What was the difference between rich and poor medieval games?

Answer 1

All classes of people played games. The distinction between who played what was based partly on who was invited, whether it was deemed seemingly for a person of a class to participate, and what the costs of materials and space were.

Games that involved horses were restricted to people who owned horses, and this mean rich people only. Jousting was limited to knights, and this meant rich people who had gone through the training and ceremony to be a knight. Other games restricted to rich people included chess, because of the cost of the pieces, and cards, because of the cost of the cards. Such games as lawn Bowling might have been played only by the rich because of the need for a lawn.

There were Martial Arts for poor people. Archery contests were really only for yeomen, because only yeomen would have practiced enough to have the ability to compete (yeomen were owners of small farms, required by law to practice archery).

Some games were considered unseemly for certain people. Medieval football was played in a number of versions, some of which took all comers as players, and some did not even have limits on the numbers of players on each side. In theory this meant that anyone could play, but upper class women were probably never among those who did. On the other hand, it is very easy to imagine that just about anyone could play dominoes.

Answer 2

The amount of food eaten would be one of the primary differences. Gifts were not given in this time and Christmas trees weren't put up. Everyone attended 3 masses on Christmas and then had dinner. One of the prime dinner foods was a boar. Rich would have had a real cooked boar and the poor a boar pie. This was a pie made in the shape of a boar with vegetables and some meat inside.