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The early Irish loved board games. This is clear both from archaeological finds of gaming equipment and from the numerous references to the playing of board games in vernacular literature. While much of the secular literature of early Ireland presents narratives set in an imagined past, texts can nonetheless be investigated for insights into attitudes to gaming, by both men and women. Before the advent of chess, the most important game was the native fidchell, a ‘battle’-type game of pure skill derived from the Roman ludus latrunculorum. A selection of references to the playing of fidchell in prose and poetry, primarily from the Old and Middle Irish periods (seventh-thirteenth century CE) is used to explore the role of women as players among themselves and against men, focussing on the following themes: status, the social and physical context of games, the materiality of gaming equipment owned by women, the relationship between games and alcohol, gambling, eroticism and its absence, and attitudes to the intellectual capacity of women.