EPISODE 018: BOARD GAMES

DRINK INFORMATION

Every episode we drink a different libation – so what are we drinking this episode?

Tom’s Drink – Glenfiddich Scotch – 14 Year Bourbon Cask

– A tasty Scotch that is a staple in Tom’s liquor cabinet

Ian’s Drink – Laphroaig

– An Islay Peaty Scotch that tastes a lot like 8 year Lagavulen (it’s from the same region)

*Visit our “Tasting Room“

TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
Hey Tom, do you ever go to the Dollar General?

Tom Kubiak
Not very often.

Ian Robertson
So I don’t know what it is about a Dollar General. But I feel like it looks like it always just got robbed. You know what I mean?

Tom Kubiak
It’s so true.

Ian Robertson
Every time I go in, there’s like, empty shelves, and all these boxes blocking the aisles. So if you want like something at the other end of the aisle, you have to like walk around. And there’s..

Tom Kubiak
Yes.

Ian Robertson
There’s people there working. But there’s like, empty shelves and boxes everywhere. And parts of the store that I feel like haven’t been something’s gone into in a long time, like months.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I totally agree. But I want to know another question about Dollar General. How come when I go, when I do go into Dollar General and I buy three things. The bill comes to $7.95.

Ian Robertson
Every time?

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. Why? Why is it not $3?

Ian Robertson
I don’t know. Oh, well, it’s not like the dollar store. It’s $1 in general.

Tom Kubiak
That’s, that’s false advertising. Like I’m expecting to pay $1 for everything and nothing in there is $1.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, there’s not much in there. But I tell you what, maybe it’s they spent $1 on the product.

Tom Kubiak
That could be.

Ian Robertson
I don’t go there very often. But I had to go to there the other day. And I was actually, just came to my mind because I was holding a piece of paper. And even my wife said, I’ve never seen thinner paper in my life.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, everything they sell is crap. Can you buy any board games in Dollar General?

Ian Robertson
Actually, you can, little travel games. But you cannot buy paper. Like it’s old school tracing paper from the 90s. It was, what is this?

Tom Kubiak
That’s exactly what it is.

Ian Robertson
I don’t even know how they manufacture, I feel it was more expensive to make it that thin, but you are touching on our actual theme today. I digress as usual, of board games. And I’m going to actually caveat this we’re going to talk about board games. We’re going to talk about board games, card games, puzzle games, all that kind of stuff. I kind of have in the back of my mind, because they all fall into the same category for me of awesomeness.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, I think I love board games like that is a staple in..card games, especially in my family. My family has a big history of card games. But board games.

Ian Robertson
Are you trying to say it was like, like the movie Maverick situation there, like, I don’t I don’t understand. You’re enigmatic.

Tom Kubiak
We played card games all the time. All the time, like our family growing up card games and monopoly. Like we played so much monopoly as, as you know, young people, it’s I’ll tell you a story about that when we get into it, but tell me what you’re drinking first.

Ian Robertson
Okay, what I’m drinking is, I have, I’m probably not going to say right, but it’s a Laphroaig. So, L-A-P-H-R-O-A-I-G. So you know it, okay,

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, is that a 12 year or eight year?

Ian Robertson
Ten year.

Tom Kubiak
Or ten year, okay, ten year.

Ian Robertson
So my wife got this for me, cuz she’s like, Hey, it’s cheap. And it’s scotch. And it was from Islay. So I always pronounced that wrong. It’s not Is-lay, it’s ai · luh. And she’s like, that’s where your Lagavulin’s from? So I’m like.. This is the the cousin to Lagavulin. Okay.

Tom Kubiak
The less refined cousin to Lagavulin.

Ian Robertson
So, I did not know that and I was like alright, I’m gonna have to power through this, might as well give it a taste. And I high fived my wife right afterwards.

Tom Kubiak
You can like it.

Ian Robertson
I like it.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, you’re gonna like it. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I like it. It’s very peaty. It’s um, if you like Lagavulin, this is very comparable to the eight year Lagavulin.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, it’s the less refined cousin of Lagavulin. Lagavulin’s more refined, more complex. Laphroaig is a little rougher, but easier to find.

