The Chip Taking Game

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The Chip Taking Game is an abstract game which manifests in any many-player game that does not limit inter-faction targeting, and does not hide who the current leading faction is¹. The Chip Taking Game very frequently arises in political games, and is itself a political game.

The game is described as follows:

• Each player is given a set number of chips (or tokens) at the start of the game.
• On each player’s turn, they select another player to remove a chip from.
• If a player reaches zero chips, they can no longer take other players’ chips nor win.
• The last player who remains with more than zero chips wins the game.

The game has many flaws, including but not limited to a nearly-guaranteed tendency to induce kingmaking and decreasing the impact any non-political decisions have on the game’s outcome.

The Chip Taking Game is most often seen when players decide to “target the leader”: All game mechanics are disregarded, and the player with the largest lead (the most chips) must have the lead reduced (chips removed).