6element wrote: ↑11 January 2022, 15:45
Arguably, there is the first player disadvantage as well - during the last round the first player (naturally) plays first, and other players can beat him with higher score. Non-first players have more control when finishing the game.
I'm not sure to understand.
If you reach 15 points on round 10, trigger then end game, and someone else after you reach 17 points this same round, then if it was the other way around (and assume the game goes in a similar way), they would have reached 17 points on round 10 and trigger the end game, and you would still have reached only 15 points.
The only difference is that if you're first player, you have to think about whether it's better to end the game this round or to reserve a card to block someone else to delay their win. If you're last player, you don't have that luxury, you can't delay the victory of others if they're already triggered the end of the game.
Admittedly, at low level of play, you can "surprise" the other players by winning and ending the game immediately when being last players, but you can't do it as much when being first player. But against players that keep an eye on what you're doing, unless you made a blind reservation of a card or get lucky with a new revealed card, they already know how much you are able to score this round and there is no surprise to have.