What is your favorite board game?

Answer 1

Balderdash! I love making up funny definitions!

Answer 2

My favorite game is Dread Pirate by the Front Porch Classics company. They specialize in wooden collectible based games. In this game, you play a pirate that races to other islands stealing and raiding your fellow pirates of their treasure. The board is a faded cloth that looks like an old map, the ships are cast iron, and the coins actually have weight. It is worth every penny and it is never the same game twice. It includes instructions for families with younger players and more advanced instructions for adults. I have the bookshelf edition.

Answer 3

Reading the answers took me back. My neighbor used to have a risk board with wooden pieces (they were cubes). I'll have to vote for Risk, though Monopoly comes in a close second (generally, a much shorter game). Clue is also great (Cluedo to you non-Americans). I also remember a great little young persons board game called "Mother's Helper". I don't remember many of the details, but I *do* remember that it was the best little kids game that I ever played. I continued playing it (with my younger sister) well into my teens.

Jim, http://www.life-after-harry-potter.com

Answer 4

Go. Go is an ancient game that I believe originated in China. It is both the most complex and the simplest game in the world. You can learn the rules in a few minutes, but it takes a lifetime to master. It is popular in Japan, Korea, and the United States. Go has a board that has a grid on it that measures 19x19. The stones consist of slate and shell (black and white) which are shaped something like the popular notion of a UFO: round, with a thin edge and a thick center. They are placed by alternate players on the intersections of the grid. The purpose is to capture stones and surround territory. A piece of territory is surrounded if there is a stone on each intersection of the border. Stones are captured if the opponent's stones completely surround them, with no spaces in between. To keep a group of stones live, it has to have two eyes. An eye consists of an open intersection (or collection of intersections) that cannot be surrounded on the inside without putting your own stone(s) into a threatened or surrounded position. At the end, the person with the most stones and territory wins. The edge of the board is special because if you surround stones or territory to the edge, you don't have to place stones along the edge as well. Players take turns placing a stone in a place he regards as advantageous. Good players will SEEMINGLY place stones at random. But they can be connected later to form very strong positions. One more thing people need to know. If two stones are placed at a diagonal to each other, they're connected, but the connection can be broken by someone placing stones of opposite color on the other points of the cross diagonal. (Think of a square. One person places white stones on opposite corners, and the other person places black stones on the other two opposite corners.) On the other hand, two stones placed adjacent to each other cannot be broken that way. They have to be surrounded. Stones on a diagonal are offensive. Stones placed adjacent to each other are defensive. This is also a game which can be handicapped easily and precisely.

I used to play chess, but when I learned to play Go, I stopped playing chess. Go is much more fun!

One of the evidences of Go's complexity is the fact that no really good computer program to play Go has ever been written. On the other hand, chess programs have beaten world grand masters.

There is a ranking system in Go. There are 27 kyu ranks and 9 dan ranks. A person starts out at 27 kyu and advances by smaller numbers until just before hitting dan, he is 1 kyu. Dan can be thought of as equivalent to having a black belt in a martial art. There are almost no players worldwide that hold the rank of 9 dan. To show you the difficulty of writing a computer program, I'll tell you that no computer program of which I am aware plays a better game than about 1 kyu. The challenge of writing a good Go program is formidible.

Answer 5

Believe it or not, my favorite board game is aggravation. I learned to play it in Northern Maine when I was dating the young lady that is now my wife. The premise is to win, or not be "skunked", but in NO instance to show compassion on anyone in your way. I just taught this to three of my grand kids, and they think it is a hoot. It's not a violent game, but it can be frustrating. You get a chance to teach others how to get over set-backs and bumps in the road.....

Answer 6

I'm not a big board game person but I guess I'll say Apples to Apples. The more people play the better the game is. =)

Answer 7

Axes and Allies, Risk, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, and Chess.

Answer 8

Monopoly

Answer 9

Sequence it's not really popular but a great strategy game. It's not a really long game either. We usually play best of three. There's also a kids version.

Answer 10

Monopoly.

Answer 11

some of my favorite board games are scrabble monaply and checkers (if that's a board game)