Playing games

I am intrigued that playing games is a regular theme across the range of podcasts that I listen to, such as the TED talk Stuart Brown says play is more than fun, the RSA talk on Why games are the 21st century’s most serious business and IBM Developerworks on Serious games.

What unites these talks is the way that game playing helps in real world situations but what differs is the way that it does this which includes, for example, by building leadership skills or enabling simulations of events like the outbreak of a serious virus.

Games have also been a significant factor in the growth of Facebook where almost everybody I know plays some sort of game be it something "serious" like chess or scrabble or something more frivolous like Mafia Wars or Farmville.

I have a foot in both camps as I play both chess and Farmville!

What I like about Farmville is that it is a very open game which, rather like a large box of mixed Lego bricks, lets you do anything you like within the confines of some very lose rules around the planting and harvesting of crops, flowers and trees.

It's also a social game (as opposed to a competitive one) in that you are encouraged to make friends and to help them by working on their farms and sending them gifts.

But I mostly use it to make coloured patterns out of lavender, red wheat, sunflowers, coffee, etc.

In many ways it's not unlike Kings of Chaos that I played for a few years in that most of the game's objectives were personal, it has to be played regularly to work and there is some interaction with friends. So, bizarrely, being a gentle farmer is not unlike being a violent elf.

I don't know how all this makes me a more effective or nicer person but I'll accept all the testimony from the learned speakers mentioned above and believe that it does!

A rare win at chess

I do not win that many games of Chess so please indulge me in rejoicing in this win. I only play chess on Facebook these days and most of these games are against a former fellow member of Weymouth Chess Club, who always beats me.

These loses mean that my chess grade keeps falling so occasionally I accept challengers from other players and I do manage to win some of these games and so my grade recovers a little.

This is one of my recent wins that I particularly enjoyed because of the way it ended. Black had wasted a lot of time moving his queen several times while I developed all of my pieces. Black's last move was e5 (PK4) in an attempt to bring his bishop into play, but it is too late. Can you see what I played? And do not cheat by looking in the moves box!


The winning move, exposes the weakness of Black's position where there is just one rook on hand to protect the king against White's onslaught of a queen, two rooks and a bishop. In a position like this sacrificing a rook, or even a queen, is immaterial as the checkmate is certain.

So the move I played, Rf6 (RB6) is not really a sacrifice, it puts unbearable pressure on h6 and so quickly opens up the Black king. The game quickly ended, 24. Rf6 Qd5, 25. Rxh6 Kg8, 26. Rxg7+ Kxg7, 28. Qg5++.

A lucky win at chess

A quick look at this position shows that white (that's me) is three pawns down in the ending and that black's pawns are well placed in the middle of the board.

Normally that would be enough for an easy win for black but I kept the queens on in a desperate attempt to get a draw through repeatedly checking the black king.

I offered black a draw several moves ago but he declined thinking (probably correctly) that he could force one of his extra pawns through.

The luck came when black made the mistake of moving his king away from his queen which meant that his queen could not block checks from my queen.

This mistake was compounded when the black king moved to the edge of the board where its movement is severely restricted.

My previous move was to take my king from g2 to h3, stopping his king from moving to h2, which meant that suddenly my manic attempts to drawn the game were rewarded with a simple win.

The only move that black had to delay the checkmate was to play his queen from e2 to d2 to put me in check but playing my pawn from g3 to g4 blocked black's check and inflicted one of my own. (This is the position shown here.)

Black's only legal move in this position is queen takes pawn on g4 to which I would reply queen takes queen which delivers checkmate. So black resigned and I am one lucky bunny.

Lord of Ham has retired from Kings of Chaos

Age 9 of Kings of Chaos has just finished and my account, Lord_of_Ham, finished a very creditable #214 out of a total of 13,278 players at the end of the age.

I would like to say that this was a result of immense skill but mostly it came down to some simple tactics and putting the long hours in to grow the size of my army through the very repetitive process of "clicking".

But no more.

Having played Kings of Chaos for just over four years, starting right back in Age 1, there is nothing else that I want to achieve in the game so Lord of Ham has retired. It was fun but there are other things that I now want to do with my time.

Lord of Ham makes the top 150 :-)

Age 7 of Kings of Chaos has been going since November 2006 and currently has 35,071 players.

My initial ambition this age was to finish in the top 500 but I am now comfortably exceeding that and Lord of Ham has just made the top 150.

He's currently ranked #148 but I am about to go to bed (2:30am) and am bound to be attacked sometime overnight and will lose 60-70 million gold :-(

Kings of Chaos

My fellow players of Kings of Chaos (KoC) have questioned why I have not mentioned it in my blog, so here goes!

I've been playing KoC for almost four years now, having been introduced to it by one of my sons. The boys have since moved on to Runescape and World of Warcraft but I still play KoC and a couple of my mates do too.

My account is Lord_of_Ham and I am in an alliance called Elite Sabbers, with my mates Orckestra and RichardBajor.

The game is quite simple. You get gold every half hour and by attacking people. You can spend the gold on attack weapons (to take more gold), defense weapons (to stop other people taking your gold), spies (to be able to see other people's gold and to sabotage their weapons) and sentries (to hide your gold and to fend off enemies' spies).

It is difficult to balance all four aspects of your account so most people specialize in some way, e.g. sabbers or attack dogs. My tactics are to build up my sentries so that most people cannot see how much gold I've got and to keep just enough attack weapons to be able to get gold from people.

Our clan, Elite Sabbers, is at war at the moment (we usually are!) so I have lots of enemies to take gold from. They try to sab me in retaliation but normally my sentries are too strong.

Some of you may have noticed a weakness in the game; the gold comes every half hour. This means that either you have to sleep not very much or get used to waking up every morning to see that you have just been visited by an enemy who have taken a 1/3rd of your day's gold. I go with the little sleep option!