Ian Robertson
Easier to find. And you know what, if you like Lagavulin, and you don’t want to spend $100 on a bottle? Yeah, this was like 50 and it’s great on a Thursday night, and I think I’m going to keep a bottle in the back of my cabinet. You know, I’m sitting here just alone. I’m going to have a glass of scotch and watch some Stranger Things and then you know, I don’t want to break open my Lagavulin. So this is good. I like it.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, you’re gonna like it.

Ian Robertson
I don’t think it as unrefined as maybe you think it is, actually I think is very comparable to the eight year, if you gave me this and told me it was an eight year I’d have to stop and think about it.

Tom Kubiak
Really? Okay.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. I would figure it out because I can tell especially on the aftertaste but I’d have to stop and think like, Is this? How about you?

Tom Kubiak
So I’m drinking a big box Scotch this time. I know we’ve been we’ve been drinking small batch bourbons for the past couple episodes, but I’m drinking Glenfiddich, 14 year bourbon cask, so that means it’s casked in an oak cask that previously held bourbon.

Ian Robertson
Well most Scotch is, isn’t it?

Tom Kubiak
No, sometimes some are casked in new oak, some are casked in you know, sherry. I mean there’s all kinds of different casks. But this one specifically..

Ian Robertson
I feel like that’s saying our boats float in water too, you know.

Tom Kubiak
So this is, so I’m back to my to my favorite, you know..

Ian Robertson
Yeah Scotch, that’s what you’re all about. So how is it?

Tom Kubiak
Very good. Yeah, Glenfiddich is good, it’s easy to drink it’s um you know it’s got all the notes that I like but none of them are really strong.

Ian Robertson
Is it blended?

Tom Kubiak
No, Glenfiddich, single malt, but it’s, it’s not designed for a niche market it’s more like a mass market scotch. So it’s kind of like MacAllan, Glenlivet, Glenmorangie, they, they’re all higher volume producers and they look for a consistent product, whereas the smaller bottlers, smaller by, you know, just you know, they’re more more niche and they tend to have more exaggerated flavors. These are our more generic flavors. I think so. It’s good, but it’s not something I would drink every day.

Ian Robertson
I don’t know. You put MacAllan in that list. And I agree that’s very mass produced Scotch, but like a 35 year MacAllan is, uh..

Tom Kubiak
Oh, but anything, anything past, you know, 18 years, you start to get you know, you’re, you’re out of the realm of normal.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. Okay. So okay, you got your Scotch and I got my scotch. And that’s actually one of my favorite things to do when we play games is I have a glass of scotch, bourbon actually is my my game go to. I like a little bit of bourbon when I’m playing games.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. So did you, when when you were growing up, did your family play board games?

Ian Robertson
Me and my brothers played board games all the time we had built in players at all times. Monopoly was our big one. But just about anything we could get our hands on, we’d play it. It’s part of tradition. It’s it’s nostalgia. You know, I watch these people on like shows like pickers, American Pickers.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
And I’m like, why would people ever do that? And then I see a board game. I’m like, I want that.

Tom Kubiak
I know.

Ian Robertson
Now, I have an entire closet and a case and part of my basement. And I’m like, Yeah, I get it now.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, yeah. Well, I’ll tell you, I was hinted on the story. So when my family did some traveling, we did a little European trip when I was maybe about 14 or 15. And, and one of the things that we focused on was everywhere we went, every country went, we got the Monopoly board for that country. I have no idea how my parents got this back to the United States, we must have had so much luggage, but we ended up with all these foreign monopoly sets. And my brother and my sisters and I, we created this, like, super monopoly where you would move from one board to the next, and we had exchange rates, to, you know, transfer the money back and forth. It was amazing. And it took like months to play it.

Ian Robertson
That’s awesome. Yeah, my brothers are gonna argue with me, after they hear this if they listen. They hated playing Monopoly with me, because were you the guy that always won? I always won.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, yeah.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And it just, and as I got older, I’m like, Why did I always win? And I’m like, All right. Yeah.

Tom Kubiak
To this day, my, my, especially my sisters will say to me, you know, like, we had phrases that we would say when they would when they would land on one of my properties, I’d be like, Marvin Gardens, so nice of you to stop by. They say that to me to this day.

Ian Robertson
You know, I think, I think anecdotally, I could honestly say that board games have almost ruined more marriages and families than anything else, though, too.

