Game Night At Pride Hotel.

I’ve dreaded writing this post since the weekend because Saturday night was so packed that I felt overwhelmed by just the thought of accounting for that night alone.

_{Pictures are mine and photo grid created on PhotoGrid app}

Anyways, as part of my new years goals, I mentioned that I’ll go out more this year, socialize and create more connections. So yesterday(Saturday), myself, @thisisnativeboy, @abdul01 and @mohammed5 decided to go for a frenzy night that was hosted at Pride Hotel in Tamale, Ghana. It featured a lot of fun games including Truth or Dare, FIFA 23, Chess, Scrabble, Uno, Monopoly, Ludo, Domino, Cards and Phase 10.

_{Image belongs to the game organizers and is used with permission.}

Just from the games listed, you can tell it was one hell of a night!

The 4 of us arrived around 8:30 thinking we were late because the time designated for the kick off of the games was 7pm. In truth we were actually late because by the time we arrived, the boys had started the games with the FIFA 23. But there were only about 2-3 people at the FIFA Station at the time.

Me, I don’t like FIFA much. It’s been like a year or something since I last played. But @abdul01 was interested in playing so I asked him to sign me up in the championship they were about to play.

_{I’m zologe on the league and abul01 is pandev}

@thisisnativeboy and I focused a little more on chess when we spotted a chess setup on the table with one intermediate (my opinion) chess player seated there. We tool this as an opportunity to learn how to play since a lot of my Nigerian friends are good at chess and I had plans of joining their leagues soon.

I learnt a lot about chess from last night. Obviously not enough to be called a pro, but enough to not be called a mediocre at it anymore. Lol

The instructor first taught us about the pawns. What the pawns represent, how the move and capture other pawns, whether straight or diagonal, and the special abilities of each pawn.

More of the explanation in the 3speak I’ll be posting soon. Part of the tutorial, he explained why they say the weakest chess piece can become the strongest. The chess players know this already:)

I learnt at the chessboard for a bit and I explored the other games a little until I got to the scrabble group where I belonged. At least I thought I did. I lost at scrabble TWICE in just one sitting. But you can’t really blame me because this was my first scrabble game and I was not familiar with the rules, so I messed up a lot. My initial is the H in the score sheet above. Nativeboy is going to post it to torment me even I don’t, so I figured I might as well. Less shameful that way.😂

Here’s a little fun challenge for you. You win 1 Hive if you can figure out 5 words I put on the scrabble board. The prize is insignificant, I know but it’s really about the fun of the challenge.

So for those who haven’t played scrabble yet either, scrabble is a word play game where each player is giving 7 tiles(7 letters) to form words on the board. There’s a rule book governing play and they’re too many for me to able to tell you here.

Each letter is assigned a number. So depending on the letters you use to form your words, you get a total score. You see the double letter on the board, it means whatever letter you place on the board there, the letter’s number gets multiplied by two.

Let’s take a case example with the word MERE. If I was the first player and I form the word MERE, I get 5 points(2+1+1+1). If for instance, the letter M was placed on a double letter space on the board, M’s number (2) get’s multiplied by 2. So the new score for word MERE in that case now becomes 7 ( 2(2)+1+1+1). Pretty easy. But like I said, there are A LOT of rules but this is basically just how the game goes.

I really enjoyed playing scrabble and I think I’m going to play a lot more for practice in case we ever meetup again for another game night. Chess was pretty awesome too, but I couldn’t catch a lot of the tutorial because I was the photographer at the time. Lol

Still, I have plans of really learning to play chess some time. Luckily for us, the guy in this picture with @thisisnativeboy is a chess coach and we’ll be joining his class for chess lessons. If I get good enough, you’ll see me in the Hive chess community more often in the next few months.

Anyways, Like I said, there were many other games going at the different tables. Thanks to @abdul01, I get to show them to you, because he had my phone at the time I was playing scrabble and he took some very nice pictures of the other games.

This is the boys at the FIFA 23 station. For some reason, I never got called to play my turn in the championship. Or maybe I missed it because I was too busy losing at scrabble.

Here, we have the pool players. Now that I’m writing this post, I’m wondering why I didn’t head over there to try it out. I’ve played a lot of pool with my friends on the 8 Ball App, but never in real life. I’ve gotten many opportunities to play though since a hostel in my school had pool players. Anyways, it looked fun watching from a distance.

Over here now, was the gentlemen’s table where they’re playing card. I didn’t go near here because even though I can play card, I’m not good enough for public challenges like this one. Besides, last time I played card was like a year or two ago too.

Ah yes, group monopoly. I’m honestly not surprised to see lesser people here. Monopoly sounds like a fun game, but also is complicated af. I’ve seen @nhaji01 and some classmates of mine playing it before, but it was all gibberish to me. Lol

And for the basic stuff, we had ludo. I like Ludo, but you sure won’t find me playing Ludo in a place with sooo many games to explore. And it seemed many people shared my thoughts at it was just this gentleman and lady at that table. Maybe they were having a romantic time or something? Idk.

And here we have the UNO table. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t know shit about UNO. I don’t know what it’s about or how it’s played, but it looks like a normal card game to me. Should’ve hanged around them a little to grasp the concept. But there’s always a next time, right?

The Dominos group seemed to be having something aside Dominos for dinner. Lol I just realized I forgot to mention there was food. Yes, but not for free. We were holding the games at a hotel after all so there was food available for those who wanted to play and eat. Don’t ask if I bought any.

Then there was this weird ping pong game I don’t know what to call it. So basically the disposable cups on the table were filled with Sobolo, a local drink around here. You bounce this small ball on the table and if it falls into any of the cups, you drink the Sobolo in the cup. I know you’re wondering if it’s not nasty since the ball could fall on the floor as they play. But they had tissues in their hands to rinse and wipe the ball if it fell to the floor. Now whether it’s still nasty after this piece of information or not, I leave it to you. I didn’t go anywhere near this table though because I heard some of the boys saying the drink was spiked with some alcohol to “make the game more fun”.

@abdul01 and @mohammed5 didn’t stay to the end because mohammed wasn’t feeling well and he was the man with a bike so abdul had no other option than to go with him. Myself and nativeboy however stayed until around 2AM when we left there. It was really fun. At the end of it all, we exchanged numbers, took some pictures together, and headed home.

It was one of the best game nights I’ve had for real and I’m looking forward to more of those.

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All images in this post were taken on my iPhone 11 Pro Max. Most of the picture credit goes to @abdul01 though since he was the one shooting