My extended family are such disgusting competitors that I went through quite a phase with that. Now, I pull back a lot, and it takes a lot to activate it. But once it's on, it's on. I think it's good I didn't go to law school, cause there's no way in hell I could do that collegial thing where you beat ass in court and then go and have drinks. I'd be too busy looking up "Your mama," in Latin.

JZ is super competitive and can be a bad sport when she loses at board games. She grew up in a cut throat board game family.

I remember being totally surprised by this the first time I played games with her. Not that she was a bad sport (I have seen no evidence of this), but that she was so competitive.

I am like JZ when it comes to board games. I have been banned from games, mostly Trivial Pursuit, for my poor sportedness. We shall not speak of The Dance.

I'm good at games which require deviousness which I've found can throw people who don't strategize that way.

My favorite part of playing croquet is pitting people against each other. Doing that while getting tipsy is just the best!

Not that she was a bad sport

Well, mostly she just gets upset about losing now. But I have seen her stomp off in a huff more than once.

I almost always lose at Scrabble, because I don't play strategically (building off of other people's words to get more points, going for the triple word scores, etc). I always mean to, and then I get caught up in how awesome my words are, and then before I know it, I have, like 15 points to my opponent's 150.

In my family we almost always play Scrabble with no points, where the goal is to make the coolest words possible. It's much more fun that way, though actually we started it because of some not-very-wordy people (ahem, mr. flea) joined the family.)

I miss game days with megan walker.

I have told my parents that soon after the move I want to start having them over one set night a week for dinner and games. In prep, I am starting to play games with one of the babysitters one night each week.

ChiKat and I paired up for Trivial Pursuit at her NYE party. We kicked ass and were winning by so much that everyone else just cheated to get the game over.

I think part of board game playing is learning to play by rules , and part learning to negotiate rules. There is one kid game out there - the ladybug game - that has the rule to win you have to have the exact number to get to the end. In the rules, it suggests with the youngest kids it might be better to just let them get to the end with out about the exact number.

I'm not particularly competitive. I usually lose at scrabble , because I get distracted by cool words. As Long as I am doing better, I'm cool with it. And it turn out, when it is a game of chance I can have ridiculously bad luck. Which makes me laugh and laugh . So as a baysitter, it was easy to enforce the no crying rule. And I agree, if a game causes tears, stop.

The woman we were playing with (she was new to us and I think we exasperated her sorely) opined that there is no plural to qi, that there is only one life force, one that we all share. WhatEV.

Hahahahahah! Okay, I love this argument.

The SO is super competitive but he's working on it. I am definitely competitive, but I am also super Japanese in that I want everyone to win equally. I would like to win some rounds and then the other person should also win some rounds. I want it to be an even matchup, with a well fought victory enjoyed with decorum.

My mom carefully researched and bought a game that the niece (9) and nephew (5) and fam could play together. Which they did, happily, for day one. Then my brother in law bought a Wii. Which dominated the entire rest of the break, including wailing and gnashing of teeth, and me having to step in and say I needed a break from the game for an evening (after it being on from dawn to dusk for literally days).

Whereupon they immediately had to watch television and try desperately to find a movie. None of which were appropriate for my parents' sensibilities. Sheesh.

Now I realize that they just came back from Africa and are a bit starved for media, but man, I couldn't believe how unable they were to just sit together without external stimuli. I mean, have a conversation, dude.