After over 4 million votes in Monopoly’s Token Madness campaign, the results are in. The first revealed cut? The iconic thimble token. Originally added in 1935, the token will now be retired and replaced with another token fans have voted in. Hasbro will reveal some more info on the vote statistics during the New York Toy Fair this coming weekend, but the full results won’t be revealed until World Monopoly Day on March 19th of this year.

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The Google-sponsored AlphaGo computer program, which had previously defeated world Go champion Lee Sedol, racked up 59 wins playing anonymously online against a variety of masters.

Sergey Karjakin, who had lost the recent World Chess Championship to Magnus Carlsen in tiebreak games, managed to best his rival on tiebreak criteria to claim the top position in the World Blitz Championship. At the same tournament, Vassily Ivanchuk won the World Rapid Championship, while Anna Muzychuk won both rapid and blitz titles in the women’s section.

Wesley So won the London Chess Classic, putting him at the top of the four-stop Grand Chess Tour. His total prize winnings on the Tour: $295,000.

University students in Wageningen, Netherlands created the world’s largest Monopoly board, along with dice and houses all to-scale. Made with the support of Hasbro and certified by Guiness World Records, the board measured 900.228 m² (9,689.97 ft²). The previous record, set in the United States earlier this year, was 744.867 m² (8,017.69 ft²).

It was two Dutchmen who faced off in the World Draughts Championship. Roel Boomstra came away the winner.

In December, Feliks Zemdegs solved a 6×6 Rubik’s Cube in a world record 1 minute, 32.47 seconds. Then in January, he beat his own record with a 1 minute, 27.85 second solve.

Here’s a machine solving a standard 3×3 Rubik’s Cube in 0.637 seconds:

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Hasbro has announced the Monopoly Token Madness Vote, which leaves the fate of all eight current Monopoly tokens in the hands of the fans for the first time.  Yes. That means the car, too.

From January 10 – 31, you can head to VoteMonopoly.com to choose eight tokens they’d like to see in the next Monopoly game. There’s a total of 64 tokens, including the current eight tokens and 50+ new contenders such as a penguin, sliced bread, hashtag, emojis, and more. This is the first time all eight tokens could get voted out of the game. The winning tokens will be announced on World Monopoly Day, March 19, and the fan-picked tokens will be updated in the Monopoly game hitting shelves this August.

You can see a full gallery of the new tokens below:

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While I may not be a huge fan of Monopoly in general, but my kids are. Not only are they fans, but they really like licensed versions of the game. USAopoly’s MONOPOLY: The Legend of Zelda Collector’s Edition as been a huge hit in our household for quite some time.

How excited was I when Hasbro said they had mailed me out a copy of USAopoly’s MONOPOLY: Pokémon Johto Edition? Not as excited as I knew my kids would be. Pokémon is huge in our household, and my kids were in even more of a Pokémon froth with the release of Pokémon Sun and Moon.

So how is it? Really well made. It’s colorful, dripping with Pokémon artwork and theme, and has really nice Pokémon tokens that the kids constantly fight over. It’s hours upon hours of Pokémon MONOPOLY fun.

Seriously, though. If you like MONOPOLY, and you like Pokémon, this edition of the game is for you.

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Hasbro UK announced it will be running a hotline for Monopoly disputes over the upcoming holiday. On the end of the line will be “experts on hand with the official rulebooks to instantly settle any disputes, and advice on how to resolve common complaints.” According to a survey sponsored by the company, 51 percent of Monopoly games end in an argument and 13 percent of players cheat.

For those needing Hasbro’s help December 24-26, the telephone number is 0800 689 4903.

[via Metro]

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Today Hasbro announced HASCON, a massive event which will be held in Providence at the Rhode Island Convention Center and Dunkin Donuts Center from September 8-10, 2017. The convention will be three days packed with everything Hasbro has to offer from all their product lines, characters, and stories. There will be live interactive experiences, exclusive products, special guests, panels, and everything else you’d expect to find at a good convention. Being Hasbro, it’s a fully family-friendly event.

This is one party I’m going to make sure not miss!

For more information, and to get on the mailing list for first-notice ticket sales, visit http://hascon.hasbro.com.

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A group from France beat out a field of 64 teams to win the Hide-and-Seek World Championship. The event was held in the abandoned town of Consonno, Italy.

In one game at the Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan, Dana Reizniece-Ozola defeated the Women’s World Champion, Hou Yifan, despite being ranked 400 Elo points lower. Dana is no stranger to such lofty achievements, however. At 34 years of age, she is a longtime Chess competitor , holds graduate degrees in Translation & Terminology and Business Administration (in addition to further graduate studies in Law, International Business, and Aerospace Management), can speak six languages, and is also the Finance Minister of Latvia.

Grandmaster Timur Gareyev broke the world record for consecutive games of blindfold Chess. In fact, most of the 64 games (54 wins, 8 losses, 2 draws) he played while pedaling an exercise bicycle.

After declaring Monopoly an official sport, the Lagos State Sport Commission of Nigeria hosted a world record 1,300 people playing Monopoly at the same time in a single venue. That achievement was recorded at the state’s Under-17 Monopoly Championship, where also Elizabeth Braimoh of Top Field College took home the trophy and a NGN600,000 education grant prize (about $2,000).

Eight winners secured second interviews at an annual Mahjong tournament meant as a job recruiting event for university students in Japan.

At the Asian Rubik’s Cube Championship in Beijing, Kevin Hays of the United States solved a 6×6 Rubik’s Cube in a world record 1 minutes, 32.77 seconds.

