Game Blotter

The United States Senate has designated St. Louis as the National Chess Capital.

The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed a defamation lawsuit by a man who didn’t like how the CBC portrayed his board game pitch on the Dragon’s Den television show. Despite signing an agreement in which he recognized that the broadcast might be “disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing or of an otherwise unfavourable nature”, the plaintiff argued that the show misrepresented how his business was received by the dragons.

A 23-year-old German Chess grandmaster who was suspected of cheating, banned for 2 years, and then reinstated 5 months later is suing the German Chess Federation for €68,000 (approximately $94,000).

A possible United States ban on the sale or transfer of any elephant ivory, even ivory harvested before 1914, could be a big problem for the owners of antique Chess and Mahjong sets.

Innovention Toys still isn’t finished with MGA. It’s convinced the judge to order MGA to pay another $260,000 of Innovention’s legal fees resulting from the patent suit over Khet.

A Korean man was fined $12,000 after failing to declare 14,000 cigarettes when returning to Australia on a flight from Japan. The man claims he was going to use them to “play dominoes“, by which I assume he meant topple them over.

In the UK, Syed Naveed Shabir was sentenced to 9 years in prison for smuggling heroin from Pakistan inside Chess and Ludo boards.

The game of Dominoes showed its violent side twice in Alabama recently. In Montgomery, a man shot his two opponents during a game. In Fairfield, a man attacked a group of players with an assault weapon. A baby at the scene was protected when one of the players threw himself over her.

The subjects of a lawsuit are firing back at Spin Master. Rehco claims to own a valid patent for the technology used by Brix ‘N Clix’s Starfly product. The two companies say that Spin Master is the one infringing and that its lawsuit represents “a big company [trying] to stifle competition from small business by unjustly using the court system.”

Four reputed gang members were arrested and charged with murder in connection with the robbery of a card game in Fairview, New Jersey. The man who was hosting the game was the one killed. Police said that his regular illegal games had become well-known—known enough to the robbers, apparently not enough to the police.

Cheryl Lacy has a beef with the Brisbane City Council (Australia). She’s unable to take her turn hosting the regular Mahjong game among her friends because the city’s on-street parking rules limit her to two visitor permits.

In the course of a dice game in the Bahamas, two men came to argue over $1. Unable to resolve the argument peacefully, one stabbed the other, killing him.

Another dice game argument, in Dayton, Ohio, also ended in death but was over $30.

A man in Wilmington, Delaware was shot dead as he was fleeing a dice game that was about to be robbed.

In Quezon City, Philippines, a woman playing Mahjong with friends in front of her home was approached by a motorcycle rider, who shot her several times with a .45 caliber pistol. She died at a hospital shortly thereafter.