Early Game playable 5 on chop

[Vincent696]

Hey guys,


#### GAME 1

Got in a situation like this:
P1: XX XX XX XX XX
P2: XX XX XX XX XX
P3: 5G XX XX XX 5K
P4: XX XX XX XX XX

First round of the game: P1 clues 5 to P3, and P2 adds G clue to P3's hand (no other cards of P3 are green). So that P3 understands his 5K is playable.


#### GAME 2

P1: XX XX XX XX XX
P2: XX XX XX XX XX
P3: XX XX XX XX 5K
P4: XX XX XX XX XX
First round of the game, P1 clues 5 to P3, and P2 does nothing (says clue 1 to P4 for instance to have him something playable).

QUESTION:
My understanding so far, is that in Game #2, P3 should play his 5K chop because if it was a save clue, then P2 would have done it. It's not a double save either since P2 didn't clue the new chop. But I was told this was wrong and that no one should play a 5 chopped even clued from a player more than 1 ahead of him in early game.

--> Is that right ? If not, how is this move of early 5 play called?
--> Are Game 1 and 2 situations different in their interpretation due to an additional 5 in P3's hand?

Cheers,
Vince

[Blacktango]

I have never heard of such a convention.

P1 has several reasons to clue that Bk5 (instead of P2):
- They have to clue because there are 8 tokens
- They want to clue to allow P2 to discard a useless card instead of discarding themselves
- P2 has another clue to give, like 1 to P4

P1 sees that there are at least 2 clues to give in the first round: save the Bk5 and clue 1 to P4.

What do you expect them to do? What is the difference if they give the 1 clue to P4 instead of the 5 clue?

Maybe there are playable cards in P1's hand, so helping to save the 5 (which is actually playable) allows P2 and P3 to both give clues: a 1 in P4's hand, and maybe a 1 in P1's hand.
Now imagine that P1 has a Bk4. Then the Bk5 can be finessed by P2, which is very valuable.

If P2 wants P3 to play their Bk5 right now, with no Bk finesse available, they can easily do it with a reclue on it.

IMO, there is no general rule for skipping. You can never be sure why you've been skipped, so you can't generalize what to do when it happens.
Also, giving a save when you don't have nothing else to do is a very "light skip" and except maybe at very high levels with players who know each other very well, there'ss no reason to interpret it in any particular way.
A "hard skip" (stealing bluff/finesse position, cluing when you have a play, ...) is a bit different and probably has an intention behind it. This intention may be simply to force the skipped player to discard now (and avoid a future double discard situation, for example).

[Travis Hall]

#### GAME 1

Got in a situation like this:
P1: XX XX XX XX XX
P2: XX XX XX XX XX
P3: 5G XX XX XX 5K
P4: XX XX XX XX XX

First thing I want to point out is that you are showing too many cards. With 4 players, there is only 4 cards in each hand. 5 cards each for 3 players.

#### GAME 2

P1: XX XX XX XX XX
P2: XX XX XX XX XX
P3: XX XX XX XX 5K
P4: XX XX XX XX XX
First round of the game, P1 clues 5 to P3, and P2 does nothing (says clue 1 to P4 for instance to have him something playable).

QUESTION:
My understanding so far, is that in Game #2, P3 should play his 5K chop because if it was a save clue, then P2 would have done it. It's not a double save either since P2 didn't clue the new chop. But I was told this was wrong and that no one should play a 5 chopped even clued from a player more than 1 ahead of him in early game.

--> Is that right ? If not, how is this move of early 5 play called?
--> Are Game 1 and 2 situations different in their interpretation due to an additional 5 in P3's hand?

Cheers,
Vince

Unlike Blacktango, I have heard of this convention, but I advise against it. There are some players who only recognise clues as saves if they come from the very last person who could possibly give them.

However, those players rarely reach the higher ranks. Not allowing anyone except the immediately preceding player to clue a save leads to a lot of lost opportunities and inefficiency. A can’t save C to allow B to play, for example. Or, A can’t save D to allow B to bluff or finesse C.

Or, in cases when the team hits the limit of 8 tokens, a player may have to waste a token just to allow the next player to save. That’s exactly this example. Sure, it’s from the first turn of the game, but that doesn’t really change anything, does it?

So this is a poor convention, and most players who reach a master ranking on BGA have discarded it long before,

In exchange, we have the inefficiency of having to reclue a chop 5k to make it play. Since 6 out of 9 5s is coloured, though, that’s only 1/3 of these cases when you have to use an extra token. And that’s still assuming you care about getting it played straight away. If 4k isn’t available, there probably isn’t urgency for 5k; if 4k is available, B just clues 4 to 4k to make 5k play, and the inefficiency vanishes.

