Help me understand what happened?

[TricksyFox]

https://boardgamearena.com/11/hanabi?table=468926479

I genuinely don't understand what happened in this game. I know there's some sort of advanced convention where which card you discard sends some sort of message to other players, but 1) I don't know the convention, 2) The convention wasn't mentioned in the table settings or chat before the game, and 3) I can't imagine there's a world in which it makes sense to discard your non-chop card so early in the game to save a card that doesn't need saving?

I'm obviously missing something, right? Please help me understand.

[Romain672]

I think there is nothing weird on that game for that player to not discard his chop, so that just look like a mistake.



#A] About your third question though, imagine this situation:
- order of players Alice>Bob>Cathy
- Alice have 0 clue left and a card to play
- Bob have no card to play
- Alice discard her chop (instead of playing)

What would you do as Bob?

#B] Now to enter deeper, saving 2s (and in most games 3p+ games 3s too) even if the other copy isn't discarded is really good since it reduces the amount of lost game because if the other copy is late in the deck that can either make you lose instantly (if it's the last card of the deck, OR if it's a 3 and it's the second to last and one player must play when there is two cards left on the deck and the 4>5 are out of order), or force you to keep 4&5 until really late on the game.
#C] And so you can totally create convention to save more of those cards, even early on.

[TricksyFox]

I think there is nothing weird on that game for that player to not discard his chop, so that just look like a mistake.

Ah, sorry. I didn't realize the replay doesn't show the chat. I asked why they discarded not-chop, and they said that discarding one off from chop was meant to tell the next player not to discard.

They did it again later in the game. First time is Move 17, second is Move 32. After Move 17 I asked and they said "1 from left = no discard", and after move 32 I asked again and mentioned that the next player had a play and was unlikely to discard anyway, and they said "4 x indici - white + 4 + 2".

So it was all very intentional, I just... don't know why.

And yes, I totally agree about saving cards, but presumably not at the expense of risking discarding a 5?

#A] About your third question though, imagine this situation:
- order of players Alice>Bob>Cathy
- Alice have 0 clue left and a card to play
- Bob have no card to play
- Alice discard her chop (instead of playing)

What would you do as Bob?

Oh, sure. But even in your example, Alice is discarding the chop. Which I guess does have a slight risk in that Zelda may have counted on Alice playing and not needing to save the chop, but that still feels fundamentally different from playing off-chop.

[mikee3]

discarding off chop -particularly if out of clues- is a signal something critical is on chop and the teamate should discard another card, preferable equal to the number of spaces away from chop.

[Romain672]

Yeah I used that a few times at 2 players, but it's not really effecient.
First, it has a massive risk of making the game instantly loss.
And second, you can always hope for you to draw something good to clue, and if your next player got some hints that something could be weird, he should be careful.

But in many cases where it could be good, it's the kind of games where most players got critical on chop, and it's really hard to manage.

[Travis Hall]

discarding off chop -particularly if out of clues- is a signal something critical is on chop and the teamate should discard another card, preferable equal to the number of spaces away from chop.

This is true, but due to the risk (which Romain points out) it should only be done in an emergency. Usually, that emergency is having no tokens to save with, or fewer tokens than the number of saves required.

We call that a scream discard, because there’s something wrong, but we can’t say what, so all we can do is incoherently scream “Aaaaaaahhh!” And it works the same by discarding chop when you have a play as by discarding off-chop when you don’t have a play; it’s just discarding when you shouldn’t.

But none of that is really what is going on in that game.

I am familiar with the player in question. Check out their wall; the comments there vibe with my experience. This is someone who doesn’t actually understand the conventions; somebody has probably used a scream with them in the game, or mentioned it at some point, and they’ve gone in their own direction with it. It’s a player whose rating has been plummeting since abandonment started counting as a loss, too. So basically, don’t try to learn anything from that player, or the game.

[Rizi Bizi]

In my opinion, playing hanabi with conventions is fine as long as the conventions can be explained logically and they aren't just 'house rules'.

I would assume that if a player discards a non-chop card while there are clue tokens left, they must want us to question why. Probably they want to hint something about some card but can't do that with a regular clue, because any clue they could give would be wrongly interpreted. That alone gives us some information about cards in our hand.

If the discarded card is next to chop (or chop card if the player has a playable card, as mentioned in the comment above), I would assume it's to save the chop card. Otherwise, for positions 1-3 I would assume that the card in that position is to be played, since it's not at risk of discarding yet. I can see some end game cases where this may be useful.

Is that remotely correct? I haven't had such situation recently, and most of my games were played years ago.

[Romain672]

If the discarded card is next to chop (or chop card if the player has a playable card, as mentioned in the comment above), I would assume it's to save the chop card. Otherwise, for positions 1-3 I would assume that the card in that position is to be played, since it's not at risk of discarding yet. I can see some end game cases where this may be useful.

Why not save it directly? Because you got x-x-x-5-4 (or x-x-5-4-4) with rightmost 4 critical? But here it's not the case.

On those case, I assume a mistake is going on, either from that player, from what you deduced, or from what that player deduced (and here it's obvious since a 5 has been discarded, that should not happen without mistake in nearly all games). So my first goal would be to resynchronise the team, make sure everyone assume the same things.
In most cases that mean to not discard (even if in that example you could still imo).
You could reclue a specific card per example if it's part of a finesse.
Clue an unrelated thing and let the player concerned decide what they do.
Clue an early 5 in chop in someone who are supposed to have a play to make sure it's not going to be discarded.

Or things like that.

(Note that if clue count is low, and there is lots of saves to do, just discarding and let other players manage those problems could be risky but totally fine)


If you are even better and can be convinced of the source of the mistake, you could make a better decision, but that's sometimes extremely hard, and others times just impossible.

[TricksyFox]

discarding off chop -particularly if out of clues- is a signal something critical is on chop and the teamate should discard another card, preferable equal to the number of spaces away from chop.

Super helpful to know, thanks! Presumably should be used as a last-resort, since you risk discarding something critical yourself, yes? Ah, nevermind. I just read the posts that followed haha. I do still appreciate the explanation, though!

all we can do is incoherently scream “Aaaaaaahhh!”

This is hilarious and memorable, thank you for bringing it into my life.

I am familiar with the player in question. Check out their wall; the comments there vibe with my experience. This is someone who doesn’t actually understand the conventions; somebody has probably used a scream with them in the game, or mentioned it at some point, and they’ve gone in their own direction with it. It’s a player whose rating has been plummeting since abandonment started counting as a loss, too. So basically, don’t try to learn anything from that player, or the game.

You know, I didn't think to look but this makes sense and makes me feel a lot less like I'm losing my mind. Thank you! Always happy to acknowledge that I'm not a pro and still have a lot to learn, but usually when I see something I don't "get" I can at least understand what was going on once it's explained - definitely not this time though haha.

Or things like that.

Not quoting this whole post because it would be very lengthy, but it was super informative!