Tom Kubiak
It’s the arguments that start from board games.

Ian Robertson
Oh, my goodness, you know, me and my wife, we don’t fight. It doesn’t happen very often, if ever, it’s and you know, it’s rare. But one of the times I can count has to be at least two of them involve the board game. It’s amazing. But you know, in doing research for this podcast, you know, I couldn’t help but think of Andrew Huberman. Have you ever?

Tom Kubiak
No, Andrew Huberman, who is he?

Ian Robertson
He’s a neuroscientist who’s very popular on. He visits a lot of podcasts. And he’s all over YouTube. He’s, but he’s basically he looks like a bodybuilder kind of guy. And he does neuroscience, and he talks about basal dopamine levels. And he said, one of the things that we miss as a society is what they call tension and release, okay, you know, you, you’d work really hard, you’d get done, and you’d have a release, and then you’d go back and you do it again, we as a society, we go work at a desk job, we have tension, but we never had the release. Or sometimes we we, you know, like people vape and that actually, the releasing of dopamine is why like vaping, or to be honest with you drinking alcohol. That gives us an artificial release of dopamine and other chemicals, but without the tension. So that’s why things like that also tend to cause depression. He talks about it a lot. But I thought about him because another guy was talking about the importance of tension and release and board games. And he said, it’s both much of the same things. I said, we have releases and we have tension, but too much of our society is lacking in tension and release. And we’re built for that. That’s why people go to the gym. They’re like, I feel great afterwards, because they had tension, and they stopped and they had release and dopamine, and it keeps our basal dopamine levels good. And I’m going back to the Dunning Kruger part of our podcast. I don’t know what, I’m not a neuroscientist. So this is all just what I’ve learned from the internets.

Tom Kubiak
What you read has made you an expert.

Ian Robertson
I am an expert. But interestingly enough, when people talk about board games, you have tension, okay, you have goals, and then you have release, even the people that lose the game, even though they’re upset. Have you ever noticed that they’ll come back? And they’ll laugh like 5, 10 minutes later? Yeah, they still had the release, because there was tension and release. So on a psychological level, board games actually provide a very necessary function for our brains.

Tom Kubiak
Interesting. Very interesting to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a period of time where, you know, especially American society got away from playing board games and more focused on video games and whatnot. But there’s, I’m not sure if it was Hasbro or whoever it was that they tried to create a game night one one night a week where a family plays a game. Obviously, they have, you know, an incentive to do that, because they’re trying to sell board games, but I think there’s really a benefit to get a family around the table, you know, and play a game. Yeah, I think it’s a good thing.

Ian Robertson
Well, yeah. And I don’t know the psychological effects of that. But being with your family, having fun doing something that doesn’t involve a computer screen. Yeah, we have game night, when my daughter was little, she was probably two, three years old. I’m like, we’re gonna have game night. And remember when she was four, and she beat us at monopoly?

Tom Kubiak
Yes.

Ian Robertson
Nobody was watching her. We’re like playing a game. And all of a sudden, she just puts her stuff on the table. And she’s like, I win. And I’m like, I’m like, should we get her tested for genius stuff is like, she’s just sneaking around, just like nobody’s watching me. So I’m just gonna accumulate money, you know? And she actually beat us. But um..

Tom Kubiak
But we, that’s one of the gifts we would always give her is a type of game, because she loved to play all those different games, King of King of Tokyo, we you know, played or what was the other one? Tacos, something where you had to throw tacos at each other?

Ian Robertson
Oh, that’s Throw Throw Burrito? And then there’s Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza. That’s a good game, too. I think you guys gave us that one. But it is interesting. We talked about it. Like when you talked about those games, I lit up. Yeah. And when I mentioned Monopoly, even though you had just kind of talked about it, you lit up. Yep. Our brains recognize there was something good in there that released dopamine last time that made me happy.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. And the thing is, games are not only for kids, like adults enjoy playing games. So you know, we’ve we’ve talked about, you know, I’m a chess fanatic. I play you know, I in the past, especially played chess tournaments. Yep, I’m a rated, U.S. rated chess player, but and they’re, you know, to watch a chess match is exciting to me, even though most people would look at it and say, it’s super boring. I really enjoy it. And I really enjoy the the mental, you know, exercise that goes into it. But even you know, there are other games that and that tends to be a niche environment. But there are other games that a lot of people enjoy playing like, Settlers of Catan is one that a lot of people have gotten into, and enjoy playing. There’s, you know, other strategy games that are that take a lot of work learning them.

