The Real Lesson Behind A (Board/Card/Video) Game?

[sterlingice]

I play Words With Friends with a few different levels of players fairly regularly on my phone. I'm not the best or the worst so I pick up good tidbits from watching the better ones and even sometimes from the worse ones.

But, if you stopped a person on the street and asked them what the key to Scrabble is: 9 out of 10 people would say "A huge vocabulary" but that's not it at all. Sure, it helps. But tile placement is much more important: not leaving open large point squares for your opponent and taking advantage of the ones they leave open for you (or even playing defensively so they can't play one they left open).

What about other games? Shelves of books have been written about Poker and the game within the game. I suspect some could say the same with Chess and, say, the concept of gambits. In Monopoly, there's probably something about the value of opportunity cost. Fantasy football is about game theory and replacement level. But I just haven't played enough games deeply enough to come away with some of the real lessons "underneath" the game.

So what say you, FOFC? What underrated and less obvious lessons can be gleaned from other games we play (be they board, card, electronic, or other)? What are things you have noticed in games that you take advantage of that are inherent in the structure of the game but not necessarily intentionally there?

SI

[AnalBumCover]

Global Thermonuclear War.

The only winning move is not to play.