Before the era of computers, tablets, and smartphones, life was simple, carefree, and filled with endless childhood games. Those afternoons spent chasing, dodging, and strategizing on the playground laid the groundwork for today’s surprising competitive arenas.
Why Childhood Games Turn Professional
What started as a way to burn off energy or pass the time has, over the decades, morphed into fully‑fledged sports with governing bodies, official rules, and prize money. From tag on a concrete quad to hide‑and‑seek across a ghost town, let’s dive into the ten games that made the leap from playground pastime to professional competition.
10 Tag
The classic game of tag hinges on a single premise: one player is “it” and must chase down another player, who then becomes “it”. Variations like freeze tag or shadow tag add twists, but the core chase remains the same. In 2012, brothers Christian and Damien Deveaux from the United Kingdom reimagined this simple chase as a sport called World Chase Tag.
World Chase Tag pits two squads—up to six athletes each—against one another in a series of 16 “chases”. Each chase lasts 20 seconds and takes place in a 40‑by‑40‑foot (12‑by‑12‑meter) arena littered with ramps, obstacles, and platforms. One player assumes the role of the Chaser, the other the Evader.
The Chaser must tag the Evader using only his hands before the 20‑second clock runs out. A successful tag scores a point for the Chaser’s team, after which the Chaser becomes the Evader for the next round. If the Evader escapes, his team earns the point. Players receive a 25‑second breather between chases, and after all 16 rounds the team with the highest score wins.
9 Dodgeball
Dodgeball’s reputation as the playground bully’s nightmare—especially for the less‑athletic—belies its evolution into a polished sport. The brutal African ancestor involved hurling rocks, but modern dodgeball has shed that cruelty.In 2004 the National Dodgeball League launched in the United States, followed by the Worldwide Dodgeball Federation in 2011. Professional matches retain the core rule: two teams toss balls to eliminate opponents.
Teams consist of six to twelve players, with up to three designated ball retrievers and two team leaders. Matches are two 20‑minute halves separated by a five‑minute break. The court measures 59 feet (18 m) by 29 feet (9 m) and includes a free zone, queue area, and penalty/substitution zones, all bounded by barriers to keep balls in play.
To reduce bruises, pros use cloth or foam balls—five balls for cloth, six for foam—rather than the rubber spheres of school gyms.
8 Musical Chairs
Musical chairs needs only chairs and a soundtrack, making it a birthday‑party staple. Players circle a set of chairs—one fewer than participants—while music plays. When the music stops, the scramble for seats begins; the sitter‑less player is eliminated. The process repeats until a single champion remains.
In 2012 former prison guard Fred Smith turned this party game into a high‑stakes competition. After a 2011 idea sparked by a fundraising request, Smith founded the World Musical Chairs Federation and staged its inaugural championship in Amesbury, Massachusetts.
Smith’s rules tighten safety: once the music halts, competitors have just seven seconds to sit butt‑first, and no body parts other than the butt may be used to force a seat. Each 40‑player field employs one referee per 40 participants and a squad of two dozen “enforcers” to keep things fair. The 2012 champion walked away with a $10,000 prize.
7 Speedcubing
Ernő Rubik’s 1974 invention—the Rubik’s Cube—started as the “Bűvös kocka” (Magic Cube). Its nine colored squares on each face mask a mind‑bending puzzle: 43 quintillion possible configurations, a month for Rubik himself to solve.
After a rocky start in Hungarian toy shops (1977‑1979), the cube found global fame in 1980 when Rubik partnered with the Ideal Toy Company. Over 450 million cubes have since been sold.
Speedcubing turns this puzzle into a sport where competitors race to solve the cube—typically the 3×3 version—in mere seconds. The current world record stands at 3.47 seconds, set by 22‑year‑old Yusheng Du of China.
6 Four Square
Four Square needs just a piece of chalk, a flat surface, and a ball. The playing area is divided into four numbered quadrants. Players serve the ball into another’s square; a failure to return it after one bounce, a line hit, or an out‑of‑bounds shot results in elimination. The eliminated player’s spot is filled by the next challenger, and everyone moves up toward the coveted #4 square.
