by Oliver Roeder (Author), William Sarris (Narrator), HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

An Audiobook Review by Jackie Houchin (Available in Hardback & Kindle)

Oliver Roeder’s SEVEN GAMES is the history of seven well-known games that people play today, and the ways that technology attempted to beat human skill. (Mostly, AI did finally do better, but not in ALL the games.) Roeder covers Checkers, Chess, Go, Backgammon, Poker, Scrabble, and Bridge, and details the history of the game as well as the names and tournament games of the top, world-wide players.

I found it very interesting in the beginning how attempts to teach computers dealt with how data processing worked. (The illustrations are great.) After initial input, the computers could teach themselves, playing multitudes of games and finding the strong and weak moves. But it was also sad when the computer “brain” eventually outdid the human counterpart.  And in a few cases, the beaten human was in so deep dispair that they soon died.

It was more difficult with Poker because there is so much “chance” or “luck” involved.  And to win at Scrabble you only need to do one thing – memorize the Scrabble dictionary, which the computer easily did. Bridge, the king of games was never able to be digitalized sucessfully because of so much player innuendo. Hints to partners are often opposite and confusing. Yay humans!!

SEVEN GAMES is a detailed and well researched book. I’m glad I read it, although I am not proficient at any of the games mentioned.

FOUR STARS

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