The Game of Mancala

• Chess emerged in fifth-century India. In ancient India, there were no bishops, castles, or queens, but elephants, chariots, and ministers of war.
• In early Islam, the game was played with elegant cylinders and conicals in ivory or stone.
• In the 12th -century Norway the kings were bearded brutes with lustrous hair, flanked by shield-biting berserkers.
• Chess standardized in the 19th century and became the Staunton version we play with today.

Chess either gets you hooked or makes you avoid it because it is not played enough.

The number of different possible positions on the board adds up to 10 to the power of 120. The numbers of the pieces involved are frequently quoted and always unimaginable.

But chess is a game of logical consequences and sly entrapment. It is a magnetic field of forces that are charged with energy. It is an endless pursuit that gives it an edge.

Addiction can include:

• Addiction as a moral transgression, like excessive drinking or drug use.
• Addiction as a scientific disease, which characterize alcoholism and drug addiction as biological.
• Colloquial violation, which applies the term to almost any fixation. 

The idea that someone can be addicted to a behavior, as opposed to a substance, remains debatable.

• Excessive gameplay is a symptom of a larger problem, like anxiety or depression.
• The fear of possible addiction arrises from moral panic about new technologies, not scientific research or clinical data.
• Making excessive gaming a disorder can harm the gaming industry by stigmatizing their products. 

Games are optimal learning environments:

• Feedback loops are short, fast and adapted to your skill level.
• Challenges grow as you develop new skills.
• Failures are learning opportunities because every time you make a mistake, you get a hint about how you can do better next time.

Boredom is what we feel when our brain decides that there's nothing worth learning. It's the brain searching for new information.

And even games become boring at some point because they eventually run out of things to teach you. That's when you stop playing.

• When novice players play chess, they focus on what to do with the pieces. They may try and visualise a few steps ahead, but mostly just react to the board without considering the reasons behind the pieces.
• Professional chess players focus on how their opponents think. They seek to ask the right questions to understand their opponent's process.

Whether in chess or life, don't be fooled by what's on the surface. The best approach is to have a framework in place to trim the fat and focus on what matters. Ask enough pointed questions to lead you to clear answers.

In chess, students learn famous patterns and tactics. If an opponent does one thing, you are expected to react with another.

While it is good to recognize appropriate cues and employ the tactics you have learned, sometimes it is good to look towards where you want to end up and fill the gaps in a new way rather than using the past to move in a predictable direction.

The Pokémon craze was in full bloom when the first movie of the franchise debuted in 1999, though the parent company Nintendo made huge waves with the innovative, crazy-good NES console in 1983. The games were imaginative and beautiful, becoming extremely popular all across the world.

In 1989, Nintendo’s handheld console, Game Boy, in which many games including Pokémon debuted, changed the way games were consumed both by adults and children.

• The game is set in a fictional village where players explore the rivers and forests searching for creatures(or monsters) which are for taming and training.
• The game was designed to compel the player to seek out other players and network with them to complete their mission.
• American companies like Atari provided a primitive gaming experience when compared to the explorative, dream-like atmosphere and playing complexity provided by Game Boy.
• The game was originally considered too cute for American gaming customers, where macho men and femme fatales were preferred to school children and ‘Hello Kitty’ styled monsters.

Researchers designed a game called SPARX to help treat depressed teenagers. The players had almost double the total recovery rate when compared to the conventional treatment group.

Games that are popular or involve social mechanics can help with making friends by giving access to the community that forms around the shared experience. 

Gaming conventions, online multiplayer sessions, and competitions all help players meet new people and make friends with a common interest. 

Why don't smart decisions always lead to good results? Because we don't have complete control over our lives — and we don't have all of the information. 

You can opt not to drink on New Year's Eve, for instance, but still get blindsided by somebody who did to drink and drive. You made a quality decision, but happenstance hit you upside the head anyhow.

Becoming comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing is a vital step to becoming a better decision-maker.

What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge.

There are games designed to train and improve brain functionality, logical deduction, pattern recognition, memory, matching, and outside the box thinking.

The interactivity of games is one way to exercise your mind while having fun. That’s important because, like muscles, the brain will atrophy if you don’t work it. 

It’s possible that gaming enables stereotypically introspective individuals to be more social, ultimately improving social skills.

In the earliest consoles, gaming with friends involved a physical gathering in front of a single TV. Even in today’s online multiplayers, gamers often form groups, communicate over voice and video chat, and can even help train leaders in the case of those who manage the groups. 

When your eyes are closed, your brain isn’t working as hard to filter out visual information. So: 

• Use one screen, one browser window, and one computer program at a time.
• Keep your physical and virtual desktop tidy.