Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back at least 1,600 years. The earliest record of backgammon itself dates to 17th-century England, being descended from the 16th-century game of Irish.
Chinese checkers (US) or Chinese chequers (UK), known as Sternhalma in German, is a strategy board game of German origin that can be played by two, three, four, or six people, playing individually or with partners. The game is a modern and simplified variation of the game Halma.
Stratego is a strategy board game for two players on a board of 10×10 squares. Each player controls 40 pieces representing individual officer and soldier ranks in an army. The pieces have Napoleonic insignia. The objective of the game is to either find and capture the opponent's Flag or to capture so many enemy pieces that the opponent cannot make any further moves. Stratego has simple enough rules for young children to play but a depth of strategy that is also appealing to adults.
Chess strategy is the aspect of chess play concerned with evaluation of chess positions and setting goals and long-term plans for future play. While evaluating a position strategically, a player must take into account such factors as the relative value of the pieces on the board, pawn structure, king safety, position of pieces, and control of key squares and groups of squares. Chess strategy is distinguished from chess tactics, which is the aspect of play concerned with the move-by-move setting up of threats and defenses. Some authors distinguish static strategic imbalances, which tend to persist for many moves, from dynamic imbalances, which are temporary. This distinction affects the immediacy with which a sought-after plan should take effect. Until players reach the skill level of "master", chess tactics tend to ultimately decide the outcomes of games more often than strategy. Many chess coaches thus emphasize the study of tactics as the most efficient way to improve one's results in serious chess play.
Checkers, also known as draughts, is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve forward movements of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers is developed from alquerque. The term "checkers" derives from the checkered board which the game is played on, whereas "draughts" derives from the verb "to draw" or "to move".
The Computer Olympiad is a multi-games event in which computer programs compete against each other. For many games, the Computer Olympiads are an opportunity to claim the "world's best computer player" title. First contested in 1989, the majority of the games are board games but other games such as bridge take place as well. In 2010, several puzzles were included in the competition.
Halma is a strategy board game invented in 1883 or 1884 by George Howard Monks, an American thoracic surgeon at Harvard Medical School. His inspiration was the English game Hoppity which was devised in 1854.
This glossary of chess explains commonly used terms in chess, in alphabetical order. Some of these terms have their own pages, like fork and pin. For a list of unorthodox chess pieces, see Fairy chess piece; for a list of terms specific to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems; for a list of named opening lines, see List of chess openings; for a list of chess-related games, see List of chess variants; for a list of terms general to board games, see Glossary of board games.
Archon: The Light and the Dark is a 1983 video game developed by Free Fall Associates and one of the first five games published by Electronic Arts. It is superficially similar to chess, in that it takes place on a board with alternating black and white squares, but instead of fixed rules when landing on another player's piece, an arcade-style fight takes place to determine the victor, and each piece has different combat abilities. The health of the player's piece is enhanced when landing on a square of one's own color.
Martian Chess is an abstract strategy game for two or four players invented by Andrew Looney in 1999. It is played with Icehouse pyramids on a chessboard. To play with a number of players other than two or four, a non-Euclidean surface can be tiled to produce a board of the required size, allowing up to six players.
Jungle or dou shou qi is a modern Chinese board game with an obscure history. A British version known as "Jungle King" was sold in the 1960s by the John Waddington company. The game is played on a 7×9 board and is popular with children in the Far East.
The Game of the Amazons is a two-player abstract strategy game invented in 1988 by Walter Zamkauskas of Argentina. The game is played by moving pieces and blocking the opponents from squares, and the last player able to move is the winner. It is a member of the territorial game family, a distant relative of Go and chess.
Fields of Action is an abstract strategy board game for two players.
Blokus is an abstract strategy board game for two to four players, where players try to score points by occupying most of the board with pieces of their colour. The board is a square regular grid and the pieces are polyominoes. It was designed by French mathematician Bernard Tavitian and first released in 2000 by Sekkoïa, a French company. It has won several awards, including the Mensa Select award and the 2004 Teacher's Choice Award. In 2009, the game was sold to Mattel.
Hive is a bug-themed tabletop abstract strategy game, designed by John Yianni and published in 2001 by Gen42 Games. The object of Hive is to capture the opponent's queen bee by having it completely surrounded by other pieces, while avoiding the capture of one's own queen. Hive shares elements of both tile-based games and board games. It differs from other tile-based games in that the tiles, once placed, can then be moved to other positions according to various rules, much like chess pieces.
Khet is a chess-like abstract strategy board game that uses lasers, and was formerly known as Deflexion. Players take turns moving Egyptian-themed pieces around the playing field, firing their low-powered laser diode after each move. Most of the pieces are mirrored on one or more sides, allowing the players to alter the path of the laser through the playing field. When a piece is struck by a laser on a non-mirrored side, it is eliminated from the game.
Rubik's Games is a five-games-in-one PC game created for Windows 95/98, developed in part by Ernő Rubik with Androsoft, and published by Hasbro Interactive. It was part of Hasbro's Classical Games collection of PC games. A history of the Rubik's Cube and its inventor, with pictures, is available from the menu.
This glossary of board games explains commonly used terms in board games, in alphabetical order. For a list of board games, see List of board games; for terms specific to chess, see Glossary of chess; for terms specific to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems.
