Board Games, Play to Win?
 

The actual subject matter is Gaming, but the question is more about life, so I put it here...

I'm a competitive person by nature when it comes to anything that has a "winner." So I tend to play to win. I also play a lot of poker and used to plat a lot of computer games, both of which are very much "play to win" types of games. So maybe that's where it comes from. Besides, winning feels good, and I'm usually a gracious winner, and an equally gracious non-winner.

However, when playing board games, I have been accused of taking them too seriously. 9 out of 10 times if I log a complaint, it's because another player is not playing by the rules of the game (AKA cheating). I remember learning a long time ago that cheating was bad, and therefore frowned upon. But whenever I bring this up, I usually get the stink-eye from the other players. "Aw, lighten up" or "Are you serious?" or "Oh, just let Little Johnny do it."

Am I being anal about it? Are board games about just playing the game itself and not about the winner? Are they about playing by the rules or letting Little Johnny win to boost his fragile ego? Let's face it, someday Little Johnny will be in the real world, does letting him 'cheat' to win a board game set a potentially dangerous precedent for life?

Excellent idea for a thread. I was thinking about this last month.

Yeah, you might just be a jerk.

J/K

Nah, take it seriously while you're doing it... laugh about it later.

Yup

I take the rules of board games seriously.

If we don't teach kids to follow the rules of board games, and allow them to cheat because they're kids, we're telling them that the rules don't matter.

I play to win, no matter who I'm playing, old or young. But then the kids I play board games with know I take them seriously as players, and they can take great pride in the victories they do achieve when playing against me. I think that's better for a child's self-esteem than letting them win.

Rules in board games are in place to ensure an appropriate level of challenge. Breaking the rules knowingly implies that you aren't up to the challenge. Why are you playing?

When my nephew was a bunch younger, he used to like to challenge old auntie mal to a game of chess... at 6 i would never cheat, but I'd occassionally let him win... when he was 9 or so, he wouldn't let me get away with letting him win and he'd get mad if I got caught.. .Now that he's 13 - he's quite a good chess player (well, he can kick my ass at at but I'm not all that good) He learned to play and played by the appropriate rules, not some made up set of rules that tilted the game in his favor... but by occassionally letting him win - he didn't get frutrated with the game and learned to enjoy it.

Scrabble was a big game in my house when I was growing up.. and it's not something I ever enjoyed playing -having an english professor mother and attorney father across the board - i woudl get soundly thrashed every single time...

Cheating is wrong.. having certain sets of rules for kids doesn't help the kids al that much - but occassionally letting a kid win, isn't necessarily a bad thing if it gives the kid an apprecation of the game and doesn't m ake them want to quit.

I played a lot of Junior Scrabble this summer with one of my young charges, age 5. She beat me twice, and beat her mother (a history prof) twice. We were amazed! I can't wait until she's old enough to play real Scrabble.

I also played a lot of old-school Candyland this summer, with a 2.5 year old. That's a game where all players are equal, regardless of age, because it's largely a game of chance. And he LOVED it. We had to tell him that we would only play one game at a time with him, and only at certain times, otherwise he would insist on playing again and again and again. He started making up stories about the characters on the Candyland board. Very cute.

It didn't really matter if he won or lost, he just enjoyed playing the game, though we did have to institute a "celebration penalty" like in college football, to teach the kids how to be good winners after winning a board game. I wish that were something I could take to heart in my own life, but I just love saying "in your face" too much.

Yep - rules are there for a reason - playing games is as much about teaching as it is about playing. Having said that - how many people have family 'rules' which are an addendum to the official rules that come with a game? As long as these are agreed before starting, then I don't see a problem with that...

I don't think there are any games in my closet that we haven't added at least one house rule too.

cheating wouldn't be cheating if you were allowed to do it. i don't' think following the rules is considered taking it too serious. if you lose (or win) and gloat or brood about it 15 minutes after the game has ended, then maybe you might be taking it too serious. running around with your index finger raised in the air, doing an endzone dance and screaming "i'm number one, bitches, yeah, reckognize" when you win at monopoly might indicate a problem, as does wanting revenge. but if you play to win, and then after the game is over, continue with life realizing nothing just happened, then don't' worry about it.

as for letting a kid win, if he follows the rules and you sometimes make the "wrong move" and he wins now and again, that's not so bad, is it?

Dood, I'd PAY to see you do that.

As long as all the players know the rule amends and sign up to them up front then it's just flavour.

I always play to win within the accepted rules of any game. If there's no realistic chance of a victory I won't play.

However, if there's no realistic chance of a defeat I won't play either. I won't play my seven year old daughter at full adult scrabble, because most adults I play can't beat me (not a boast, the statistics back me up over many years of obsessive record keeping).

So, in short, I play to win, but I only play games against oponents that might be a challenge.

Alright, cool. Sounds like the responses are decidedly in my favor. I agree with the occasional making the wrong move for the kid's ego.

I just remember my mom giving me the dirtiest look and sob story when I eliminated Little Johnny (no, that's not his real name) in Monopoly one time. My points being...
A. That's the game, those are the rules
B. Little Johnny ain't so little anymore
C. Little Johnny had been running his little mouth before and during the game

Other than that, there are plenty of games that are more geared toward adults that are just fun to play, win or lose. Pictionary, Balderdash, Scene It. My buddy and I played THE BEST round of pictionary EVAR. He was drawing, and he can't really draw for shit, but he's very smart. The rest of the crowd was looking at the word and saying that we would never get it. He drew a horse, circled the head. He drew a bed. Then an arrow from the horse's head to the bed. The word was 'Godfather' I got it.

