Game Blotter

Corruption in the Bulgarian Chess Federation was caught on video by investigative reporters of television show, Gospodari na Efira. The Federation’s Executive Director promised tournament supplies and an arbiter position to the President of a local club in return for votes in an upcoming Federation election.

Thirty-five national Chess federations are late paying their dues to FIDE. Players affiliated with those federations will not be allowed to play in certain tournaments.

When an intoxicated man playing The Game of Life in Mill Creek, Indiana commented about already being married, his wife didn’t take it kindly. Though it never became violent, the ensuing argument was loud enough to attract the attention of police, and because the man ran instead of answering their questions, he was arrested and charged with resisting law enforcement.

A $3,000 collection of Magic: The Gathering cards was stolen in Madison, Wisconsin, then recovered when someone tried to sell them at a local game store. The person who tried to sell the cards admitted to police that he was high on drugs but claimed that he purchased the card collection from “some dude”.

Controversy erupted after OneBookShelf removed a card game about GamerGate from DriveThruRPG. Some, believing that public statements by people associated with Evil Hat Productions drove OneBookShelf’s action, called for boycotts of Evil Hat or DriveThruRPG. The retailer, however, disputed that assertion, stating instead that the ban was because the subject of GamerGate was “too current, too emotionally fraught, and too related to violence to be an appropriate subject for satire.” OneBookShelf further argued that “the violent element of the Gamergate issue has a basis in misogyny”—this argument despite the presence of a number of directly misogynistic products in the store.

Government corruption scandals in Spain have spawned a second board game. Last month we mentioned Corruptopolis. This month it’s D€mocracy.

A Chess set was stolen from a car in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Two men playing Scrabble in the public library of Hespeler, Ontario were asked to stop making so much noise rattling the bag of tiles.

A man who in 2008 was banned from tournament play for 1 year by the Victoria branch of the Australian Scrabble Players Association was hoping to finally have his day in court. The man had already served out the ban for poor behavior but wanted the disciplinary action declared illegal. In the end, Ringwood Magistrates Court did overturn the ban but refused to order the Association to admit that he did not cheat. It turned out that the man had already agreed to a settlement with the Association and that settlement did not require the Association to state that it was wrong.

Cards Against Humanity’s Black Friday deal was for a box of Bullshit. Thirty-thousand people purchased it, even though the company warned them not to expect anything different than the name on the box.

Hasbro released a Corporate Social Responsibility Report, detailing the company’s progress during 2013 on product safety, environmental responsibility, ethical sourcing, human rights, responsible marketing, and global philanthropy.

Taking that responsibility seriously, Hasbro has offered to replace a phallic extruder tool in its Play-Doh Cake Mountain toy.

According to a former inmate writing his memoirs, Chess and Dungeons & Dragons are popular pastimes in New York state prisons.

Two men in Cleveland were watching sports and playing Dominoes when they got in to an argument over sexual orientations. Then one of them attacked the other with a sword.

Two men were shot while arguing during a Dominoes game in Frankfort, Kentucky. Local reports do not indicate what this argument was about.

A woman in Kendal, Cumbria was convicted of slapping a man during a heated discussion about the scheduling of a Dominoes tournament. Her sentence included a 12-month conditional discharge, a fine of £620 for court costs, and a £15 victim surcharge.

A high school honors student was shot and killed during a $2 dice game in Detroit. The men he was playing were upset that he was winning. During the resulting argument, the student offered to fight the men, but one of them pulled out a gun and shot him instead.