Game Blotter

Organizers of the European Team Championship Chess tournament claim they have the right to restrict publication of game results to those news outlets with which they have license arrangements. Competing outlets disagree. So do I.

A government program in Jamaica is teaching Dominoes to teens and young adults as a way to keep them away from trouble and out of gangs. Apparently, they don’t track the news like we do.

A student group at the University of Texas at Austin was planning a live “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Game“. The group intended to have people wearing “Illegal Immigrant” signs walking around campus. Participants would then be invited to find and escort these people to the Young Conservatives of Texas chapter for the reward of a $25 gift certificate. Activists, though, threatened to swamp the game with a “You’re All Immigrants” campaign, in which descendants of “Illegal Pilgrims” would “self-deport” for the bounty. So, the game was cancelled.

In Detroit, more than 20 people were playing low-stakes dice games in the back room of a barber shop when someone started shooting at a vehicle outside. Then someone decided to open the door, at which point the assailant began firing in to the building. Three people were killed and six more injured.

FIDE wants everyone to know that the Amateur Chess Organization’s World Amateur Championships (scheduled for Rhodes in 2014) is neither sanctioned by the World Chess Federation or International Olympic Committee, nor will the event be included in FIDE’s ratings list.

Police in Nashville, Tennessee questioned a man about a shooting death that they believe was related to a dice game. No one has been arrested, though.

Two men who robbed a neighborhood toy store in Cambridge, United Kingdom were caught on camera. Now police are hoping that by publishing the mens’ pictures, they can be caught in person.

In Canterbury, UK, a man is on trial for throwing a beer glass at a friend’s face and blinding him in one eye. The incident occurred during a session of I’ve Never, which is a Truth or Dare-type drinking game. Apparently, a board game is not the best way to tell your buddy that you’ve slept with his girlfriend.

A man in Trenton, New Jersey was shot and killed while playing cards and Dominoes with friends inside his home. Police have not explained why.

An online crowdsourced Chess game between Norway and the rest of the world (to play alongside the World Chess Championship) was cancelled due to sabotage. Within just a few hours of the game’s launch, the Norwegian newspaper that was running the game noticed a series of suspiciously bad moves by the not-Norway side. Lest you think that this result should have been expected, it turns out that many such games have been run successfully in the past.

A New York man is suing Chess.com for $200,000 for labeling him a cheater. The man claims that the label negatively impacting his ability to sell Chess lessons and books. Ya think?

The “Heroquest 25th Anniversary [Kickstarter project] is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is currently unavailable.” Gamezone, owner of the project, has rights to the game and the name, HeroQuest, in Spain. However, in the UK those rights belong to Hasbro and in the U.S. a trademark to “Heroquest” belongs to Moon Design.

Remember those San Francisco Chess players who were ejected from their normal venue by police over concerns of drug dealing? Some of them have found a new place to play.

In the Ivies vs. Inmates competition, five students from Princeton University played Chess against 12 inmates at the New Jersey State Prison.

One dice player shot another in the back in St. Louis.

In Hong Kong, police and elderly residents disagree over whether 11 shops in Eastway Towers were illegal gambling dens or simply cafes and private clubs in which small-stakes Mahjong players paid HK$13 per hour for a table, tea, and bread.

The Michigan Gaming Control Board is also working to reign in business that it considers casinos. Bars are holding regular gambling events, ostensibly to benefit charities, though often without the required participation of those charities.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that 11 toy-related deaths and 265,000 toy-related injuries occurred during calendar year 2012 [PDF]. Most toy-related deaths were due to drowning, asphyxiation, or aspiration. Toy-related emergency department-treated injuries were most commonly  lacerations, contusions, or abrasions.

A new exhibit at the V&A Museum of Childhood displays objects confiscated from children in London primary and secondary schools. We’re not talking real guns here, rather “games, keepsakes, cult toys, …homemade playthings such as pen tubes used as pea shooters, toy guns, colourful plastic toys and jewellery, make-up, gadgets and improvised missiles.”