2-player games

I've been dating a lovely young lady for about 3 months now, which means a bit more of the two player games than normal.

We started off with Carcassonne and Thurn & Taxis, branching into backgammon and cribbage. (We even dove into my old copy of Khet, aka chess+lasers!)

She decided to start a board game library again, beginning with one of the Carcassonne Big Box versions...5 expansions, enough for 6 players, etc. (Ah, we have it at both places now!)

She also picked up Lost Cities, Lords of Vegas, Hive, and Mr. Jack.

Lost Cities is a tight, 2-player only game that is one of the few games that was pulled by its publisher on Xbox Live. In 2008, it was nominated for best of XBLA 2008...and withdrawn before it could win. The turns are quick and full of choices - do you go for big points? Can you discard a certain card, without powering up the opponent? Do you skip steps to get done with that part of the game faster?

Depending on the speed of players, a game can wrap up in 20-30 minutes. Fun.

Lords of Vegas is 2-4 players, with a fair amount of gambling and real-estate management. We've modified the rules slightly to remove the bottom quarter of the deck, instead of pretending we can't count cards. Fast, light...no dense ideas to process. Easy game to teach to rules-averse players.

Hive is a tile-laying game, where you try to trap the opponent's queen bee. I think it is limited in play, but maybe fair when the players come to the game on an equal scale. It's like a shorter game of chess...but I don't recommend chess highly - therefore I don't recommend Hive quickly.

Mr. Jack, I thought would suffer from a similar fate. 8 characters running around London, controlled by the detective player and Mr. Jack. One of the eight is Mr. Jack's imposter, and the detective has to piece together which one it is based on in-game hints and the overall play of Jack. It's broken down into consumable chunks, with strong pacing and a lot of choices. It's my latest "favorite two player". I'm just hoping my turns don't take too long.