Do you ever "let them win"?

[digitalpress]

Most popular with dating or married couples and with parents and their kids (in either direction). Do you ever let your opponent win just to keep them interested... or are you merciless despite your opponent's lacking skill?

Describe a time when you've done either - sacrificed your game for their enjoyment or thrashed them mercilessly.

[Flack]

My wife really likes Tetris ... but c'mon baby, I'm the Flackster! So when I used to play against her, I'd make up my own mini-games. For example, I'd intentionally leave holes in the middle that were difficult to remove, start the game out with 10 or so pieces stacked up in the middle of the screen, etc. That worked okay until we started playing games like Bust-A-Move and Tetris Attack, where doing well on your side drops pieces on your opponent. Then she started accusing me of ganging up on her. Sometimes you can't win!

[s1lence]

Depends on my mood. My wife, NO WAY, I will go all out. Friends that arent good I will handicap them, but it depends on the game. In Dr. Mario I will play 5-7 levels higher then who I am playing. I guarantee though that if I've have a bad day at work, I will not hold back on anyone. :D

[OldSchoolGamer]

I never showed my nephew mercy, sure he cried and got upset when he was very young and I kept telling him it's no fun to win ALL the time, and to not get upset when beaten. Today he kicks my ass on most games which would not be the case if I went easy on him. :D

[Xantan the Foul]

The only games I ever really play against friends are racing games and fighting games. And I kinda suck at both so I rarely have to hold back LOL

[Cmosfm]

Nope, play to win baby! It pisses my brother off that I whomp his ass all the time in fighting games, but when he DOES beat me, it's an even bigger accomplishment for him. :D

[izret101]

If it is my little brother and he says i am so much better than you i can trash you. I Destroy him first try if he has played the game before.
If he says that and it is a game i know he has never p[layed i lose the first match or let him get close to beating me(much more likely because i love a huge come from behind victory) then second match/game/round i dominate him.
There are very few games he can beat me in. There are some he can give me a good run for my money in though.

If i am playing with younger kids or older parents i tone down my game play because i want them to have fun and because it is fun to teach them how to play.

[AB Positive]

I let my ex beat me a couple times in Magical Drop 2/3 just to see if she'd get interested... then she'd beat me when I played for real... took me a good three months to catch up to her. Last time we played I rolled off a decent winning streak on her, until she got some new strategy and trashed me in the last game, heh.

Against friends in fighting games... no mercy. I've had deep bruises on my knees/legs from when friends would charlie horse me after killing them in a 2D fighter. My friend Dan still refuses to play any street fighter against me :-D

-AG

[Hep038]

Against friends? No way! But when I play my Dad in Tecmo Bowl or RBI , sometimes I don't let him win but I do maybe make some questionable decisions to let him back in the game. But the one game I will crush him in every time is Sea battle for INTV. He has never beat me in that game and about 15 years ago swore to never play it again. For some reason I like having that over his head. But I think their is a part of me that would like for him to beat me fair and square in that game just to see his face. And I know if he won what he would do. Sometimes when he beats me at one of the games I am better at, he will "retire as champion" and not play that game for a while.

[QBert]

i go easy on my kids usually, but sometimes Im all out crazy and beat the hell outta them!

When we play any Hockey games thou, I watch out because my oldest(7) can beat me damn near everytime!

[ubersaurus]

I don't know how to hold back. There've been times where I've deliberately gone for more roundabout ways to win to keep my friend from thowing a nit-fit, but as a general rule, people gotta earn their wins on me.

[Garry Silljo]

I like to Handicap myself but never ouright let them win.

[scooterb23]

There's this kid we babysit sometimes. He loves playing games like Madden and Tony Hawk, but he doesn't have all the coordination yet. So I always try to make sure I fall down a lot, or don't complete passes and such, to keep the games close, but eventually I always pull off a couple of cool moves so the kid goes "Woah cool how did you do that??" I show him how to do the cool move...he gets more knowledge of the game. and I end up getting the victory.

Win win situation in my book. I can only do this for another year or two though...he's starting to get good at Tony Hawk.

[hezeuschrist]

Any chance I get to prove that I'm better at video games than small children I GRAB WITH AN IRON FIST AND NEVER LET GO.

Actually, the only multiplayer game I play anymore is Halo 2, no mercy for anyone, ever.

[NE146]

My wife doesn't play videogames.. you kidding? LOL

But have I let anyone else win? Of course! It used to be in Street Fighter 2 if an opponent is obviously weaker, I tended to always make them win the 2nd round. It made their quarter go further ;)

But in general, winning in videogames doesn't mean very much to me.. unless I'm paying for it :P

[Cmosfm]

i go easy on my kids usually, but sometimes Im all out crazy and beat the hell outta them!

