Blog and Updates

21 August Sixteen competitors took part in the Hare & Tortoise championship at this year's Mind Sports Olympiad. The gold went to Tige Nnando (England), silver to David Pearce (England), bronze to David Jameson (Wales). Fourth was last year's champion, Dario de Toffoli (Italy). We had, for the first time, two players from Estonia: Kertu Luht and Andres Kuusk, who finished in 5th place. Thanks to all who took part - I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and look forward to seeing even more hares and tortoises next year.

4 July Added a new original card game called Colour-blind.

24 May At last I've got round to adding an unsolicited testimonial to my game of Penguin Patience, sent to me some time last year by Australian Patience enthusiast Alexandre Mah. Earlier this year I spent some time preparing a paper for the 14th Colloquium of the International Board Game Studies Association, held at Brugge (Bruges), my topic being speculations on the origin of games, and at the moment I'm busy putting some game prototypes together for display at the upcoming Game Designers Fair at Göttingen.

22 April Added details of books of mine available on Kindle.

4 April Added a reproduction of a Victorian painting of Tintagel Castle to the entry for Bax's tone poem Tintagel. It came from a collection of late 19th or early 20th century prints in a series called, if I rightly remember, "Great Paintings from Private Galleries"". They were being thrown out of the art room when I was at school in the 1950s and I rescued a few of them that rather appealed to me. (My art master said that, in retrospect, he wished he'd burnt them.) Unfortunately I've lost the separate sheets specifying the name of the artist and the collection from which it comes.

1 March Update on music by Bax page.

24 December Made a correction to the earliest mention of communal-card Poker in my history of Poker.

29 November A lot has happened since I last updated. In October I visited the Essen Games Fair and a couple of weeks later Tom Werneck's Games Inventors Fair at Haar, Munich. I also saw how the new premises for the Bavarian Games Archive is coming along - very impressive, and I have some pictures to post when I have a moment. On 25 November I went to a reception for the launch of Irving Finkel's latest fun book, "Swizzle de Brax and the Blungaphone". On Saturday the 27th my son Edward married Lisa Kennedy, at long last, and I've posted pictures on a Picasa web album.

29 August: There were 12 entrants for the World Championship Hare & Tortoise Tournament at the 2010 Mind Sports Olympiad in London on this date. Gold went to Dario de Toffoli (Italy, pictured here). The silver was won by Natasha Regan and bronze by James Heppell.

22 August: Revised Hare & Tortoise pages. The new 2010 English-language edition (pictured below) is now available and will be used in the Hare & Tortoise world championship at the 14th Mind Sports Olympiad.

1 July: Redesigned home page.

27 April: Volcanic ash-clouds notwithstanding, have just returned from the latest Board Game Studies Colloquium held in Paris, followed by a trip to Munich to see the proposed new site for the Bavarian National Games Archive. At the Colloquium I presented a paper on abstraction and representation in games and am currently polishing it up for publication.

February 21 - Having just discovered the Libel Reform Campaign I've signed the petition and added this message to its Pledge Wall: "People who sue for libel are invariably villainous and should not be encouraged by our ridiculous libel laws."

February 2010 - Made a few minor tweaks, including a revised three-player version of Calypso. At the moment I'm working on a paper for the 13th Board Game Studies Colloquium to be held in Paris in April.