When games cease to have rules, they become jumbled-up happenings that cannot be listed as sports. Gene Tunney, Nine Seconds Belong to the Man on the Floor
Welcome to Friends Provident St Mary’s Stadium for the quarter-final of the FA Cup – games don’t get any bigger than this. commentator
Good evening. The game you are about to see is the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football possibly in the history of the game. David Coleman, Chile v Italy 1966
The game is balanced in Arsenal’s favour. John Motson
This could be a different game now. John Motson, Match of the Day: Fulham v Newcastle 1-1, BBC 2011
We deserved to win this game after hammering them 0-0 in the first half. Kevin Keegan
There was nothing wrong with the performance, apart from throwing away the game. Glenn Hoddle
The game has its ups and downs, but you can never lose focus of your individual goals and you can’t let yourself be beat because of lack of effort. Michael Jordan
‘After all, golf is only a game,’ said Millicent. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is a kink in their character. They simply don’t realise what they are saying. P G Wodehouse, Order by Golf, 1922
You’re in the great game now. And the great game is terrifying. Game of Thrones s6e10: The Winds of Winter, Tyrion to Khaleesi
The invention of deliberately oversimplified theories is one of the major techniques of science, particularly of the ‘exact' sciences, which make extensive use of mathematical analysis. If a biophysicist can carefully employ simplified models of the cell and the cosmologist simplified models of the universe then we can reasonably expect that simplified games may prove to be useful models for more complicated conflicts. John Williams, The Complete Strategyst
It’s the game you’re playing, Helen. I didn’t make the rules. Panic in Needle Park 1971 starring Al Pacino & Kitty Winn & Alan Vint & Richard Bright & Kiel Martin & Michael McClanathan & Warren Finnerty & Marcia Jean Kurtz & Raul Julia & Angie Ortega et al, director Jerry Schatzberg, rozzer to her
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game. Donald Trump, Trump: The Art of the Deal, 1987
We need to focus. Because this isn’t a game. Game Night 2018 starring Jason Bateman & Rachel McAdams & Kyle Chandler & Billy Magnussen & Sharon Horgan & Lamorne Morris & Kylie Bunbury & Jesse Plemons & Michael C Hall & Danny Huston et al, directors John Daley & Jonathan Goldstein, Annie’s Trivia final
The game that we’re gonna play tonight is so epic that we don’t need a board and we don’t need pieces … In the next hour someone in this room is gonna be taken … Whoever finds the victim wins the grand prize. ibid. Brooks
It’s intensely contemplative. It’s almost hypnotic. It’s like putting your hand on the third rail of the universe. If you play Go seriously there is a chance that you will get exposed to this experience that is kind of like nothing else on the planet. AlphaGo, dude, Netflix 2017
We think of Deep Mind as kind of like an Apollo program for AI. Our mission is to fundamentally understand intelligence. ibid. developer
The game of Go was the Holy Grail of Artificial Intelligence. ibid. developer #2
I lose with a program. And I don’t understand myself any more. ibid. Fan Hui, European champion
I still think I have the advantage. ibid. Lee Sedol v Deep Mind, South Korean tournament
I want my style of Go to be something different, something new, my own thing. Something that no-one has thought of before. ibid. Lee Sedol [18 world championships]
This is the thing we were most afraid of: self-doubt. ibid. television commentator
The computer just came out the victor. ibid. US commentator post-first-game
Surely, AlphaGo is creative. ibid. Lee Sedol, Game 2
There is something I think frightening to people about a machine that learns on its own. ibid. expert
I couldn’t believe I won one game … after losing three games in a row. ibid. Lee Sedol
Some of my earliest memories are of games. I come from a big boisterous farming family and during times of festive captivity card and board-games were seen as a way of diverting restless energies and restoring a little domestic harmony. Benjamin Woolley, Games Britannia I: Dicing with Destiny, BBC 2020
But there’s another history: one in which we are the players. It is both intimate and epic; it casts new light into the hidden corners of our past. It’s the history of the games we play. ibid.
Games Britannia is a 2,000-year romp which tells the story of these islands through its games. Games that are played for fun, for friendship, for intellectual challenge, for education and often for money. ibid.
The ‘Game in the Quarry’: something the archaeologists had never seen before: right in the middle, laid out like a sacred relic, was a set of beautifully preserved glass gaming pieces. It was a board game frozen in the midst of play. It was the earliest complete gaming set ever to be played in Britain. ibid.
We keep being told as kids, It’s just a game. Well it’s not just a game. It’s hardly ever just a game. At least for the ancients it was a way of exploring ourselves, our world, even our destiny. ibid.
By the end of the 13th century it had been overtaken by an influx of secular newcomers that had stayed with us to this day: this is when chess, draughts and backgammon made their way into Games Britannia. ibid.
There was another game: a game Chaucer described as being played in the devil’s temples. It was said it was the making of a man or it undid him in the twinkling of an eye. It they called it Hazard. ibid.
What was so dangerous about it? Simple. Gambling … Hazard was condemned by the Church. ibid.
By the end of the 18th century the problem of gambling had become one of the most important social and political issues of the day. ibid.
The gaming tables of London was laden with the huge inheritances of aristocrats. This club Crockfords was the epicentre of this speculative mania gripping Britain. It was London’s leading gambling hell. ibid.
1845 Gambling Act: This was to regulate gambling for the next century and a half. ibid.
The Royal Game of Goose … the quintessential parlour game fit for the whole family. ibid.
Snakes & Ladders … inspired by this – Gyan Chapoor – the Hindi game of Knowledge. ibid.
‘Chess is the highest evolved example of a board game produced by the human race.’ ibid. Professor Irving Finkel
The Golden Age of Games Britannia: when games of chance were combined with games of strategy to create what we recognise today as the modern board game. Benjamin Woolley, Games Britannia II: Monopolies & Mergers
The Mansion of Bliss came out during the explosion of board games that bombarded families in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, patriotic and improving games aimed at helping the middle classes navigate the treacherous social and political waters in which they found themselves. ibid.
The Mansion of Happiness: the first commercially successful game to be published in the United States. ibid.
The Checkered Game of Life revealed something else: it revealed the subtle almost stealthy political role that games can play … The escalating battle between Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the Suffragette movement and her arch-enemy, prime minister Herbert Asquith. ibid.
As a game, Brer Fox an’ Brer Rabbit faded into obscurity. ibid.
1The game that conquered the world: Victor Hugo Watson, chairman Waddingtons Ltd: Monopoly. ibid.
The 12th century King of Spain Alfonso X: The Book of Games, his extraordinary compendium of medieval game-play. Backgammon was his ideal game. ibid.
Britain’s most successful board game: Cluedo. ibid.
Clue: Hasbro Inc: ‘Imagine you’re a celebrity at a party everyone’s dying to attend, when suddenly, well, someone dies.’ ibid. promotional video
This was the third in Games Britannia’s holy trinity of board games: Scrabble. ibid.
Why not invent a game based on geometric patterns: the result after a couple of years of development was this: Kensington … Its inventors were courted by television … Kensington was a huge hit at the time but is now in the firmly ‘Where Are They Now?’ category. ibid.