Many of us work out at the gym to maintain physical condition and stay fit, but what about exercising our minds? Strategy games provide a good exercise for keeping our brain in shape because they require a lot of thinking. We won’t talk either about physical games or team strategy games. For example, a strategic decision in sports could be the decision to sell your best player or not, like the dilemma Manchester United is currently facing, which you can read more about here. Although the element of luck sometimes plays a minor role in the outcome of strategy games, these games are usually not based on it.

Many punters think that games of chance are similar to strategy games, but they are wrong. With games of chance, it doesn’t take much skill or strategic planning to beat the odds, just a small dose of luck.

Let’s take live horse racing lotteries, like Win Place Show — you pick a number and place a certain bet on it. If you’re lucky enough to guess the numbers in the correct order, Win Place Show bet calculator will show you how much your payout is worth. But again, you have to be extremely lucky to guess the numbers in the exact order.

On the other hand, you don’t need luck, quick reflexes, or physical skill to be a successful player of strategy games — you just need to carry out a winning strategy. Strategy games can be both simple or complex, but what they all have in common is that players need to plan ahead, and execute the plan accordingly. Let’s see what are some of the most popular mind-bending strategy games.

Go

Go is a two-player strategy board game that originated in Asia more than 2,700 years ago. The main object of the game is to conquest more territory than the opponent. The standard Go board is crisscrossed by 19 vertical and 19 horizontal lines, but a quick game can be played on a 9 by 9 board, without changing the fundamental character of the game.

Playing pieces or ‘stones’ are divided among players as one player uses black stones and the other white ones. Once the stones are placed on the board, they can’t be moved unless they are captured. Players use their stones to form territories by occupying vacant intersections on the board. The game is played until neither of the players wants to make another move. The winner is the player with the larger overall territory and the larger number of captured stones (prisoners).

Draughts

Draughts, also known as Checkers, is a two-player strategy board game that dates back more than 5,000 years ago when a similar board game was played in ancient Sumerian city-state Ur. Draughts is played on a standard 64-square draughtboard that is similar to a chessboard. Each player starts the game by placing 12 disc-shaped pieces in three rows.

Players can move pieces diagonally until they reach the unoccupied square. The point of the game is to capture all the opponent’s pieces or to place your pieces so that the opponent doesn’t have any available moves. The concept of draughts is simple, but you need strategy and tactics to improve your chances of winning.

StarCraft  

StarCraft is a strategy-based video game introduced in 1998. StarCraft has been one of the most popular strategy computer games of all time and represents a national pastime in South Korea. According to the study conducted by researchers from the University College London, the game improves brain’s cognitive flexibility and agility since the role of a player is to construct their base, gather resources, and acquire armies to fight their opponents.