In a world where we are introduced to new games on an almost daily basis, it easy to forget the classics. So, today we thought we’d take a brief look at three classic games that we all know and love: Monopoly, Roulette and Chess.

Monopoly

Created by Elizabeth Magie of Brentwood, Maryland, Monopoly was first patented under its original title The Landlord’s Game on January 5th, 1904. After marrying her husband Albert Phillips in Chicago and moving to Clarendon, Virginia, Magie re-released the board game in 1924 with a few changes including the addition of street names under the name Prosperity. It was in 1935 that Parker Brothers first began selling the variation of these games named Monopoly that we know and love today.

However, it wasn’t until Hasbro acquired Parker Brothers in 1991 that a new wave of Monopoly games based on different locations around the world were released. As of January 2017, there are over 300 different versions of Monopoly available based on real world locations as well as fictional places. As technology developed and video games became more popular, Monopoly received a variety of digital counterparts on consoles – with the newest release being Monopoly Plus for the Xbox One and Playstation 4 – as well as in the form of slot machines and lotteries.

Roulette

Invented by French physicist and mathematician Blaise Pascal in 1655, roulette was originally meant to be nothing more than a perpetual motion machine. While Pascal’s experiment failed, he had managed to create the basic roulette wheel, which went on to be played for the first time in a Parisian casino. Interestingly, the zero was not added until 1842 when Francois and Lois Blanc designed a brand new roulette wheel for King Charles III of Monaco.

This version of roulette featuring the staple zero quickly became a favourite at the Monte Carlo casino and could soon be found in casinos around the world. For many years, roulette remained the same until the early 2000s when the iGaming industry began to flourish on the Internet. These days, almost every online casino features at least the basic form of computerized virtual roulette, while others such as Casino Cruise have a collection of different versions including live roulette games, in which a human dealer is responsible for spinning the wheel, with their actions broadcast in HD resolution at 200 frames per second. In live roulette, their actions are translated into machine readable data that is output almost instantly on the players’ screens.

Chess

Although we may not know who invented chess, we do know that the game originated in India at some point before the 7th century. Back then, chess was known as Chaturanga and involved dice that determined the players’ moves. The game was instantly well liked and spread across many areas of Asia and Europe, adopting many of the pieces, moves and terms we use today. For instance, the pieces were created in 15th century Spain and ‘checkmate’ comes from the Arab term ‘Shah mat’ meaning ‘king loss’.

The first recorded chess tournament using the chess we would recognise today took place in 1886 when Wilhelm Steinitz won the first World Chess Championship. There are now hundreds of different tournaments held around the world each year that focus entirely around chess, although there are still a number of variants using different rules, pieces and boards. Like many other classic games, chess was introduced to computers in the late 20th century and later received a number of video game counterparts so it can be played by anyone, any time, anywhere.

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