Thread

1. SwellJoe · 1790971326 · focus · HN ↗

   I loved Stratego so much as a kid. But, I eventually couldn't find anyone to play with me because I crushed everyone, including my dad who was much better than me at chess. But, I never would have thought it'd be a game that models would have a hard time with. It feels relatively simple. And, inexplicably, I never even thought that there might be serious players...I've kept the board game, one of the very few things I have from young childhood, but it's been twenty years since I played. I guess it's time to find an online Stratego. Surely someone in the whole world can beat me.

   Too bad I never played against an AI before they cracked it.

   1. m463 · 1790981061 · focus · HN ↗

      > But, I eventually couldn't find anyone to play with me because I crushed everyone

      I think this is a problem with many deeper games. I remember going over to other people's houses and they would pull out obscure-board-game-xyz. The rest of the night for me was trying to figure out how to play, while others were 30 steps ahead of me.

      I think you need something like chess club - stratego club - where people have all gotten to the nuance level and you can play with people of appropriate level.

      1. zahlman · 1790984096 · focus · HN ↗

         I feel like the depth of a lot of board games gets undersold simply because of how inconvenient it would be to play a large number of games physically. And/or because it's easy at the start to try something complicated, fail to get it right and end up concluding wrongly that only the simple things actually work.

         At one point in my life I got in literally thousands of games of Dominion, and I was definitely still not as good as some of the people I discussed the game with online, but in person I could barely find anyone to play with, ever. (In fact, of the people I knew who were familiar with it, few even seemed to think it was any good as a game.)

         1. xyzzy_plugh · 1790986320 · focus · HN ↗

            I've played a lot of Dominion with people who have played thousands of games. I've even beat them with some frequency (it's not that hard!).

            I don't think Dominion is a good game. It's good if you maybe think cubing is good. And it can be a lot of fun!

            But as a game? It's not good. If you have no idea what you are doing and are totally unfamiliar, you can even win pretty easily with some luck. But you won't understand why you won, or rather why others lost.

            There are many, many games where everyone can read the rules together and be, more or less, on even footing. Dominion can sometimes be that way, but it can pretty easily be extremely opposite of that.

            1. GoatOfAplomb · 1790993104 · focus · HN ↗

               >If you have no idea what you are doing and are totally unfamiliar, you can even win pretty easily with some luck. But you won't understand why you won, or rather why others lost.

               Interesting, this is a _feature_ of poker games like Texas Hold'em. If the losing players didn't go on convincing winning streaks, they'd stop playing. And those winning streaks can convince them they don't need to learn anything else about the game in order to be a winning player.

               1. xyzzy_plugh · 1790997976 · focus · HN ↗

                  The key difference is gambling.

                  Have you ever gambled over a game of Dominion? I wouldn't.

                  Have you ever played Hold'em without gambling? I wouldn't either.

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