:involuntary shudder at flashback:

After dating for a half-year, I was invited to a "family getaway" which consisted of my girlfriend's mom's side of the family (her mom had 4 siblings). Pictionary was played. It was the most brutal version I've ever seen, and included a teenage daughter and her dad swearing at the tops of their lungs at each other.

And yet, I still married my girlfriend, and we laugh over the trial by fire she put me through.

/end flashback

With my 5 year old boy, I play to win about 30% of the games. As he gets better at losing, I'll step it up, but for now he gets pretty upset even if he thinks he is going to lose. We insist that he follows the rules of the game, however, or the game ends right then.

I think that monopoly is one of those games that has so many different house rules with it -I'm not even 100 percent sure what the original rules of the game are :D

Of course you should play to win, but always remember what you just won or lost, a board game. Most are largely games a chance anyway, and don't really mean a thing.

As for the rules thing, why wouldn't you follow the rules? If you have to break the rules to win, you didn't really win, at least not the game I was playing. I have a prime example of this, my girlfriend, mother, and one sister are big scrabble fanatics, they play every time someone brings it up. But, they look up words in the dictionairy, which as far as I'm concerned defeats the whole purpose of the game. When I explain this to them, I'm a spoil-sport or I take the game too seriously.

Make Little Kids Cry!

Cheating takes the sport from the game. I do play competitively, but at the end of the day I don't forget that monopoly money only works on cardboard and that the people I'm playing with are more important than the game, so I don't get mad or impatient. I just play and try to have fun. If I happen to have 14 hotels on Boardwalk and someone lands there... oh well. I mean, he was just going to spend the money on booze anyway.

Wow holy smokes. While logical, that outlook is kinda unnerving for me... The focus on rules and competition, I just cant identify with that most the time.
Personally, I am quick to disregard rules, and lose enjoyment when my peers competitive ability sags significantly below mine. Sometimes I like to rise to a good challenge, but usually Im loathe to take things seriously.

Im there for the fun, not the contest. I generally dont play to win. As a matter of fact, Ive thought about this quite a bit. I have an odd tendency to play the underdog, or spring their trap, or see how bad it is, or just generally fuck around and make consciously bad tactical choices. Usually, if I know Im unarguably superior at a game than my peers, I simply dont want to play it. I also tend to hold the concept of sportsmanship in high regard - not in the letter of its unwritten laws, but its spirit. I get offended when people violate the sportsmanship lines (which admittedly are extremely vague and unofficial). Ive identified how illogical that is, but I simply don\\\'t know how to see it any other way.

I\\\'m probably a bad person to play Monopoly with.

I gotta disagree with that one. If Im playing a game against a kid and kicking their butt, they will not think it is fun anymore. Generally when theyre young, I will doubt theyre playing for the achievement of the victory, those moments of glory... Theyre playing for fun. Id let the kid win (or almost win) unless I know hes there specifically to take me down.

You know whats odd?

You can actually be accused of not taking it seriously, by the same people who make the accusation of taking it too seriously. If you just do it for fun, messing around, not worried with winning, they will get upset also...Its a Catch 22, which is only cured by ACTING like you're trying, and still letting them win.

-Will

I play to win, but only if the act of winning will make me happy. Winning against a 3 year-old will not bring me any joy whatsoever. OTOH, winning against one of my peers definitely give me that warm, fuzzy feeling inside. At the end of the day, the aim of the game for me is to enjoy it and have fun.

As far as the rules are concerned, I stick to them pretty well. I will at times forego a rule or two if it is in the interest of making the game more fun, and all the players agree to it.

I pick the game (or my daughter does) to be fun for everyone playing.

She likes dominoes and pick up sticks (less reliance on book learning and sneakiness) but also enjoys monopoly and junior scrabble.

I monopoly she hardly ever wins, but she gets better and loves that she can sometimes do well.

This crap that is so common nowadays really bites me. If we never teach our kids about competition and failure (as an essential part of winning there has to be a loser) what happens the first time they have an appraisal at work? Does their boss say - "sorry Johnny, you're crap, but I'm giving you the same pay rise as Bert, otherwise it's not fair".

Is he hell.

Exactly. It starts with letting them win at board games, bending the rules so it's easier. There is always a loser in life. The sooner kids learn that life isn't fair or easy, the better off they are.

I don't allow my kids to cheat, but when I'm playing the 8-year-old I usually go soft on her. She gets so happy when she wins. :)

Otherwise, if I am playing adults, I play to win, but I'm not cutthroat about it. It's just a game, after all.

Oh, and Sorry is the game of choice in our house.

I do both as it really depends on my mood. It depends on the people I play with as well, oddly enough family and strangers I tend to want to win more, but with friends I tend not to care as much. And finally it depends on the game. If it's a game I'm into and like then I'm more likely to want to win, but if I'm not into it then I don't care much and it's more about the social interaction.

Don't allow cheating but don't make a huge deal of it either. And while winning is fun, revel in the thrill of succeeding using your wits/rolling power rather than gloating rights or beating someone.

Sometimes I get annoyed with asshole winners that flaunt it in your face. It's just a game!

depends what type of games. If it's something that requires skills and I lose, then I will be dissapointed in myself.

If it's a luck game and I CONSTANTLY lose, then i will be pissed off at the dude who's always winning. Same with cheating. you cheat, you're fucking out of the game.

On a somewhat unrelated note, if you include 'strip' in the name of the game, then I tend to play to lose.

because when you lose everyone wins?

Bwahahahhahahaa... snap!

[deep voice] Oh yea.... [/deep voice]

But more importantly, the fun starts after you lose and keep playing.