What I Learned From Board Games

BOGGLE

I love Boggle and although it's not a board game per se I mention it because it's a great way to keep those synapses firing. If you play it enough it will keep you sharp and help you learn a lot of random three-letter words no one else knows. The astonishing fact is that no matter how many words you find there are bound to be several you didn't see. We used to have an unwritten rule when hitting a wall that we would agree to turn the cube a half turn or more for a different perspective. It always worked.

And you can't really cheat unless you write down words after the timer has run out. People who cheat at Boggle should not be playing Boggle.  

LESSON LEARNED: Keep looking, you just might be surprised. Perspective is everything.

 BATTLESHIP

This one actually dates back to World War 1 when it was a basic pen and pencil guessing game. Battleship is pretty much the opposite of strategy because the only one possible is ESP. There is something vaguely interesting, however, in attempting to decipher where the other player would place their ships (usually based on their personality). You really have to trust your opponent with this one because the possibility of cheating is high. We created our own version where we planted the plastic pegs as mine fields which cost you points if you "hit" them. Battleship remains very popular to this day and I'm not sure why.

LESSON LEARNED: Not a damn thing. 

MONOPOLY

Monopoly is like life in that it's exciting and full of possibilities at first and then quickly turns sour. Definitely wins for most bizarre playing pieces. 

What was Parker Bros. thinking when they set little kids against each other in an Atlantic City real estate war where the rich got richer and eventually owned everything? The only thing missing was gangsters but we soon learned there was a fine line between legit business and organized crime.

Monopoly is how I first learned about greed and taxes. More important, it was the first time I ever encountered cheating. You know, hiding a bankroll under the table or literally stealing cash from the bank. We were ten years old and already people were embezzling and strong-arming their friends. If the kids were expert cheaters, how accomplished would they be in twenty years? It boggled (no pun intended) my mind. 

In Darwinian fashion we used to tweak the rules and put our taxes on Free Parking in some desperate bid to give ourselves a loophole. Others made alliances and secret agreements ("I won't charge you if you land on Marvin Gardens if you give me a house"). It was like the Hunger Games. Sure, you could team-up with someone for a while but in the end you had to kill him. And there was no other game (other than Risk) that dragged on forever and whose principles were booted early on just waiting for the inevitable. 

LESSON LEARNED: Corruption is not an anomaly but the norm. Taxes suck.  

BACKGAMMON

In some ways Backgammon is a perfect game with a classic mix of luck and skill. It's also extremely addictive. Backgammon offers hope for anyone because an average player can overcome an expert if all goes well. Conversely, an experienced player can readily defeat a lesser player even if they are rolling dice seemingly in violation of the Laws of Probability. And if you lose one, no worries. . .play another round. Although you can trap and humiliate your opponent it rarely gets as heated or stressful as something like poker or Risk. 

LESSON LEARNED: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity" (Seneca). It is also what happens when you roll doubles eight times in a row. 

RISK

Who hasn't got a story from playing this satanic game? Risk is the macro-version of Monopoly because the goal is to take over the entire world. Risk not only recreates warfare but the emotions that go with it. I won't lie, Risk was my favorite childhood (and early adulthood) game but it brings out the worst in all of us.

My mother banned the game in our household after my dad literally flipped the board over during one particularly heated argument. 

Risk is Darwin in action and if you've played enough games you know just how many daring and/or desperate approaches one will take in order to survive. I used to try to psych-out my opponents by fastidiously arranging my armies in perfect rows like the NAZIs entering Poland. 

If they don't already study Risk at West Point they should because much of what you learn from that game seems to apply to real-world geopolitics. The Middle East is always a disaster zone because of its borders. Australia is the easiest continent to hold but you won't get anywhere unless the superpowers take each other out. And when a player is helpless, he or she will often create alliances with other weak players to topple the stronger ones. You have to watch out for the smaller armies without real strongholds: they have nothing to lose and are therefore not above suicide missions if only for spite or to help their friends defeat you.

Like Monopoly, though, there is always that point of resignation when the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The only problem is it might not happen for two days.

I used to play regularly with a group of guys and often changed up my game to keep them guessing. But I fell into the habit of amassing large armies while everyone else destroyed each other. A friend remarked, "You're no fun to play with. You only make a move when you know can't lose." He was right. I wasn't taking risks--I was playing it safe and sucking the fun out of it. 

Whenever I find myself building metaphorical armies I keep that statement in mind. 

LESSON LEARNED: Take risks. Keep your options open. Avoid the Middle East. 

TRIVIAL PURSUIT

The first time I played Trivial Pursuit was one of the more memorable moments of my young life. I was seventeen and my girlfriends' parents invited me to dinner slash Trivial Pursuit. It was the first time I'd ever really hung out with them and I can't be sure but I think their ulterior motive was to either size me up or humiliate me. The Herots were classic East Coast intellectuals; he was a chemist and she was a math professor so I was intimidated on several levels. I was in a rock band and they probably assumed I was a complete moron. What they did not know was that I was secretly a trivia nerd. Thing is, it was also their first time playing and where trivia is concerned all bets are off because one never knows what one knows.  

We played teams and fifteen minutes into it my girlfriend and I were struggling with an answer and her parents could barely contain their glee. The tables soon turned, however, and we beat them handily but I was careful not to gloat. Mrs. Herot shook her head and said, "I've never felt so stupid in all my life." Mr. Herot, on the other hand, waved his hand dismissively. "Congratulations. You know a lot of trivial things."

That still burns me up.  

LESSON LEARNED: Remember to win (and lose) graciously. 

LIFE

This was the first "grown up" game I ever played. I vividly recall being five years old and the older neighbor kids let me play although I had no clue what I was doing. It was the first sort of meta moment I had when I thought about it. Here I was, living my life, and they made a game about it. Then it hit me that life was like, a thing. . .a concept. It was weird and no one knew what it was but we were all playing anyway. I remember staring at the board and thinking, "This is what life is? It's set up with rules about insurance and marriage and college? It scared me, too, especially because a lot of what happened depended on the spinner, which I suppose to me represented Fate or Luck. So in some way Life made me take life less seriously and my disdain for those crazy rules probably set me on a more non-conformist course.

LESSON LEARNED: Still working on it.