Game Blotter

A man was mugged for his board games in Hull, UK. One, possibly two, discerning thugs (then again, I don’t know which games were grabbed) robbed the man of two board games and left him with life-threatening injuries. Said the local constabulary, “This was an isolated incident. Luckily incidents of this kind are rare and we don’t believe there is any threat to the wider public.”

Two men in Maroochydore, Australia, bored with “nothing to do at home”, grabbed an unspecified board game off the shelf of their local Target and walked out the front door with the box shoved down a pants leg. Stealth was not their strong suit, though. Police officers overheard them planning their caper, watched them grab the game, and followed them out the door before making an arrest.

In an incident made for headlines, a Florida woman stabbed her 18 year-old niece in the ear with a screwdriver during a game of Family Feud.

According to the website, eCommerce Bytes, in the Amazon listing for Hasbro’s Pie Face game, someone marked up boxes so the people appeared in blackface. That image isn’t there any more, nor was there any explanation available for how or why that image might have been part of the listing in the first place.

Petersen Entertainment is suing PayPal in Texas court. The game company claims that PayPal has improperly refused to hand over nearly $58,000 raised through Kickstarter for Cthulhu Wars. This despite Petersen providing documentation to PayPal that it has already shipped the product to the customers.

It seems that an apology and voluntary pay-cut wasn’t enough contrition for the president of the Japan Shogi Association after penalizing a player for cheating without evidence. He’s now resigned his position.

The mayor and deputy-mayor of Iizuka, Japan have resigned in the wake of public outcry over their habit of gambling on Mahjong during business hours. Also, the funeral business owned by one of the people with whom they played landed a municipal contract.

Two men in their 60s, one of them the president of the Hop Sing Tong Benevolent Association, were stabbed to death by an intruder while playing Mahjong in the association’s Los Angeles recreation center.

After several months of surveillance, police in Mallorca, Spain raided a location of weekend Mahjong games, where they believe €25,000-35,000 was illegally gambled on weekly basis.

“Most people who played Chess are liars,” said a Muslim televangelist in Turkey. “Playing Chess is worse than gambling and eating pork.” In response, the Turkish Chess Federation is suing.

A man died while fleeing from police who broke up a street dice game of Bầu Cua Cá Cọp in Binh Dinh, Vietnam. The police and coroner say he died from lack of oxygen caused by running. His uncle says the police beat him.

A man who just tried to walk away from a dice game argument in Waco, Texas, was followed out of the apartment by his host and stabbed in the parking lot.

In Cleveland, Ohio, when a man tried to rob a street dice game at gunpoint, one of the players, who had a concealed-carry permit, shot back and killed the robber.

In Ahmedabad, India, a dump-truck driver took to the wrong side of the road, killing a Chess coach riding a scooter on his way to a lesson. The driver’s employer then quickly began a dig on the street, attempting to suggest it was an active work zone.

Someone experiencing a seizure crashed their SUV right through the miniatures section of Deep Comics & Games in Huntsville, Alabama. Though the store was occupied at the time, no patrons or staff were injured.

According to police in Gainesville, Florida, a man grabbed a collection of 1,000 Magic: The Gathering cards from an unlocked car, then tried to sell them at a local game shop. The store manager, though, was a friend of the victim and, recognizing the cards, reported the seller to police.

An 83 year old man was beaten and robbed while walking home from a game of Dominoes in the Bronx.

Also in the Bronx, it was the Dominoes game itself that turned violent. An argument started, shots were fired, a woman was hit in the neck. The reports are unclear, though, whether she was participating in the game or hit by a stray bullet.

A former police officer in Cebu, the Philippines was shot and killed by a masked gunman while playing Mahjong. Authorities think the killing was retaliatory for something connected to the victim’s time in law-enforcement.