The Optimum Game Selection Tool
Tony Ackroyd
United Kingdom
Brighton
E Sussex
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Remember those old "Choose Your Own Adventure" Game books? Well this uses that process to choose the game for you to play based on:
# Players
Game Genre you want to play
Game Weight (Light, Medium, Heavy, and a few Very Heavy)
Obviously the Weight category is massively subjective and Medium Wargames are heavier than Heavy Kids games, Gamer games are heavier than Family games, etc, so the Weight is varied based on the Genre you select.
I referenced a lot of BGG resources to help put this list together. Notably were the following geeklists, but there were many more:
Monty Circus's "Plays best with 2? 3? 4? 173? You tell me! Ultimate Optimum # of Players List"
jaquino's "75 GeekLists About Number Of Players: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8"
Robartin's "A Tribute to Ameritrash"
1000rpm's "Little Kids Games Championship: THE FINALS"
Dalestephenson's "The Thumbs Up List of Party Games"
YOU can improve this tool!
Writing this list certainly exposed my own areas of ignorance, in particular around Abstract games, Negotiation games and Heavy wargames.
1. If you can think of a game which you think would be an as good or better result than the one(s) you get then add a Comment to that geeklist item and state the other game, ideally with reasons. Unfortunately the popups don't let you add comments so you have to do this in the main list.
2. If some other games have been added as comments then give the game you like most a  to support that suggestion.
Many thanks to Boltongeordie for teaching me how to do dynamic links within a geeklist!
Many thanks to rooboomr for summarising the list in an Excel file as of 6 July 2007:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=25267
As an aside, if you haven't used "I don't know, what do you want to play?" to create yourself a set of cards of the games you own then you need to check this out now! Go to:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/28567 to understand it
http://www.superpowernosissies.com/games/idkwdywtp/ to do it
Update: The poll feature on games about ideal number of players has made it easy to add games to this list - thanks Aldie! Using that I have made some more lists you could use to solve the age-old problem of what game to play:
The Best Games for 1 Player
The Best Games for 2 Players
The Best Games for 3 Players
The Best Games for 4 Players
The Best Games for 5 Players
The Best Games for 6 Players
The Best Games for 7 or more Players
And my full reference geeklist for choosing games:
The Which Game to Play/Buy Metalist
If you liked this list, here is the version 2:
The Optimum Game Selection Tool v2.0
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Tony Ackroyd
United Kingdom
Brighton
E Sussex
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Heavy 7 player Party game
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Tony Ackroyd
United Kingdom
Brighton
E Sussex
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Heavy 8+ player Party game
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Tony Ackroyd
United Kingdom
Brighton
E Sussex
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1 Player Abstract Game
Light? go to 329
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Tony Ackroyd
United Kingdom
Brighton
E Sussex
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Light 1 player Abstract game
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Tony Ackroyd
United Kingdom
Brighton
E Sussex
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1 Player Dexterity Game
Medium? go to 331
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Tony Ackroyd
United Kingdom
Brighton
E Sussex
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Medium 1 Player Dexterity Game
(suggested by Jonny5)
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Posted Mon Jul 2, 2007 2:25 pm
Portland
Oregon
But...2 player/kids game/heavy = Lost Cities??? List cities is a kids' game?
I'd put Gulo Gulo in that category instead...or maybe Carcassonne, which is heavy for a kids game and plays all right with 2.
Vancouver
British Columbia
San Rafael
California
Edit: I'd like to suggest a card games option. For trick taking games and the like (things like Tichu, Sticheln, Mu, etc.)
Manchester
Connecticut
Seems to me that dex games can be any weight depending on the raw skill and experience of the players...
On that note (whether or not you're tired of hearing this at this point), fantastic work man! You get my thumb (and I'd give you more if I were a bgg mutant)
Brighton
E Sussex
The Optimum Game Selection Tool v2.0