Where are definitions of the conventions?

[Malo77]

Same problem here .. it is a bit anoying there is no clear explanation of all the options from the game main page.
And conventions choice are surprising as they should not be exclusive : like Chop Focus / Finesse
After playing here for a while, i noted that theses options are not (very) usefull and most often not used.

Even Standard is "BGA Standard" and is different than H-Group.
Romain explained well the main differences between BGA and H-Group convenions.

Most common is Standard and Finessse but finesse IS standard anyway so this does not change if you specify it or not.
According to ELO/Level/Rank people will know and play more "advanced" techs ..
but this is not granteed and not as precise as the H-group Level X notation.

I would love a H-group convention choice to be able to test and play it or Hgroup-level-X
It seems more common / usefull / better described than all the other options so imho it would be great to add it (when a dev is found)

[orgle]

Most common is Standard and Finessse but finesse IS standard anyway so this does not change if you specify it or not.

According to ELO/Level/Rank people will know and play more "advanced" techs ..
but this is not granteed and not as precise as the H-group Level X notation.

Makes me wonder what was Standard before Finesse, and when did Finesse evolve to be considered BGA Standard?

I've been playing for a long while, and the conventions definitely became more complex a few years ago when we all started learning about Layered (and Bluff Seat).

I really appreciate most of the H-Group conventions, but you're all correct -- they're much more chop focused than BGA. They also have some truly freaky variants, so I understand why they require that extra level of complexity. I think BGA Masters have done a good job of figuring out the best logic for our standard combination of Black Powder, Avalanche & Flamboyants, and the players I regularly sit with are fairly cohesive in our understanding of conventions. We should probably record them the same way H-Group has...

For now, I'd be happy if "Layered" was added to the convention options, as it encompasses all the complex conventions we currently play with on BGA.

[LouMamou]

Thanks for the clarification that chop focus allows finesses (and it's my understanding that a 5 clue in the early game is a stall and not a finesse)

But I'm not sure about the mixed signals around chop focus, and the idea that sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. I started with the H-group conventions and I don't recall any ambiguity around the chop focus.

It would really be nice if H-group conventions were an option, but I supposed Hanab.live is the main option, which is a shame because most of the players on that site are playing at a much more complicated level than I would prefer to play the game.

Thanks for all the replies and information!

[Romain672]

It would really be nice if H-group conventions were an option, but I supposed Hanab.live is the main option, which is a shame because most of the players on that site are playing at a much more complicated level than I would prefer to play the game.

Let me look again hgroup's conventions https://hanabi.github.io/learning-path :
- Changements: saving 2s on chop on, chop focus on: just a change on how to play
- level 1: hgroup has strict rules for early game which has the advantage that you know when someone is allowed to discard or not. While on bga, if someone has a 5 in chop you could be scared he discard it, and so instead of doing a powerful clue, you will be inclined to just clue 5 in case he discards. Thanks to that, it's less the case with hgroup.
- level 4: order chop move : special rule for playing 1s out of order. As a bga player you can miss it (it's even hard for me), but that's fine
- level 6: hgroup don't allow to reclue an already saved card 'for a single play'
- level 9: stalling. While bga have atrocious rules (=none) for when players got 8 clues or are locked: hgroup got complicated rule to resolve this problem. Still a rare but important level.

And with all of this, you are already level 12. After that, there is really few stuff which are present on bga, but this doesn't look much really. And playing at level 11 or 12 is fine for many players if you just ask. The bluff open a lot of options (like ejections and discharges which are level 16) so is pretty cool even with experienced players.

[orgle]

Thanks for the clarification that chop focus allows finesses (and it's my understanding that a 5 clue in the early game is a stall and not a finesse)

But I'm not sure about the mixed signals around chop focus, and the idea that sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. I started with the H-group conventions and I don't recall any ambiguity around the chop focus.

There's no ambiguity around chop focus in H-Group because they ALWAYS play chop focus (colour & number). BGA Standard is nearly always leftmost focus, even if a multi-card clue touches the chop. The convention being suggested here for BGA is for numbers on the chop (which aren't saves) to always be chop focus instead of leftmost.

We also don't do Unique (non-critical) 2 Saves in multi-player. They would be considered early saves, forcing a play. People are also really quick to discard here, before all the playable clues are extinguished. Some people think that being skipped over means you should discard, even though there's a number of playable cards still left to clue in Early Game.

That being said, I am very interested in practicing games with proper H-group conventions. However, since the ELO change, I'm struggling to get a standard 5p Master game going, let alone one testing new-to-BGA conventions.

We all successfully made Layered standard for Masters games a few years ago (it was pretty rough for a long while, since we didn't have a lovely reference doc of our own), so I think it's possible to make the switch to chop focus. But as I mentioned earlier, H-group plays with a LOT of challenging variants, and perhaps they need the chop focus more than we do. I'm curious if there's enough benefit for Black Powder Avalanche Flamboyant to bother, you know?

[Blacktango]

Keep in mind that H-group allows to play with many more advanced modes than the physical game.

Some very advanced techniques may be useful if you play with many custom card colors (ex: pink, grey...).
On BGA, there are only M and Bk, so we don't need extra conventions/techniques because we have enough to get a score of 30 most of the time.

[Stroom]

Also you should note that the large amount of conventions would limit how you play the game. H-group does not allow giving empty clues. That's IMO the main reason why they have so many weird conventions. Chop focus might come due to that.

Some rules are very generic and are blindly applied for all variants as well, whether it makes sense or not. There can be some better general playstyles but if you have always been thinking in a specific way, solving different variants will always be approached first with similar "basic rules" in mind and you stay very dogmatic about keeping them. Less creativity, less variant-specific solutions. Mostly creating good-enough playstyles that would work for all variants with little modifications to use for specific cases.