Sid Sackson Books

This book contains 15 wonderful games, and excellent instructions on how to play them all. This would be a great gift for somebody of any age. It's just fun to play....

We have had this wonderful book - collection of games since it first appeared in 1990 (well before amazon.com). We are ordering another for our sons who are away at college and requested it to share with their friends at their apartment. Does that tell you anything?

This book is a great collection of board games from around the world, with easy to understand instructions, and all the peices to play. The board games are all multileveled but easy to play, and all of games are fun. The pages are all heavy laminated board, with a sturdy wire binding. The pieces are glass with a carrying case attached. The only problem I had was the carrying case tearing. All in all, a great buy.

What is really awesome about this book is that not only does it tell you How to play the game, but includes the board AND the pieces you need to play for EVERY GAME! So far all of the games have been a blast and I find myself playing them over and over! I'd reccomend this book to anyone that loves games!

This is a classic Klutz book, one of their earliest, and it's wonderful! A perfect way to occupy your kids in the backseat or on an airplane; it's extremely portable and all you'll need is a flat surface for playing.

It's not just for kids, though! Instead of lugging around 3 or 4 different travel editions of games, why not just grab this book and you'll have 15 games in one in a lightweight and easy to carry format.

This is the perfect little book for family trips. Small, light weight, about the size of a Reader's Digest. The format, instruction, and illustrations are great. I appreciate the Level of Difficulty label for each game. It makes selecting a game easier.

For those who works nights, this book provides lots of entertainment in the wee hours of the morning on our nights off.

Prolific game collector and author Sid Sackson branches out into card games and the result is fantastic. Going beyond the typical "Hoyle" type games, you will find the rules for fun and exciting card games that have not been published anywhere else (including Sid's own CARD STOCK MARKET game, a fun simulation of the stock market using a standard 52 card deck). If you know how to shuffle a deck of cards, then you need this book.

This is a terrific compendium of card games from all around the world, as seen through the eyes of the Dean of American Game Designers, Sid Sackson. This book also contains a few original games by Sackson, including the wonderful Card Stock Market game, which was later sold in boxed form as Black Monday. This inexpensive volume would be worth its price if only for that!

This is a great collection of card games from all around the world, as seen through the eyes of the noted American Game Designer, Sid Sackson. This book also contains a few original games by Sackson, including the wonderful Card Stock Market game, which was later sold in boxed form as Black Monday. This inexpensive volume would be worth its price if only for that!

First published in 1969, this book brings you 38 original games. Sid Sackson collected these games as member of the N.Y.G.A (New York Game Associates), allthough many are his own invention.

It is true that any Hoyle will give you instant access to many games, but all these games somehow have something special.

My own favorite is Haggle, a delightfull party game for birthday parties.

Board and card games are so ancient and spread around the world that one may think nothing really new will come up. If that's your opinion, this book will change your mind, offering dozens of NEW games to play with pencil & paper, pocker chips or standard playing cards.

Sid Sackson was probably the most prolific collector of board games in the United States (and probably the world). Sid loved games and he loved inventing games, too. With many published games to his credit (some of which made their first public appearance in this book), Sid Sackson (the designer of one of my favorite games of all time, "Acquire") is my personal game guru and I have made a point of acquiring any game or book with his name attached. This book is full of fun and very playable games discovered, re-discovered, and invented by Sid Sackson. Do your brain a favor and buy this book now!

This is a brilliant book by Sid Sackson. It compiles the rules for a variety of games, with the common feature that all can be played with the materials that you already have at home. Some games use cards, others use a chess or checkers set. There are a lot of paper and pencil games which are great to play while travelling.

The games are a mixture of "forgotten" games, new games invented by friends of Sid, as well as lots of games invented by the author. Many of these games have subsequently been published in a boxed format by major companies, but this book gives you a chance to try them out at no cost.

There are simple games, solitaire games, serious strategy games, party games for 20 or more people, and everything in-between.

My favourites in the collection include a 2 player card game of pure skill ("Mate"), a card game that resembles Canasta but which is rather more fun ("Paks"), a scrabble-like pencil and paper game ("CrossWords"), and a game called Focus that is 2 or 4 player strategy game that weakly resembles a cross between checkers and Shogi.