Peter Lowell launched the first Four Square World Championship in 2010, held in Bridgeton, Maine, as a fundraiser for the Lakes Environmental Association. The competition begins with a one‑hour first round; half the field advances to a 40‑minute semifinal, and eight players move on to a 25‑minute final. The player who spends the longest time in the top‑ranked square wins.
5 Marbles
Marbles trace back to ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Native American tribes, where they were often made of stone, clay, or nuts. Modern competitive marble play dates to the early 1920s.
The National Marbles Tournament, founded in 1922 in Wildwood, New Jersey, invites 7‑14‑year‑olds to a four‑day contest that awards college scholarships. It takes place each year a week after Father’s Day at Ringer Stadium on the boardwalk.
Across the Atlantic, the British and World Marbles Championship began in 1932 and convenes every Good Friday at the Greyhound Pub in Tinsley Green, Sussex.
4 Nerf Gun Battles
Lonnie Johnson—NASA engineer, Super Soaker creator, and former Air Force member—gave the world the soft‑foam Nerf blaster. These safe, indoor‑friendly darts turned backyard skirmishes into a beloved pastime.
In 2016, Dallas resident Jared Guynes escalated the fun with Jared’s Epic Blaster Battle. The inaugural clash took place on March 12, 2016 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, drawing 2,289 participants and earning a Guinness World Record for the largest toy‑pistol fight. The event generated $14,000, which Guynes donated to tornado relief.
Since then, Guynes has taken the battles on tour, staging events at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and the Mercedes‑Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia.
3 Red Rover
Red Rover splits players into two equal teams, each linking hands to form a chain. A captain shouts, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send [player] over!” The chosen player dashes at the opposing chain, attempting to break through. Success lets the runner claim an opponent for his own side; failure means he joins the opposing team. Victory comes when one side is reduced to a single player.
The Indian sport Kabaddi, professional since 2014, borrows heavily from Red Rover, mixing elements of tag, rugby, and touch football. The term “kabaddi” derives from the Tamil “kai‑pidi,” meaning “to hold hands.”
Kabaddi pits two squads of seven on a 42.6 × 32.8‑foot (13 × 10‑meter) hard‑rubber mat, divided by a midline. Players hold hands to form a defensive chain while a “raider” sprints, tags as many opponents as possible within 30 seconds, and chants “kabaddi” repeatedly before returning safely. Matches consist of two 20‑minute halves with a five‑minute intermission.
2 Board Games
Go—known as weiqi in Chinese and baduk in Korean—is arguably the world’s oldest board game, with roots in China dating back roughly 4,000 years. In ancient China, mastering Go was one of the “Four Accomplishments” alongside lute playing, calligraphy, and painting.
The game features a wooden board marked with a grid, where black and white stones are placed on intersecting lines. Black moves first; players alternate turns, aiming to surround their opponent’s stones. Scores are tallied by counting captured stones versus those lost.
Professional Go is overseen by bodies such as the Japanese Go Association, European Go Federation, International Go Federation, and American Go Federation. Numerous tournaments worldwide crown elite players, and the digital realm offers AlphaGo for those eager to learn.
1 Hide and Seek
The only large‑scale international hide‑and‑seek competition debuted in 2010 at the Nascondino World Championship in Consonno, Italy—a ghost town once dubbed the “Las Vegas of Italy” before a 1976 landslide rendered it abandoned.
In September 2017, the two‑day event revived the town as 80 teams from nearly a dozen nations competed. Each squad of five hides one player for 60 seconds, after which seekers are released. Hiders may conceal themselves behind hay bales or other obstacles, but not inside the derelict buildings.
Seekers then have ten minutes to locate the hider and escort them back to the home base—a large air mattress. The first to reach home earns 20 points, the second 19, and so on. The top‑20 teams advance to a final round, where the champion receives a golden fig leaf.