Too Zealous about not skipping

[CoolLuke]

I discard my share, and I’ve not been criticized as a clue hog. But I think a lot of players believe in DONT SKIP NO MATTER WHAT, and I think it’s quite silly. Keep in mind most of my teammates aren’t masters, but here’s a few examples of what I see regularly:
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Example 1. It’s the first turn of the game. Bob has no card that should be clued yet. So Alice gives them a blank clue. Meanwhile Cathy and David both have a pair of playable 1s. Imo, just skip and tell Cathy her 1s. Quite a few players waste a token like this.
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Example 2. I am Alice saving a 4 on chop. David saves two 5s on my chop, leaving me only 1 unmarked card. Bob has four trash cards. Cathy has a playable card in slot 3… I will probably clue Cathy now, instead of letting Bob do it.

This does not mess with a finesse position card. The team has less time to deal with my hand now than everyone else’s hand. Also, why lock my hand up, when the player after me has trash? I will still discard the following turn, but I will skip more often in this situation.
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Example 3. Under 8 cards left, with 3 players, and none of us has a playable card. I am Alice, I discard, and draw nothing. Bob discards, nothing. Cathy discards, and draws a playable 3. Imo I should usually skip and clue that 3. If instead I discard, I could draw a playable in another suit. This makes Bob have to choose which of us to clue.

More often, we will have more success by giving a clue as soon as a playable appears, than discarding and running out of time because now we can’t clue everything fast enough. This is another situation where players in Alice’s seat might choose to waste a blank clue to Bob. Better to skip Imo.
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I don’t understand the benefit of wasting a blank clue rather than skipping and giving a straight clue (unless the blank clue helps a player deduce a card they are holding). Even if the straight clue interferes with a finesse, it will be as good as wasting a token completely.

[Romain672]

Example 1. It’s the first turn of the game. Bob has no card that should be clued yet. So Alice gives them a blank clue. Meanwhile Cathy and David both have a pair of playable 1s. Imo, just skip and tell Cathy her 1s. Quite a few players waste a token like this.

While there is sometime value of clueing 5 like that to give the initiative to Bob (since you could have two 1s in some cases), it's still usually bad.
Wasting a clue and get no 5 out of it look a lot worst.

Example 2. I am Alice saving a 4 on chop. David saves two 5s on my chop, leaving me only 1 unmarked card. Bob has four trash cards. Cathy has a playable card in slot 3… I will probably clue Cathy now, instead of letting Bob do it.

This does not mess with a finesse position card. The team has less time to deal with my hand now than everyone else’s hand. Also, why lock my hand up, when the player after me has trash? I will still discard the following turn, but I will skip more often in this situation.

Yeah, I tried a lot to understand the logic of some about not skipping, and it look like the only argument for it is simplicity. I never got anyone explaining with multiple arguments and counter arguments why he took that position instead of our.
You was extremely conservator with your example.
If Bob has two trash cards (or even one), since your chop is random and his chop is not, that's already enough to usually skip.
Since I like that part on my old guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vzg ... Mlyhc/edit# , and search for 'chop management 2, and 'chop management 3'.

Example 3. Under 8 cards left, with 3 players, and none of us has a playable card. I am Alice, I discard, and draw nothing. Bob discards, nothing. Cathy discards, and draws a playable 3. Imo I should usually skip and clue that 3. If instead I discard, I could draw a playable in another suit. This makes Bob have to choose which of us to clue.

More often, we will have more success by giving a clue as soon as a playable appears, than discarding and running out of time because now we can’t clue everything fast enough. This is another situation where players in Alice’s seat might choose to waste a blank clue to Bob. Better to skip Imo.

edit: missread the example. My answer is my third post of that page.
Bga's convention are extremely bad for situations with 8 clues left.
Even on your case, you should instead compare the differents chop like you did in example 2. You will need to do more discard at 7/8 clues.
And if you steal the clue you remove the possibility of saving useful card with a bluff. It's not about the effectiveness of bluffing (you are at 7/8 clues you don't need it) but making sure of keeping alive the useful non critical cards.


But yeah I fully agree with you.

[Blacktango]

Skipping is very useful, and never always means playing, but just "I prefer to give the clue myself than you".
There are many (good) reasons for skipping.

