I am still this way a bit. Really it boils down to perspective.

For me I broke it down like this

1. You get angry about losing because it makes you feel incompetent

2. I am allowed to enjoy things casually, I don’t have to excel. I can excel at things that actually matter and have real world consequences, like work

3. There are a million factors that can feed into a loss; luck being one of them

This is a worthwhile struggle. Realizing you want to change your perspective is a great start.

For me it was a shift in perspective. It sounds trite, but basically, I turned “having fun” in to the thing I’m trying to win. So I still optimise and strategise, but sometimes it’s to make ridiculous moves that will make people laugh. Sometimes it’s to keep the game close, and sometimes it’s just to try and win. It all depends on who I’m playing with and the mood at the table

Reframe your goals. Is the game about winning or is it about having fun with your friends? Almost always the real goal is the latter, but our lizard brains don’t always realize this. Sometimes this may mean you choose to play differently because your goal is to maximize fun rather than win rate. And that way if you do lose you don’t feel bad because you still had a good time.

I just stopped competing. I’m not a good loser or winner haha. I really like cooperative games.

My partner also doesn’t like losing, and so we bought a few cooperative games instead. Now we both have a great time regardless, as we both win or lose together. Aeon’s End and Spirit Island are two games which we play which we particularly enjoy!

Losing gives you a chance to practice being happy for someone else. Remember board games especially are an excuse for you and a bunch of people you like to sit at a table and do something fun. If you can’t find joy in simply playing a game, just take a moment to appreciate the joy and excitement of the people around you.

Two approaches. Mixed success with both.

1. Choose games that don’t make you feel bad. This can mean playing more cooperative games, or it can mean offering to referee or sit out games you know will just piss you off. For me, the chance of winning isn’t appealing enough to outweigh the chance of ruining the game for someone else. It helps to identify what exactly it is about losing that makes you so sour. I have a hard time with games like Cards Against Humanity because the card combinations that are funny to me usually aren’t funny to anyone else because they didn’t go on the ADHD field trip with me to make those connections. It starts to feel like a popularity contest that I’m losing because my brain is wired wrong, and it’s hard not to take that personally.

2. Set different goals in the games you’re playing, and define ‘winning’ for yourself based on those goals. I used to get annoyed every time my friends pulled out settlers of Catan. I would do what made sense to me each turn, but I’d always lose anyway either to random chance or just not having enough RAM in my brain. Even on the rare occasions I won I often wouldn’t have fun with it because I spent so much of the game being frustrated. So I decided the only thing I cared about in the game was getting one of the bonus goals, usually ‘longest road’. That was much easier to focus on, and it took all the pressure off me to win. After a while it became kind of a running joke.

It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t happen in a vacuum either. Sore losers often have anger issues they’re not dealing with (I know I did!) and figuring that stuff out will help in more areas of your life than just board games.

Your mileage may vary.

Good luck!

My MIL. She would eat that shit up and make it 10x worse if she noticed Id be a sore loser. They were the only people we would play games with, my parents hate them. I love them, so I had to learn how to deal with it.

First I had to just keep it inside. Then I found out, I don’t actually care that much. As long as my partner loses as well though.

She’d make remarks, asking if I wanted to talk about how I lost, with a pity voice. Stuff like that.

Mainly just emotionally growing up along with developing a general self-awareness that being a sore loser makes you look pathetic.

I used to get way too mad playing online fighting games like Street Fighter 4, but thankfully I got over it by realizing a few things:

1. I wouldn’t dream of reacting that way to losing in person, because I know that it’s an embarrassing way for a grown ass man or woman to react to losing a game. It’s fine to play games competitively and anyone who does knows that it can be frustrating to lose. But you only end up losing twice if you make yourself look like a petty little shithead. I’m guessing you’re playing online games, but just ask yourself if you would act the same way in an offline setting–most people wouldn’t, so you probably shouldn’t.

