Ten Families, One Tree: How the Sport Atlas Sorts Its Games

Race Games gathers traditional track-and-destination games from across the world, including the Royal Game of Ur, Senet, Pachisi and Yut, and keeps Monopoly here too for its roll-and-move-around-a-track structure even though it is a modern commercial design rather than a traditional dice race.

The mancala family gathers sowing-and-capture pit games found across the world, from Bao and Oware to Kalah and Sungka, grouped by their shared pit-and-counter mechanic wherever in the world the game is played.

Displacement and Capture Games groups capture games whose pieces are identical or near-identical, such as Draughts and Alquerque, a line the atlas draws specifically to separate this family from the chess family, where pieces carry distinct ranks and powers.

The chess family proper covers games where every piece carries its own distinct rank and movement rule, including Chess, Xiangqi, Shogi and Janggi, all descended from or parallel to the historical game of Chaturanga.

Modern Conquest and War Games covers twentieth century commercial conquest and negotiation designs such as Diplomacy, Risk and Stratego, kept apart from the chess family above because none of them carries a traditional lineage.

Alignment and Abstract Strategy Games groups games won by forming a line, connection or configuration of pieces, such as Hex, Gomoku and Connect Four, and also places Nim here as the tree's closest available neighbor for a purely mathematical combinatorial game.

Space and Territory Games covers abstract games decided by controlling board territory rather than by capturing or aligning pieces, recording Go alongside both Othello and Reversi as distinct entities under one family rather than treating the newer commercial Othello as replacing the older Reversi.

Games of Chance covers games whose outcome is dominated by an unpredictable mechanism, grouping Craps, Yahtzee and Bingo by dice or drawn number, and recording Rock Paper Scissors here too as a browsing convenience even though it uses neither dice nor cards.

Domino and Tile Games groups games played with tiles rather than cards or a fixed board, covering Dominoes, Mahjong and Carcassonne regardless of whether the tiles are matched, drawn and discarded, or laid to build a shared layout.

Trick-Taking Card Games is the tree's largest traditional card game family, covering Bridge, Whist, Skat and Spades along with historical tarot card games, included here because tarocchi are trick-taking games at their core, with fortune-telling tarot recorded as a separate and later use of the deck.