In 1283, a team of scribes working for King Alfonso X of Castile finished a manuscript that game historians have been mining ever since: the Libro de los juegos, the Book of Games. Most of its hundred or so illuminated pages belong to chess. But tucked between the chess problems and the dice games sit […]
Alquerque: The Moorish Game That Became Checkers Read More »
If you have ever played craps and wondered why the rules are so complicated — why a “shooter” rolls until something specific happens, why some numbers are “naturals” and others “craps”, why the language sounds half-medieval — the short answer is that craps is the simplified American version of an English game called Hazard, which
Hazard: The Medieval Dice Game That Became Craps Read More »
When War Became Sport In the spring of 1130, on a muddy field outside the walls of Würzburg, two groups of mounted knights charged at each other with leveled lances. There was no invading army. No castle was under siege. No kingdom hung in the balance. This was a tournament — a formalized competition that
Medieval Tournament Games: Jousting, Melee, and the Origins of Sport Read More »
In the past week there has been a lot of buzz on the internet about the Poprad Game Board, which was found in Poprad, Slovakia, back in 2006, in a tomb of a Germanic chieftain, who served in the Roman army as a mercenary, called foederatus, and dated to 375 CE. The reason for the buzz