Seven Games

A Human History

By: Oliver Roeder

Narrated by: William Sarris

Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

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 arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable.

Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across 40 years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan; 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 Go stones.

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. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games - and for us.

©2022 Oliver Roeder (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Mostly about AI

This focused a lot on artificial intelligence, which was an ok perspective, but I thought it’s history of these games tilted more to AI and why that was built than in the games itself. It got a little repetitive. Still interesting though.

All about computers and games

Probably not what you expect. I thought it would be the history, development and the strategy of each game but it is the history of the effects computers have on the gaming world.

Better title Seven Games: An AI History

This book is clearly a very modern book, with its lens being that of Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence as it intersects with classic games. Personally, I found the subtitle "A Human History" completely misleading - its a computer history. There are entire books of the history of Chess, but here we begin with the Turk, and move to Babbage - just glancing off the huge names in the history like Philidor.

As with the opening chapter, where it concludes with "Checkers is Solved" (by a computer, grunting away for 18 years) I found this less an achievement than a sad tombstone. Yes, circuits with massive databases of human achievement, can, with their artificial speed and artificial evaluation algorithms draw or defeat people - at a very thing that only people cherish. Games are special, play and work, art and science, learning and teaching - but to a computer. Well, tell me what computer is going to enjoy listening to this audiobook. I didn't. I'd rather read an actual "A Human History", not a computer one.