Portal:Games
Introduction
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).
Games are sometimes played purely for entertainment, sometimes for achievement or reward as well. They can be played alone, in teams, or online; by amateurs or by professionals. The players may have an audience of non-players, such as when people are entertained by watching a chess championship. On the other hand, players in a game may constitute their own audience as they take their turn to play. Often, part of the entertainment for children playing a game is deciding who is part of their audience and who is a player.
Selected article
The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the machine. With a skilled operator, the Turk won most of the games played during its demonstrations around Europe and the Americas for nearly 84 years, playing and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. Although many had suspected the hidden human operator, the hoax was revealed only in the 1820s by the Londoner Robert Willis.[2] The operator(s) within the mechanism during Kempelen's original tour remains a mystery. When the device was later purchased in 1804 and exhibited by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, the chess masters who secretly operated it included Johann Allgaier, Boncourt, Aaron Alexandre, William Lewis, Jacques Mouret, and William Schlumberger.
Owing to the Turk's popularity and mystery, its construction inspired a number of inventions and imitations, including Ajeeb, or "The Egyptian", an American imitation built by Charles Hopper that President Grover Cleveland played in 1885, and Mephisto, the self-described "most famous" machine, of which little is known.
Selected images
The Card Players, an 1895 painting by Paul Cézanne depicting a card game.
The Card Players by Lucas van Leyden (1520) depicting a multiplayer card game.
Students in Laos use dice to improve numeracy skills. They roll three dice, then use basic math operations to combine those into a new number which they cover on the board. The goal is to cover four squares in the row.
Soccer (football) is a popular sport worldwide.
Tug of war is an easily organized, impromptu game that requires little equipment.
Playing Cards, by Theodoor Rombouts, 17th century
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Did you know ...
- ...that in 1967, Mac Hack became the first computer chess program to defeat a person in tournament play?
- ...that a reviewer called the narrator in the game Defenders of Ardania (pictured) "booze-obsessed", with a voice that sounds like "a Dalek doing an impression of Sean Connery"?
- ...that snooker player Stephen Maguire won his first ranking tournament at the 2004 European Open in Malta?
- ...that the Crawford-Gilpin House is alleged to have once changed owners due to being lost as a wager in a poker game?
- ...that The Big Bang Theory episode "The Santa Simulation" features a Christmas-themed Dungeons & Dragons game?
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