11/08/2021
With entertaining cultural profiles of the games of checkers, chess, go, Scrabble, backgammon, poker, and bridge, journalist Roeder (The Riddler ) delivers a splashy narrative that successfully argues that games, more than just being forms of entertainment, help individuals develop strategies for navigating daily life. “Learning a game’s intricacies and playing that game with others binds us with other humans, shaping our culture and, indeed, our perspective on the ‘real’ world,” he asserts. Chess, for instance, offers players a chance to consider lengthy tactical combinations and resolve complex relationships among the pieces on the board. Legend has it, Roeder writes, that go was invented by a Chinese emperor 4,000 years ago to discipline his “unruly son.” In poker, the player must surrender to not knowing what lies in their opponents’ hands, much as they have to in real life, “where there is often a whole host of things we would like to know but that we do not: consider courtship, negotiations, warfare.” To further enrich his exploration, he weaves in luminous sketches of other fierce competitors, such as one “technochratic Scrabble sage” who advises other nationally ranked players and helped Roeder prepare for the 2019 North American Scrabble Championship. This humanistic look at some of the most popular games in history will have readers hooked. (Jan.)
"The focus of Seven Games is, instead, on more recent history and the application of so-called ‘artificial intelligence’ to games, as well as its influence on their competitive cultures. Here is where the book’s rich human interest—and comedy—really lie.... In pleasingly gonzo style, the author enters the North American Scrabble Championship as well as the World Series of Poker, drawing delightful pen-portraits of his adversaries while entertainingly evoking his own emotional roller-coaster."
Wall Street Journal - Steven Poole
"The games that have preoccupied and fascinated us over millennia tell a story not just about human history but, crucially, about the nature of the human mind. Oliver Roeder’s Seven Games offers a sweeping and provocative tour of the labyrinths into which we so eagerly lose—and so revealingly find—ourselves."
"Oliver Roeder masterfully reveals the way games teach us about play, risk, intelligence, technology and our inner selves—and introduces us to some unforgettable characters along the way. Like the very best games, this book is deep, enthralling, and tremendous fun."
"A beautifully written exploration of what games can tell us about philosophy, art, and human nature. Oliver Roeder is a commanding thinker and storyteller. His enthralling narrative delves into subjects ranging from art appreciation to artificial intelligence, cognitive science, world history, archeology, and, of course, game theory. Everyone should read this fabulous book!"
author of Good to Go Christie Aschwanden
"A lively, deeply fascinating examination of why we play."
"Seven Games is exciting and personal – you can sense Roeder’s emotional investment. The book is also built on richly fleshy characters profiled by Roeder – both the human game champions and the AI designers who beat them."
Times Literary Supplement - James Mcconnachie
"Roeder’s appealing biography of seven games — draughts (checkers), backgammon, chess, Go, poker, Scrabble and bridge — explores why play is both fascinating and necessary."
"A journalist and gaming geek, Roeder’s book is part memoir and part meditation on the way in which overwhelming machine superiority is changing both games and those who play them. His account is perceptive in particular on the oddities of gaming subcultures."
Financial Times - James Crabtree
"Illuminating...offers powerful insights into why we play games and what we can learn from them...accessible, enjoyable...raises provocative and sometimes unsettling questions about the nature of intelligence and the unintended consequences when machines play better than we do....If you are intrigued by this rare opportunity to pull back the curtain on how humans and computers learn, then you will be richly rewarded."
"In Roeder’s hands, games have real consequence—not only as art but as tools for technological advancement—yet the story remains fun, even amid deceit, heartbreak, tragedy, and mystery. Seven Games is an adventure, adeptly written, thoroughly original and profound—a literary example of what in chess we call a brilliancy."
"A beguiling, mesmerizing, and utterly charming history of the world’s most beloved games and the centuries-long quest to ‘solve’ them. In prose as elegant as the classics he profiles, Oliver Roeder shows that, contrary to what you might have heard, the battle between human and machine was a battle between human and human after all."
author of Word Freak Stefan Fatsis
"An eclectic cast of brilliant, and obsessive, characters makes Seven Games an absolute page-turner. Through their stories, Oliver Roeder shows that games are incomparable canvases for human creativity and agency."
author of The Sports Gene and Range David Epstein
"Roeder’s appealing biography of seven games — draughts (checkers), backgammon, chess, Go, poker, Scrabble and bridge — explores why play is both fascinating and necessary."
"Seven Games is a beautifully written exploration of what games can tell us about philosophy, art, and human nature. Oliver Roeder is a commanding thinker and storyteller. His enthralling narrative delves into subjects ranging from art appreciation to artificial intelligence, cognitive science, world history, archeology and, of course, game theory. Through personal experiences he explores the culture of world-class competitors, and what they give up reaching such heights. Seven Games inspired me to pull out a deck of cards and open my Scrabble board with a new understanding of the meaning of play. Everyone should read this fabulous book!"
