CLOSING DAYS OF THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER FOR $10 MILLION FIRST PRIZE IN LAS VEGAS: 4/4: Seven Games: A Human History, by Oliver Roeder.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 July 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
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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.
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel with Joe Pappellardo, the author of the new book, Red Sky Morning, |
| 0:08.0 | the epic true story of Texas Ranger Company F. Many anecdotes. We've told none of them, but we have concentrated on the gunfire. |
| 0:17.0 | And the gunfire is what they remember today. Good heavens. These are lawmen. However, |
| 0:23.2 | whatever happens to them once they leave the frontier, I mentioned Captain Scott marries in |
| 0:28.9 | December of 87. I believe Captain Brooks will marry in not too long after that. Brooks loves a woman |
| 0:35.6 | on a horse who can shoot and he finds one, Virginia. |
| 0:39.0 | However, whatever happens to them after they leave the Rangers. |
| 0:42.3 | Let's start with Captain Scott. |
| 0:44.4 | You mentioned Joe that he starts building a railroad. |
| 0:46.9 | To where? |
| 0:48.0 | What does he make of building a railroad? |
| 0:49.8 | It seems like the same restless life he lived before. |
| 0:53.2 | Yeah, there's this conundrum amongst rangers. |
| 0:56.8 | When you are, when you become an officer, you can marry at that point. |
| 1:01.5 | So sergeants and captains can marry. |
| 1:03.6 | But by the time you're a sergeant and captain, |
| 1:06.1 | you've wondered the state enough that how do you settle down? |
| 1:10.0 | You've got a sort of your pick of the best sort of women |
| 1:13.6 | i know it sounds kind of crude but that really uh comes out when you're doing the research i mean |
| 1:18.7 | scott marries a 19 year old and they're and they're all well healed right so yeah the women |
| 1:23.9 | the families are a great catch the families are very happy to have a Ranger in the, as a son. |
| 1:29.1 | Absolutely. Absolutely. And they're, you know, very financially secure. And they're, |
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