国际象棋
Western chess, international chess
六种棋子、一个王，还有一千五百年都没人下完的棋。规则十分钟学会，剩下的够下一辈子。
Blinky Games
棋牌游戏指南：规则、历史与策略
每款游戏都有四个页面：完整指南、规则、规则背后的历史，以及取胜的策略，并为文字难以说清之处配上图解。
29 游戏116 指南免费，无需注册
The chess family
Xiangqi
象棋 Xiàngqí
Cannons that capture by jumping, a river across the middle, and generals who may never leave their palace. Chinese chess is sharper than the game it shares an ancestor with.
Shogi
将棋 Shōgi
Captured pieces change sides and come back. That one rule makes shogi the sharpest member of the chess family, with almost no draws and no safe simplification.
斗兽棋
鬥獸棋 Dòu Shòu Qí
象吃狮、狮吃虎——可鼠偏偏能扳倒象。八只分等级的野兽、两条河，以及每座兽穴前的三个陷阱。
Asian classics
围棋
圍棋 Wéiqí · 囲碁 Igo · 바둑 Baduk
至今仍按原始规则进行的最古老棋类，也可以说是最深奥的一种。五条规则，毫无例外，可能的局面比宇宙中的原子还多。
Gomoku
五目並べ Gomoku · 連珠 Renju
Five stones in a line on a Go board. Simple enough for a child, and so favourable to the first player that two separate rule systems exist to fix it.
Surakarta
Roundabouts
Two rules and one extraordinary idea: pieces capture by racing around the board's corner loops — a mechanism found in no other traditional board game.
Congkak
congkak · congklak · dakon
Scoop the seeds, sow them one by one, and chain your free turns. The Malay world's branch of mancala, and a game of pure arithmetic.
Conquer
Kepung Titik
Squared paper, two colours, and one idea: ring your rival's dots and the territory is yours. Known as Точки in Russia and Kropki in Poland.
Western classics
西洋跳棋
Draughts, English draughts
斜向走子、强制跳吃与升王。简单得孩子也能上手，深奥到证明它是和棋花了十八年计算。
Backgammon
Tables, tavli, nard
A 5,000-year-old race where every roll is luck and every choice is skill — and the doubling cube turns the whole thing into a question of nerve.
Reversi
Othello
A minute to learn, a lifetime to master. Outflank to flip — and discover that having more discs in the middlegame usually means you are losing.
Nine Men's Morris
Mills, Merels, Mühle, Nine Man Morris
Place nine men, line three in a row, and take an enemy man each time you do. A game carved into Roman stone, Viking ships and cathedral cloisters.
Royal Game of Ur
Twenty Squares, the Game of Twenty Squares
Buried in a Mesopotamian royal tomb 4,500 years ago, dug up with no instructions, and brought back to life by a cuneiform tablet. It is also a genuinely good game.
Ludo（飞行棋）
Parcheesi, Parchís, Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, Pachisi
掷六出门，四枚棋子绕十字赛跑，把对手一路打回起点。全世界玩得最多的赛跑类棋。
Chinese Checkers
Sternhalma
Hop your marbles across a six-pointed star. Neither Chinese nor checkers — a German star board for an American game, renamed in New York in 1928.
Dots and Boxes
La Pipopipette, Squares, Paddocks
A children's doodle invented by a French mathematician in 1889 — with a rigorous theory of chains, loops and sacrifices that most players never suspect exists.
Card games
Bridge
Contract Bridge
An auction, a contract and thirteen tricks to prove it. The deepest card game there is, and the bidding is a language you can spend a lifetime learning.
Hearts
Black Maria, Black Lady
Every heart costs a point and the queen of spades costs thirteen. A trick-taking game where winning tricks is the last thing you want — unless you take all of them.
Gin Rummy
Gin
Ten cards, two piles and one decision every hand: cash a small win now, or hold out for gin and risk the undercut.
Big Two
鋤大弟 · 大老二
Thirteen cards each, the 2 above the ace, and poker hands played as single units. Shed everything before the other three do.
Solitaire
Klondike, Patience
The game that taught the world to drag and drop — and a card puzzle where the deal matters more than anything, but careful play still decides most winnable hands.
Modern games and puzzles
Stratego
L'Attaque
Forty pieces, all face down. A French battle game patented by a woman in 1908, and one of the last classic games artificial intelligence managed to crack.
Battleship
Sea Battle, Salvo
Hide a fleet, call your shots, and learn how much better a good search is than a lucky one — about fifty shots a game.
四子棋
Four in a Row, Captain's Mistress
投下一枚棋子，连成四子。1988 年同一个月里被两次算尽——先手会赢，但只有从中间开局才行。
数独
数独 Sūdoku
一条规则的三种说法，不需要算术，也永远不必猜。1979 年由一位没人署名的美国建筑师发明。
Crossword
Crossword puzzle, cryptic crossword
A grid, some numbers, and clues that cross. Invented to fill space in a newspaper in 1913 and still the most played word puzzle in the world.
Minesweeper
Mine Sweeper
Every number is a constraint. Flags are optional, deduction is not — and the puzzle is formally as hard as any problem in NP.
Tilt Maze
Labyrinth, marble maze, ball maze
Tip the board and let gravity do the moving. The hard part is not finding the route — it is stopping.