What do you do in games you've shut your opponent out before they can concede?

[FrankJones]

I think I would have done exactly what your opponent did - just leaving the game and accepting the Karma penalty, it' not a big deal. It's not worth my free time to sit in front of a screen and doing a very boring thing. Even if it were only 2 or 3 minutes to get to 50%, what's the point of that - only to not have an artificial Karma level go down?

I think in the current framework, that's the best you two could do, not wasting each others time. And I agree that BGA should offer the option to concede early at least in 2p games, or maybe the threshold can be at least lowered to 25% game progression in 2p games.

It's not just a Karma penalty.

The player also lost 10 additional Elo, resulting in 6x as much Elo lost compared to what should have been lost.

I'm not sure what you mean by "artificial" Karma. The Karma score for each player is real, and has direct effects on a player's ability to join some games. And it takes more than 2-3 minutes to recover 10 lost Karma. And if it happens a second time, it's minus 20 Karma.

[FrankJones]

I haven't watched the full replay, but I don't understand how you can get totally "blocked" in Splendor. You can always take 3 gems (according to the normal rules) - while there is a limit of 10, you can go over that during your turn and then just have to discard down to 10 at the end.

And it's news to me that there is a hard limit on the number of cards you can reserve - although I don't think I've ever had more than 1-2 cards reserved at a time so I guess I've never come across it?

Sure, if you play badly enough you can put yourself in a position where you're miles behind the opponent in the race for points with no hope of catching up - but surely it's not a major inconvenience to keep playing moves, however pointless (grab 3 gems and discard 3), until your opponent has got enough points to win (or reach the 50% point where you can concede). I don't see how you wouldn't be able to afford to by some cards at some point while doing this, either...

1) The two players had in their possession all the tokens except 2 blues. Gaining additional blues was not helpful to the blocked player. All the blocked player could do every turn was draw a blue token and return a blue token.

2) There is a limit of 3 reserved cards.

3) All the cards on the board required either White or Green tokens that the blocked player did not possess and could not obtain.

4) No new cards came up in the common pool, because Ceaseless simply kept reserving blindly from the first row.

Thanks for explaining.

Sounds like a case of unnecessary "torturing" of the opponent in the case of the winning player then - because surely at some point they would want to spend their non-blue gems to get a useful card? Thereby both returning potentially useful gems to the pool, and also revealing a new card.

What you descibe sounds like a purely artificial stalemate, consciously maintained by one player, where neither of them is making any progress at all.

Sure, "at some point".

That "point" would be once all 3 royals had been acquired. Or when it would be possible to buy 2 consecutive cards that guaranteed a score of 15. Otherwise, why risk turning a guaranteed win into a loss? AT the start of the locked sequence, the player who was stuck had 4 points compared to 0 for the player who was not stuck.

[dschingis27]

The player also lost 10 additional Elo, resulting in 6x as much Elo lost compared to what should have been lost.

I'm not sure what you mean by "artificial" Karma.

Point taken about the Elo. I meant "artificial" in the sense that you shouldn't pin any of your self-worth on it, it is a digital value that exists for practical reasons, none of these practical reasons apply if your Karma drops only from 100 to 90. I personally never saw game entry requirements of >90% Karma, they may exist but must be super rare. The vast majority of players do not care if your Karma is 90% or 100%, both in practical and social/emotional sense, the vast majority will not judge you to be unreliable or whatever if your Karma is not 100%. (Some people think they are "marked" when their Karma is not 100% but I think that is a completely artificial worry that does not fit reality.)

I personally wouldn't care enough about both Elo and Karma to sit through minutes-long "garbage time" during a game when I actually want to have fun on BGA. Both Elo and Karma recover eventually. I admit it's annoying and unpleasent to get the penalty but I can swallow and forget it while a garbage time in a game just drags on and on.

Maybe you could say I value my time over some temporary online reputation.

[Ceaseless]

That is a hilarious game replay.

Can't buy any cards. Can't draw green or white tokens needed to buy anything. Cannot reserve a card. Completely blocked from doing anything.

Mayb this is above my pay grade - I'm only 300 Elo - but what the heck was your opponent doing???

Reserving cards on the first 3 turns? And then somehow spending all the jokers and ending up without the tokens necessary to buy anything on the board, AND without buying any of the 3 reserved cards to be able to reserve another one to get a joker?

I've seen players aggressively reserve what they think the top cards are to ensure their game plan, then they get greedy and disregard the power of token warfare. Most players do it to a smaller extent, but you occasionally get one that really overdoes it. I suspect many players overlook it, forgetting that Splendor is a 2-player game and end up too focused on their own cards, but I'm usually a player so my experience with other players is usually as my opponent instead of someone else's, I don't spectate enough Splendor games to know for sure how others overlook plays from someone besides myself.

