How We Research & Verify Our Content

Sources & verification

• Modern games (chess, backgammon, cribbage, spades…): rules are checked against the games' widely published standard rules and official federation sources where they exist.
• Ancient games (Senet, the Royal Game of Ur, Patolli, Latrunculi, Hounds and Jackals…): complete original rules rarely survive. We state clearly when rules follow scholarly reconstructions — for example, the Royal Game of Ur follows Irving Finkel's reading of a 177 BC Babylonian tablet, and Patolli draws on Sahagún's 16th-century accounts.
• Numbers (probabilities, dates, game-tree sizes): we only publish figures we can verify, and we mark uncertain dates with a tilde (~).

Editorial independence

Every game on Arcadia is free to play. Rankings in our best-of lists and verdicts in our comparisons are editorial judgements based on stated criteria — strategic depth, accessibility, session length — never on commercial placement.

Review & update policy

Guides carry a visible "Reviewed & updated" date. When rules interpretations change, a factual error is found, or a game is updated, the page is corrected and the date refreshed. Our sitemap reports honest last-modified timestamps — never fake freshness.

Corrections & feedback

Spotted a rules mistake, a wrong date, or a broken example? Email support@arcadiagames.io — corrections are reviewed and applied to the live page, and material fixes refresh the page's review date. Researchers and journalists can also use our open Classic Games Index dataset.