will win more often. While some purists consider luck not to be a desirable component of a game, others counter that elements of luck can make for far more diverse and multi-faceted strategies, as concepts such as expected value and risk management must be considered. A second feature is the game information available to players. Some games (chess being the classic example) are perfect information games: every player has complete information on the state of the game. In other games, such as Tigris and Euphrates, some information is hidden from players. This makes finding the best move more difficult, but also requires the players to estimate probabilities by the players. Tigris and Euphrates also has completely deterministic action resolution.[clarification needed]

Another important feature of a game is the importance of diplomacy, i.e. players making deals with each other. A game of solitaire, for obvious reasons, has no player interaction. Two player games usually do not involve diplomacy (cooperative games being the exception). Thus, negotiation generally features only in games for three or more people. An important facet of The Settlers of Catan, for example, is convincing people to trade with you rather than with other players. In Risk, two or more players may team up against others. Easy diplomacy involves convincing other players that someone else is winning and should therefore be teamed up against. Advanced diplomacy (e.g. in the aptly named game Diplomacy) consists of making elaborate plans together, with the possibility of betrayal. Luck may be introduced into a game by a number of methods. The most common method is the use of dice, generally six-sided. These can decide everything from how many steps a player moves their token, as in Monopoly, to how their forces fare in battle, such as in Risk, or which resources a player gains, such as in The Settlers of Catan. Other games such as Sorry! use a deck of special cards that, when shuffled, create randomness. Scrabble does something similar with randomly picked letters. Other games use spinners, timers of random length, or other sources of randomness. Trivia games have a great deal of randomness based on the questions a player has to answer. German-style board games are notable for often having rather less of a luck factor than many North American board games. [edit] Common terms

Simple wooden "pawn-style" playing piece

Wooden tokens from the Carcassonne board game Although many board games have a jargon all their own, there is a generalized terminology to describe concepts applicable to basic game mechanics and attributes common to nearly all board games. Gameboard (or simply board)the (usually quadrilateral) surface on which one plays a board game. The namesake of the board game, gameboards would seem to be a necessary and sufficient condition of the genre, though card games that do not use a standard deck of cards (as well as games which use neither cards nor a gameboard) are often colloquially included. Most games use a standardized and unchanging board (chess, Go, and backgammon each have such a board), but many games use a modular board whose component tiles or cards can assume varying layouts from one session to another, or even while the game is played. Game piece (gamepiece, counter, token, bit, meeple, mover, pawn, man, playing piece, player piece)a player's representative on the gameboard made of a piece of material made to look like a known object (such as a scale model of a person, animal, or inanimate object) or otherwise general symbol. Each player may control one or more game pieces. Some games involve commanding multiple game pieces (or units), such as chess pieces or Monopoly houses and hotels, that have unique designations and capabilities within the parameters of the game; in other games, such as Go, all pieces controlled by a player have the same capabilities. In some modern board games, such as Clue, there are other pieces that are not a player's representative (i.e. weapons). In some games, pieces may not represent or belong to any particular player. See also: Counter (board wargames) Jump (or leap)to bypass one or more game pieces or spaces. Depending on the context, jumping may also involve capturing or conquering an opponent's game piece. (See also: Game mechanic: capture)

^ de Voogt, Alex, & Retschitzki, Jean (2004). Moves in mind: The psychology of board games. Psychology Press. ISBN 1841693367. ^ Stealing the show. Toy Retailing News, Volume 2 Number 4 (December 1976), p. 2 ^ "Playing Linear Number Board GamesBut Not Circular OnesImproves LowIncome Preschoolers Numerical Understanding". http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~siegler/sieg-ram09.pdf. [edit] Further reading Austin, Roland G. "Greek Board Games." Antiquity 14. September 1940: 257271 Bell, Robert Charles. The Boardgame Book. London: Bookthrift Company, 1979. Bell, Robert Charles. Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1980. ISBN 0-486-23855-5 Reprint: New York: Exeter Books, 1983. Falkener, Edward. Games Ancient and Oriental, and How To Play Them. Longmans, Green and Co., 1892. Fiske, Willard. Chess in Iceland and in Icelandic Literaturewith historical notes on other table-games. Florentine Typographical Society, 1905. Gobet, Fernand; de Voogt, Alex, & Retschitzki, Jean title= Moves in mind: The psychology of board games (2004). Psychology Press. ISBN 1841693367. Golladay, Sonja Musser, "Los Libros de Acedrex Dados E Tablas: Historical, Artistic and Metaphysical Dimensions of Alfonso Xs Book of Games" (PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2007) Gordon, Stewart (July/August 2009). "The Game of Kings". Saudi Aramco World (Houston: Aramco Services Company) 60 (4): 1823. http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200904/the.game.of.kings.htm. (PDF version) Murray, Harold James Ruthven. A History of Chess. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1913. Murray, Harold James Ruthven. A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess. Gardners Books, 1969.

Parlett, David. Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-19-212998-8 Rollefson, Gary O., "A Neolithic Game Board from Ain Ghazal, Jordan," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 286. (May, 1992),