7 wonders duel is a lot of fun. Feels similar to regular seven wonders but tweaked enough to be it’s own game.

Cribbage.

Jaipur and patchwork

Here are my top 5 2 player specific games:

1. Radlands. Mean as nails card based lane-battler with amazing components and art, easy rules, and tons of cool abilities on each card.
2. Beer and Bread: easy to learn resource management and hand-passing to bake and brew even amounts of bread and beer. Simple components and tons of fun!
3. 7 Wonders: Duel. Perhaps the best 7 wonders iteration ever
4. Boop: simple rules but very thinky game with cute components, cats pushing each other off a bed. Much deeper than you’d think!
5. Patchwork. It’s basically a meme to recommend this one but it’s a fantastic polyomino game that’s tougher than it looks.

MageKnight plays well with 2 players

Jaipur and Targi.

Learning the top quality Netrunner gameplay. (currently through Null Signal Games, System Gateway starter deck)

Also great at 2P are Innovation, and Port Royal.

Don’t know if it counts as a board game, but Hive is great.

Battleship

Everdell or Ticket to ride.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_(board_game)

My wife and I have been playing a lot of the 2 player varient of The Crew this month. Works really well with the “Jarvis” third player and makes for a good quick game to reel through a few missions of.

It almost feels like cheating to say so, but Chess.