According to the legend, Croatian king Stjepan Držislav defeated Petar II Orseol and won a chess match for his own freedom and part of the Croatian territory. The king incorporated a chessboard into his coat of arms, and the characteristic Croatian red and white "checkerboard" is created, which today inspires Croatian design. The earliest proof of chess in Croatia dates back to the 14th century from the inventory of merchant Mihovil from Zadar. According to legend, in the 18th century Baron Franjo Trenk of Fridrik II takes ivory chess as a war booty. At the end of the 19th century, the Zagreb Chess Club was founded in Croatia and in 1912 the Croatian Chess Federation. From 1920 until the independence of 1991, Croats acted as part of the Yugoslav Chess Federation. The first Croatian chess player of the 19th century was Alexander Witek, Vladimir Vuković was the strongest Croatian player in the first half of the 20th century, while the second part of the century was celebrated by Petar Trifunović, Mijo Udovčić, Krunoslav Hulak, Nenad Petrović, Hrvoje Bartolović and world junior champions Bojan Kurajica, Ognjen Cvitan and Hrvoje Stević. Among the contemporary chess players are the champions of Europe Zdenko Kožul (2006), Robert Zelčić, Mladen Palac, and juniors Ivan Šarić and Valentina Golubenko. Dražen Marović is a long-time editor of the "Chess magazine" and author of various chess books. For the Chess Olympics in 1950 in Dubrovnik, Andrija Maurović designed, and Vjekoslav Jakopović produced chess figures, which were later labelled with top-of-the-line design and are now made in a plastic version.

Bridge is a card game where two rival pairs are involved. At the end of the 19th century, the bridge from England and America spread to Europe and to Croatia where in 1934 the first Zagreb bridge club was founded, whose players won the second place in the European Championships in 1936 and the third place in 1937 in the world. In the sixties, bridge clubs were established in Zagreb, Karlovac, Pula, Rab, Rijeka, Samobor and Split. In Croatia there is an active Croatian Bridge Alliance founded in 1991, which organizes various tournaments and participates in competitions outside Croatia. In 2019, the Croatian Bridge Alliance will host the second World Junior Championship in Opatija, a city that often stands out as the host of European and world competitions.