The scattered green, pink and white bills in front of him are such a mess that he cannot put together $6 in rent for the property he has landed on. My son thinks of himself as a player in the World Series of Poker™. All he is missing are the sunglasses, flat-billed baseball cap and a hoodie. We all know him from past games- he's a wildcard player. If he could get away with it, he would mortgage the chewing gum in his mouth just to have enough money to buy one more hotel for a property. This would leave him cashless, but he would trust lady-luck to provide a sucker to land on a high rent property and give him some buffer cash. At 25, he has played cards for money in Indiana, Nevada, Macau, Colorado and other venues. He is no stranger to the strategies of high stakes games. The banker, only 15 but clearly seasoned and not one to be easily bullied, places order above all other values. She does not like being rushed. She is not impressed with the antics of the young man who would be king with all of his bluff and bluster. She has seen the inside of his car and recognizes it is even less organized than the bills in front of him. It has clothes, food, books, batteries, bills and possibly a body. She had overcome her own issues of tidiness by the time she was 14. This means that his untidiness in his car and his financial game playing is to be considered with a modicum of disdain. The more properties, houses and hotels he amasses is just more work for her later as she has to deal with the mortgages. She likes to consider purchases, ratios, number of times a player has to land on purple properties to make buying them worthwhile. She has no favorites on the playing table. My son sees this as a weakness in my daughter and takes advantage of it by pushing her, rushing play and asking for the dice, even when it is not his turn just to upset her rhythm. Her favorite game is Risk™. It is more strategic, slower in pace and allows her to make decisions through a trade-off mindset that favors her decision-making mindset. Sun-tsu, famed and often quoted Japanese military strategist, believed strongly in the idea of appearing one way in battle when in fact you are acting in another. My wife is a warrior from this belief. In almost all of our family games of any kind, she wins. She never looks like she is trying, concentrating or competitive. There is a visual and verbal quality for those at the table that sounds like, "Oh, well look at that, I can't believe that just happened…" When playing this game, she has favorites for properties and a questionably high amount of luck. We have had cameras installed with the footage professionally reviewed. Nothing. This having been said, she has the highest ratio of "right roll at the right time" of anyone who plays the game. Suspicious? Yes. However, the D.A. says we can’t get a conviction on the evidence collected. I'm a flip-coin personality. Very early in the game, my inner light turns red or green. I am either all in and hunting for victory or I am indifferent and want to watch Netflix. I have favorite properties and I like to pick on other players depending upon my mood and their mouth, which leaves me almost exclusively going after my son. We both have a risk-it-all-take-it-all approach, which leaves us very open to attack to the other players. This is very enjoyable to the "Me Hulk, Me Smash!" type audience. Our family owns three monopoly games. Traditional monopoly of course, we also have Harry Potter monopoly and finally and newest is our Star Wars monopoly. There are many, many other versions, but we have not gotten to the more expensive versions, and these work very well. Besides, up until recently, our youngest had a habit of getting frustrated watching the four of us playing and would flip the board, ruining the game and damaging some of the materials. Our son Zach hated playing word games like Boggle™ and Scrabble™ against my wife Jen and me because he would get crushed. He got better and I got a little better and so we hate it much less, we are competitive really, but we still lose to Jen. If the games are trivia based, Jen and I just watch Zach and Cate battle it out. They are a blur of speed to the buzzer and accuracy of detail. Jen and I can maybe pick out the category of answer, but the detail is lost. Games like charades, draw-a-lot and others that involve time and non-verbal communication skills are a nightmare when it is all boy v. all girl teams. My wife and sister-in-law will say a syllable of the first word of a clue and the other one of them will guess the word. If it is a friend of mine and me, he will say a clue, I will say 10 guesses in a row and he will say the same clue to me again slower and louder.
Him: BLUE
Me: Sky? Bird? Bell, berry, day, water, WHAT?
Him: BLUE! The games that all five members of our family can play together include UNO™ and Sorry™ which are loved by my youngest daughter. She has a vindictive streak that is fulfilled in both of these games. In each, she is able to force someone else to take more cards or move back many positions. When this happens, you would think that she had received a new puppy for Christmas. If it happens to her from someone else, she looks up with a mixture of sadness and anger as if someone had taken her ice cream. I love how much I learn about our children through playing games. The games are very fun and we have a lot of laughs playing them. The older two are starting to beat Jen and me regularly, so we may have to sharpen our skills. It may be time to move to Euchre. The game is not hard, but making Cate and Zach partners will give us a sustainable advantage. It will be like a tornado paired with Mt. Rushmore. Conversation is great, family connection is great, the rare and fleeting amount of time as a family is irreplaceable. I guess that teaching a competitive appetite is also passed along. Just a little.