I think the argument of competitive thinking can still be made, even for collectible games where you get points for execution. My entire CCG ‘career’ has been made on taking deck archetypes that should not work and making them playable (my Death Star Deck for Decipher’s Star Wars game blew up over dozen planets in a tournament during the latter days of the game’s life). The satisfaction came not only from making the improbably likely but also from the recognition I earned for being one of the more creative deck builders in the area, even if I didn’t often take the top honors in competition.

Not always having the skill (or money) to compete with high rollers, I chose to be competitive on a different level of play.

Yehuda

I do see your point, but you cite some difficult examples. I’m not very familiar with Go, but isn’t it like Chess inasmuch as it’s a fixed start position and with no randomness, just what the other player does? This sort of game does very much promote a sense of self-think, yes. But in how you say it, you acknowledge an impicit handicap system when you play well vs. vastly superior opponent. If you lose in such a case you’ve still “won” because you’ve beaten the secret handicap. This is just saying that the absolute victory condition isn’t the one you’re using to determine who was the best thinker; you’ve replaced it with a relative system because you know you have unequal talents at work here. Presumably with enough “good” plays, your implicit handicap becomes smaller, in other words, you’re expected to have that “better” game more often against your superior opponent. Because you’re thinking better.

In any case, the more conventional board game setting (or is it?) is when the players are more equally talented, and there’s some randoming forces to keep everything lively. Under those circumstances, we’re more likely to go with the absolute winner in the game as a measure of who played best, even as we humor the stories for exceptional circumstances (e.g., “it’s amazing that I managed even 3rd place given the starting hand I was dealt!” I think a lot of Euro games fairly can be described as, you “read” the board conditions, come up with a “plan” for how you’re going to try and win, and then see how your plan fares versus your opponents.

Regarding Magic, as a collectible/constructable game, much of the “game” is played long before you sit down to deal the cards. Most of my Magic playing is highly NON-competetive and is really about seeing how often a well-crafted deck operates correctly. In this case we’ve turned a “game” into something more like an “art” or “craft”, and so victory or success is judged via vastly different criteria. Of course, I would be thrown to the wolves in a serious Magic tournament. And when it’s put in a highly competetive venue like that, I think that the “best thinker” concept still carries a lot of weight.

If games model reality, one of the key elements they model is that it takes both skill and luck to do well. Once we accept that, the question becomes: just what kind of skill are we talking about?

Ah, but this is so NOT true.

If I play a game of Go with someone ten better than me and I do well, while he plays routinely, I may lose the game but “win”. That’s the whole point. I play against myself.

I play Magic with my friend David all the time. Not once do either of us “acknowledge at the end” who devised the “best” plan. The only thing we acknowledge is who did well with what they had. If we both play well, we both won. If we both play poorly or overly reliant on luck, we both lost. And that’s regardless of the victory conditions of the game.

I have never ended the game with even the barest of thought as to which of us was the best thinker. Not a smidgen, not a whit, not even a glimmer … well, maybe a … no, not even a glimmer.

Yehuda

People who don’t game try to impress others by memorizing trivial sports data, details of TV shows, or other useless pieces of information. It seems that the worth of a person is how much you can cram into your brain and retrieve at the right moment. Some boardgames might be considered an arena where such knowledge can come to the fore. Remember how popular Trivial Pursuit was? Others like the strategy elements. Some people I know go to great lengths to “perfect” a boardgame strategy. I wonder if these people also realize it’s no fun playing with someone who only seeks to win by the fastest means possible? I prefer the random luck games, or better yet, the games that can win by killing off the other players (Heroquest, Cosmic Encounter, etc.). This way everyone is on even footing (I’m all about fair-play).

I think board-gaming is not usually pure competitive thinking. There is often a small amount of randomness from concealed initial setup, cards, dice, more 2 player turn order, etc. After-all, we gamers don’t all play chess all the time!

Shooting off my comment, (surely less well thought-out than Smite’s article), I would say that the complexities of the board game allow the player to enjoy the implementation of strategies or strategems. For board games we know well, we know ‘preffered standard opening moves’ to help increase chances - the best risk-reward. But what if a player knows this, and just franly is bored by the same approach, he can gamble on different openings.

In this aspect, I think board games combine the sub-core of SOLO THINKING as well as COMPETITIVE THINKING. This is one reason I think most board gamers to have relatively good sportsmanship. The play of the game enables the fece-saving rationalization of loss not just to the dominating intellects around the table, but also to the results of the luck and risk-reward choices the player made in the game. And in no few board games (race type especially), the play of others has little influence on your outcome, so you can soak your brain in your own plans & strategy juices for most of the game. The competetion is the braggin’ rights at the end score.

So I think, in board-games you play against yourself as well as against your opponents. Like golf. (Of course, some golfers are not good sports)