Cheating is a blight on board gaming. It's something that can harm any group, and something that few players would admit to. It ruins the point of most games, cheapens any victories, and can cause arguments. It's also worryingly easy to do.

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Plenty of games run on hidden information, or trust every player to arbitrate the rules. It's very easy for an ill-intentioned player to lie about that information, or fail to enforce the rules on themselves. However, some games make it even easier to cheat. Their design allows plenty of opportunities for a less-honest member of the group to take advantage.

10 Many Tables Don't Know Uno's Real Rules

A hand including a Draw Four in Uno

Uno is one of the most widely-played games. However, a great many tables play it without checking the rules. As such, several popular house rules have crept into people's perceptions of the game. Some are so popular that players think they're the rules as written. One notable false rule is players getting to stack Draw Two cards to force a player to draw. Another is that a Wild Draw Four can be played at any time.

In reality, Draw Twos cannot be stacked, and a Wild Draw Four can only be played when a player has no color-legal card in hand. If a group uses these rules in the knowledge that they're house rules, nobody is cheating. However, some players who know better can convince tables that they're the real rules, and use them to their advantage.

9 Escape From Colditz Actually Encourages Players To Cheat

An in-progress game of Escape From Colditz

Most games discourage cheating. The rules are there to be followed, and breaking them derails the game. However, some account for cheating in their rules. Escape from Colditz is one of these. It's a game about Allied soldiers attempting to escape a German prisoner of war camp. To represent the illegal nature of the Allies' activities, they are allowed to cheat.

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Players usually do this with their cards. They can only draw cards in certain circumstances, and can only hold so many at once. A player can use sleight of hand to draw cards when the German player isn't looking, or conceal how many they're holding. However, if the German player catches a player cheating, they can arrest one of their units.

8 Monopoly's Banker Is Infamous For Being Abusable

A photo of the Classic Monopoly game board.

Money is the most important resource in Monopoly, a game about buying and selling. It's also the domain of one player. In Monopoly, one person has to act as the Banker. They hand out money to the other players, and take it back for things like taxes or fines. The player's finances and their role as Banker are ostensibly unrelated.

However, the role is ripe for abuse. Players have to give the right amount of money to other players, who can check, but there's far less supervision for playing themselves. It's well-known that the Banker sometimes gives themselves an extra bill when they shouldn't. However, it can also be very hard to detect.

7 A Player Can Give Additional Clues In Codenames

A selection of covered and uncovered words in Codenames game

Codenames is a game of word association. A player has a number of random words they have to help their team guess. To do so, they can only give individual words. After they give an individual word, they're not meant to communicate any further. They have to keep quiet, and they can't communicate in any other way.

However, it can be very easy for a player to do. With something as simple as a smile or frown, they can indicate if something is a good or a bad choice. Notably, it's easy to do this by accident as well. Particularly nonsensical or funny guesses can break a player's poker face. However, players can do so deliberately to gain an edge.

6 Magic The Gathering Relies On Players Being Fair

Players competing in a game of Magic: the Gathering

Few games are as easy to cheat at as Magic: The Gathering. It has a huge number of rules, which the players are responsible for enforcing themselves. Some are purely mechanical. A player can falsely shuffle their cards to make their deck non-random. Alternatively, they can put down lands when they're not meant to, or lie about card costs.

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However, one of the easiest is to simply ignore effects in play. Magic: The Gathering is full of cards that impose effects on the game, and there can be many in play at a time. A player in bad faith might choose to simply 'forget' that they're meant to lose life when a creature dies, or that certain types of spell cost extra at that moment.

5 Players Can Take Extra Soldiers In Risk

Soldiers deployed across the world in Risk game

Risk is one of the best-known wargames. The only real strategy in it is to outnumber the enemy. As such, getting as many soldiers as possible is important. There are many ways to do this, including amassing territory, and completing sets of cards for additional reinforcements. Another way is to simply lie.

Players get a certain number of reinforcements at the start of their turn. Holding territories affects this number, as does holding entire continents, and using cards. Most players simply trust each other to get the correct number of reinforcements. A dishonest player might add an extra one or two, trusting that nobody will check, and grow their army unfairly.

4 It's Easy To Fudge Dice Rolls And Bonuses In D&D

A d20 rolling a Natural 20 in DnD.

Dungeons & Dragons uses a d20 to determine the outcomes of most actions. Players roll the d20, add relevant bonuses, and attempt to get higher than a target number. As such, cheating is as easy as saying a higher number than the player actually got.

Some tables encourage players to roll in the open, to encourage openness and fairness. Even then, however, players are unlikely to know every bonus another player gets. Cheating can happen even with open rolling. The Dungeons & Dragons community is split on whether 'fudging' dice rolls is cheating for a DM who does it.

3 Pandemic Has Some Easily-Forgotten Rules

The board, cards, and components from the original edition of Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative game. By its nature, it tends to dissuade cheating. If every player agrees on a rule that makes it easier for the group, then that's simply how the group wants to play. However, Pandemic is also well-known for having many rules that slip players' minds.

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These rules include players only being able to trade when in the same city, and player roles being randomized. Some groups choose to ignore these rules. However, a less-honest player can insist that they're the correct rules, and less-knowledgeable tables will believe them. This can cheapen the experience for everybody, unlike agreeing to it as a house rule.

2 Munchkin Is Set Up To Enable Cheating

Munchkin board game.

Munchkin is another game that incorporates cheating into its rules. The game is themed after rule-breaking Dungeons & Dragons players, and encourages players to lean into it. As such, its rules actively encourage players to cheat. Players are invited to argue over the meaning of any rule and try and angle it in their favor.

The nature of character-building and equipment also lends itself to cheating. A player could equip two Big items or a piece of equipment banned for their class, and other players would be hard-pressed to tell. However, a player does have to stop if they're actually caught cheating, encouraging players to be subtle.

1 Scrabble Players Can Lie About Words

An in-progress game of Scrabble

Scrabble is a game about words. It favors players with a larger vocabulary, and those who are best at seeing patterns in letters. However, the vocabulary issue also opens it up to cheating. A player is fully capable of putting a nonsensical series of letters on the board, and insisting that they actually spell out a word.

A well-meaning player might just assume that it isn't a word they know, and let the other player get an edge. This can also apply to incorrect spellings of words or spellings from other nations' dialects. It's not helped by Scrabble allowing particularly strange, obscure, or arcane words as legal plays.

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