CLOSING DAYS OF THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER FOR $10 MILLION FIRST PRIZE IN LAS VEGAS: 1/4: Seven Games: A Human History, by Oliver Roeder.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 July 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Games-History-Oliver-Roeder/dp/1324003774
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 ways their design makes them pleasing.
Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as the evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last gochampion 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. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white gostones.
Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language, itself.
1904 KIEL RANCH
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:10.0 | Sabine County, Texas, March 31st, 1887, the moonlit pines of a thicket, it's called, a dense forest in East Texas. |
| 0:22.9 | Suddenly, gun flashes erupt. |
| 0:26.2 | This is the centerpiece of the explication of the Texas Rangers in Joe Popolardo's new book, |
| 0:33.8 | Red Sky Morning, the epic true story of Texas Ranger Company F. |
| 0:38.8 | At this shootout, March 31st, 1887, and we need to tell the story of who's shooting |
| 0:45.5 | and who the captain and sergeant of Company F are that get hit by the gunfire. |
| 0:51.5 | Joe, congratulations. It is wonderful to go to Texas because your history of |
| 0:57.0 | Company F also tells the story of the transformation of Texas into the modern superstate that it is. |
| 1:04.0 | The shooting that night is between Company F led by Captain Scott and Sergeant Brooks and the Conner family. |
| 1:11.1 | Why are the Rangers shooting it out with the Connors? |
| 1:14.6 | Who are they? |
| 1:15.5 | What did they do? |
| 1:16.4 | Good evening to you, Joe. |
| 1:17.8 | Hello, and thank you so much for having me. |
| 1:20.1 | The Conner family and East Texas family of master hunters, backwoodsmen, |
| 1:26.7 | who live and manage to do better than scrape out, |
| 1:30.4 | but do actually make a very good living out of terrain that most people in Texas don't know |
| 1:36.4 | what to do with it. They run hogs. They cut timber. They are masters of their terrain there, |
| 1:42.5 | and they have been swept up into this very violent feud |
| 1:47.7 | and Sabine County with two other prominent families, and there have been killings and jail breaks. |
| 1:53.5 | And now they're on the lamb hiding in their own backyard, and the Rangers have been assigned to |
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