Game nights are great ways to make and keep friends.

Game nights are more about ritual than who wins.

Make room at the table for others to play as well.

I'm not much of a gambler. I tell people I gamble on startups and the stock market.

In high school, my friends and I played a lot of board games and cards. Mostly it was an excuse to drink cheap Black Label beer and smoke Camel Lights until well past 2 a.m. I was never any good at most of the games. We never played for money, only for shots of Jägermeister for the losers. Yeah, that stuff was big in the '80s.

It didn't matter who won. What mattered was that we were all at the table together.

Not much has changed. These days I play cards with family, and we put up some money, counted in quarters, for whoever wins at the end. I've been in a couple of fantasy leagues, but they never grabbed me. Mine were online, and I never got any sense of brotherhood from a screen.

Sports betting apps have made gambling easier than ever, and for a lot of men that's a real problem. But the problem isn't the bet. It's betting alone.

Why Apps Can't Replace the Table

The American Institute for Boys and Men has been tracking what happened when sports betting moved onto our phones. In a recent policy brief, its researchers point out that in just eight years, legal sports betting went from a niche activity in Nevada to a mass-market product on every smartphone. Today, nearly all bets are placed online.

What drove that growth? Frictionless apps, built on the same playbook as social media: Remove every obstacle, reward you at random, and ping you to come back.

Game night runs on friction. Somebody has to find a night that works, clear the kitchen table, and bring the drinks. Somebody has to settle whether it’s quarters or bragging rights.........

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