SEVEN GAMES

A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why - and how - we play them.

Checkers, Backgammon, Chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and Bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the behavioral design that make them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai the Master, the last Go champion of Imperial Japan, defending tradition against "modern rationalism"; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the Space Shuttle. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games - and for us. Funny, fascinating and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human. Oliver Roeder has been a senior writer at FiveThirtyEight and editor of The Riddler, a collection of the site's math puzzles. He studied artificial intelligence as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and holds a PhD in economics focused on game theory. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.