Tag: Games for Two

Take a classic board game, play it backwards and fun will ensue – but it can be trickier than it sounds. In Giveaway Checkers the winner is the person who loses all her pieces or can’t make a legal move.

Sometimes called Suicide Checkers or Anti-Checkers, Giveaway Checkers makes it easy to stay in the game if your goal is to avoid losing. But it’s spectacularly hard to win this board game. For one thing, it’s easy enough to avoid capturing the other player’s pieces. And then, as you clear the board, it becomes even easier to avoid being in a situation where you would be forced to capture a player’s piece.

It seems like the most successful strategy would be to do everything you can do to prevent the other person from getting “kinged.” Once the other player has a king he can burn up turns by wandering all over the board. And you can do the same.

This is one of the more active, yet easy games for two people. For a bigger group, use a game ladder and make it a tournament. A gold-painted tennis shoe would make an awesome trophy.

How to play:

Two players face off holding hands. At the signal the goal is simple: tap the top of the other person’s foot with your two. Three taps and you’re the winner. (But if you’ve got the ropa-dope going on, like the pair above, maybe you could call a winner after a single tap.)

Extra points for epic moves.