[sugg] Add 'ante', an initial bet every round

[Romain672]

Hi,
From what I have seen of the game, it seem the best strategy is in many round to just roll one dice to 'pass your turn', especially if you play first.
Poker has the same problem.

To resolve it in Poker, you got games with ANTE. That consist of every player betting something initially. Here it could be one dice per player: so every player at the start of any round would add one dice to the middle.

With that rule, at 4 players when you play first, you still got your two possibilities:
- 1) 'forfeit' the round (in 99% of cases), roll one dice and let the other players win the pot of '5 dices'
- 2) play the round, and if you try to do a really powerful combinaison and you get it, instead of gaining 3 dices (because the 3 others players could all 'pass' ), you would gain 7 dices which is more than twice as much

I actually don't think I will play much more the game because in a lot of round the best strategy seem to just pass your turn, which is just not fun at all.

[Deadly_Rat]

I used to think that way but no longer do after more games in. It is true that the optimal way to play after a really strong roll from an opponent is to roll just one dice - "pass" your turn. But this is almost never the case when you're starting (or when your opponents had only slightly better rolls). The expected winnings of the first player is always greater than -1 which you achieve by "passing".

Being able to "pass" also allows for more skill expression in this highly luck-based game. You won't win by just rolling perfect rolls in more than half of the rounds, since you would only win one dice from each opponent per round. The outcome of the game will be influenced by one's skill of determining when to fight or to "pass".

[Romain672]

I guess my feelings about probabilities are wrong, but on rounds where you need to rolls 3/4/5 dices to get a good combinaison, it really look like going for a -1 and be sure to not play first next round is really effecient.

I guess I should try 3 players instead of 4, that will reduce that strategy too.

[Deadly_Rat]

I guess my feelings about probabilities are wrong, but on rounds where you need to rolls 3/4/5 dices to get a good combinaison, it really look like going for a -1 and be sure to not play first next round is really effecient.

I guess I should try 3 players instead of 4, that will reduce that strategy too.

To be fair I only played 3-player games recently. Perhaps the math changes for 4 players and the optimal strategy is a lot more stale. 3-player games are quite enjoyable for me so far with very little "passing" going on.