Game Blotter - A roundup of crimes, legal cases, and when "the law" gets involved with gamesIn Tuscaloosa, Alabama a bystander was shot in the leg for “talking too loud and disrupting the dice game.” Yeah, disturbing gamers during a game. Definitely a no no!

Security officers at London’s Heathrow Airport confiscated a board game being played by two kids. They said that the word game, Pass the Bomb Junior, was a security risk because of its grenade-styled timer device.

The U.S. Open Chess Championship, scheduled for August in Phoenix, has sparked the ire of an Arizona Poker advocate. The man, who has previously been arrested for running a Poker room, claims that state authorities are being inconsistent with the enforcement of the law. He says that Poker is as much a game of skill as Chess. So if Poker rooms that charge fees and award prizes are illegal, a Chess tournament that charges fees and awards prizes should also be illegal.

In Ft. Pierce, Florida a man was celebrating his 51st birthday by gathering with friends to play Dominoes. The group was outside playing, in the driveway of his home, when they were approached by four teenagers armed with five handguns and robbed of their cash and jewelry. The man’s extensive home surveillance system caught video of the whole incident.

A Houston group was playing Dominoes inside when two people broke in to the home to rob them. One of the players was shot dead.

Another home invasion occurred in Oakland, California, where a dozen people playing Mahjong in the basement were bound, gagged, blindfolded, and robbed by two men wielding guns. Supposedly, the players were all friends. But then how the robbers know where to hit? Did they just get lucky?

Back to Dominoes… A 73 year old in West Palm Beach, Florida hit his neighbor in the head with a pot, allegedly because that neighbor made an illegal move in a Dominoes game.

In Virginia, a man who’s $8,000 collection of Magic: The Gathering cards was stolen from his car, reached out to local players and game shop owners, asking them to be on the lookout for the thieves. The effort paid off. When the thieves attempted to fence the cards at one store, the owner directed them to another and also warned police, who arrested them outside.

FIDE appears to be siding with Mihaela Sandu, suggesting that the accusations of cheating levied against her during the European Women’s Chess Championship were unsubstantiated and a “witch hunt”. FIDE’s Anti-Cheating Committee promises an investigation.

With recent increased attention to the Confederate flag, it appears that Amazon, in removing confederate flag products from its website, also (at least temporarily) removed some Civil War board games.

A prototype Osama bin Laden action figure and a prototype terrorism-themed Chutes & Ladders board game, both produced at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency, were recently sold at auction for $6,250 and $625, respectively.

The first Aqua Dots lawsuit to go to trial has resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff. Spin Master and Moose Enterprise were found liable for the toy that when ingested metabolized in to GHB (also known as the date rape drug). The two companies were ordered by a U.S. federal court jury in Phoenix to pay $435,000 to the family of a child that suffered brain damage after swallowing Aqua Dots beads.

Hasbro caught some flack for advertising its Jurassic World dinosaur toys as male, when according to the story the dinosaurs are female. Hasbro claims that it was an accident.

Two police officers were assaulted while trying to break up a dice game on a street corner in the Bronx. One of the officers suffered a broken nose and a fractured eye socket, the other a fractured jaw. Ten people were arrested.

The city of Vicksburg, Mississippi is planning to keep $10,000 that police seized when responding to a shooting at a dice game.