Fun and hatred.

I've heard it attributed to Erma Bombeck -- though I can't track down the quote -- that one should never marry someone until they've played the board game Monopoly together, because that's how you can see the true person within. 

That's pretty good advice. Someone who is cruel and ruthless in meaningless things may be very cruel and very ruthless when it counts. Some women look for that in a man -- a guy who's a killer, who will protect and provide -- only to find out that he will cut them off at the legs when it suits him, too. On the other hand, some women want a nice guy who couldn't care less who wins or loses, and then get furious when he turns out to be a couch potato. 

Monopoly can be illuminating. 

Board games can teach us a lot. One of the reasons that people like myself who love words are so frustrated by Scrabble is that, as my wife noted, it's not really a word game. It's a math game. People with good vocabularies think they have an advantage going in, but the mathemagicians who know how to slay with an X on a triple letter score and always know how many of each letter tile are likely to still be in the bag are the ones who win. They can make up for their lack of words by -- completely within the rules -- hogging the official Scrabble dictionary while they scan their letters. They're not looking to get rid of that Z. They're looking for a way to get set up by you to dump it on the triple word score next time. Because it’s not the killer word that counts, it’s the killer score.

All this is very educational, but for those who really want to know how evil their friends and loved ones can be, I still say that you can't beat Avalon Hill's classic, Diplomacy. It is the king of bad relations. 

1976 edition

Forbes magazine called the game board "the map that ruined a thousand friendships," and I'd say that's being nice. The goal of the game, for up to seven players, each representing a pre-World War I nation, is to take over Europe, which means capturing eighteen of the thirty-four major cities (as supply centers). There are no dice, no cards, just moves and alliances. All moves are written in secret and played simultaneously.

I believe that it is impossible to win this game without screwing someone over. 

There's no way. You can only survive for any time by making alliances, and if your alliance vanquishes the other alliance(s), no one player will yet control enough of the map to win. Someone's gotta go down, and the best way to do it is a surprise attack, when you can mortally wound your former friend and he cannot stop you. We called the game Screw Your Buddy.

I've played the game many times, and it's ugly. It’s the only game I have ever seen end with someone's announced move being "I flip the game board." In this game it's routine. There are no good losers in Diplomacy. There are no good winners. Just sore losers and sore winners. No one's happy.  

It's amazing.

The last time I played, I started out with an ally who said we would experiment with the noble idea that we would be pals straight to the end. Blood oath to not attack each other. I took advantage and made an unusual early aggressive move on an opponent. He didn't like it -- basically, he didn't want me as an ally, he wanted to control my country -- so he immediately stabbed me in the back. I swore the game off after that. The hatred would have made Emperor Palpatine look like Tweety Bird.  

If you want a classic game that tests the mettle of up to seven people, try Diplomacy. Even people who are weak on strategy can do well if they're good on personality. Of course, you may never speak to one another again, but c'est la guerre.