Ian Robertson
Isle of Cats.

Tom Kubiak
Isle of Cats. Yeah, I’ve never played that.

Ian Robertson
Oh, that’s a fun game.

Tom Kubiak
Really? Okay.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. Yeah. But no, it takes a little bit of learning. But you know, after a time or two, but I think you’re referring to like, not Dungeons and Dragons. But Dungeons and Dragons-esque, they had these adventure games.

Tom Kubiak
There are role playing games. Yeah, that I have actually a couple friends that, you know, we’re not big on the Dungeons and Dragons genre. But, but similar games like that, that involve role playing. And those games are incredibly detailed. Like you need somebody who is the person who guides the game, and the other people have characters that have skills and then their what they accomplished is based upon roles. And it turns into really like a an amazing event, fun thing to do.

Ian Robertson
And it’s funny when you play games like that, how the time flies like.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, yeah.

Ian Robertson
10 hours into it. Like you spend a whole day on it. And you’re like, Oh, crud, I gotta go home. And then you don’t want to, like you got sucked into that world.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, we have actually, my wife and I have a group of friends that we from time to time vacation with, and literally the entire vacation is playing games. So we have a couple that we have traveled on with and we take the game Oh, I can’t remember what it’s called now. It’s a it’s a card game that’s played on a board every single night we play that game. And then we have another group of friends that we play this this other very complicated strategy game called Terraforming Mars. We literally play it every single night and it’s just it’s it’s so fun. We look forward to it.

Ian Robertson
But you know, it’s funny those the game things don’t come out like that automatically. Matter of fact, have you ever bought a bad game? And you’re just like, What is this garbage. So even like professionally built, games don’t always come out awesome. And there’s a bit of a science that they have about making a game to the point where people actually enjoy it.

Tom Kubiak
An interesting side point to that is this, this one game that I enjoy playing called Terraforming Mars, complicated game, very well received. And we’ll come back to maybe in a few minutes, we’ll talk about the way games are rated, but the makers of this game wanted to make some add ons to it. Some, you know, expansion packs, they call them I think, and they used AI, which brings us back to our AI episode a couple of couple episodes ago, they used AI to do some of the development of it, and it got the gaming community upset. Like they’re mad at the developers of the game because of that, because they’re, they’re using like, they feel they’re cheeping out on the technology and developing the game.

Ian Robertson
Well, there’s a very human element to a game, there’s a science, so the science is solid. So there’s a there’s a pyramid of what they need to design a game. There’s components, theme, and mechanics. So no matter how complicated the game gets, those are always going to be the three pillars of the game. Even a simple game, like Solitaire, one of the simplest games you can play. There’s components, theme, and mechanics. And the most complicated game in the world components, theme, mechanics, but even though those are the bones, the flesh on the bones is what makes the game special. Yeah, you know, and you can’t have that without the human element, in my opinion.

Tom Kubiak
No, definitely not. And I think that that’s an interesting piece. Because as an example, you know, we’ve recently learned about this game called Twilight Imperium. And it’s a it’s a super, super highly rated game. So if you go on Amazon, you look up Twilight Imperium, costs $100, this is a board game, and it’s got 1000s of five star reviews, like every single person who plays this game loves it, but it’s, it’s an it’s a niche market, because it takes like eight hours to play one, round one, you know, one game. So it’s not something you can sit down and learn very easily, you have to really be devoted. But there is a very large board game community, in fact, in in the city that that Paulette and I live near, my wife and I live near there is a little cafe, that is a board game cafe. So you can go in there, they have five or 600 Board Games. And you can take one of them in play. And they have specialty cocktails and small appetizers that they make.

Ian Robertson
You’re only telling me about this now??

Tom Kubiak
Can you believe it? Like, we need to be there.

Ian Robertson
We should be recording this podcast there, what the heck man.