If you love games, then you should have this book. If you don't, then buying this book just might change your mind!

I bought and played Beyond Competition when it first came out at the age of 8; nearly 25 years later, I still think back on it fondly and still pull it out from time to time to introduce to friends. As a life-long player of games, I am nostalgic for many educational game titles from my youth (such as the classic "M.U.L.E." for Atari 800). While I can't say that the 6 games included in this title are the best games I've ever played, they were solid games with an excellent point: that there are limits to what competition can do for society, that not everything must be a win-lose situation. A point world leaders could do well to remember in this age of terrorism. There is so little work done in this space, so few games that get you to think outside the box politically, that this book will always remain close to my heart.

A note for prospective buyers. The book has many tear-out pages, so be sure to discuss the condition with a seller of a used copy.

Sid Sackson is a genius known for designing excellent board games. This book consists of six "board" games designed to be played cooperatively. The themes are unique, as are the game mechanics. Another winner from Sackson.

When I first acquired this book, I expected to receive a run of the mill book on little calculator tricks. I should have known better. In this collection of six games, Sackson uses the calculator as an integral part of the game. This is not a "type 01134 and turn the calculator upside down" book. Rather, these are six of Sackson's games that belong on the shelf of any Sackson fan or game collector.

Purchased the is board game for Christmas as a request from my 16 yr. old son. Our whole family enjoys playing it and it gets especially exciting when the "negotiations start". The game actually ends once all the transactions are complete, which is about an hour and a half. Lots of fun for the four of us.

Sackson's classic game of sleuthing takes the basic premise of the popular game "Clue" and gives it whole new twist. In Clue, you try to deduce who committed the crime, in what room it occurred, and what weapon the murderer used. Sleuth is a little different in that you are trying to guess which gem is stollen from 36 possibilities. Each gem has three traits: the type of gem (pearl, diamond, opal), the number of gems in the setting (1,2,3), and the color of the gem (red, green, blue, yellow). Hence, Sleuth is more like a three dimensional puzzle than three separate puzzles. If it sounds brain-bending, it is, but the game is a lot more fun than many other abstract logic games.

The play is different than Clue as well. Each player's queries are driven by cards, so you can't just ask whatever information you want whenever you want. To win, you must rely on deducing clues from other peoples queries as much as your own.

One of the great pleasures of Sleuth is the post-game analysis. You may or may not want to reveal whether you guessed right about the missing gem or really had it completely figured out. Either way, someone will want to know how you figured it out.

Overall, I like Sleuth better than Clue because I find the strategy more difficult. It does tend to separate out and reward the abstract and carefully systematic thinkers, so be aware of your audience when suggesting this game.

This book is a collection of short descriptions of seven games that can be played by marking segments with different colored markers and a large set of sheets used to play the games. Six of the games are for two, three or four players and one is for two players only. In each case, the first player is chosen in a manner agreeable to all and marks one segment. After that, the players alternate in marking segments with their designated color and scores accumulate based on figures that are created or the existence or absence of adjacent colors. For example, in the Mondrian game, a player scores points if they colored in a section that can be used to form a rectangle when combined with one or more sections that were previously colored. Some of the other games require that the board be completely filled before the scoring is done.
All of the games involve strategy and the simple-minded player is easily defeated. The name of the creator and the year of creation of each of the games are included. The youngest two are nearly one hundred years old and the oldest over one hundred and twenty five years old. These games are easy to understand and play, although some of the strategies can be quite involved. Therefore, it is incorrect to consider them similar to tic-tac-toe, which is a game that involves almost no strategy. They are all very interesting and can be difficult if you are playing against someone with a sound strategy for play.

I'm a huge Sid Sackson fan, and his passing was a blow to the world of games and game designers. I have yet to find a Sid Sackson product that I did not enjoy. This just was not among the best of those.

Book is handsomely done with the rules and the boards for the games enclosed. It is a traveling board game collection. As always, Sid Sackson was both lucid and engaging in his writing.

For a Sid Sackson product, I recommend Sleuth, Beyond Competition, or Card Games from Around the World as some of his best titles.