source: papercitymag.com

Don’t let the collection of board games collect dust under your bed. Playing them is a great way to spend a Friday night with your friends and family. Board games can not only keep you entertained, but they can also help you to relieve stress and increase mental agility.

Being concentrated and having fun with people you like can lower your blood pressure and improve cognitive function and memory. The best thing is that board games can also teach you how to think ahead. So, if you want to unplug yourself and improve your strategic thinking, check out a list of the best board games of all time:

3Scrabble

source: meeplelikeus.co

Scrabble is a legendary board game. It’s not only a lot of fun; it can also help you to improve concentration and learn new words. If you want to be the best of the best, feel free to help yourself by using an anagram solver: Unscramblex.com.

There are a lot of tricks that can help you to win at Scrabble. To boost your score, learn more two and three-letter words. Also, consider placing tiles in order to create common beginnings or endings. For instance, a lot of words in English finish with ‘-ing’, ‘-er’. ‘-ed’. This simple trick will help you to visualize your future options.

Before you start the game, plan how you will move toward bonus squares ( also known as ‘hot spots’).

Another trick is to look for single letters that you can add to existing words in order to make completely new ones. For instance, you can add ‘t’ to ‘come’ and it will be a completely new word that will help you to boost your score.

2Monopoly

source: wsgamecompany.com

A monopoly is not about luck. To win this game, you should come up with a strategy. The current Monopoly world champion winner – Norwegian student Bjørn Halvard Knappskog says that the most important thing is to keep cash flowing.

To get a better bargaining position, you should buy everything you can in the very beginning of the game. Later it will allow you to negotiate, trade, buy even more and then sell.

It’s recommended not to focus on buying the most expensive streets. You need to think small in order to generate cash flow. Look at Donal Trump- he’s started with something small at the beginning of his career. Do the same in Monopoly – get to the top step by step.

Another important advice is to build at least three houses on each street in town as soon as possible. If you buy all the houses, your opponents will not have a choice – they will be forced to buy overpriced real estate from you.

As you can understand, you don’t need to have a lot of cash in Monopoly. You need to learn how to invest money (and run the world!).

1The Settlers Of Catan

source: polygon.com

The Settlers of Catan was invented in the early nineties. In 1995, it was honored as the best board game of the year. Klaus Teuber, the creator of the game, still anonymously plays Catan online. Most people don’t want to play with him once he introduces himself so poor Mr. Teuber keeps his identity confidential whenever he plays.

If you want to defeat your opponents in Catan, learn a bunch of useful tricks!

First of all, make sure to choose the right trading partners. You should not give other players access to your resources in the game. In some cases, it will be better to take a bad deal from the bank rather than letting others win.

Secondly, diversify your portfolio and consider using the robber as a weapon. Your goal is to make yourself the only successful businessman in the city.

Keep in mind that there are two basic strategies in this game. The first strategy is focusing on wheat and ore and getting development cards (while building new cities).

The second strategy is building a lot of settlements. Consider combining these two strategies in order to win. On the other hand, make sure not to overextend yourself since other players might understand what you are doing.

At the end of your turn, try to have less than six cards. To do so, you might need to trade with your bank more often.

The bottom line

No matter what you choose, try to come up with the right strategy for yourself. If you want to shine bright like a diamond, learn board game design and development. Before you start playing, make sure you understand the rules. It’s obvious, but you can’t even imagine how many people play board games without seeing the full picture.

These days, big corporations make their employees play board games so that they can improve strategic thinking. Besides Monopoly and Scrabble, you can also play chess, Acquire, Carcassonne, Ravensburger Labyrinth, Agricola to boost your skills!