Fun without phone, tablet, or fancy gadgets. Monopoly, Battleship, and Cards.

Fun without phone, tablet, or fancy gadgets. Monopoly, Battleship, and Cards.

A lot of us are on our phones most of the day.  When not on a phone, you are on a computer, tablet or ipad, or a game console.  And of course, there are other fancy gadgets to keep us busy aside from the above.  Its even harder now with most of our jobs requiring a computer and smart phone too.  To keep my household from having our faces planted in our phones 24 hours a day, I try to go out sight seeing when I can, have quiet time in the morning or before we sleep, and even take small walks around our neighborhood.  One other method that we came up with is to play cards and board games.  We enjoy playing Monopoly, Battleship, and of course card games.  Most people have played these games before, but here is some info about them =)

Monopoly

Monopoly is a game where you roll your dice, and move around the board to buy property, build houses and hotels on your property, and charge people rent for staying on your property.  The point of the game is to bankrupt the other players until there are no players left but yourself.  Although this game was first published by the Parker Brothers in 1935, it actually goes as far back as 1903.  Elizabeth Magie initially created “The Landlord’s Game” to demonstrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies.  In 1991, Hasbro acquired Parker Brothers, and Monopoly.

Today, there are a lot of different designs of versions of Monopoly.  As you can see above, we bought the Las Vegas edition, which is exactly the same as the original, except with Las Vegas hotel names as the properties, and Las Vegas themed designs.  So far all of the versions that we have played were mainly just design changes, except for the Super Mario Monopoly.  The Super Mario Monopoly actually has different game rules, moves along much faster, and the characters actually have different powers.  A must try for anyone who likes Monopoly and Super Mario!

We even have Monopoly for Nintendo Wii, Playstation, and Gamecube, which have their convenience and positive points, but of course the original, non digital, old school version is the best.

Battleship

Wow!  Battleship, does this bring back memories!  This was also one of my favorite games as a kid.  Battleship is a “Guessing” game where each of the 2 players place their ships on a grid, and take turns calling out locations on the grid and try to sink each others ships.  Battleship is one of the games like baseball, where you can’t really pinpoint the origins because there are so many games that are similar.  Although Milton Bradley introduced a version of this game with pegs like we use today in 1967,  some have said Russian officers played a similar game even before World War I.

As you can see in the picture above, you keep track of your attacks on the top grid, by marking misses with a white peg, and hits with a red peg.  The bottom grid is where you placed your ships before starting, and mark shots that your opponent calls out the same way.  Whoever sinks all of their opponents ships first, wins.  With Battleship, I will admit the digital versions are a little more fun.  Aside from Console or PC versions, even simple online versions of this game are really fun to play with each other.  Sounds, graphics, and just clicking the mouse is a lot better than calling out grid numbers with your opponent.

Card Games

There are countless numbers of card games out there.  Cards go back as far as ninth century during Tang-dynasty China.  Of course they were a little different from the playing cards that we use today.  Some were even made of wood, plastic, or bone materials.  I think ever since the Poker Boom, most house holds have cards and Poker Chips now.  In 1998 the movie “Rounders” came out, and so did online poker at Planet Poker.  In 2003, and amateur named Chris Moneymaker, who made his way into the tournament with a $86 seat on Poker Stars online tournament, won 1st place.  Not only did he win $2,500,000, this was televised, and the poker boom started.  I even heard of people who became millionaires by selling poker chips during this period.

A friendly game of Hold’em or black jack can be lots of fun, and can keep your mind sharp.  I actually started playing blackjack when I was 4, because my parents thought it would help me with my math skills.  I actually did end up being advanced in math while growing up, but also became a expert at gambling too.  The next game that we are going to start playing is Chess.  Chess is actually very similar to the Korean game “Janggi”  As Chess is very complex, and each of the pieces can only move a certain way, I will post a separate posting on the rules and how to play.  D.I =)

 

 

 

AUGUST 7, 2018 BY DAVIDIN