Deal the Cards, Delay the Decline: Strategy Games and the Aging Brain

The Oasis Health Journal · Submitted June 28, 2026 · 8:14 PM ET

I used to think a deck of cards was just a way to lose money to my uncle. Turns out it might also be a way to keep your brain. That is a better return than my uncle ever offered.

Here is the strange thing researchers keep noticing. Older adults who regularly play card games, board games, and other tabletop games tend to hold onto their thinking skills longer than people who do not. Not dramatically. Not magically. But consistently enough that the same finding keeps showing up in different countries, with different people, across decades.

The French quietly ran the longest game night in science

In Bordeaux, researchers followed 3,675 older adults who did not have dementia, and then they waited. For twenty years. (Twenty years is a long time to commit to anything that is not a sourdough starter.) About a third of them played board games regularly. Over those two decades, 840 people developed dementia, and the board game players had roughly a 15 percent lower risk of being among them.

Here is the honest part. When the researchers accounted for how sharp people already were and whether they were depressed at the start, that 15 percent edge mostly faded. Translation: the games may help partly by keeping mood up and minds busy, or the people destined to stay sharp were simply the ones who kept playing. Science calls this reverse causation. I call it 'the chicken is also the egg.'

It is not just one study with a baguette

Back in 2003, a landmark New England Journal of Medicine study followed adults over 75 in the Bronx. Among all the leisure activities they tracked, reading, dancing, playing a musical instrument, and playing board games were the ones tied to a lower risk of dementia. They built the study specifically to rule out the 'people who are quietly declining just stop playing' problem, which is the criticism every study like this gets.

Then there is Scotland, where researchers tested the same group of people, all born in 1936, again and again into their late seventies. The ones who played more analog games, things like cards, chess, crosswords, and bingo, showed less cognitive decline, especially in mental speed. Analog. As in, no screen. The kind of game where the longest loading time is your friend shuffling.

A 2016 review that pooled many of these studies landed in the same spot. Mentally engaging leisure activities were tied to a meaningfully lower risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. One study is an anecdote. A stack of studies all leaning the same way is a pattern.

Why a pile of cards might matter

The leading explanation is cognitive reserve. The idea is that a brain you challenge regularly builds a kind of buffer, so when age and wear start chipping away, there is more cushion before anything shows on the surface. A 2025 review made the case that everyday leisure is one of the real ways people build that reserve over a lifetime.

Games are sneaky good at this because they run several brain drills at once. You hold the rules in working memory, plan a few moves ahead, read your opponent, and rewrite the plan when it falls apart (it always falls apart), all while talking and laughing with an actual person across the table. That social part is not a garnish. Loneliness is its own risk factor for decline, and a good game is just an excuse to sit across from someone for three hours.

A game of Magic: The Gathering makes you manage resources, weigh odds, and bluff. A round of Pokemon with a grandkid is two generations doing pattern recognition at the same table. Even a big, chaotic deck builder like Dragon Ball is a workout wearing a costume, which is the only kind of workout most of us actually finish. (Keeping the cards safe in sleeves is optional, but your future self will thank you.)

The fine print, because there is always fine print

None of this proves that games prevent dementia. These are observational studies. They show that game players and healthy brains tend to travel together, not that one is pulling the other along. Nobody has run the trial where you assign half a town to twenty years of game night and check back later. (Somebody should. I volunteer the town.)

But here is the part I like. Unlike most brain-health advice, this one has basically no downside, costs about as much as lunch, and is actually fun. You will not pull a hamstring playing cards. The worst documented side effect is your uncle winning again.

The Oasis of Health keeps the games on the shelf next to the professional-grade supplements for the same reason. We think the unglamorous, well-made basics, done over and over, quietly beat the flashy stuff. We even make our supplements fresh per order instead of letting them age on a shelf, which means slower shipping and higher potency, the kind of trade that is worth the wait. A booster pack is not a prescription. It is a low-risk, evidence-adjacent reason to use your brain and see your people. Deal the cards.

This article is for education only and is not medical advice. Games are not a treatment for dementia or any other condition, and individual results vary. Talk with a qualified professional about your own brain health.

Sources

1. Dartigues et al. Playing board games, cognitive decline and dementia: a French population-based cohort study (BMJ Open, 2013)
2. Verghese et al. Leisure Activities and the Risk of Dementia in the Elderly (New England Journal of Medicine, 2003)
3. Altschul and Deary. Playing Analog Games Is Associated With Reduced Declines in Cognitive Function (Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2020)
4. Yates et al. Cognitive leisure activities and future risk of cognitive impairment and dementia: systematic review and meta-analysis (International Psychogeriatrics, 2016)
5. Beyond traditional proxies: the contribution of leisure to cognitive reserve and dementia (Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 2025)