Tom Kubiak
Probably should be, it’s an awesome place. So you go there, you have a drink and you play, you can play a board game and you get appetizers. And like, that’s a perfect evening. That’s, that’s an amazing evening. And they and it’s interesting, I read an article about it, they, so they’ll take a board game. And they will also know how to play it. So if you need instruction, they can help you to walk through it. But they also like upgrade all the pieces and laminate the cards and you know, make the board heavier duty so that they can stand up to multiple uses. It’s really a cool, cool place to go. Let’s let’s go there. Let’s go. Let’s go hang up and let’s do it. I should look it up because I could give them you know, give them a shout out on the podcast on because I think the concept of doing it is just so cool. Like somebody came up with that

Ian Robertson
Well, and there’s other places that are like that, there’s a place not far from me in a very small city. And it’s across the street from my dry cleaner. And I pull into my dry cleaner. And my wife goes is that a board game place? And we’re like 20, 30,000 people in this small city. It’s basically a town and they have this whole building. And there’s people all over it for board games. It’s a whole culture.

Tom Kubiak
Do you remember when we were vacationing up in the Adirondacks? It might have been I don’t know if it was Lake Placid or it was somewhere up there one weekend and we went into this little toy store and the toy store had a wall of board games and they it had to be 500 board games they had on that wall available in that store and I was blown away that they had that big of a selection. So the the place that I’m that I’m referencing is called Bard and Baker in Troy, New York. And it’s on Broadway, they actually you know allow events to rent their space but they’re they’re open everyday 11 to 10 and they have you know a small you know, like a tapas menu, sandwiches, and salads and specialty drinks and cocktails, and they have board games and they currently have 1000 board games available to play.

Ian Robertson
And they know how to play them all.

Tom Kubiak
They know how to play them all. That sounds awesome. So if anybody, if any of our listeners, even our Canadian listeners, come on down to New York and Bard.. Bard and Baker.

Ian Robertson
Bard and Baker, interesting,

Tom Kubiak
We’ll put the link in the in the show notes.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, definitely. So having 1000 games, you think about all the games that people have created. That’s actually a small sampling. So some of the earliest games are not actually chess, one of the earliest games was was like 5000 years old or so from Egypt.

Tom Kubiak
Really?

Ian Robertson
It was like a tile game. But they had a name and..

Tom Kubiak
Similar to Domino’s?

Ian Robertson
No, I only saw a picture of it. I don’t know how to play the 5000 year old Egyptian game, Tom. Let me just go and learn how to do that. But people for 1000s of years, somebody figured out this feels cool to play games. How old is chess? I mean, Chess has been around forever.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. 500 years, probably at least. Yeah. In its modern form, maybe 200 years.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. But even look at people’s obsession with that game. Bobby Fischer. Or that Netflix TV show of watching the red haired lady in Queens Gambit? Yeah, I mean, there’s there’s a bit of an obsession with board games.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. Interestingly, during the 70s when Bobby Fischer was playing like that, that Soviet American, you know, rivalry that existed because chess was a Soviet game. And for an American, like Bobby Fischer, to be able to hold his own against, you know, the Soviet chess powerhouses that existed was phenomenal. But, you know, sadly, Bobby Fischer was also a madman. And, you know, as a result of that, you know, unfortunately, it brought down the sport but during the time period that the membership in the chess Federation’s skyrocketed and even, even currently with the success of the Queen’s Gambit, that Netflix miniseries, you know, chess involvement, rose too, the sad thing is during the pandemic, though, you know, obviously, you couldn’t do in person tournaments. But recently, they’ve been coming back. And so in the the tournaments locally, have seen some of their highest numbers recently. And actually, New York State has the longest running continuously held chess tournament in the world. And it’s held in in, in Albany every year in New York State, open Chess Championship, usually Labor Day weekend. And it’s literally the longest running Chess Championship in the world.

Ian Robertson
Interesting. I didn’t, I would have imagined it would have been in Russia. But you know, going back to the the pyramid of the components, mechanics, and theme of a game, I started thinking about that a lot in relation to good games and bad games. And I thought of an example, you’ve played King of Tokyo, right?

Tom Kubiak
I have yeah. With you.

Ian Robertson
So King of Tokyo has good components to it, the mechanics really work well. And we don’t need to explain what components, mechanics, and theme is because it’s self explanatory. The theme is really good. You know what your job is, be the King of Tokyo, or be the last monster alive, the mechanics all makes sense. You have a barter system with money, which are these little jelly things. Everything works out really well. So when I look at that game, I see the three components of it. But then they came out with another game called King of New York, have you played that?

