Cluedo, Chess and Scrabble
Although its not a board game, connect-4 is wonderfully addictive!

I want to try Settlers of Catan.

Chess (especially variants like Penultima) and Chinese Chess are probably my other favorites.

Camelot, Shatranj, Morabaraba.

A wonderful game called "Conquest" by the late Donald Benge (died in 2007 thanks to a drunk driver). It was self-published and it's future is uncertain - but if you can get a copy it's worth it. One website describes it as follows:
"Conquest was designed to be a diceless wargame. Set in ancient times, Conquest has players utilizing troops, cavalry, chariots, elephants and ships to try to capture their opponents' fortifications or occupy the "quest" locations. The map is designed for point-to-point movement, and play hinges on a pool of action points that each side uses to move its different units. Conquest comes in two versions, one designed for four players and one designed exclusively for two."
Link: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/67
It's got plenty of complexity to always be new and fresh - and yet it's rules are simple and a game can be played in a couple of hours.

I also play chess. Connect-4 is pretty good, figlesquidge - check out "Four Score" - a 3-D version of it. Very good game.

Sorry - "Score Four" is the correct name, not Four Score:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Score_Four

Here's a very good description with pictures of Conquest... it's in German - but Babelfish works pretty well in translating it.
http://www.grand-conquest.de/

Axis & Allies (all versions), Feudal (AH Bookshelf Games), and virtually any of the Mayfair and European games. I'm into boardgaming...

settlers of catan = win
axis and allies D Day
sanctuary

Axis and Allies. Me and a friend from college still get together every new and then to waste a day playing a major victory.

Stratego: Just good fun.

Chess: I'm just good enough to realize how bad I actually am.

Chess
Settlers of Catan
Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico, LAWL, awesome inside jokes there.
Setttlers of Catan
Monopoly

Twilight Struggle
Third World War (GDW)
Twilight Imperium

Go
Hex
Streetsoccer (go to www.littlegolem.net if you want more information about this)

Chess - I've been playing for 6 years
Monopoly
Risk

Settlers and Carcassone are pretty keen. Panda - try this site for an online version of the former: http://games.asobrain.com/

My wife visits the game shop on a regular basis, so #3 is constantly shifting ;)

I always liked Don't Wake Daddy.

Kingmaker. Haven't played in years. I miss games with 40 pages of legalese masquerading as a rule book. I miss having the time to play them even more.

Is poker a board game?

I also like all the standard ones; risk, monopoly, chess, etc

Kestas! A fellow poker player! Do you play tourny or cash or both? I'm a cash player. I play once or twice a month to supplement my income and take some money from the fish at the Grand Victoria in Rising Sun, IN.

Go is, in my view, possibly the finest two player game without a luck element involved.

It's considerably more challenging than chess, and i'm not sure there's a game which is more genuinely analagous to human conflict.

How is Go amy more analagous to human conflict than other games? Just by virtue of being an abstract game about controlling territory?

And how is it 'considerably more challenging than chess'?

Serenissima

also:

Chess
Catan
Axis & Allies
Race for the Galaxy

(of course, saying that go is better than chess is up for debate as they feature differing styles of thought)

He didn't say Go was better than Chess, but that it was 'considerably more challenging', which although presented as a fact is more of a value judgement.

Ok, maybe I should have said "Considerably more challenging to compute". There is no real prospect of developing a computer programme which can come close to defeating top Go players any time soon. They've had Chess on the ropes for a while now.

I would argue that more challenging to compute can safely be shortened to more challenging, as the only element of the two games which is not computational is playing the pieces.

As for the human conflict thing...

It's pretty difficult to write a pithy couple of lines to entirely substantiate the view that I hold, which I shared more with the intention of prompting people to look into the game than to prompt requests that I justify my stated view.

I guess a simple way of putting it, is that I cannot think of a single argument, fist fight or full blown war, which I cannot see
reflected in instances that occur on the Go board.

This isn't an invitation for people to attack my opinions, though I doubt i'd be as keen on Diplomacy as i've become if it bothered me when they do ; )

Perhaps, Chess fans, or those who think other games are more like real conflict, might like to explain their position rather than just challenging mine?

Happy gaming folks.

According to wikipedia there are are a number of reasons that make Go more challenging to program than Chess, such a larger board size (19 by 19 instead of 8 by 8) and more options for the first move (55 moves for Go, and only 20 for Chess). There were a number of of other reasons listed too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go
As far as which game is more challenging, I think that would depend on who you were playing.

I don't really know what I am talking about here, but I think that programming a computer to play Diplomacy against high level human players would be far more difficult than Chess or Go - way further into the realm of science fiction.

I have played amateur chess and go, and left chess because I felt it was too arbitrary. It felt like a game with... well, weird rules, weird pieces, and so on. Also you depended a lot on your opening knowledge, after a certain level, and I didn't felt like learning a lot of that.

When I learned about go.. well, it's different. It's rules feel more natural. I don't think it maps human conflict better than chess (none of them does it pretty well) but the overall feeling of the game is better (for me). For the programming part, Go has a lot of intuition in it, some things you (you or the best players!) just know are right, but couldn't really explain why should be so, program-wise. Strategy is hugely deeper than in chess (the bigger board accounts for a large part of it, of course), and that's the stronger point against computerized players.

Spyman, Diplomacy would be a Turing test for a computer player, and doesn't fit the "game" part, but the language processing and reasoning part.