Nancy Sacks gets together with friends every Monday to play mah jongg. Participating in board and card games not only offers social benefits, but can keep your brain healthier, reduce stress, and possibly even help you find things you’ve lost, according to research. Photo by Christopher Myers

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Since 1974, Nancy Sacks has had a standing Monday evening engagement. The 66-year-old realtor gets together with five other women for a weekly mah jongg game.

When Sacks began this tradition, she and the other women were young mothers who all belonged to the same philanthropic organization. Forty-two years later, some of the players have moved on (Sacks and her friend Sue Belle are the originals), and their kids are now grown. But the Monday night “mahj” tradition lives on.

“The game is fun, and it’s a bond of friendship,” said Sacks. “We’re all girlfriends, and this is a time for us to spend together and share our news.

“Plus, playing games [Sacks also plays in a weekly canasta game] is good for my brain and gives me something to occupy my time,” she added.

Board games (or to use the broader term, tabletop games) refer to games that are normally played on a table or other flat surface, and can include card games, dice games and tile-based games, such as Scrabble.

Once in a slump because of the proliferation of video games, board games are enjoying a surge in popularity. Sales of board games grew an astonishing 56% from 2014 to 2015, and sales of card and dice games grew 75% in the same period, according to ICv2, which tracks industry sales.

New games are continually being created, but some of them have their inspiration in perennial favorites. The developer of Qwirkle, for example — a tile-laying game in which players lay square wooden tiles directly on to the table to form lines showing matching shapes or colors — was inspired by Scrabble and the players’ ability to score on more than one word with a single move.

Capitalizing on the popularity of these games is the rise in board game cafes — casual restaurants or bars with a modest entry fee that stock a wide variety of board games that patrons can play as long as they like.

The cafes appeal to people who not only enjoy playing games, but are looking for a more in-person connection; something they can’t get from, say, their Words with Friends sessions (a word game played on smartphones, tablets and via Facebook).

While a recent search doesn’t reveal any dedicated board game cafes in Baltimore, many coffee shops and restaurants have board games available for their patrons, or encourage them to bring their own and settle in for a few hours. You can also join existing board game groups at your local senior center, or start your own.

Multiple benefits

Dick Fulton, who is 88 and lives at the Edenwald Retirement Community in Towson, enjoys his twice-weekly backgammon games. For several years, Fulton invited a few other men to his apartment on a weekend afternoon to enjoy an informal game. That group is still ongoing, but now Edenwald itself sponsors a weekly game for anyone who is interested.

Fulton said he has been playing backgammon all his life. “I learned from watching my father and his friends play,” he recalled. Fulton enjoys the fact that backgammon is a quick game that involves both a certain amount of luck as well as strategy. “Although it’s 95 percent luck,” Fulton added, laughing.

According to Fulton, playing games like backgammon, and doing his word jumbles and Sudoku, helps keep his mind sharp.

Research bears this out. A study conducted by the Rush University Medical Center and Illinois Institute of Technology reports that mental activities like reading, writing and playing games can contribute to a healthier brain in older adults.

And Health Fitness Revolution Magazine cites these health benefits of playing board games:

For Pollitt, chess is a game you can “get lost in.” “It takes your mind off things,” he said. “Once a week, for three hours, I forget about everything else. It’s all about the chess.”