When I was younger, my sister and I loved playing snakes and ladders. I think we both believed that we were somehow responsible for sending each other down the snakes, or for victoriously climbing a ladder. Now, of course, I know that we were totally at the mercy of the randomness of the dice. We had no real influence over our own successes or failures.
I had also assumed that this game was a western creation – but my recent travels in India revealed that it has different origins, and an unexpected spiritual aspect. According to one interpretation it was used as a tool for teaching about the quest for liberation from the vicissitudes of karma and the hindrances of passion. Kindness to others is rewarded by a ladder. Drunkenness by a snake. The winning square represents moksha – freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth. Others have seen it as a representation of destiny – the notion that the course of your life is beyond your control, with good and ill fortune determined by impersonal forces.
This fatalistic view of life it captures is one reason why, ultimately, snakes and ladders is a very unsatisfying experience. So what makes a really good game? Ideally it involves an element of agency, so that you are able to express yourself through playing it. In India games are traditionally used at weddings to provide a structured way for a newlywed couple to get to know each other, especially when the marriage has been arranged. They are an opportunity for shared experience – like a kind of dance with your opponent. In a good game, just as in a dance, you determine your moves and your opponent interprets them.
Irving Finkel, assistant keeper of ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures at the British Museum, has speculated that the fact games sharpen our mind-reading skills – forcing us to put ourselves in our opponent’s shoes – is why they have been such an enduring feature of culture. He even goes so far as to suggest that they developed in tandem with human consciousness. Imagining how someone else might move and planning accordingly provided a tool to explore the inner lives of others, an essential skill for a social animal. Finkel is responsible for decoding the rules behind one of the very first board games in recorded history: the 4,500-year-old Royal Game of Ur, which was rediscovered during excavations in the 1920s. Players compete to race pieces around the board using pyramid-shaped dice.
Snakes and ladders, as we’ve seen, doesn’t provide any kind of window into other people’s thinking. So perhaps games of pure strategy like Go or chess represent ludic perfection. Surprisingly, it turns out that chess, which also has its origins in India, originally involved the roll of a dice to determine which piece you were allowed to move. When gambling and games of chance were outlawed in Hindu culture, players found a way to evade censure by simply taking away the dice and deciding for themselves what to move, making success about intellect and nothing more.
Although chess and Go are beautiful games, their reliance on strategy means they suffer from a different sort of problem. Unless players are perfectly matched, the outcome can be rather predictable. In the perfect game, you should still be in with a shot of winning even if you’re not as practised as your opponent. An element of uncertainty is required. We decide to play because there is a chance either of us can beat the other. If we know in advance how things will end, things aren’t very interesting. Garry Kasparov against Donald Trump would not be a match that had people on the edge of their seats.
So the ideal is to weave an element of strategy together with unpredictability – the source of which has to be something like the roll of a dice or the deal of a hand of cards. Indeed, ensuring this uncertainty lasts for as long as possible is a key component in game design. Monopoly suffers as a game precisely because once someone has gained the upper hand, it’s hard to turn the tables.
Another key component is simple rules that allow you to get the hang of things quickly. My family have a very short attention span for my explanations of how to play. If they haven’t got it within two minutes, I’ve lost them. Yet that simplicity has to also give rise to multiple possible outcomes – something which makes a game worth returning to again and again.
Where does that leave us in our quest for the perfect game? If I was going to have to pick one, I would choose backgammon. It is full of drama, twists and turns. The lead can shift dramatically with a roll of the dice. As with the mathematics of chaos, small changes can send things in completely new directions. A beginner has the ability to beat an expert, but even when the dice seem against you, strategic play can still give you the upper hand. The rules couldn’t be simpler, and yet, in each of the thousands of matches I’ve played, the story is different every time. And as well as being one of the most perfect games, it is also one of humanity’s most ancient – able to trace its origins back to the game Finkel decoded at the British Museum.
Ultimately, of course, the perfect game – like the perfect book – is a question of taste. Some love giving up control, letting the dice decide their fate. Others prefer to retain a sense of agency and relish honing the most effective strategy. Tell me the game you play and I’ll tell you who you are.
• Marcus du Sautoy is Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford. His book Around the World in 80 Games: A Mathematician Unlocks the Secrets of the Greatest Games (4th Estate) will be published on 12 October.
Further reading
Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder (WW Norton & Co, £13.99)
How Life Imitates Chess by Garry Kasparov (Cornerstone, £10.99)
The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favourite Board Game by Mary Pilon (Bloomsbury, £10.39)
Around the World in 80 Games by Marcus du Sautoy (HarperCollins, £22). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
