Agreeing on discard order before playing - cheating or not?

[Bear na]

Note: I'm not asking if below strategy is a good one. It's a principle of the thing - is it ok or not to pre-agree on something like this.

I was discussing this point with my girlfriend and we could not fully agree.

Do you consider it against the spirit of the game (e.g. technically "cheating") to agree on some paying strategy before the game?

For example: "When I discard one of the cards that I have no info about, I will always pick the rightmost (the one that I had longest)".

Knowing this bit, my partner could be more efficient with the hints.

Do you consider this cheating?

Again, to channel discussion in the right direction, I'm not asking if this particular strategy is a good one. It's a principle - is it ok or not to pre-agree on something like this.

Thanks!

[Travis Hall]

There’s a pretty philosophical discussion to be had about whether agreeing to strategies in advance is right or not, and I doubt you’d get a strong agreement on that. There’s definitely a camp of players for whom the challenge, as a group, is to come up with the best possible set of algorithms by which to play, given common agreement on said algorithm; and another camp that is interested in the challenge of working out how their partners play.

But to address some specifics...

1. You don’t need to have a prior agreement to discard the oldest card (generally from amongst the unclued). That strategy is one that basically any player with a decent amount of skill and experience will follow. Your partners have had the most opportunities to clue that card, therefore if it is useful they are more likely to have found a chance to clue it, therefore it is least likely to be useful. Thus, discard the oldest.

2. In face-to-face play, there’s the question of whether you will add new tiles to the left of your hand, or the right, and that determines where your oldest is. This is not a factor on BGA. (But in face-to-face play, I would be inclined to flip up my tiles one at a time, thus establishing oldest-to-youngest order and positioning through the setup process. Which, incidentally would be legal because you’re allowed to use physical positioning of your own tiles/cards to mark information about them. No, you can’t do this with your partners’ tiles... except in the process of giving a clue, I suppose. I’ve been known to pull cards slight up in someone’s hand to make it clear which cards I’m pointing to. Less so with tiles.)

3. In an environment like BGA, I think it’s often not good policy to use pre-arranged conventions that don’t derive from principles of logic and deduction. You just don’t get much opportunity to discuss your conventions before the game starts, and (if you’re anything like me) you’ll be playing with new people all the time. You might come up with some strategy that is extremely efficient, but if your partners can’t implement it, you’re just going to rack up lots of misfires. Finesses and saves are fine - people learn them fairly naturally as they gain experience. Even bluffs, though they’re more likely to lead to errors and/or panic. But some conventions that are even less intuitive... regardless of whether you think they are “cheating”, they just may not be successful.

[Romain672]

If you play some game with the same group of people, you will begin to find some 'conventions' which will slowly become the norm, even if you don't talk to them.

And I believe each convention which exist would got the same path, as soon as enough game are played (this number of game played can vary from 1 to 10 billion).

Where it became interresting, is when we reach a 'Nash equilibrium' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium ) about one way of thinking, and the day where another player see another way of thinking, he will or not sacrifice the actual game for making others think about his new way of thinking, and on the next game where that situation happen, others players could either use the old or the new way.
So, for this to work, the goal of the group should be to be the most optimal possible in the long term, and they should be fine to test to remove anything they learned before (which isn't the case of bga, because there is new players which arrive, and experienced one which stop, and because we are humans, we can't play 10 billon game ).

On bga, I think the best example of that are: 5clue off chop, reverses with multi, and steals.

There is some group more 'logic' based, where they said they start with no conventions (which is for me a convention), but two 'logic' players from different group will have an easier time to play with each other.

(btw, since you only have 1 elo, games on bga are really different at low elo, and between experts and masters)

[Daredek]

So many 'Styles' have conflicting conventions. I always ask what conventions a teammate is using.
I am about to spend 30 mins of my precious free time, so this is important to me.

I ENJOY playing hanabi when I am challenged to get the team to a Perfect game by using the agreed upon conventions.
The game is tough enough.