Seven Games
By Oliver Roeder
A Human History. W.W. Norton & Company, 2022.
Summary of Seven Games book by Oliver Roeder
A chronicle of checkers, chess, Go, backgammon, poker, Scrabble, and bridge—seven games that have impacted society and spawned amazing creations of artificial intelligence, but above all, inspired incredible human achievements by those that have mastered each game.
Chapters in Seven Games book summary
What do you get from this book? The stories of seven significant games and the people and computers who play them
Humans have played games since ancient times because they’re enjoyable and good practice for the real world
Though there have been incredible human checkers players, it would take a computer to eventually “solve” the game
We equate chess prodigies with genius, though artificial intelligence has far surpassed the ability of human players
A game of great longevity, Go is unique in playability and would take a special AI to master it
Players used to be able to make money playing backgammon, but computers may have contributed to its decline in popularity
Benchmarks for artificial intelligence mastering games like poker can have a downside—taking the human element out of pastimes
While computer dictionaries can anagram words at a rapid pace, there’s a level of complexity to Scrabble that they can’t quite grasp
Bridge can be seen as a reflection of our reality—it’s so complex that neither people nor computers have much interest in it anymore
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Seven Games — Book Summary Snapshot
Who should read Seven Games book
- Board game fans
- playing card enthusiasts
- computer scientists
- those wondering how long popular games have been played
- anyone curious about human and AI interactions in gameplaying
About the author of Seven Games
Oliver Roeder
Oliver Roeder’s PhD is in economics, with a concentration on game theory. As a journalist, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Economist, The New York Times, and Slate. In addition, Roeder is a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight, a website dedicated to statistics, economics, and politics, and has written a book of puzzles titled The Riddler.
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