Before and between rounds, while players are waiting to play their US-Chess-rated games of chess in the tournament room, they often play casual, unrated games of chess (skittles games) in the skittles room. Skittles is a centuries-old European game played on British lawns and pubs and in German beer halls and beer gardens, in which a wooden ball is rolled to knock over wooden pins (skittles). The modern sport of bowling descends from skittles. Casual games of chess (in particular, fast Blitz games) presumably became known as skittles games because chess pieces (originally made of wood) can fly all over (and even off) the board when they’re captured and removed from the board—the same way wooden pins do when struck by a wooden ball.
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