How to cope with being a bad player?

[Archisian]

I'll never be above a 50% win-rate player. I've reached my limit on the games I play and I'll never get better. For those who are bad at board games, how do you deal with the same situation?

[nik592]

Play games for the fun of playing rather than just winning?

I have no idea what my win-rate is, and couldn't much care. I know, because BGA told me in my end-of-year wrap-up that my highest ELO for any game is 284 - so I'm obviously not expert at anything. When I win a game, great. When I don't win a game, I still usually had fun playing (if not, I generally don't play that game again). Sometimes I look at how I played and how my opponents played and try to think what I could do differently next time, but I'm not prepared to spend a lot of time analysing. But I also play a lot of different games too, whereas I notice people who do well often play a lot narrower spectrum of games, but play the ones they're good at a lot more than I do. My biggest number of plays is 362 on Can't Stop, mostly because I was entering the daily tournaments regularly for a while. Beyond that, I have a couple of mid-length games with plays in 100-200 range, nowhere near the thousands I've seen some players accrue (although I don't know, maybe they were in expert range by their 100-200th game and just play one game a lot because they like it). I prefer the diversity.

I mean, judging by this thread: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46272, I think you can certainly learn to be an expert at probably most games if you want to, though some may come more naturally to you than others. So if you want to do that, maybe try some of the suggested strategies in that thread.

[FDHenneberg]

I’m also not really good at any game. Maybe at least quite good at Wingspan with European expansion and Oceania as I’ve played that a ton, but take the expansions away or add Asia, and I’m “just okay” at Wingspan again. Funnily enough, the games I’m best at aren’t even the ones I enjoy the most. I like complex games like Nucleum, Darwin’s Journey or Gaia Project more than I like Wingspan and 7WD. I totally agree that it’s not too great to get beaten by a mile every time, so I do use the restrictions when opening a table - I see you’re premium as well. There are still games I’ll hardly ever win when restricting to Apprentices, but at least it feels like I might have a chance for at least the first half of the game, and that’s enough for me to have fun. Some games are more fun to lose than others, esp Euro games with low interaction. Gaia Project is still an interesting puzzle when I’m behind, while in 7WD (edit: which I guess is a Euro as well, but an atypical one), it’s really hard to find any motivation in the same situation.

To be generally good at board games, I think you need certain traits. If you’re, like me, bad at remembering what cards have been played or which tiles are left, you’ll never be a more than decent player in many board games.

[Spynde]

I play board games for the sake of the journey. To see how the game session develops and what kind of moves play out. Winning is just a nice bonus and feels good, but it is never the sole reason why I enjoy each game. I have found that if I try too hard to win and sweat over every move then I'm not having fun during the game. Of course I always strive to make the best move and learn from mistakes, but I try not to sweat it.

[yodamus]

Easy. Quit worrying about winning or losing. Have fun. Enjoy the game. Then you have the wrong attitude. Reached my limit and never to get better at a certain game. Why ?? That is on you. You can always improve. Learn from losing. Learn from mistakes. Read the rulebook again for things you missed. Keep playing. And your brain will get better at details needed to win. No money involved here. There should never be a fret over winning percentage.

[p99999]

As others have said, find games which are satisfying when you do win from time to time, but that you can still enjoy while losing.

I am terrible at Race for the Galaxy (419 games, 135 victories, ELO never over 200) but I enjoy playing it and it's fast paced so there isn't much sense of doom. You get a win/lose result quickly and you can move on to the next thing.

[RicardoRix]

I would suggest to restrict table access to the level you want to play with. Normally good advice for all levels anyway.

On a wider scale, you can always try and get better if you care about it. But then it might start sounding more like work, but it depends what you're into and what you want to get out of it.

You're a decent wingspan player, and that's a complicated game. Don't bash the others too hard when you play them

[FSKFSK]

Watch replays of top players. Try to predict their move what you would play, and when they play differently try to figure out why their move is better.

[Exotic Dreams]

I do think I'm prob ably a bad player. It seems to take more than average effort and time to make progress on games.
It depends on if I enjoy the game and or see potential to improve my games.
Some of my games are fun enough for me to keep playing despite mostly losing because I enjoy playing the games. Other games I quit playing.

[stillframe]

This is what a properly functioning rating system does. Unless you are one of a handful of the best players, the system will get you close to 50%. Win some games? Rating goes up, making it harder to gain and easier to lose. And vice versa when you lose a few. Working as intended.