I’m just terrible at solitaire. I don’t know why; I’m good at other card games.
All sports.
Card games. I only know one, called “King’s Corners”, which is supposedly a multiplayer variation on solitaire, but I don’t know how to play solitaire.
Anything requiring strategy. I don’t even understand the concept of chess, or checkers.
I can play eight or nine instruments, though! Professionally, not “Three Blind Mice” kind of proficiency.
First Person Shooters
I suck at every single one of these. At no point do I feel like I’m truly controlling a real person. I’ll get caught on door jambs all the time. In real life, of course, this never happens to people. If your shoulder brushes a door jamb and you keep walking forward, you just twist a little and go through the door. In first person shooters, your legs keep moving but you don’t move forward.
Then I get shot from behind by the guy who I swear was just in front of me two seconds ago, but I can’t be sure because I have absolutely no sense of direction in these games. Every wall looks like every other wall; every floor like every floor; every door like every door. I can never tell if I can make a particular jump, and my aim is laughably bad.
Ah-hah, I forgot to mention that that’s about the only card game I’m ok at. Just plain old solitaire though. No spider solitaire or anything like that. And forget it if it’s timed.
I guess I really shouldn’t ever try my luck at a casino.
Monopoly. I’ve played plenty of times, but I have literally never won a single game.
The responses so far reminded me of how bad I am at arcade games with guns (Time Crisis and some other one that I used to have to play with my friend). I just don’t seem to be able to aim very well at them or get the timing of how to reload right. My best friend always wanted to play this two person shooting arcade game with me and I would reluctantly agree. So, once we came to the agreement that if we beat the game I would no longer have to play it so we got a bunch of change and went at it. We did beat it no thanks to me. Sometimes my other friends try to get me to play Time Crisis at the student union - I always decline. They have no idea how bad I am it, or they wouldn’t ask me.
I’m horrible at card games unless I can watch it being done while being explained. Just reading explanations doesn’t do squat; it’s like I need to “absorb” the rules to be able to play.
I also suck at first person shooters, but not for the reason that BlackKnight said. I instantly go into full-blown stress and panic. I mean, I know it’s a game, fer cryin’ out loud, but that doesn’t stop my adrenaline from flowing and me thinking, “oh god oh god, he’s GONNA BE RIGHT THERE AND KILL ME I KNOW IT”. It will literally feel like I am in the situation in real life.
Two stories for everyone to laugh at, regarding 1st and 3rd person shooters:
1 - Doom first came out. My brother convinced me to play some of it with headphones on. I’m already in panic mode, and they have the damned sound effects surrounding me (like the beast-breathing), so I am in a barely controlled state of “AHHHHH!”. I’m focusing so much on the game (and have headphones on) so I don’t hear my mom asking me something. She taps me on the shoulder to get my attention. :eek: I started flailing and thrashing my arms around in panic and I almost punched her face! 
2 - Halloween night back when Resident Evil 1 came out, I brought it over to a friend’s “party” (hanging out, crashing there, whatever). I’m getting tense but I’m okay, I’m okay. I know the zombies need to be shot, then they fall, they get up and you shoot them again. Then the pool of blood around their head means they’re finished. Okay, so I manage to take out some zombies, and they’re down twice; they have the damned pools of blood around their heads, dammit. So I go walking down the hallway and one of them lunges at my legs and starts gnawing!!! Jesus Christ, I literally woke up the entire freakin’ household with my shriek of terror. My friends never let me live that down, either.
It makes me wonder whether I’d somehow excel in some kind of real-life situation like that (total anarchy, chaos etc) or if I’d just get shot in two seconds. Heh.
Anything physical - I’ve never been good at such sports and am in dire need of exercising more now. I’m pretty bad at most other inter-personal games - computer games, chess, bridge, etc simply through lack of practice.
Volleyball. I hate it, and I am terrible at it.
My brain apparently lacks whatever neuronal connections it needs to allow me to understand how to play poker.
I’ve been taught several times but it doesn’t take, I always find myself holding a handful of cards and saying to myself “OK, now what do I do if my cards suck?”
Basketball. For some reason I CANNOT get that ball through the hoop. I can play volleyball very well, as well as baseball, so I know I have hand/eye coordination. Hell, I can walk around my house and catch flies out of the air. But basketball? No way Jose.
I’m gonna say basketball, too.
I can actually shoot pretty well and hold my own in games of HORSE. It’s my ball handling that’s pathetic. I don’t even know all the rules.
Due to my build, I’m bad at physical activity.
Euchre.
I think I have a defected Euchre gene inside of me. Everyone I know can play or has played. I’ve tried and all the rules go in one ear and slide on out the other.
Euchre mystifies me.
I could have written the above. I have a lot of euchre-playing friends and relatives. These are smart folks whose opinions I usually pay a lot of creedence, and they all assure me it’s one of the greatest, most engrossing card games there is.
They have given up trying to teach me. I get frustrated and cranky and after twenty or so years I have given up trying to learn.
TLD: Why does that card go there?
Teacher: Because it does! Can’t you see?
TLD: Um… no. Why does it?
**Teacher: (Showing signs of exasperation) ** Well because it’s the right bower (or some other weird term).
TLD: But those cards have no relationship to one another. And what were bowers again?
TEACHER, TLD (in unison): AUUUUUGGHHH!!!
Basically Euchre seems to me to be played as follows:
- Play starts by taking all the interesting cards out of the deck and feeding them to the dog.
- The body of the game consists of folks placing unrelated cards on top of one another. Three of clubs on top of the seven of hearts? Well played, old boy!
WTF??? It messes with my poker-based mind. - Somebody wins. Um… somehow. Yeah.
I can’t play chess either. It’s the thinking ahead shit that I’m not good at (but at least I understand the rules - euchre, OTOH, will forever remain a mystery to me).
Yep, I hear ya. And I even managed to captain a chess team in high school, my underlings advancing in their strategies past my abilities within a few weeks. But I had seniority!
I’m also no good at games that involve hand/eye coordination. I’m OK at darts but not consistently.
Oh, yeah. Basketball. I’m short, slow, and I can’t jump. Plus I hate it.
I swore a solemn vow to myself at the age of 16 during a particularly dreary high school gym period being humiliated and yelled at on the basketball court that once I got old enough that it was even an option I would never, ever play basketball again. Here I am at the age of fourty and so far so good.
Real-Ttime Strategy games. I panic, and horde resources, and then the Orcs come and I quit in terror. Turn-based games I have no problem with, however.
Anything word-based, like Scrabble or cryptic crosswords. It’s particularly embarrassing, because people think I’ll be good at Scrabble: I read a lot, I have a fairly large vocabulary etc, but when I’m faced with a handful of letters it’s rare that I can make anything more complex than ‘cat’, or possibly, ‘catS’.
Yup, yup. I’m a reasonably smart guy, yet Chess is the one game I love, but suck at. My father and several friends have tried to help me improve my game, but it was an exercise in futility. I just don’t see how you can predict people’s moves.
Adam
Despite my inherent super-geekiness, I’m competent at a very basic level with the usual troika of “athletic” sports - basketball, baseball, football. I hate all the running around, and they’re not very interesting to me, but I can usually play without embarrassing myself.
No, the sort of game I most often have trouble with is the First Person Shooter video game. Nothing in my twenty-odd years of videogamery has prepared me for the First-Person Shooter. Oh, sure, sometimes I get lucky… but the complexity of the control combined with the realtime gameplay and intense speed just make me all fumble-fingered.