Game Blotter

When a 19 year-old man man brandishing two knives burst in to a library Chess class for kids and threatened to kill everyone, instructor James Vernon first tried to talk him down. However, as one of the mothers started escorting the children out, the man lunged and stabbed Vernon in the hand. It was then that the 75 year-old’s basic army training from 50 years ago took over. He flipped the attacker over on to a table and subdued him until police arrived. None of the children were injured.

The body of a 22 year-old murder victim was dressed in a blue track-suit by his mother and propped up to play Dominoes at his own wake. The bizarre scene (pictured below) took place at the mother’s bar (also the location of his murder) in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico.

National news outlets made a big deal of a dice game shooting that left one dead and three injured on the campus of Tennessee State University. Other incidents of dice game violence that did not get such attention took place in Memphis, Nashville, Austin, and Wellston, Missouri. A dispute over a dice game also turned in to a deadly shooting in Pretoria, South Africa.

According to witnesses, police in Heingang, India attempted to break up a dice game by firing in to the crowd. Two people were injured.

Parents in Spenge, Germany attempted to paint a Mensch ärgere Dich nicht game board (similar to Ludo or Pachisi) on the playground of a local school. When they started running out of space, they kind-of twisted the board to make it fit. Neighbors noticed and called the police. Why? Because the reconfigured board looked like a Nazi swastika, which it is against-the-law to display in Germany.

A final ruling has been issued on the English Bridge Union’s request to have their favorite card game declared a sport, and the answer by the British court was no.

Some guy lost his $60,000 collection of Magic: The Gathering cards at New York Comic Con. The cards were found by a teenager, who considered keeping and selling them, but instead decided to find and return them to their rightful owner. This he accomplished by posting news of his find to Reddit. No crime involved at all—I just thought it nice to have a good news story here on the Blotter!

Newlyweds Nick and Aggie in Hutton, U.K. stashed £1,500 of gift vouchers in a Pictureka! board game box for safekeeping. [I think you know where this is going…] The problem was it didn’t take them long to forget about the vouchers and donate the game to a local charity shop. From there the game was picked up by a teacher and brought back to the Brentwood County High School for her students. The students discovered the vouchers and with a bit of modern detective work that included social media were eventually able to return them to their rightful owners.

Found in Helena, Montana, Poker chips and a Backgammon set. If they’re yours, contact the Helena Police Department, who have recovered them for safekeeping.

A teenager in Chosica, Peru was rushed to the hospital by her family for convulsions, foaming at the mouth, and calling to the devil. She claims she was possessed by the devil after playing with a Ouija board mobile phone app.

Having been found guilty of violating FIDE’s Code of Ethics, Garry Kasparov and Ignatius Leong were banned from holding any office in the organization for 2 years.

The Malaysian Chess Federation has postponed its “annual general meeting” for at least a year. Activist Peter Long laments the Federation’s many failures to promote Chess, while still requiring that members pay their membership fees.

Veteran Chess grandmaster Nigel Davies was so fed up with infighting at the English Chess Federation that he’s defected to play for Wales.

The U.S. Backgammon Federation declined to establish formal rules for decorum at tournaments.

Hasbro’s response to the lawsuit recently filed by FOX News anchor Harris Faulkner basically says that no one would reasonably connect the company’s toy to Ms. Faulkner, despite them sharing a name, because one is a human being and the other a toy hamster.

Five men from Saginaw, Michigan are facing up to five years in prison on illegal gambling charges for playing dice outside a home on the south side. They were caught by a special police detail funded by the Safe Neighborhoods Project of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Two men were given tickets for illegal gambling while playing Dominoes in Putnam Triangle in Brooklyn. According to the men ticketed, police had tried to break up the game earlier but backed off when the men asserted they weren’t doing anything wrong. Then when one gave the other some money to go to the nearby bodega, seven officers surrounded them and issued the summonses.

A witness in the murder trial of Badri Khvedelidze in Tralee, Ireland, testified in court that the victim and alleged perpetrator had gotten in to an argument over a game of Backgammon.

The accused murderers of teenager Becky Watts in Bristol, U.K. told the court they were playing Simpsons Monopoly on the evening of her death.