So I advise treating the chop 5 clue as a save regardless of which player it comes from, unless there’s some reason to believe otherwise.

[Malo77]

As I have seen:
in the very first turns of the game, if there are plenty of 1s on the board, you should not clue early saves.
So cluing 5 before all the 1s is a often an indication that the leftmost 5 is to play as a 5k, even if there is only one 5 on the chop.

In Game#2 a 5 reclue could be necessary, only if there are no other playables cards to clue before / or very few 1s.
In case of doubt, the next player can still reclue it to be sure.

[Travis Hall]

As I have seen:
in the very first turns of the game, if there are plenty of 1s on the board, you should not clue early saves.
So cluing 5 before all the 1s is a often an indication that the leftmost 5 is to play as a 5k, even if there is only one 5 on the chop.

Don’t count on this. Just like at any other time of the game, we can’t assume that the next player will clue. What if A sees a 1 for B to clue, but B sees a better-placed copy of the same 1 in A’s hand, and wants to allow C or D to clue it? If a unique card is in danger, we should still clue it.

If there is a playable 1 in the next player’s hand as well as a 5 on chop, we should usually favour cluing the 1, but even then we might want to avoid that clue for now to allow the next player to clue another 1. (C holds 1m, which A wants to have clued. If A clues a 1 in B’s hand, B can’t be sure it isn’t 1m, so can’t clue - regardless of whether A clues by colour or number. So A may save for safety, intending to clue B’s 1 later. Or, C holds any 1, and B holds a 1 blocked by colour and a 5 on chop. Similar logic.)

So cluing a 5 on chop before 1s are clued isn’t a strong indication that it is playable. It may be a little more likely when the 5 is black (or it may not - I’m not even sure of that) but that’s too weak to want to play on it. Just wait for clarification.

(Cluing a 5 on chop when you already have a 1 clued for play is another matter.)

[Vincent696]

thanks all for replies guys it's been very helfpful

Cheers
Vince

[Wreckage]

(Cluing a 5 on chop when you already have a 1 clued for play is another matter.)

If a player has a known playable card in their hand, can I save a card on their chop with a number? Or does it mean play since it could wait another round before being saved? I am genuinely curious, because I don't know how most people play.

I understand it's usually more efficient to wait, because of the possibility that this card may never need to be saved, due to other cards being drawn that might make it a playable card soon. But sometimes there is a good reason. For instance, I'd really like to stall because I'm unsure if my marked card plays or if I should discard...perhaps waiting to see if another player answers a finesse or not.

[Blacktango]

If a player has a known playable card in their hand, can I save a card on their chop with a number?

I used to consider it as a play clue.

Some contextual situations may change this :
- Your hand is locked
- 3 cards to save in this player's hand

This gives you more ways to extract playable cards, especially with Avalanche/Black powder.
The main drawback to this convention, is that in the case you describe (when you don't want to discard), you may have to give a blank clue , to be sure you don't trigger an unwanted play.

[Travis Hall]

(Cluing a 5 on chop when you already have a 1 clued for play is another matter.)

If a player has a known playable card in their hand, can I save a card on their chop with a number?

As a save, that’s early. No early saves.

And we don’t do early saves because they will be interpreted as play clues. The basic point of the early saves concept is to give us a mechanism to clue plays from chop when we need to (acknowledging that because it is chop, it will frequently be colour-blocked).

[Wreckage]

I guess I knew early saves are not allowed. It makes sense with the rest of the convention. I'm curious how often a number clue that means play is given to a chop card. I mean, is it about once per game? Twice? More? If it's less than that, I think allowing the saves of non-unique cards on chop would be more useful than the restriction of never being about to save a card you'd like to keep.

Most players play with flamboyants on, which is VERY forgiving, because you get a second and third chance if you lose an important card early. But without flams, starting with a lot of 2s or 3s near chop, and very few 1s, means you will have to let some nice cards get discarded early. There is a certain risk to your final score if one of these cards is at the bottom of the deck.

I realize the suggestion to allow saves of non-unique cards is going to be extremely unpopular here. The argument against saving 2s for example, is that it’s less efficient because it takes away this ability to finesse a chop card. But I wonder how many opportunities to finesse are added simply because there are more mid-range cards still in player’s hands. Perhaps more play opportunities would be created than lost. For instance, a saved 2 has a certain amount of efficiency because at some point, it will play without another clue required.

Consider, if saving cards was allowed, someone saves a R3, even though there is no R3 in the discard pile. When a R4 is drawn, the saved R3 is in finesse position…instead of gone.