Tom Kubiak
I haven’t I didn’t even know.

Ian Robertson
So King of Tokyo, one of my favorite games, it’s something you can get done in 20, 30 minutes, you can play with a three year old and you can play with a 50 year old and they’re..

Tom Kubiak
Easy to learn too, that’s the other key to a game.

Ian Robertson
But it’s deeply strategized too, like you can go you can be really strategic, and it’s as quick as… So anyways, I digress. But King of New York, one of the bottom three games that I’ve ever played.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, wow. Yeah, didn’t work well.

Ian Robertson
And it was because of one of those three components, the mechanics, so you have to win in the same basic way. But they added different elements. So one of the biggest steps in the process is to test the game out. You give it to real people and say play this game. Because ultimately, and that’s, I think, where the AI, I would agree that I have a problem with that. You need to put it in front of a person and say, Did you have fun? Yeah, that’s what it comes down to? Did you enjoy this? Did the people with you enjoy it? Could you play this again? I don’t know if they ever did that. Because there’s so many different ways to win the game. And some of them are so complex, and so easily taken advantage of. Yeah, like I actually won in just a turn or two because I’m like, wait a minute, so I can do this. So I just did it over and I looked it up online. They’re like, yeah, the first person to figure that out wins every time. And then it’s just a race of who can do that in the first two turns. Okay, yeah. So the mechanics did not work.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah.

Ian Robertson
And I guess maybe that kind of flows into the mechanics. And it’s interesting, because every bad game that I’ve played, I can see one of those three elements missing, and I never really captured, distilled down the essence of a game like that.

Tom Kubiak
That you know, raises the question is like, what makes a game successful? And there’s, like you said, there’s a couple pieces to it. You know, can you learn it relatively quickly, and is it enjoyable and replayable? And you know, those things don’t always work. So you think of some of the games in your life that you enjoy playing like, we used to play Risk all the time.

Ian Robertson
Oh, yeah.

Tom Kubiak
That game, it’s not difficult to learn. But it’s very strategic. So even though you can explain the concepts in a few minutes, and you know, in, in basically, you know, the first couple turns, anybody’s going to know how to play it, mastering the game is extremely complicated. And realistically, you know, even a newbie, playing the game has the opportunity to beat an expert risk player. So, I mean, I loved playing risk, I’m really good at it. I’m good at. But there’s a politics level to risk. And there’s a dice level to risk. So when, you know when we would play in, and if, if I got up against two people who were collaborating against me, even though I’m a really good Risk player, I would lose. And my wife did that to me a bunch of times.

Ian Robertson
You know, it’s funny, you mentioned that too. I want to talk about the theme element, because I think that matters, too. Because from a marketing perspective, its branding. But I want to talk about the strategy. The simple rules are important. Because a simple rule of let’s say, people are like, well, the rules are too simple. I want a more complicated game. I like complicated games. But I like the components to be simple. So fencing, simple rules, take this sword, stab that guy. So, but now, the intricacies of it are extreme. Now, you trained for years, decades to become the best fencer. Same thing with chess, trap that king so he can’t move. Okay, now I have my goal. But doing that, that’s where the strategy comes in.

Tom Kubiak
The difference with chess and other games is there’s no unknown, like, you know, there’s no dice element in chess. So if you’re playing risk, or if you’re playing, you know, another game that has cards, maybe that are, you know, randomly shuffled. And they determine, you know, to a big extent the outcome of the game. That doesn’t happen with chess. So if you take a person who’s a newbie in chess, they’re not going to beat the experienced chess player like that, because there’s no risk. There’s no unknown.

Ian Robertson
So I will say the other person is the unknown. That’s why Bobby Fischer could beat a computer.

Tom Kubiak
Bobby Fischer could beat another computer because he was good at the calculation. And, and honestly, I think if he were playing today, he would not beat a blue. Garry Kasparov couldn’t beat Deep Blue. And I don’t think Bobby Fischer could either like I think because the this and this comes to the, the level of, you know, the unknown, that the computer can make more calculations, it’s inevitable that the computer will win. That’s that Deep Blue versus Kasparov, you know, match, prove that, like that, that it’s impossible for the human to come up with enough calculations.

