If both players in a game of draughts stick to their optimal moves, the game will always end in a draw. You or I might have guessed that anecdotally. But being a mathematician, Marcus du Sautoy knows it for sure. The calculations that proved it took 200 desktop computers 18 years to perform.
The Prussian High Command used a game called Kriegsspiel to test the abilities of aspiring officers
When such a simple game produces such numerical complexity, imagine the fun a mathematician can have with something like Go, the Chinese institution whose number of possible games contains an estimated 300 digits. (The number of atoms in the observable universe only contains 80.) Du Sautoy does indeed fill his nerdy boots (the n-word is his, so I’m not being rude) as he takes us on a tour of the world’s games (boards, cards, the lot). But it isn’t just a number-fest. He is also excellent on the cultural histories of the various games, as well as the question of why we play them at all.
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