Hard exception: if you steal the finesse/bluff position. You need a very good reason to do this.
The player you are skipping must be very, very busy, or you must be locked with 1 token left.
Or maybe, the player you're skipping has another clue to give instead (and it's a rare case where stealing the bluff position to let them give a clue to a distant player is relevant).

Sometimes the situation is reversed. You might prefer to give a blank clue to avoid the player after you discards, and let them give the important clue.
This is convenient when they have several useful (but not unique) cards on chop.

[Ant Stewart]

I think this issue is that a lot of beginner players fear discarding so will prefer to clue rather than discard without thinking if that is the best option.

They then get constantly told not to skip by other players, and they learn "never skip" as they improve.

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Some other reasons to skip are:


You have a better view of the run of cards and can see that giving a clue in a way that the next player likely won't is beneficial.
Eg: You can see the player after you has y2 and y3 in their hand, therefore, clueing y1 and y4 (with y4 on chop) is more useful than letting the player after you just clue the 1s (suppose there are 2 1s).



You need to control the timing to avoid a double discard. If letting the game play out in the most likely way would result in both players getting a card on chop at the same time, it may be cleaner to skip to change the timing.



The player after you has trash you don't want to mark. Eg, they have 2 g1 on chop and in position 4. You may want to skip so they discard the junk g1 sooner so you don't have to mark trash - especially if the other player has g2 getting near their chop.



At the start of the game, if the player after you has no 1s, skipping would allow them to clue your 1s, or perhaps even a 2 you have on chop that is payable after the 1s. (As long as you don't steal finesse.)



To force a critical discard. Suppose no 1s are played, but the player after you has r2 on chop. And the other player has 3 2s, including r2 as the earliest. By skipping, and forcing the first player to discard, that means a future save on the other player will splash save a load of other 2s.



To avoid picking up at the end of the game. If you have 3 critical cards marked in your hand and you are in the last few rounds, you should always skip, rather than discarding and risking picking up more into your hand that you don't have time to play.

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Some general points though - it is rarely worth skipping to steal the finesse card, or skipping in any way that might prevent a bluff.

If you have just been skipped, that means the player before you ay well want you to discard, so you should not skip just because you were skipped, consider if it is the right move. (Thought see turn 1 example, sometimes skipping after being skipped is the right move.)


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Most important point about skipping. If someone skips you then you can see it as an educational moment and explain why skipping may not be a good idea, but bare in mind skipping is about evaluating a position and trying to choose the best move. Perhaps you can't see the whole picture, of perhaps the player skipping is prioritising something that you don't find as important.

I've seen games where players have got really annoyed about a skip (not for finesse or anything like that) just because they disagreed with the importance of splashing a 2 and thought that wasn't worth skipping for.


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And reasons not to skip.

1. You can mess up other players timing, perhaps you and the other player have a sequence of cards, and they wanted you to discard trash first, but by skipping, you now mess up their timing.
2. You can prevent bluffs, even if you don't touch finesse, eg, b4 on chop, and b2 is played, there is no b3 visible. If you clue "these cards are 3s", then it is no longer possible to bluff b4 with "this card is blue".
3. Most of the reasons you might have for skipping, can also work in reverse and you could make things worse by skipping. Eg, you may not know you have g3 and g4, so clueing g2 and g3 in their hand is no convenient, and number clueing 2s is better.

[Romain672]

This post is destined for very experienced player, so don't apply that post without careful thinking.
This has more value with experience player since they are more effecient in average, and so would start having lots of clues earlier.
I disagree with the fact that skipping for a finesse position being that bad.

Like I said on my previous link, the game first start by not having enough clues available and needing to send information and play cards a lot. On that phase, wasting clues are very costly since that make the rest of the game harder.
Then you got a phase with nearly no clue, and need to make decision on which card you wanna keep around, which card you discard, you play, and so on.
Then you got a phase where you start to have more clue, and if you don't adapt your gameplay to that phase, you will still gain more clues until you got 4+ or even 8 sometimes.

During that last phase, wasting clues is cheap. You know you will gain lots of clues soon, and so your main goal should be to prepare the end game which got a lot of complications.
But at that point, if any player discard a (non visible on the board) useful card that usually could have been avoided.


So as an example, if your chop could be a useful card, and the chop of all players between yourself and the person who receive the clue got a trash card in chop, you should steal the clue, even if it's in finesse position.