Don't forget, we're talking about video games here.

LOL

[punkoffgirl]

If I'm playing my niece (who is 6), then yes. I'll even help her out so she can win. It's more important to me that she enjoy the game.

Anyone else is pretty much up for grabs :)

[Barbarianoutkast85]

Depends what game if its Dr. Mario or Tony Hawk then F it I go all out to show off if its other games and im winning all the time i try to ease up a lil bit just so the other people dont get pissed and stop playing.

[autobotracing]

Im out to win!


While playing ddr I will usually play at a higher lever than who im playing .


Or let them use the controller and still own them :evil:

[Wily]

No mercy! Play well or lose 8-)

[Pantechnicon]

I used to sometimes "do the job" (as they say in wrestling) when playing things like Soul Calibur or War of the Monsters with my 7-year-old son. But he's starting to really come into his own as a gamer so I don't really need to be that lenient anymore.

Other than my little boy my gaming endeavors are solo, but if I had someone near my own age to play things with...nah...I'd smoke `em every time. :rockets:

[Quickclaw]

My six-year-old nephew always "beats" me in Blades Of Steel and Bases Loaded.

[Lovely Assistant]

Well, one time, me and my brother were playing Soul Calibur 2 for the X-Box, I was just kicking his ass. I let him win about 5 games. Ending total was like 50 to 10. Of course his girlfriend showed up and started showing no mercy.

[TRM]

My brother and I used to con my dad into playing the Nintendo 64 Mario Kart with us sometimes. We would always take a solo lap, backwards, forcing us to complete an extra lap. This would give my dad the boost he needed to beat us some times...though we would still win sometimes too.

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh boy...well, I didn't exactly let somebody win, but a while back I played Goldeneye a bit with friends...my gosh, they were horrible. I was getting embarassed at being so much better. I'd open a door and watch their screen a s remote mine would fly out (Archives map, great for this sort of thing!)...and let them run away.

Then again, I was beat by a kid (a VERY good little kid) at the game, close call though. Amazing that this guy was playing the game in, er...2001 or so.

[Menacer]

None of my friends will ever touch SSX. They have barely played in single-player, so even my mediocre skills totally destroy them. It's really, really hard to screw up enough to let them win, so often times I'll just go ahead and destroy them. I'm sad that nobody will play against me. :(

As an interesting side story, my friend was once playing his then-girlfriend in a series of Dr. Mario games. Now, he's really, really good at such games. He destroys anyone we know at Tetris, Dr. Mario, Klax, etc. They played two-player Dr. Mario often, and this time was apparently no different than the others. Sometimes he'd toss a few games to her, sometimes he'd completely destroy her.

Well, this time, he beat her in a somewhat close game, and as soon as she lost, he jumped up and in a joking manner yelled "F***ing Owned!" You have to understand, our group of friends banter back a forth like that sometimes, so we never really get offended by outbursts like that. Unfortunately for him, she did. In short, that relationshipment didn't last very much longer. :/

[Kid Ice]

I don't let others win because that's humiliating. Rather, I give them a chance to win by playing hyper-agressively. Like if we're playing Tekken 3, I will try to win the match using only Frankensteiners, without throwing any punches or anything else. Or if it's a football game I'll go for a hail mary on every play. This gives the newcomer a little bit of a chance to get used to the game before I really start playing.

[slip81]

The only types of games I play with my girlfriend are fighters and racers, and she can hold her own in both so I don't really have a problem with that. When my friend was first getting into Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64 (he never really played videogames up to that point) I went easy on him till he learned, now we're pretty evenly matched.

[joshnickerson]

The only current gen game my sister is interested in is 1080 Avalanche. She usually gets annoyed when she loses a lot of races in a row, so I'll occasionally take a dive just to keep her interest up.

Interestingly enough, every time we race on the hardest track of the game (Sick With It?) she ALWAYS beats me for real. No clue how.

[Mr.FoodMonster]

double post

[Mr.FoodMonster]

I never let anyone beat me, unless its just my sucking at the game. All or nothing man!

[crazyjackcsa]

I never go easy on opponents. That way when my fiance beats me, she knows that she beat me fair and square. If we are playing a fighting game however, I will not play cheap even if it means losing. I will also pic characters that I'm not as good at.

[youruglyclone]

I cut people slack male or female simply because I would like them to play me again in the future

[classicb]

Not on Tecmo Super Bowl

I always* beat my friends and I let them pick my team and sometimes I'll even play with my backups or only kick fieldgoals.

*one time my friend beat me I was the Cardinals and he was the Bills and he won and that was a little over a year ago and he still won't play me again. He said he wanted to retire on top.

