I have a vague memory of this question coming up in an episode of Gilliganis Island, but I can’t remember which one.
I mostly play games with children that they have a chance of winning. Like “concentration”. (The card game where you have to find cards that match.) Mosts kids are better at that than adults. Or “Sorry”. There’s strategy, but not much, and kids can learn it easily enough.
I may not play cut-throat but I will play to win. So if I lose to a child, it’s because they beat me not because I let them win.
I play plenty of games with kids as part of my job. Most of my students have significant disabilities and some degree of cognitive impairment. Yes, I usually let them win, or I’ll engineer a tie. Unless they need to work on the social skill of losing. Most are working on just paying attention long enough to take turns, figuring out how the count on the spinner or dice relates to how they’re supposed to move their piece, answering a basic question, or making a simple comment to another player that’s related to the game and not totally out in left field. Actual game strategy is not the point and if they never get anything right, they’ll shut down and the session is wasted. I’ve got exactly one kid on my caseload, a 9-year-old, that I’ll play against for real, with full effort.
Yeah, it’s a fine balance between letting them be competitive enough that they enjoy the game and want to play again, and teaching them that no-one is allowed to win every time. Overall, I think Euro-style games such as Ticket to Ride are better for this, because even the losing players feel like they achieved a lot, even if they didn’t come out first on the scoreboard. As opposed to, say, Monopoly where the losers just get crushed. On the other hand, dice-heavy/strategy-light games are good in that kids have a fair chance of winning from a fairly young age with no need for the adults to play softly. So both have their place, IMO.
We recently introduced our 6-year-old to Carcassonne, starting with the very basic rules and then gradually introducing abbotts, gardens etc (farmers are next). He seems to like it and is already fairly competitive, but if I make the best move all the time and give him no help with his moves, it would be a blow-out. So I gently suggest other places for his tiles, and don’t always place mine in the highest scoring positions.
Of course, to keep doing that as they get older, without them catching on (which would defeat the object of the exercise), becomes a skill in itself. A few months ago I was playing football (soccer) with my 9-year-old cousin and he could tell I wasn’t trying my hardest. Very difficult to pull off a fake in a purely physical contest, like that. In a board game you have more plausible deniability (“Darn, I didn’t see that!”).
When I play against kids I tone it down but don’t actively try to lose.
My wife really, REALLY likes to win so for some games with her I do the same. We both have more fun when she wins once in awhile.
I never just let the kid win. But, I try to win gently so they learn and enjoy the game.
The very first time I played Magic The Gathering, my oponent pulverized me. The game was over extremely quickly and I was left confused and learned nothing. The second oponent I played made it clear he could have won just as quickly. Instead, he took his time and helped me learn the game.
What I will do when playing a child (or anyone else new to a game) is to ask “Are you sure you want to do that?”, or the like, and offer take-backs, and sometimes give advice on moves. And, yes, sometimes I’ll spend less time on considering my moves than I otherwise would.
The benefit of not letting children win is that, when they eventually do win, they know that they genuinely earned it. And my nephew is now close enough to me in chess skill that I also don’t give him hints any more, and I think he recognizes that as a compliment, too.
Depends on the child and the age. Some kids are competitive by nature, others lose interest with every loss. That can be a problem if you’re trying to develop a love of a particular game, or of gaming in general.
I can’t recall ever directly letting a kid win a game I’ve played against them.
On the other hand, the OP mentions tic-tac-toe, which has so little strategy that I could see just leaving openings or deliberately making things harder for myself. Plus, once the kid learns perfect play, there’s no more fun to be had–the outcome is fixed at a draw. The only reason to beat them is so they learn that perfect play by example.
So I think it finally opened up my mind to deliberately handicapping myself in order to keep things fun. Not letting them win, so much as giving them a fighting chance when playing a mismatched opponent.
It depends. Most games appropriate for young children depend entirely on chance. Like Chutes and Ladders. I wouldn’t try manipulating a game like that to let them win.
For games that require some sort of skill, like memory games, I also wouldn’t just let them win every game, but I’d certainly pretend to miss if required to keep them motivated to keep playing. The last time I had occasion to practice that though it turned out my young cousin had noticed how some of that cards had creases and wear patterns that made it possible to memorize what was on the other side and had proceeded to mark all the cards. She beat me handidly every time.
dup
I go to game parties where I am usually the newby and everyone else already knows whatever game I am playing for the first time. Yeah, the best player at the table routinely does that for me, and I would certainly do that for a child. (Not “fail to make a good move”, but “explain to me what I ought to be trying to do right now, and letting me take back a really dumb move.”)
I see that as very different from throwing the game to the child. That’s teaching, and the child is fully aware you are doing it. And I wouldn’t do that over and over, just the first couple of time through the game.
If the game is too hard for the kid to play decently well after doing that a couple of times I feel like it’s not a great game to play with that child.
Nuttin. Wha dup wit u?
I show my children zero mercy in Mario Kart. Eventually, I chose to sometimes handicap them(head start), but even then, it was merciless from me.
Depends on whether the kid is nice or not. If a good kid, I’ll let them win, and also make it challenging enough that they’ll get mental gratification and won’t sense that I was tanking the game on purpose.
Now if the kid is a snotty brat, sure, I’ll beat him at chess, or Mario Kart, or whatever.
Depends on the age and what I’m trying to accomplish. When my youngest was about 4, he was a terrible loser - crying and running away from the table - so I’d let him get close but still beat him, and encourage him “you almost beat me that time. Don’t give up”. Eventually his brain clicked on “I was close, how I do I actually win” instead of demanding instant gratification in victory, and from then on I was able to play fair.
Sometimes I would hold back to avoid crushing them to (a) let the game last longer and (b) keep them from losing interest in the game, especially in card games where they couldn’t see my hand and know that I was holding back.
Once they got to around 10 or 11, I always played fair. And I always went all out in video games, because they had the reflex advantage.
The last time I deliberately threw a game was when my oldest was about 10 and we were in a single-elimination Pokemon tournament. We ended up playing each other in the semi-finals. Each round was best-of-3. I crushed him the first round, could have crushed him the second round, but I decided to let him tie it up. Then he legitimately beat me in the third round and advanced to the finals (which he lost). So I “let” him come in 2nd instead of third.
If I’m good enough at a game I’ll try to let the opponent win at least 30% of the time.
Yes. I let the kids win on occasion and my wife too. Many games are able to be played merely as a social experience.
Family gaming in my household has increased a huge amount since we’ve been schooling/working from home. I have a 7 year old and feel no need to let her win and she is quite capable of winning on her own once she knows the rules and understands the strategy.