Ian Robertson
Right. But at the same time, I was talking to a guy that has played chess his whole life. And he said, you’ll often see a novice beat an expert chess player, not because the the novice is good. And he’ll never do it again. Because he’s unorthodox. The expert chess player, he’s they’re doing calculations and he’s so go back, let’s do a Star Trek reference. Remember that episode, where Data was trying to beat the master of that fake Star Trek game? And instead of trying to, and he loss, instead of trying to beat him the next time, he said, I just worked for a stalemate. So it was unorthodox.

Tom Kubiak
And I think that that is possible if the you know, the expert chess player is not paying attention. But if the expert chess player is paying attention, you know, if you put you know Magnus Carlsen, who is the current well, actually, not even anymore, but he was the world champion that that has since changed, but because he decided not to play. But if you take Magnus Carlsen, who is widely recognized as one of the best calculators in chess, and you, you sit him down across from a novice, he will never lose ever. Like there’s 0% chance that he will lose.

Ian Robertson
I know, but I’m just all I’m saying is the wild card is the other human. But I get what you’re saying. I get what you’re saying. There’s no hidden elements.

Tom Kubiak
No. And the problem is, is that the unknown is a mistake in chess, the weird, unexpected move doesn’t result in a better board position. It results in a weakness. So and that’s the thing about chess is the calculation that results in the best move is the best move. The person who makes any move other than that is not about the best move. It’s a weakness. And as a result of that, an expert chess player will take advantage of that. What you’re saying is is that the expert chess player won’t realize that and that’s not likely to happen with with a really good expert. For instance, if the if that novice chess player is playing me as a non expert, then yes, that can happen. I won’t recognize the the the weakness, but the expert chess player will recognize the weakness.

Ian Robertson
Right. So I guess you’re disproving and proving my point at the same time. Yeah. Okay, well, anyways.

Tom Kubiak
This wasn’t meant to be about chess, but board games, definitely.

Ian Robertson
No, no, and I get what you’re saying. But I wanted to go back to the whole theme thing. You you have a happy memory of monopoly, you have a happy, happy memories of chess. Chess has a theme, you have a board, you have kings and queens and pawns and knights. The theme of the game really does matter. And its branding, it goes back to that marketing point I was trying to make before you have to brand and to give people that warm, fuzzy feeling. And if you don’t get a you don’t, you don’t have them. It doesn’t matter how great your game is.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, very true.

Ian Robertson
I mean, can you imagine chess? If it wasn’t knights and pawns and kings and queens?

Tom Kubiak
No, yeah, you know, and it’s funny you say that, because even though the classic way chess is played has, you know, an appeal to people who’ve learned how to play chess. So you know, you think of chess and the way the board is set up, and, and the way the pieces are lined up. And actually, Bobby Fischer developed, he said, one of his reasonings was, this is too formulaic, let’s, let’s introduce some randomness to chess. And then we’ll see how good people really are. So they created what’s called Fischer random chess. And as a result of that, they what they did is they took the pieces and randomized them, so they weren’t in a specific order. And then your ability to be able to calculate moves really comes into play, because you’re not based, you’re not playing based upon memorized positions. And that that’s often the case with with very high level chess, there, there are not, they say they’re not new positions, they’re positions that have already been worked out and thought about and analyzed and figured out what is the best result. So as a result of that, if you’re really good at memorizing positions, you can, you know, know what to do. But with Fischer random chess, what Bobby Fischer was saying is, we’re going to take that element out of it. And we’re going to, we’re going to just put a random selection of pieces on the board. And as a result of that, you have to try to figure out what is the best and that’s really determining who’s skilled at and you know, thinking out of position.

Ian Robertson
Your passion with for chess really is coming out.

Tom Kubiak
You didn’t know that I knew that much about chess, did you?

Ian Robertson
No, I know you did. Because I remember, you actually said you beat a high level chess player the first time you went to the tournament in Albany.

Tom Kubiak
Well, maybe not the first time but I have beaten you know, I’ve I’ve had games that I’m that I’m very proud of. Yeah, definitely.

Ian Robertson
How’d he do?

Tom Kubiak
I’m not going to tell you.

Ian Robertson
That’s good.