[izret101]

I will also pic characters that I'm not as good at.
I do this too.
I told my cousin and brother I could beat them both with every character in SSBM. I did so. With out losing.
I have done the same thing in all the Mortal Kombats on Genesis and SCII on Xbox
I use to be able to do this to both of them on MvC2 on DC but i let my bro play to much and he got to good with a combo of people so he gets me if i don''t mirror his team or use my own team.


While my dad was still rusty at Centipede and Asteroids i would die at a few thousand points so he would get high score after me.
I got him back into the swing of things quite quickly. We both kept one uping eachother until we maxed out between 500,000 and 750,000.
There are a few times we might have gone even further. We use to play alot.

[Nez]

I'll let em win. Specially if they cant handle losing tooo much. My sister wont play video games, becoue after a game or two she hates me or the game. :/

[bargora]

Sure. I've taken a dive plenty of times in Combat and Maze Craze. More often, though, if I know I'm more experienced at a game I'll casually let the other player get out to a good lead and then see how close I can get to coming back. Keeps it fun for both sides (unless I actually do come back, I guess).

[Leo_A]

I let people win sometimes.

I've even let people win large online races before that can take a couple hours to run (In games such as Grand Prix Legends) to reward teammates for things they've done to help me in the past. Also let someone win a league race at Michigan Speedway in NASCAR Racing 2003 Season once when I had made a joke earlier about them being a wrecker, and he took it the wrong way and got mad. Him thinking he won had to have improved his mood some (I've won nearly 150 league races, and about 800 other online NASCAR/Grand Prix Legends races, so winning isn't special anymore). :)

[Xexyz]

I show no mercy to my sister in Dr. Robotnik's Lean bean Machine. I still manage to beat here when she's on level 1 and I'm on 5. She's not too hot with chaining yet. I definately need to get Puyo Pop Fever for GC.

[qbertandernie]

ill admit it. ive taken dives before. especially if its a new girlfriend...and then you can score by admitting it when they later say 'you let me win'...score at the game i mean...or something..

my current girlfriend and i had a run on surround for 2600. for some reason i love that game. its so basic, and you cant really kick someones ass...if youre both pretty good you can fill a screen and even average players can win sometimes. anyway, at first i would 'accidentally' turn into my own line and lose, but i always seemed to win on rounds. then she began to learn the game, and i really had to try to beat her.

tetris? i get stomped all the time.
dr. mario? depends on the day...usually i play one level up, but we start in double digits.
tecmo stackers? somehow she gets chains and destroys me...

notice a trend? she only plays puzzle games....

as an aside, i think my 'let em win' percentage is going to skyrocket here in the next few years. my niece(who is not yet one year old, actually, i think shes 5 months) has started 'playing' already. shes got instincts! my brother plays with her on his lap a lot, and was having trouble in his game(i think it was hockey). he looked down and she had the analog stick in her hands and was moving it around! she might turn out ok after all...

[goatdan]

I have taken dives, but generally my wife realizes that I'm losing on purpose... so I invested money in games that we could play cooperatively, like Tengen Tetris. Oddly enough, after a few months of it, we haven't touched it since. I think that was the last video game she played with me.

The only game I could never let her win was (real world) Chess. No matter how badly I played, she would end up doing moves that I had to take advantage of or she wouldn't have learned not to do them. After racking up about 75 wins, that's another game that hasn't been touched :(

She kicks my ass regulary in Scrabble and Upwords though...

[DynastyLawyer]

I will also pic characters that I'm not as good at.

Past-time of a REAL MAN!

Gotta pull your punches on the visitors if they can't keep up. Let's face it: You've spent 40+ hours with the game, and they haven't.

[Videogamerdaryll]

Post subject:

Do you ever "let them win"?

Yup,Most of the time....or they'll never come back and play again.
My friends are all sore losers.

I'll let them win,then I'll beat them,they'll get pissed .I'll then let them win before they leave...(that,they do not know)

Some games though I just can't beat my friends at.

My wife however is great at games and beats me at lots of games.

[JJNova]

Alright...please hold back your laughter.

Animal Crossing....
I have 80k in bells, but don't pay off my loan because it's the wifes game (I owned it before we got married) and think it would be nice if she was the first person to get the Statue in her town for repaying her debts. Sometimes I give her hints, and pretend that I am surprised by it also. For instance, I told her, "You should see if you can catch the bees" Sure enough, first try. She got a bee.

I have been playing for 2 years (Not in this one town) and have yet to catch a ^*^(*^*^ bee!

[shopkins]

In the rare situation where I'm better at the game than the other person, I let them win a few once in awhile so they won't get discouraged and give up. My 10-year-old cousin is spastic at Halo II, so I focused on the other better players in a slayer match and cut him some slack.

If the person is as good as me or better, I go all out.