2. You’re probably losing because you’re doing a bad job, and lashing out at yourself, your opponent or your teammates robs you of any chance to learn or improve.

I’m mostly a fan of fighting games and solo RTS, but I’ve played my fair share of CS, Apex and other team-based games. Solo games are simple. If you’re playing a fighting game and you’re getting hit by stupid annoying shit, it’s your fault for hitting buttons at the wrong time, for being on your back foot or not knowing how to block, plain and simple. If you’re playing an RTS and you get cheesed with a canon rush or some gimmicky shit, that’s also something that you need to be able to deal with.

If you’re playing a team game you might be tempted to flame your teammates for losing a match, but you either need to play with people who have the same level of skill and dedication as you, become good enough alone to carry a team of randoms, or simply care less about winning and focus on your own individual performance. Don’t waste your time and energy being a dick to your teammates whether you think they’re bad or not, if you’re not playing on an established team then you don’t really have any business taking that game super seriously and it reflects more badly on you than being good at a game. If you’re playing with random people, expect random results.

1. If you care about actually being good, then long-time improvement is much more important than short-term wins and losses. Nobody can win every time and just because you lose once doesn’t mean you’re bad. Conversely, it’s just as easy to get a fraudulent win off of a fluke or bad play from your opponent(s). So, if you really want to be good at a game you have to have other, better metrics for how well you’re actually playing.

If I’m playing Street Fighter for example, instead of focusing on individual wins and loses in a single play session, I’d much rather focus on improving some aspect of my gameplay that I know is weak. Maybe I don’t hit my anti-airs enough, so I want to focus on punishing jumps as much as possible. Maybe I’m not taking advantage of opening my opponent up enough, so I want to focus on consistently hitting bigger combos. I find that setting a goal for myself other than “just win as much as possible”, helps me to keep my head in the right place while actually improving as a player.

So, TLDR: If you wouldn’t act like a little bitch about losing in person, then you shouldn’t do it at home either because it’s a bad look and you’re making yourself a bigger loser for no reason. If you lash out at your opponent or teammates for losing instead of reflecting on your own performance, then you’re just doing yourself a disservice when it comes to getting better. And finally, winning and losing doesn’t mean shit compared to actually making sure you’re playing well, so change your metrics for success to things that you know are more meaningful.

If it won’t bother you in six months, its not worth getting bothered about.

• Think of the flip side: if you’re always winning, you’re never being challenged. You might as well be playing against children, the outcome would be the same. It’s only when you’re losing that you can learn something and get better.
• I recommend trying new strategies that you’re not sure about, probably guarantee yourself to lose, but try to understand why and whether there is anything useful to incorporate into a different strategy.
• Don’t let yourself go into “try-hard” mode until you’re sure you can handle a loss like an adult, that’s the real win. Until then, force yourself to lose repeatedly to get used to it.
• When a game starts, assume you’ve already either won or lost based on your current skill level and the luck you’ll have during the game, and focus instead on learning something new that will help you to win the next match.
• Lastly, be happy for your opponent just like you would be happy for a friend having good fortune.

These are all skills I had to develop to combat ladder anxiety in SC2, or being sunk in SoT. In SC2, there would be stretches where I would win 10 in a row and feel like I wasted my time because I didn’t learn anything. What good is winning 10 times just because my opponents blundered? Not like I have anything to be proud of or to use to win future matches.

“I never lose, I either win or learn.” - Nelson Mandela

You don’t like to lose? Guess what the other person doesn’t like to either. Try being happy for them when they get a win, instead of down on yourself for losing. Learn from any mistakes you made or learn how they were able to win.

No one wants to play with someone who always beats them.

I just lost the game. And now you have.

I think you have all the elements you need to switch your attitude towards games, so first off, well done on having the awareness to identify the issue and to begin asking how to go about remedying it.

Let’s talk about competitive games first and the attitude towards winning and losing

Recognise that you’re not going to win every game. You may even lose some games that looked like a sure bet, and you may win some games that looked like a certain loss. This is the inherent fun in many competitive games - the outcome is uncertain. If you stop trying and self sabotage, the outcome will always be certain, i.e. it will always be a loss.