Not for speed, Tony Fisher demonstrated in a video solving the world’s smallest Rubik’s Cube (5.6 mm on a side). To get one so small, he had a 6 mm one 3D printed by Shapeways and then filed it down further.

Among the activities that Cem Karabay of Turkey kept himself busy with during a world-record scuba dive of 142 hours, 42 minutes, and 42 seconds were underwater games of Backgammon.

Allan Silva of Brazil has won his fourth consecutive Pan American Draughts Championship.

The North American Scrabble Championship and a $10,000 prize was won by David Gibson, who in the final defeated his opponent 397-371 with words such as “drearies”, “serrano”, orcinols”, and “spelter” (none of which are recognized by my spell-checker).

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Neil Scallon of the U.K. claims a world-record collection 2,500 copies of Monopoly but also says he hasn’t played a board game in 20 years.

Sota Fujii, a 14 year-old middle school student from Aichi Prefecture, Japan, has achieved 4th dan status, breaking the record for youngest professional Shogi player ever.

Brett Smitheram of the U.K. took home the trophy, a €7,000 grand prize, and a kiss to the feet at the World Scrabble Championship in Lille, France. His win was secured with 176 points from the play of “braconid” (a species of wasp) for a bingo on a triple word score.

Londoners commemorated the Great Fire of London with the toppling of 23,000 dominoes strung through 4 miles of city streets, markets, pubs, gardens, and a church.

With a win at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis (and its $75,000 prize), Wesley So of the United States is nearly assured of also taking the top prize for the entire Grand Chess Tour. That is, unless maybe Magnus Carlsen decides to step back in for the London Chess Classic in December after finishing the World Chess Championship.

The winner of the 40th World Chess Solving Championship (a tournament of solving Chess puzzles) held in Belgrade, Serbia was Zaur Mammadov of Azerbaijan. The second place winner was also from Azerbaijan.

Draughts also finished a World Championship of Problems recently, with Alexander Moiseyev of the United States in first place.

The winner of the 2016 Magic: The Gathering World Championship, Brian Braun-Duin of Virginia, was described by WOTC as having taken the “everyman’s journey to the top.” “Grinding” through tournament tours, he had set himself a goal of Grand Prix Master for this season but managed to trump that, going home with the big trophy.

At the 2016 World Championship Domino Tournament hosted by the Andalusia (Alabama) Rotary Club, the winner, Jerry Baker, was from nearby Ozark, Alabama. In fact, all the winners were from the Southeast United States.

A world record for the largest circle field of dominoes (76,017 toppled) was set in Westland, Michigan, along with the U.S. record for total dominoes toppled (242,518). A team of 18 spent 10 days setting up the feat.

Three retirees from China finishing on top of the 11th Austrian Mahjong Open was seen as something of a comeback after an embarrassing showing at the Open Mahjong Championship 2 years ago in France, where the highest placed competitor from China came in 30th.

It was an Austrian, Wolfgang Leitner, who won the 2016 FISTF World Cup in Belgium, where 500 competitors gathered to play table football (Subbuteo).

In first place at the 41st Backgammon World Championship was Jörgen Granstedt of Sweden.

At the European Rubik’s Cube Championship, Feliks Zemdegs of Australia set seven world records, including one for solving a 7×7 in 2 minutes, 20.66 seconds. At the PSU Open, August 28th in Novopolotsk, Belarus, Roman Strakhov of Russia set a world record by solving a 5×5 Rubik’s Cube, blindfolded in 5 minutes, 1.40 seconds. Just a few days later, however, at the SPB Championship, September 4th in St. Petersburg, Roman bested himself by finishing the 5×5 blindfolded in just 4 minutes, 55.63 seconds.

And the winner of the Pentamind World Championship was Andres Kuusk—his fourth time! The Pentamind is a meta-event, incorporating multiple games of one Chess variant, Scrabble, Go, Poker, and Backgammon.

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As reported by Variety, Hasbro and Araca Group are partnering on a series of live stage projects based on the toy and game company’s properties. Though still several years out, the first will be Monopoly the Musical, which the companies intend as a Broadway production exploring the world of Monopoly (rather than people playing the game).

After Monopoly the Musical, Araca will look at other Hasbro properties to serve as the basis for theater in a range of markets, including Broadway, amusement parks, cruise ships, school productions, and community theater.

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In Singapore, 605 people broke the world record for the most people playing Monopoly at the same time in a single venue. They were, though, allowed to stop playing after 30 minutes.

At 10 years and 9 months old, R. Praggnanandhaa of India is the youngest ever to qualify for the International Master title in Chess.

Li Chao of China postponed his wedding to accept a late invitation to the Norway Chess tournament. He was asked to fill in for Sergey Karjakin, who withdrew to begin preparing for the World Chess Championship.

These guys played Jenga Giant while the blocks were on fire!

Already the top professional Go player in Europe, Fan Hui has improved his game by 300 points since he began practicing against Google Alpha Go computer program.

Webster University’s fourth consecutive win of the President’s Cup (also known as the Final Four of College Chess) ties the previous record set by the University of Maryland Baltimore County 2003-2006. It’s also the sixth consecutive win for the team’s coach, Susan Polgar, who before Webster worked with Texas Tech University.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the tremendous successes of Nigerian Scrabble players, attributing it in large part to a “surprising strategy of playing short words.” Slate, responding directly to that article, pointed out that the importance of short words has been recognized by avid Scrabble players for many years.

Taking three straight games in the best-of-five final round gave Adam Logan his fifth win of the Canadian National Scrabble Championship.

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