"A beguiling, mesmerizing, and utterly charming history of the world’s most beloved games and the centuries-long quest to ‘solve’ them. In prose as elegant as the classics he profiles, Oliver Roeder shows that, contrary to what you might have heard, the battle between human and machine was a battle between human and human after all."
06/01/2022
Though short on ancient history and favoring the last 100 years and interrelation of games and computer science, this audio summarizes the gaming impulse, or humans' "lusory mind" back into antiquity and across cultures. Relating his own Scrabble and poker tournament experiences, Roeder explains the enduring attraction of games that are now far more competently played by computers, and for these personal vignettes the narration approaches playfully energetic. William Sarris's reading is otherwise plainspoken, as though resignedly delivering bad news: not just Scrabble and poker, but six of the seven games profiled have passed from strictly human activities to a shared arena in which trained programs inevitably dominate. Going from most to fewest real-life skills exercised, Roeder argues that checkers, chess, Go, backgammon, and, finally, poker and Scrabble will one day be "solved" (if they haven't been already) or a mathematical proof of the most optimal moves achieved. Yet we continue to play these solvable games while another, contract bridge, dependent on subtle communication, has resisted digital conversion but is dying out with its current generation of players. VERDICT This melancholy yet intriguing assessment of parlor games' role in shaping our past and AI's future is an optional audio purchase.—Lauren Kage
12/01/2021
Roeder (The Riddler ) writes an exploration of how games intersect with the foundation and growth of computer science, machine learning, and humanity in general, with the history of games intermixed. Seven popular games are covered: checkers, chess, go, poker, backgammon, scrabble and bridge with a bit of background along with general theory and strategy for each (a perfect amount to understand unfamiliar games). Dominating most sections is an account of gaming research by computer scientists, starting at the dawn of the computer age, with continued interest from IBM and the University of Calgary, among others. From the idea behind the programs, their development, man vs. machine showdowns (rarely including women), and how current elite game play has been elevated—and in many cases, forever altered—by the approach computers take. Roeder explores how this has made play more uniform and erased individual style and personality from tactics, as well as how it relates to societal changes and relationships with computers overall. VERDICT A surprisingly introspective look at the history of machine learning as it relates to games, and its impact on gameplay and society. This will have appeal across game enthusiasts, technologists, and those interested in the interplay of it all.—Zebulin Evelhoch, Deschutes P.L., OR
An echo of adolescent enthusiasm underlies William Sarris’s lively narration—a fitting tone for this history of the world’s favorite and most enduring games. Checkers, backgammon, chess, Go, poker, Scrabble, bridge—even before you’ve finished the first chapter and heard all the possible opening moves in a checkers match, you realize that these are no passing adolescent diversions. Games for many are lifelong disciplines, and each challenges the highest capacities of the human brain. Sarris recounts what is aptly subtitled “a human history.” But often here, the most formidable opponent is a computer. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
An echo of adolescent enthusiasm underlies William Sarris’s lively narration—a fitting tone for this history of the world’s favorite and most enduring games. Checkers, backgammon, chess, Go, poker, Scrabble, bridge—even before you’ve finished the first chapter and heard all the possible opening moves in a checkers match, you realize that these are no passing adolescent diversions. Games for many are lifelong disciplines, and each challenges the highest capacities of the human brain. Sarris recounts what is aptly subtitled “a human history.” But often here, the most formidable opponent is a computer. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
2021-10-07
New York City–based journalist Roeder, a former senior writer for FiveThirtyEight, traverses the globe and centuries in his lively quest to understand the appeal of a handful of sophisticated games that “offer simplified models of a dauntingly complicated world, with dynamics that we can grasp and master”—checkers, chess, Go, backgammon, poker, Scrabble, and bridge. An entertaining storyteller, the author provides numerous profiles of those who were especially proficient at these games as he explores the appeal, strategies, and intricacies of each—beginning with checkers, “whose reputation as a child’s game belies its haunting depth.” Over 40 years and more than 1,000 competitive matches, Marion Tinsley, “the Ernest Shackleton of the game,” only lost three games. In 1963, blind Robert Nealey was the first to compete against an early computer, never losing. The “program itself was an achievement and a watershed,” proving computers could learn via artificial intelligence. Chess was a skill every good knight should possess. From chess hustlers in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park to the baffling Mechanical Turk, Alan Turing, chess-playing computer programs, and some of the great chess masters, Roeder describes what makes the game so complex, mesmerizing, and addictive. Go, which originated in China more than 2,000 years ago, is “often touted as the most complex board game played by humans.” Played with simple black and white stones, its rules “are stark and elegant, as if they were discovered rather than invented.” Backgammon, Roeder suggests, balances luck and skill, placing it somewhere between chess and poker, a “game of imperfect information,” while bridge “requires memory and wisdom, prudence and risk, and empathy—for both friend and foe.” Poker, meanwhile, is “the world’s most popular card game in our capitalistic age.” And then there’s Scrabble, “turning a heap of letters into a beautiful spider web of words on the board.”
A smartly informative book that should inspire readers to try a new game.