If you recognise this, then every game is worth playing through to the end, and if your opponent is also decent, as most players are, they will recognise your efforts for trying your hardest.

You can also put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine that you’re playing a really close game and after battling hard, things have swung in your favour. You want to keep fighting through to the end to secure the victory. Imagine now that the opponent at this moment throws in the towel, and torpedoes the game. This hollows out your victory. Don’t be that player. Try to empathise with your opponent as someone who equally deserves a chance to enjoy the game and compete for a worthy victory.

Finally, learning how to turn a loss into a win is a skill in and of itself. Executing a comeback is sometimes more satisfying than a complete stomp, and more entertaining for all players of the game. You won’t practice that if you check out as soon as the tide is against you, and you’re depriving yourself of some more fun games.

Now let’s look at an attitude to improving your overall skill

Some people take the attitude of looking at their long term skill as a player, and this may include their rank, win/loss ratio or season stats. Since they take a macro view, one loss may not detract from their long term improvement and helps put their temporary upset at losing into perspective. Even if you lose games on average, you can set yourself a target to strive for. The losses will still suck, but if you self sabotage then you also scuttle your long term goals.

Part of this may be an approach of wanting to improve focussed skills within the game that don’t rely on win or loss, per se, but will help build your overall proficiency. This may be perfecting your early game setup and speed, or your ability to execute on a particular strategy, or to lay traps for your opponent. Since I don’t know what games you play I can’t suggest what that would look like, I’ve just used general terms. You need iterations to work out what’s effective, and a loss is useful information that a strategy, when followed through, may not be effective. If you don’t learn from that then you may repeat the same mistakes, leading to more losses in the future.

You may also take this as an opportunity to recognise shared mechanics across games, so that playing a game is a chance to improve at others, too. Does this game have a similar economy to other games you’ve played, or hand management, or push your luck elements.

Now let’s look at an attitude of enjoying the game for its own sake

If you and your opponent are giving it your all, then sometimes the whole aspect of win/loss can dissolve away, and be replaced with sheer enjoyment of trying your hardest regardless of the outcome. Trying to wrack your brain when you’re behind and wring out every possible mechanic or avenue for victory can be just as exhilarating as trying to hold onto a seemingly unassailable win. Trying to find that flow state where you don’t care about the outcome is worthwhile, I hope you can seek it out.

Finally, don’t mourn your defeat, instead, celebrate your opponent’s victory

You tried every trick in the book, and they still won. Wow, that’s impressive! After the initial sting of loss, congratulate your opponent and turn their victory into your own. Compliment their strategy! Ask them how they managed to pull off that trick on the third turn. Ask if they have any tips, or how they spotted the gaps in your plans. If they’re a gracious winner, they will be happy to talk shop when the round is over. If you share in their win, you make up in some way for your loss, rather than doubling down on those negative feelings.

This goes especially for boardgames or games where you know the other players and opponents. If they’re your friends or family, then you should be happy that they’re happy and they’ll in kind work to assuage your upset in defeat rather than letting you sulk.

I realised this because I play a lot of boardgames with a good friend, and as soon as the scores are tallied, the first thing we always do is congratulate one another for a good game and immediately turn to talking about how one another played and what we’re going to try next game. It turns even a competitive game into a team effort where we’re working together to eke as much enjoyment out of the game as possible, and push one another to try harder next round.

So yeah, share the joy don’t dwell on the woe, and you’ll turn every win into something to be celebrated together.

I won’t talk to playing cooperative games, as other posters have addressed that. Putting yourself as a me/them into an ‘us’ game can divert your pastime to something more productive, but it may not break down your ‘sore loser’ problem enough that it wouldn’t be an issue when you return to competitive games.

If you want a good video, I like Otzdarva’s explanation of how not to get ‘tilted’ in online games.