There was a time when dad would want to play Backgammon as a way to talk about how things are going. It was nice, but I need to brush up on the rules.
Same thing with chess, though that one has probably been even longer since the last time I've played it. I actually started playing dice after I learned the rules from the 1st Yakuza game, but that's also been years.
I think the only game I could get heavily invested in would be blackjack. I've tried to do mahjong on the iphone, but I could never really get the rules because sometimes I get stumped when they don't want me to pair some blocks together.