It’s your turn.

Spin the spinner, roll the dice, pick a card. Move your game piece the right number of squares and don’t miscount. And if you think you’ve caught a cheater, well, check the rules. Or, as in the new book “Seven Games” by Oliver Roeder, check with a computer. It’ll surely know what’s going on.

Rainy Saturday afternoons. Chilly after-supper time. It’s the rare person who doesn’t have fond memories of playing some kind of game with relatives and friends. What we didn’t know, says Oliver Roeder, is that there’s a hidden side to some of the games we played.

We might remember playing checkers with a grandpa or older uncle when we were kids, but Roeder says that sometimes, checkers is no mere game. It was an obsession for one man who ultimately became the indisputably best checkers player of all-time, with three losses in his years playing as a professional. And then he met a scientist who became equally obsessed with building a computer that could best the best.

Chess, Roeder says, may have roots that extend back some fifteen-hundred years, and it might have been created as a way to practice military maneuvers. While more modern computers have famously beat highly-rated chess champions over the past few decades, the first chess computer was created in Vienna in 1770.

Go is different, in that the pieces move fluidly and not in a predetermined direction that will equal a win; it’s “a game of creation and effervescence.” King Tut and Queen Nefertari likely both played some version of backgammon. World Series Poker, says Roeder, “comprises five elemental modes: loneliness, boredom, waiting, folding, and, ultimately, devastation.” To be good at Scrabble takes maturity, age, and all the words. And when a long-time bridge column ended in the New York Times, two thousand readers complained, though the column itself was a “strain” on the Times’ employees: the only way to verify the column’s correctness was to actually play the game.

So why do we play games, anyhow? Author Oliver Roeder ponders that question several times inside his book, eventually admitting that experts can’t even put a finger on an answer. Why do we strive to win when it’s just a game?

The deep dive that “Seven Games” takes may make those questions irrelevant, in a way. In picking these particular seven pastimes (and omitting those like the ancient game of Parcheesi or tournament-level Monopoly), Roeder shows that, much like this book, with some rules and plays included, games can be for fun but they can also be serious business. You can have a great time with these seven and a few good friends on a Saturday night, but you’ll probably never be as talented as the players Roeder profiles.

And there’s a challenge: could you? You’ll ponder that, and the AI aspect of game-playing, as you read this lively, personally-researched, interesting book — especially if you’re a fan of any one of the seven games examined. If you are, get “Seven Games.” It’s your turn.

“Seven Games: A Human History” by Oliver Roeder
c.2022, Norton
$26.95
306 pages