Game Blotter

A student in Hong Kong used Mahjong as cover for stealing cash from the apartments of fellow players. Meanwhile, two students in Michigan didn’t like losing to a third at dice, so they decided to steal their money back.

The venue for the World Junior Chess Championship was moved by its host, the Turkish Chess Federation, from Hatay to Kocaeli after FIDE threatened to cancel the event. FIDE was concerned over the proximity of Hatay to the border with Syria.

Four men were shot, one killed, in Washington, DC. The police think it was a dispute over a dice game. Police in St. Louis are certain about the three people shot there. Two more were shot at a dice game in Centreville, Illinois and two, one killed, at a dice game in Jacksonville, Florida.

But look people! It is possible to play dice without shooting each other. Hip Hop artist Sean Combs lost $1 million in a dice game to fellow rapper Rick Ross and all he did was tweet about it. Two people arguing over a dice game in Madison, Wisconsin also decided to forgo shooting each other, opting instead for fisticuffs and automobile vandalism.

Chess players in Punjab, India are complaining about a lack of support from the state government. The finance minister explained that Chess isn’t part of either the Olympics or the Asian Games. Players though, point out that neither is Kabaddi (a wrestling sport), yet it has been the subject of significant spending by the government.

According to Vestnik Kavkaza (a Caucasus news website), Dominoes is respected and supported in Abkhazia because the International Domino Federation is the only international organization that recognizes Abkhazia as an independent state.

A Kentucky man convicted of killing two others over a $20 dice game was spared the death penalty and instead sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

A recent rash of murders in the Bahamas included one man killed while he was playing Dominoes and a teenager killed while playing Backgammon.

A homeless man in New York City is facing possible hate-crime charges in addition to felony assault. According to witnesses, he was watching people in Union Square Park play Chess but then became enraged when no one wanted to play with him. After threatening to attack the next “white person” who walked by him, he slugged a passer-by, knocking him to the ground. The victim is in a coma and has been declared brain-dead.

In San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood, homeless street chess players have apparently been getting along well with their wealthier counterparts. Yet the police decided to confiscate their game boards, chairs, and tables to combat illegal gambling and drug use. “It’s turned into a big public nuisance. I think maybe it’s a disguise for some other things that are going on,” Capt. Michael Redmond told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The spending of CDN $22,000 by the Cumberland Heritage Village Museum on the installation of a giant Sorry board game is being questioned, first of all because of the amount of money spent without political review, and second of all because of a tenuous relationship to the mission of the museum.