Azul Daily Puzzle

[Effgee]

Hi all!
In a recent post "What is this move? (Top Level huge blunder)" (https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31013), some people expressed interest in more discussions on analyzing specific games and get different opinions on what to play next.
As a small attempt to meet this demand, I created a blog on WordPress where I've posted a few interesting game configurations I came across in my last games. In some situations the next move might be obvious, but hopefully some will generate interesting discussions/debates, please comment as you see fit!
I will try to post about one new puzzle a day. At this point I am sole administrator of the blog, but happy to share the burden! And if you have an interesting game layout, feel free to screenshot and share with me so I can post it.
The link is: azulboardgame.wordpress.com
Please feel free to spread the word, looking forward to crowd-sourcing Azul analytics

[Priptonite]

Will take a look!

[CroatianFish]

Hi looks nice, but I don’t see the solutions anywhere?

[Effgee]

The absence of solutions is not an omission. Unlike chess puzzles where there is a unique solution in order to do "checkmate in 3", many of the puzzles I post are likely to be open-ended (except in the las round when there is no more randomness), with different people having different approaches and styles. And even if there was a unique solution, my ELO would probably not allow me to figure it out
The purpose of the blog is to get everyone to chime in and offer their insights.
Thanks for checking the blog out!

[CroatianFish]

The absence of solutions is not an omission. Unlike chess puzzles where there is a unique solution in order to do "checkmate in 3", many of the puzzles I post are likely to be open-ended (except in the las round when there is no more randomness), with different people having different approaches and styles. And even if there was a unique solution, my ELO would probably not allow me to figure it out
The purpose of the blog is to get everyone to chime in and offer their insights.
Thanks for checking the blog out!

I understand that, however I don’t see any comments or discussion either.
Or even a button to post my comment. Maybe it’s the iPad thing, will try from some other device when I can.

[Effgee]

Thanks for the feedback!
I tried playing around with the comment options (this is my first time making a blog on wordpress...), can you add comments now?
https://azulboardgame.wordpress.com/202 ... uzzle-004/

I tried reducing the friction as much as possible (open to all, no individual comment moderation, no need to be logged in...) hopefully that doesn't open things up to crazy spam/phishing, otherwise I'll have to activate some filters...

Thanks again!

[Propaganda_Panda]

Hey Effgee - first of all, great idea. Love it!

That said, the response has been negligble so far. Which is a pity, because your content definitely deserves more engagement! May I offer some suggestions:

- 1) One puzzle per day is too much, both for you and the commenters. I would keep it at one puzzle per week maybe.
- 2) Keep it on this forum, people are unwilling to visit an external site. Make a new thread where you post the weekly puzzle, and then people can discuss for the next week what the optimal move is (or just give the best solution and educate others). And after that, you can just post the next puzzle in that thread at the beginning of the next week, and the cycle re-commences.
- 3) Once it hopefully gets more traction, you can also accept puzzle suggestions from other players, which should make the job much easier for you!
- 4) Most importantly: As far as I've understood it, you only post situations from real games. Please also state how many tiles of each colour have been discarded in the previous rounds. Also, it is good to know the live score, as your decision-making changes once one player is clearly ahead. It is impossible to make a competent decision without these crucial pieces of information, and strong players will be more encouraged to give their own suggestions if that information is available.
5) When I look at the puzzle, I often don't know whose turn it is, as this is normally not deducable by the current board state.

[Pellepen]

Yep - this is very nice - I agree with Propaganda_Panda.

1. One per week seems to be enough I think.

4. But it's not so hard to count how many tiles that already have been gone. If you have a red on line 4, then 4 red has gone.
Is it necessary to know the score? I don't think so. You goal is to maximize your score from given position.

5. I assume it is always the player on top, that has the move to make.

6. It would be nice if you set up a poll about best move to make for each situation.
You can have - let's say 4-5 possible moves - and then we easy can see what other thinks, and discuss from that.

7. The "value" of the moves also depends on how you value to be first player next round or not. In some situation it is extra good to be first player to be sure to get a certain piece in last round for instance. Then a a slightly worse move now can pay off in next round

[Effgee]

Thank you so much Propaganda_Panda and Pellepen for your thoughts and encouragements!
Ideas make a ton of sense, I will give it a shot this week, expect the very first "Puzzle of the week" sometime this week on this BGA forum!
[Regarding comment 4: theoretically you can figure out which tiles already came out by looking at those already placed, however you might underestimate the true value based on tiles that went to the floor. I'm not quite at the level of tracking those, but perhaps keeping track of those for this 'puzzle of the week' will help me improve my game ]
Thanks again, looking forward to the upcoming discussions!

[Propaganda_Panda]

Thank you so much Propaganda_Panda and Pellepen for your thoughts and encouragements!
Ideas make a ton of sense, I will give it a shot this week, expect the very first "Puzzle of the week" sometime this week on this BGA forum!
[Regarding comment 4: theoretically you can figure out which tiles already came out by looking at those already placed, however you might underestimate the true value based on tiles that went to the floor. I'm not quite at the level of tracking those, but perhaps keeping track of those for this 'puzzle of the week' will help me improve my game ]
Thanks again, looking forward to the upcoming discussions!

Looking forward to the future puzzles! You and Pellepen are right that you can have a rough estimation of the remaining tile distribution by looking at the already placed tiles. But without the number of discarded tiles, this is not exact, and especially in later rounds, this is very important! I would assume that most master-tier players are actually tracking the precise number of discarded tiles (at least I do), and it usually influences my decision-making in the 4th round.