Board Game Arena

Look closely, the 8 science points you are missing are in the row "World Wonder" and they are already counted into your overall score of 57 points. The table is indeed a weird way of writing it. You have 13 science points, 5 of them are attributable to science cards themselves and 8 of the...

If this goes on for >300 games and they reach an Elo quite above everyone else's in a game where it is implausible, that means something is going on. I mean 80% win rate isn't fishy on its own but it would be if it was in a game like Can't Stop or Lucky Numbers where such win rates can't be maintane...

I think the whole gaming industry is affected by the current AI development. Chess has the problem of AI assistance in online competitions for many years now and they established counter measures at least in high-stakes tournaments that would not be feasable in the BGA world (like players must film ...

As you guys mention the "pitfall" of 2p Harmonies (spending much effort on blocking rather than enjoying your own build), I am reminded of my experience with competetitive 2p Carcassone (base game). I tried it a few times but ultimately hated it while I enjoy the 3p, 4p variant a lot (most...

It might be interesting that BGA starts an algorithm similar to that an youtube : If you like games A, B and C and hate games X and Y and there are some other players on this site with the same pattern which also like games D and E, than BGA could propose you these games. This already exists! In th...

run the moves through an engine (alpha-zero type for Splendor) Your idea sounds very interesting. Maybe you can elaborate about the engine part? Where is the engine coming from, how is it trained or engineered? I am not aware of a general purpose engine for boardgames. Like, for instance, AlphaZero...

I did a little research and the "sth we are not told" about this story is that they played Hollywood Gin which has a very peculiar scoring system. (You can ask AI if you want to know how it works.) Stu did not really win 86-0 single games of Gin Rummy (particularly not in a way how it woul...

If the worst player really can win 40% of the time against the best player, then no system is likely to ensure that the best players win an arena season. How did Stu Ungar manage to win almost 100% of the time? (At gin Rummy.) He didn't win anywhere close to 100% lol, unless he was playing total fi...

Every single 2p game that does not end in a tie has makes a difference of 20 Elo points (the contrast of your resulting Elo if you won vs. resulting Elo if you lost will always be 20 pts). From that you can infer that there is a big variance in your current Elo value, at least in games with a lot of...

I’ve noticed that the pulse expansion is now available on bga, enjoy! :) This is great! But wait, exactly 3 days after I create the "most universal" Harmonies tournament series including "all" four major game variants, they add the expansion to BGA? :D The timing is incredible.