Tom Kubiak
But I will tell you an interesting story. So I played in the chess in, let me think this was in so this was there was a chess tournament in Lake Placid. It’s called the New York State open, it’s not the New York State Championship, but the New York State open which means in chess terminology, that means that it’s it’s open to any player you don’t it’s not an invitational and so I’ve played in that chess tournament a number of times and and sometimes I’ve done really well in placed highly and, and other times, I haven’t done as well, but anyway, this time, I was playing and I played against a player who was blind. And you think about the consequence of that, and the the implications of playing chess blind. And so he had a specially designed board. And we sat actually in a section off to the side of the other players, because he had to be able to verbalize his moves. And also record them into a recorder, and normally during a chess tournament, you’re not allowed to talk. It’s, you know, it’s a quiet event. So he had to be able to talk and his pieces had, he would determine what where the pieces were by feeling them. And the difference in the you know, once in chess, one set is white and one set is black. And you could tell which was which because the the white pieces had a point, you know, a point on the top of them, and the black pieces didn’t, so he could determine what was what. And to me that is phenomenal. To be able to play a live match blind.

Ian Robertson
Okay.

Tom Kubiak
Because if I tell you and I say and I tell you that I beat the blind chess player, you’re gonna say oh, that’s that’s not fair. You beat the guy who was blind. And if I say that I lost to the blind chess player, you’re gonna say, Oh, you lost to a blind chess player. So I’m not going to tell you

Ian Robertson
Yeah, fair, fair analysis.

Tom Kubiak
But it was really a fun experience, you know, to be able to do that. And interestingly, if you read the history of Bobby Fischer, he would play games in his head. And other other chess players do this frequently, too, they will play an entire chess game without a board. That is amazing that they are that in tune to the positions on the board, that they can keep track in their head of in their head where 64 pieces are on a board. Just phenomenal that they can do that.

Ian Robertson
Nah, that’s incredible. You know, there’s a lot that goes into chess or just about any game out there. And as you can see the passion that you have for, for, and let’s be honest, it’s it’s a game. So get into the weeds on that. No, no, that’s what we want. That passion you have for that is incredible. They have risk tournaments, that they’re trying to make big and Catan tournaments. And you know, it’s amazing the effect that has on us as a society.

Tom Kubiak
I’m going to do a shout out to my to one of my friends Brian Kornblum. He’s a board game person too, also, and he’s a tax accountant like I am so he’s kind of a nerdy guy, but proudly nerdy. He had developed a board game.

Ian Robertson
Nice, Cones of Dunshire?

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. Exactly. Beautiful reference. He is proudly the Chutes and Ladders champion of 2022. He went to a chess tournament and, and one likes Chutes and Ladders.

Ian Robertson
That’s awesome. I’d hang that on my wall.

Tom Kubiak
I know definitely.

Ian Robertson
Tom, I’m, I’m actually running out of my Laphroaig. And so I thought maybe we could end on a couple of board game jokes.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, definitely. Let’s do it.

Ian Robertson
I heard you had a good one.

Tom Kubiak
I do, you go first, though.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so I almost got caught trying to steal a board game yesterday. It was a risk I was willing to take.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, that’s good.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I was a risk taker.

Tom Kubiak
You were a risk taker, literally.

Ian Robertson
Exactly, what you got?

Tom Kubiak
How about, what did the lonely chess set say?

Ian Robertson
I don’t know.

Tom Kubiak
I’m bored.

Ian Robertson
Oh, come on. You know, I took my friend’s board game without him noticing. He doesn’t have a clue.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, that’s bad. I forgot about Clue. We should play Clue, professor what was it?

Ian Robertson
Colonel Mustard. All right, I got one more. I got one more. I went to the board game shop and I told the guy I want I want a dice. Clerk says the correct term is die. So I said I want to die. The number two die so I want two die. Clerk goes, plural is dice, alone it’s die. So I roll my eyes and I go I want two die alone.

Tom Kubiak
I got a last one for you. What’s the chess fans’ favorite rock band?

Ian Robertson
I don’t know.

Tom Kubiak
You should know this one, queen.

Ian Robertson
Oh, there it is. Great end to an episode, Tom. Thank you very much.

Tom Kubiak
Thanks for spending the time with me, Ian.

Ian Robertson
You too. Bye.

*Visit our Our Homepage