trivia

Double-click on any word and see its definition from Cambridge Dictionaries Online.

History
Senet (or senat), a board game from predynastic and ancient Egypt, is the oldest board game whose ancient existence has been confirmed, dating to circa 3500 BC, having been pictured in a fresco found in Merknera's tomb. The full name of the game in Egyptian was sn.t n.t H'b meaning the "passing game." The Senet gameboard is a grid of thirty squares, arranged in three rows of ten. A Senet game has two sets of pawns (at least five of each and, in some sets, more). Senet was apparently a race game for two players, with moves determined by tosses of throwstick or, sometimes, knucklebone. The actual rules of the game are a topic of some debate, although historians have made educated guesses. Timothy Kendall and R.C. Bell are two Senet historians who have proposed (different) sets of rules to play the game. These rules have been adopted by different companies which make Senet sets for sale today.
Source: Wikipedia

Person
Adrianus Dingeman (Adriaan) de Groot (1914 - 2006) was a Dutch chess master and psychologist, who conducted some of the most famous chess experiments of all time in the 1940s-60. In 1946 he wrote his thesis Het denken van den schaker, which in 1965 was translated to English and published as Thought and choice in chess.
The studies involve participants of all chess backgrounds, from amateurs to masters. They investigate the cognitive requirements and the thought processes involved in moving a chess piece. The participants were usually required to solve a given chess problem correctly under the supervision of an experimenter and represent their thought-processes vocally so that they could be recorded.
De Groot found that much of what is important in choosing a move occurs during the first few seconds of exposure to a new position. Four stages in the task of choosing the next move were noted. The first stage was the 'orientation phase', in which the subject assessed the situation and determined a very general idea of what to do next. The second stage, the 'exploration phase' was manifested by looking at some branches of the game tree. The third stage, or 'investigation phase' resulted in the subject choosing a probable best move. Finally, in the fourth stage, the 'proof phase', saw the subject confirming with him/herself that the results of the investigation were valid.
De Groot concurred with Alfred Binet that visual memory and visual perception are important attributors and that problem-solving ability is of paramount importance. Memory is particularly important, according to de Groot (1965) in that there are no ‘new’ moves in chess and so those from personal experience or from the experience of others can be committed to memory.
Source: Wikipedia

Film
Jumanji (1995): directed by Joe Johnston and starring Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce and Bonnie Hunt. Tagline: Are you game? Roll the dice and unleash the excitement! Plot outline: When two kids play an old magic board-game they found, they release a man trapped for decades in it and a host of dangers that can only be stopped by finishing the game.
Source: IMDb

Numbers
The number of legal positions in chess is estimated to be between 10₄₃ and 10₅₀, with a game-tree complexity of approximately 10₁₂₃. The game-tree complexity of chess was first calculated by Claude Shannon as 10₁₂₀, a number known as the Shannon number. Typically an average position has thirty to forty possible moves, but there may be as few as zero (in the case of checkmate or stalemate) or as many as 218.
Source: Wikipedia

Thing
Game piece (or token or bit) — a player's representative on the game board. Each player may control one or more game pieces. In some games that involve commanding multiple game pieces, such as chess, certain pieces have unique designations and capabilities within the parameters of the game; in others, such as Go, all pieces controlled by a player have the same essential capabilities. In some games, pieces may not represent or belong to a particular player.
Source: Wikipedia

Song
Chess is a musical with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, formerly of ABBA. The story involves a romantic triangle between two players in a world chess championship, and a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. Although the protagonists were not intended to represent any specific individuals, the characters’ personalities are loosely based on those of Victor Korchnoi and Bobby Fischer. Following the pattern of Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, a concept album of Chess was recorded in 1984, and generated a number of hit singles.
Source: Wikipedia

Fictional character
Gibson Praise is a fictional character played by Jeff Gulka on the FOX television show The X-Files. Gibson is introduced as a young chess prodigy who thwarted the assassination attempt on his life by stepping back out of the path of a sniper bullet. It is Agent Spender who was assigned to investigate the case, but Mulder intruded on the briefing and immediately came to the conclusion that Gibson sensed the shot precognitively, and that he can in fact read minds. Follow-up tests proved that Gibson's mind-reading abilities were 100% accurate. The investigation lead Scully to find that Gibson had an unusual level of development in one brain lobe not yet fully understood by neuroscience. Mulder thought Gibson might be the key to understanding human potential and to everything in the X-Files. He interrogated the would-be assassin in prison, who said the boy was a "missing link," and Mulder jumped to the conclusion that Gibson had alien genetic structure and was proof of ancient astronauts.
Source: Wikipedia

Recipe
Double Chocolate Chess Pie
See recipe

Wordplay
The following are all board game-related puns (an amusing use of a word or phrase which has several meanings or which sounds like another word):
He gave up playing chess, and went on to a checkered career.
The price of chess sets has gone up across-the-board.
Is someone who sells old chess pieces a pawn broker?
Those interested only in board games at Christmas might just be chess nuts roasting by an open fire.
Checkers was invented starting at square one.
Source: http://punoftheday.com/

Literature
The Glass Bead Game (German: Das Glasperlenspiel) is the last work and magnum opus of the German author Hermann Hesse. Begun in 1931 and published in Switzerland in 1943, the book was mentioned in Hesse's citation for the 1946 Nobel Prize for Literature. "Glass Bead Game" is a literal translation of the German title. The title has also been translated as Magister Ludi. "Magister Ludi," Latin for "master of the game," is the name of an honorific title awarded to the book's central character. Magister Ludi can also be seen as a pun: lud is a Latin stem meaning both "game" and "school." The setting is a fictional province of central Europe called Castalia, reserved by political decision for the life of the mind; technology and economic life are kept to a strict minimum. Castalia is home to a monastic order of intellectuals with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools for boys (the novel is thus a detailed exploration of education and the life of the mind), and to nurture and play the Glass Bead Game, whose exact nature remains elusive. The precise rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Suffice it to say that playing the Game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and scholarship. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics. For example, a Bach concerto may be related to a mathematical formula.
Source: Wikipedia

The Player of Games is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1988. The second of the Culture novels. A brilliant, though decadent, game player (Gurgeh) from the Culture is entrapped and blackmailed to work as a Special Circumstances agent in the brutal Empire of Azad. Their system of society and government is entirely based on an elaborate strategy game, Azad.
Source: Wikipedia

Quotes
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. (Emo Philips)
Chess is life. (Bobby Fischer)
Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise. (George Steiner)
In life, as in chess, forethought wins. (Charles Buxton)
People are governed by the head; a kind heart is of little value in chess. (Nicolas Chamfort)
Poets do not go mad, but chess players do. (G. K. Chesterton)
Source: Creative Quotations

Record
The world’s biggest board game was a version of the game “Goose”, and was organised by ‘Jong Nederlan’. It stretched for 2,090 feet (637 metres) and was played by 1,631 participants at Someren, Netherlands on 16 September 1989.
Source: Guinness World Records

Proverbs
A man of high principles is someone who can watch a chess game without passing comment. (Chinese)
Those who play the game do not see as clearly as those who watch. (Chinese)
A fool only wins the first game. (Danish)
He who leaves the game, loses. (French)
By the time the fool has learned the game, the players have dispersed. (Ghanaian)
After the game the King and pawn go into the same box. (Italian)
It is a bad game where nobody wins. (Italian)
In the game no one is brother to others. (Norwegian)
Source: Creative Proverbs