What other board/card games do you like to play?

I'm personally a big fan of Days of Wonder, and play lots of Small Word and Ticket to Ride: Europe. I'm not a huge fan of Ticket to Ride and mostly play it because the rest of my family does, but Small World has a near-perfect ratio of strategy to luck so that the games are always interesting (with the randomized races and Last Conquest dice roll) while still feeling strategic. I'll be picking up Memoir '44 at some point. 

I unfortunately don't play Bridge (can't find anyone else who knows how to play or cares to learn), but I like playing Ten-Point Pitch and Gin Rummy. 

I like to play Foil. It's a word game which was one of the 3M Bookshelf games published by 3M (the tape company) long ago. You win by either having the most points at the end of a predetermined number of rounds of play, or by being first to earn an agreed upon number of points. There are letters on playing cards.  Through the familiar process of selecting and discarding from your "hand", the one who gets the proper cards to use them all in words of the legal length, "knocks", receiving points for being the one to knock. After the knock, the other players must work with whatever letters they now have in their hands. Letters that can't be used in a word are discarded for a one point penalty per discarded card. Players take the cards they have and make legal length words (legal word length is longer in each subsequent round) according to, first of all, whatever they are able to  do, and according to their strategy, since bonus points are awarded for such things as using all the cards in hand in one word, and making a word that nobody else can unscramble ect.. The players make their words, group the letters in discrete sets per each word, and scramble the words. Each player has a pencil and paper. At the signal, the egg timer is turned over, players reveal their (heretofore unseen by the others) scrambled words and everybody begins to unscramble everybody else's word. Two points awarded for every letter in a word you make. One point for every letter in a word you unscramble. Various bonuses.

I like this word game a lot, and way better than Scrabble, because potentially, one can make any word. You'e not limited to what's already on the board, or what space is available. This game plays far more smoothly than I was able to describe it. The more you play it, the more easily you unscramble your opponents' words. Lots of fun, a social game.

I like to play chess.

Magic is a fun TCG and I also like Mastermind.

I hear people talking about Magic frequently (especially in the chess world), but I've never played it.

Poker

Like chess, it's complex and full of players with different playing styles.  Unliek chess, there is the beta game, which is what types of decks people are playing more often than not, which cards are being used a lot, etc.  I find it interesting, even though I'm not that good at it.

'Nuff said, I like poker as well, but don't play frequently anymore.

Same

Wei Chi or Go.  Around 2000 years old.  If you run out of chess problems or want to work on something related to crises, think Life and Death problems of Go.  There are tons as in thousands of these problems around the internet.  This game activates the right hemisphere of the brain-big time.  If you want something intense that feels like a real knife fight emotionally, not that you would want this-try Go game.  I actually found that this game was so realistic it made coping with day to day problems such as traffic or basic interactions difficult so I had to play more conventional chess which activates the left hemisphere more and is less concerned with personal space issues.  

One of the reasons that chess really helps with stress is the way it trains your brain:  Specifically, it helps create order out of chaos(left hemisphere) and makes more of a priority not territory or personal space but how space relates not to ownership of the space but not getting killed.  This trains the brain not to be possessive of personal space but to not worry about for example whether people are constantly in your face, as in a big city.  Also, this activation of the left brain helps with time perception which is related to perception of motion:  Specifically it makes motion seem as less and time to be more free flowing at the same time.  All of these things allow chess to be very good at combatting stress.

Although I think that wei chi or Go is the superior game and would rather play it exclusively, I find that chess is not only fun but is superior to Go for combatting the little stressors of day to day living.  Chess cuts through all the nonsense that I am constantly forced to deal with(its in my face not by choice) and it wastes my time.  These things are very very annoying and chess takes me away from this crap.

I did play poker for a while but the conclusion I found on that game was that it was enjoyable and mentally challenging but after a while I felt like a statistics robot that was rewarded by having no emotion.  Somewhat boring, I may play again.

My mind just exploded when you discussed the way chess trains your brain.

@ Cyrofoam:  Ive thought a lot about hemispheric activation lately and come to the conclusion that each hemisphere processes time and space differently and different situations activate the brain differently and this can be interpreted according to previous conditioning.  For example, during endgame near checkmate in chess, this is largely right brain, like Go problems or playing Go period, and for some this can be either anxiety or exciting due to the vast open space and the feeling of near destruction.  But most of the time in chess, there is more of a calculation going on rather than position and open space, which I hypothesize may activate the right hemisphere and for me, may make for stress.  It is similar to driving on icy streets in traffic-the fear of things far away coming through open space and the feeling of time going by very slowly.  Again, all brain pattern activations which may or may not be interpreted as stressors.  Chess on the other hand, at least for me, makes my day go by much much quicker and yet makes each moment feel more "special" somehow.  All of this is very very complicated related to catecholamine production in the brain and interpretation by the individual through past conditioning related to biochemistry of the brain and how the structures are activated wholistically and sequentially of which I know nothing.

CyroForm*

Anyway, my mind is still exploding, most likely since I don't have a major in psychology/brain stuff degrees that sound sophisticated/etc.

like pontoon, black bitch or chase the ace, but most of all I love strip poker!

I like to distract myself from the purely logical game of chess with some wargames which have an element of luck. As I also like miniatures, I play a game called Infinity (check out infinitythegame.com if you are interested.)

With my less wargame-minded partner I like to play Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Carcassonne, Arkham Horror and Backgammon.

Mumblety peg and five finger fillet.

Never heard of those games :p

Othello [reversi].

I am hopeless at card games. I tried to learn bridge once but I found bridge clubs to be insular and selfish; nobody wanted to teach me how to play or even to tell me where else to go to learn.

Oh, Othello is a good one, too.

500 next best game to Bridge