I Thought I Knew Who Won Game Night. I Was Wrong.
There’s a very specific kind of inner voice that shows up at game night.
It might not be loud or aggressive, but often it’s just… deeply incorrect.
“I always lose this one.”
Said casually (even if it’s just to yourself). Like it’s a known fact. Like it’s been peer-reviewed.
No notes. No evidence. Just vibes and a strong sense of personal narrative.
For years, this was me.And also my husband.And honestly, probably everyone we’ve ever played with.
That inner dialogue helped shape our discussions of which game we’d play and which would stay on the shelves.
We weren’t arguing, exactly. We were just… protecting our limited fun time by maintaining our own private versions of reality.
The Version of Events I Was Working With
In my head:
I was pretty solid at engine builders
he dominated anything with direct conflict
and there were a handful of games I “never” won (tragic, unfair, deeply suspicious; I am absolutely looking at you, Scythe)
This all felt extremely accurate.
Not proven, obviously.But confirmed in the way you confirm things when you’ve repeated them enough times to yourself.
Which is to say: not at all.
Then I Made One Small Mistake
I started writing things down.
(This is the same tracker setup I use for all my games—you can see how it works here.)
Nothing intense. No spreadsheets. No dashboards. No pivot tables making eye contact with me.
But I made a pretty PDF, labeled some grids and tables, popped in some star-ratings and a bit of pizzazz and wrote down:
what we played
who played
who won
Very chill. Very “this might be interesting later.” (With the surprising side effect of being wildly satisfying to use.)
And then, inevitably, later showed up.
The Reality Check
We were about to play a board game that I had mentally categorized as:
“One of those games I never win.”
You know the type.The ones where you sit down already emotionally prepared to lose, but in a charming, self-aware way.
“I don’t know why I’m even trying,” I thought to myself, shuffling cards like a woman wronged and already daydreaming about the game I’ll pick when it’s my turn to choose next—because I’ll definitely pick something I can actually win—when my husband said, without missing a beat:
“I’m pretty sure you won this last time.”
I laughed.Because that is simply not how the story goes.
So I opened the tracker.
Scrolled. Paused. Scrolled back up.
…and just stared at it for a second.
Because not only had I won the last game—
I had won three of the last five.
Oops.
I Would Like to File a Formal Complaint Against My Own Memory
This was… upsetting.
Not in a serious way.But in the very specific way where your brain has been confidently telling you a story, and then suddenly there’s documentation.
And the documentation is like:
“Hi. So. None of that is true.”
It turns out I didn’t “always lose” that game.
I just remembered the losses more vividly.
Because they were:
dramatic
annoying
narratively satisfying
And to be honest? If it wasn’t my favorite game, I probably didn’t even register the win. Which feels like a flaw in the system, but unfortunately the system is my brain.
Anyway. Those wins? Apparently, they were forgettable.Which feels rude, but okay.
This Is When I Realized Something Slightly Uncomfortable
We are all walking around with:
extremely strong opinions
based on extremely incomplete data
And then confidently sharing those opinions like they’re facts.
“I always lose this game.”“I’m really good at this one.”“You win every time we play that.”
Do we know that?
We do not.
We feel that.
And unfortunately, feelings are not known for their statistical accuracy.
What Changed Once the Board Game Tracker Existed
Here’s the part I didn’t expect:
Tracking didn’t make us more competitive. It made us… more precise.
Now when someone says:
“I always win this game,”
the response isn’t an argument.
It’s:
“Do you, though?”
And then—crucially—we can check.
Because this is where tracking your plays starts to get interesting—not just what you played, but what actually happens over time.
No spiraling. No debating. No trying to reconstruct a game from six weeks ago like we’re piecing together a blurry crime scene.
Just:
“Oh. You’ve won 2 out of the last 7.”
Which, for the record, means my husband will now play Dominion with me again—a game he had previously opted out of because I “always win deckbuilders.”
Reader, I do not.I just won twice in a row in 2022 and apparently that became canon.
Also, Some Humbling Discoveries
Since we’re being honest:
There are games I thought I was excellent at.
I am… not.
There are games I assumed I was mediocre at.
I am, apparently, quietly dominant.
And there are games we both insisted the other person “always wins,” when in reality, we’ve been trading wins back and forth like civilized adults this entire time. [or maybe this is where Dominion reference goes?]
It’s almost like the tracker revealed a version of reality that wasn’t curated for drama.
Rude.
Helpful, but rude.
If Your Game Night Lore Feels… Suspicious
If you’ve ever said:
“I never win this game”
“You always beat me at that”
“I’m pretty sure I crushed you last time”
…and you cannot back that up with anything beyond confidence and vibes—
you might not have a memory problem.
You might just not have a system.
🎲 That’s where the board game trackers come in.
They give you a clean, low-effort place to:
track wins
log plays
keep notes without overthinking it
and quietly dismantle your own inaccurate narratives
No spreadsheets. No weird pressure. No turning game night into a performance review.
Just… clarity.
👉🏼 Take a look at the Board Game Trackers here
Or, if you want to try it without committing to a full system yet:
👉🏼 Grab the Play It Cool sampler and see how it feels at your table
And the next time someone says, “I always win this game,” you don’t have to argue. You don’t even have to respond.
You can just… check.