There is an exception if you see a bluff target in a hand after the player who receive the clue, because then you are sure to get that card marked which isn't in risk of discard anymore, but if that card is the forth chop, then this isn't valuable per example (and not the player before because other player should have the same reasonning than you and if they saw you not skip, they are intencive to skip themselves, which make the overall move worst).

Note that a commun answer to what I just said is that you remove possibilities of bluffs on your hand, but again bluffs aren't valuable at that phase of the game, and you keep your chop one more turn with that play, so that bluff could only at best be at your second chop. Which give at 4 players game still 8 more turns, which should increase the clue counter, and let you waste a clue in worst case (even if in reality you would waste 4 turns later, but for the comparaison it's 8, don't think I'm clear here ).

Once you skipped once, everyone know their chop is useless. If someone else which know their chop is useless skip you (and there was no other reason for it, like about 5s), then you should have two trash cards in chop. But now everyone know nothing is in danger and can start fully switch their priority about the last turn of the game.

Note that all of that require you to know that you will have extra clues at the end, if you got some bombs or got a difficult game, it's possible you never got or got too few extra clues available. And know that sometimes a specific player should already waste clues because per example they are holding 4+5+5, which make the amount of extra clue you would get or need much lower.

Thanks for reading, as usual I can't do a short post

[Romain672]

Example 3. Under 8 cards left, with 3 players, and none of us has a playable card. I am Alice, I discard, and draw nothing. Bob discards, nothing. Cathy discards, and draws a playable 3. Imo I should usually skip and clue that 3. If instead I discard, I could draw a playable in another suit. This makes Bob have to choose which of us to clue.

More often, we will have more success by giving a clue as soon as a playable appears, than discarding and running out of time because now we can’t clue everything fast enough. This is another situation where players in Alice’s seat might choose to waste a blank clue to Bob. Better to skip Imo.

I just saw that I missread your example earlier, and since that's extremely interesting and I enjoy end game, I will talk about it.

So firstly usually that doesn't matter. Cathy discard and draw a playable 3. Alice discard and draw a playable X. Bob clue 3 to Cathy. Cathy clue X to Alice, and then everyone has all the information and we are good.
And especially at 3 players, you don't have to anticipate much compared to 5 players since if one player got 3 playable you just need 9 turns instead of 15 turns to play them.

The fact you put a 3 in Cathy's hand is pretty interesting since you seem to have understood the problem.
If Cathy delay too much their play, that will start to be really bad.

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I need to talk about pace. Pace is the number of discards you are allowed to have until everyone need to play during last turn.
When pace is negative you can't score max anymore.
In 99% of cases, when the pace is equal or superior to the number of players (unless you got 3 playable or two unplayable 5s), if you know your chop isn't useful, you should discard as soon as possible to draw the useful cards as soon as possible and make other players be able to see the potential problems for end game and which suit will be last to play per example. You should still usually give play clues to players without plays though. (and show to players with extra playables that they should play, which could mean clueing them too)

When pace is equal to the number of player or slightly lower, you should still usually do that.
When pace is 2, then you know that 2 players will be able to not play during the last turn, which is totally fine in 99% of cases. You just need to keep in mind that sometimes keeping a playable card to play it during the last turn can be game winning. Playing a non-5 before the last turn make you virtually lose one clue, and sometimes you need that clue to score max.
When pace is 1, if one player have no playable, then you must play a card during the last turn. And discarding is extremely costly but can be the right play.
When pace is 0, you can't discard to score max.

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And so to come back to your example, if pace is high, then you should discard. If both yourself and Cathy have a playable, and yours is more important then Cathy will clue you. If Cathy is more important, she will still clue you if it's fine, or will play if it's not. Then yourself, you will either discard if you saw 5s in other hand, or you could waste a clue if the whole board is trash. Again, the pace is high, so that shouldn't matter anyway.

If pace is 1 or 2, then you should check Bob's hand. Does Bob have a useful card? If not, you should steal the clue to try to make Bob draw useful card. If Bob have lots of useful cards, you don't want him to draw more playable, so you should discard and let him clue Cathy. If Bob have one 5, then huh that's close? Too dependant of number of clues, board, what is missing with the 3 and so on.



And finally here is my guide for end game:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jKF ... it?tab=t.0
But end game is very situational. Outside of talking of general case like I did here, giving me some examples could be much more valuable

Thanks for reading, as usual I can't do a short post