Here is my pm and my position for those not aware about what is 'chop management':
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Hi, I saw you did some aggressives changes on the hanabi wiki page, and want at least to hear your opinion on it, since most good players i know will disagree with you.
I will try to be short first, once you get really good at Hanabi, you can score 30/30 or 25/25 very regularly. One of the main possibilities to lose is by discarding per example an early r4 (red 4), and have the other one last or close to the end of the deck
if it's last, the game is instantoly 'lost' (or you can't do max score anymore) since you will play r4 last turn of the extra turn.
if it's close to last, that forces you to keep r5 in hand until the end game, which is fine. But if now it's not r4 but r2, then you are forced to keep r3+r4+r5, which is annoying, and which if they are out of order (r3>r5>r4) can cause a lost even if other copy of r2 is second to last.
Order of players Alice (you)>Bob>Cathy>Donald.
So knowing that, if after like 20 turns, Bob has a hand with only trash or saved cards, and Cathy has a r1 playable in finesse position, you as Alice have two choices:
- either you discard, and let Bob bluff or finesse that r1 which will give you extra clues and effeciency
- or you 'steal' the clue and clue r1 (which would be usually bad on that example), which can make Bob angry, but that should tell him something extra
Note that this extra thing can't be a play one slot, else Cathy will assume her card is r2 and not r1.
Usually that extra thing (with the 'experienced players' i play with) will be that Bob got some trashs cards.
As Alice, your chop you know is not critical (else others players would save it), it should be not playable (else others players would clue it). So it could be trash, or it could be useful like a non unique r4.
So if there is like 20 cards in deck, and both r4 aren't visible, and Alice hand is x-x-x-(5), and you decide to discard (and your chop could be useful), then the probability to lose instantly is 2/23 (r4 in chop) * 1/22 (r4 last) = 1/253=0.4%. [post-edit: in reality it's higher, something around 2/10 * 1/22 ~= 0.9% because your chop you know it's not any card but a non playable non critical]
And you can multiply that probability for every critical card and everty turn where a player discard a potential useful card.
Then, if Alice hand is instead x-x-(5)-(5), you don't want Alice to draw more playables, or else there is a chance for Alice to have too many playables, and make her not play all her card before the last turn.
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Note that if instead Cathy's hand is x-r1-r-x, then both Alice and Bob can clue red, since you can't bluff Cathy anymore. Red will be clued in nearly all cases, so now the question became as Alice, do you want yourself Alice or Bob to discard. Bob's chop is trash, your chop is trash OR useful.
So knowing all that, you can decide the best action depending of others factors.
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Yeah, I tried to be short, but it's hard for me to explain totally that concept.
The main problem with any other interpretation, is that if Alice got two 5s, and Bob got a full trash hand (and it happen), you force Alice to discard. Which can be really hard to defend and causes many others problems
Oh and btw, if you skip in purpose Bob and he discards a useful y3, then now the person who hold the other copy of y3 know he has it in hand. With random player on bga, that will not do much, but if you play with player who play with higher sensibility, that can be really powerful.
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