MadWish Pro: We Made the Mistake of Letting Our Most Competitive Friend Choose the Cards

Our group has one friend who is genuinely incapable of letting anyone else have the last word. It does not matter what we are doing. If there is an opportunity to prove a point, win an argument or make someone else look ridiculous, he will find it. So when we decided to play MadWish Pro during a get-together, we probably should have known what was coming.

There were eight of us, and the evening had started quietly. Everyone was sitting around the table, talking about work, school and the usual things. We wanted something that would get everyone involved, and the different prompt categories made the game an easy choice for the group.

Our competitive friend, Daniel, immediately became very involved. He had a habit of remembering what everyone had said earlier, which made certain questions particularly entertaining. Whenever someone picked a card, he seemed ready to bring up something from a previous round.

The situation became funnier when the cards started coming to him. For someone who had been so enthusiastic about everyone else's turns, he suddenly became much more careful when it was his turn to participate. The rest of us noticed, and his reactions became almost as entertaining as the prompts themselves.

By the middle of the game, the entire group was paying more attention to Daniel's expressions than to the cards. Every time he picked one, everyone waited to see whether his confidence would survive. Eventually, a challenge caught him completely off guard.

After spending most of the evening encouraging everyone else to join in, he found himself in exactly the kind of situation he had been enjoying watching other people experience. He completed the challenge, but his reputation as the fearless member of the group definitely took a hit.

We continued playing for another hour. Daniel spent the rest of the evening trying to convince everyone that he had actually been playing strategically. Nobody believed him, although he did manage to make everyone laugh more than once.