Why Every Family Needs a Games Night
The week disappears. School, work, clubs, dinner — and by 8pm everyone has drifted to a different room. A games night is the cheapest, oldest fix there is, and it works for reasons that have nothing to do with the game.
Reason 1
Family time shouldn't default to a film nobody chose
Sitting in the same room isn’t the same as being together. A film asks nothing of anyone. A board on the table asks everyone to show up — and that’s exactly why it feels different.
Reason 2
The conversations happen sideways
Ask a ten-year-old about their day and you get one word. Play draughts with them and you get the whole story, sideways, somewhere around move twelve. Games make talking easy because nobody is looking at each other — they’re looking at the board.
Reason 3
Turn-taking is patience practice in disguise
Waiting while someone else thinks, holding a plan in your head, losing a round without losing the plot — a weekly games night gives a child hundreds of small repetitions of the exact skills school report cards call “self-regulation.”
Reason 4
Chess and draughts teach thinking you can watch develop
Planning two moves ahead, spotting what the other player intends, choosing the harder-but-better move — you can genuinely watch a child get better at thinking across a few months of Sunday games. It’s one of the few kinds of progress a parent gets to see happen live.
Reason 5
Play the version the whole world plays
The Staunton chess set — the design every tournament on earth uses — was introduced by Jaques of London in 1849. We’ve been making the family table’s games since 1795, in solid wood that survives being loved.
Where families usually start
Jaques of London has been making games since 1795 — the family firm that gave the world the Staunton chess set and lawn croquet. Everything we make is solid wood, built to be handed down.