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Yes, vocabulary is cleaned up (Charades is no longer known by the pretentious "The Game", which is now generally understood to refer to either a professional wrestler, a rapper, or an extremely tiresome 4chan meme). But the card game section is embarrassingly traditional -- not a single Spanish-deck game, for example, despite the United States' large quantity of Hispanic citizens and immigrants, and few games popular in other countries like Tarot, Brag, or el Mus. There is one and only one reason I am giving this book three stars: if someone needs to settle a dispute about a game rule, this is likely to be the book someone goes looking for. Or Bejeweled. Granted a 4th edition that was actually worth buying would be well over a hundred pages longer, but one would hope that Morehead could live up to the standard of someone like David Parlett. A few things are added here and there -- Freecell, for example, and oddly Minesweeper make up a scant section on computer games. Or Frozen Bubble/Snood).
Dice and dominoes only get minimal coverage; tile games like Mahjongg get none at all, and not even a token effort is made at recognizing the wide swath of strategy and role-playing games out there. If it wasn't for that, it wouldn't be worth buying at all.Morehead and Mott-Smith's book may have been perfectly adequate when it was printed, but Morehead's son Philip really hasn't done more than a superficial job of updating it. Board game coverage is abysmal -- where's Mancala, or Pachisi, or Chinese Checkers, or Snakes and Ladders, or Go, or Xiangqi, for that matter even Monopoly or Risk (since Morehead, Morehead, and Mott-Smith do include Scrabble and Battleship). (But not Tetris. Or Samegame. (Meanwhile, the arcane and somewhat sadistic trivia game Botticelli remains intact).A serious gamer will need this book, but Philip Morehead really did a piss-poor job of updating his father's work. Get the best deal on this one you can find, but don't tie yourself to it.
THE AMAZON SERVICE WAS FAST, COMPLETE AND HAS MADE A BELIEVER OUT OF ME WHEN I WANT TO ORDER A BOOK. EACH GAME WOULD BRING ARGUMENTS, TABLE SLAMING, FOUR-LETTER WORDS, BATHROOM BREAKS (THAT IS ANOTHER STORY) ETC, BECAUSE WE COULDN'T REMEMBER THE EXACT RULES. FOR MANY YEARS SIX WOEMN (NOW SEARCHING FOR THE GOLDEN YEARS) MEET TWICE A MONTH TO PLAY A TYPE OF RUMMY CALLED "MAY I". THAT IS IF I RMEMBER, NOW WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE COMPANY. SO, BEING THE NEXT TO YOUNGEST, I ORDERED HOYLE'S RULES OF GAMES AND GUESS WHAT, ON PAGE 120 WAS THE GAME (UNDER A DIFFERENT NAME) BUT, NONE THE LESS, THE CORRECT RULES. NOW, WHEN WE MEET, HOPEFULLY I REMEMBER TO BRING THE BOOK, BUT THEN AGAIN, I MIGHT FORGET WHY I ORDERED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. AND WHY DO I REALLY WANT TO KNOW. OH WELL, THE KISS OF DEATH GIRLS WILL CONTINUE TO MEET AND THE BOOK WILL BE PART OF THE PROPTS, THANKS AGAIN.
This book has come in handy many a card game night when rules are questioned. Great reference, the best I've found, very complete.
Book is NOT user friendly, did not help me learn the game of Hearts.book is written to those that already know more than I do and my friend agreed.
Hoyle's Rules of Games, Third Revised and Updated EditionThere are easier to understand and more up-to-date descriptions of gameplay for most of the more popular games on the internet. The book is particularly weak on diagrams, which simplify understanding of many of the games tremendously. I would consider this book to be useful as supplementary information only; it would not be my first choice for learning a new game from scratch.
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