Irving Finkel

So most games are either just...

probability like snakes and ladders, snake shoots and ladders.

It's just a thing like that.

Or you have a game like chess, which is pure strategy.

And the grown-up game in the modern world where fortuity or chance and strategy have a good balance is backgammon, which is a sort of grown-up version of this sort of game.

where nevertheless, if you play according to the most rational interpretation, strategy is a major factor.

So what happened was that many people had ideas how it was played, and the route followed, and I did too.

And then I discovered this tablet in the British Museum, which was written at a very late period in the 2nd century BC.

So 2,300 years after this object existed, and it had on it the names of the pieces and what the pieces were like and various things about the throws.

And it was obvious that the rules were to do with a game which was derived from this simple early game.

And that working backwards from it, you could reconstruct the game in accordance with its later incarnation that might be workable.

And it jolly well turned out to be workable because people play this all over the world now.

And they even play it in Iraq in cafes.

Wait, now, now?

They do.

Because after it's come back to life, it's on the internet, people play.

There are different rules.

The ones that I invented are pretty much regular.

So if you have a good balance between chance and strategy, and it's a fair game and doesn't take four days to play like modern board games.

So you can have a go and if you're lucky, you win fast and then you have another go, maybe best of three or something like that.