Magical Objects - Games

Gobstones

Gobstones is one of the many magical games played by young wizards in the books, along with Wizard's Chess and Exploding Snap. Gobstones is similar to the real games of marbles and pétanque, except that in Gobstones, the balls spit, or gob, a foul smelling liquid in the face of the opposing player when they lose a point. Hogwarts students are seen playing Gobstones throughout the books, and there is even a Gobstones Club at the school.

Playing cards: Self-shuffling and Exploding Snap

In Chamber of Secrets, a pack of Self-Shuffling cards is mentioned as one of the objects littering the floor of Ron's room.[9]

In Goblet of Fire, Ron was trying to build a card castle out of his Exploding Snap pack, playing cards that have the ability to explode at random. It is mentioned that this made building card castles more exciting, as they were likely to explode at any given time, and indeed his did so as he placed the last two cards on the top of the castle.

Wizard's Chess

Wizard's chess is played with pieces and a board like real chess, except that the pieces are animated.[11] The players simply tell the pieces to move using algebraic chess notation, and the pieces obey. The pieces attack each other in cases where an opposing player's piece would be taken, usually by knocking the captured piece out and dragging it off the board. Ron has a set left to him by his grandfather and Harry first plays with pieces borrowed from Seamus Finnigan, (it is said that the pieces kept shouting him advice because they did not trust him).[HP1] Harry later gets a set of his own in one of his wizard crackers during his first Christmas at Hogwarts. During the climactic chapters of Philosopher's Stone Harry, Ron and Hermione become human chess pieces, in a life-sized game of wizard's chess, thus risking their lives. Harry replaces a bishop, Ron a knight and Hermione a castle. Ron responds to the first move by using the Scandinavian Defence to verify that the chess pieces are enchanted and can smash each other. Later in the game, Ron sacrifices himself leading to Harry successfully checkmating the opposing King.[12]

Recently, the company Deagostini released a magazine series called Harry Potter Chess, which is based on the life-sized game near the end of the film version of Philosopher's Stone and each piece is specially animated. The chess pieces that come with it are based on the life-sized pieces in the film. Arco Toys and others also have a Wizards Chess Set.