I haven't watched the full replay, but I don't understand how you can get totally "blocked" in Splendor. You can always take 3 gems (according to the normal rules) - while there is a limit of 10, you can go over that during your turn and then just have to discard down to 10 at the end.

And it's news to me that there is a hard limit on the number of cards you can reserve - although I don't think I've ever had more than 1-2 cards reserved at a time so I guess I've never come across it?

Sure, if you play badly enough you can put yourself in a position where you're miles behind the opponent in the race for points with no hope of catching up - but surely it's not a major inconvenience to keep playing moves, however pointless (grab 3 gems and discard 3), until your opponent has got enough points to win (or reach the 50% point where you can concede). I don't see how you wouldn't be able to afford to by some cards at some point while doing this, either...

1) The two players had in their possession all the tokens except 2 blues. Gaining additional blues was not helpful to the blocked player. All the blocked player could do every turn was draw a blue token and return a blue token.

2) There is a limit of 3 reserved cards.

3) All the cards on the board required either White or Green tokens that the blocked player did not possess and could not obtain.

4) No new cards came up in the common pool, because Ceaseless simply kept reserving blindly from the first row.

Thanks for explaining.

Sounds like a case of unnecessary "torturing" of the opponent in the case of the winning player then - because surely at some point they would want to spend their non-blue gems to get a useful card? Thereby both returning potentially useful gems to the pool, and also revealing a new card.

What you descibe sounds like a purely artificial stalemate, consciously maintained by one player, where neither of them is making any progress at all.

There's a 3-card limit on how many reserved cards you can have at once, though as long as long as you buy them, there's no limit on how many times you can reserve over the course of the game.

Not unnecessary torturing at all. The non-blue tokens I want to spend are my gold tokens, which I can keep a constant supply of thanks to my reservations. They can no longer access those, meaning they're a safe renewable resource. My bonuses account for the rest of the expense. Row 1 cards are cheap enough to keep buying, allowing me to get enough bonuses to acquire all 3 nobles. On top of that, they have occasional 1-point cards to pad my score. Finally, when I feel secure enough with my bonuses, I can reserve level 2 cards from the top and buy them, finishing my opponent off without risking them interfering. It's a layout for a forced win and ideally someone would just concede when they see it's locked in.

It's not a stalemate. I'm making progress, and my opponent isn't. In a 2-player game, progress made by one player is compared to the other. Each player has their own ideas to win, so if you are too focused on your own plan and forget you have an opponent, they can catch you off guard and snatch victory from you. Anything that lets you account for your opponent like that is a huge deal. Always respect your opponent's ability to win until the game is over. Too many players see a path to victory and get burned in won games because they didn't do due diligence on addressing their opponent.

1) The two players had in their possession all the tokens except 2 blues. Gaining additional blues was not helpful to the blocked player. All the blocked player could do every turn was draw a blue token and return a blue token.

2) There is a limit of 3 reserved cards.

3) All the cards on the board required either White or Green tokens that the blocked player did not possess and could not obtain.

4) No new cards came up in the common pool, because Ceaseless simply kept reserving blindly from the first row.

Thanks for explaining.

Sounds like a case of unnecessary "torturing" of the opponent in the case of the winning player then - because surely at some point they would want to spend their non-blue gems to get a useful card? Thereby both returning potentially useful gems to the pool, and also revealing a new card.

What you descibe sounds like a purely artificial stalemate, consciously maintained by one player, where neither of them is making any progress at all.

Sure, "at some point".

That "point" would be once all 3 royals had been acquired. Or when it would be possible to buy 2 consecutive cards that guaranteed a score of 15. Otherwise, why risk turning a guaranteed win into a loss? AT the start of the locked sequence, the player who was stuck had 4 points compared to 0 for the player who was not stuck.

I can even reserve level 2s off the top once I get enough bonuses. That way I can rank up the remaining points without risking counterplay. If I'm going second I can land the finishing blow from the visible cards to hit 15.

[FrankJones]

Exactly.

a 100% win is preferable to 99.9%, in my opinion.

[Meeplelowda]

And I agree that BGA should offer the option to concede early at least in 2p games, or maybe the threshold can be at least lowered to 25% game progression in 2p games.

You can only concede in 2p games. Of course, the threshold they set is arbitrary and when they added the adjustment to reduce the amount of Elo gain after consecutive wins they probably should have also considered lowering the threshold for conceding because Elo boosting that way is no longer as profitable.

[robinzig]

That is a hilarious game replay.

Can't buy any cards. Can't draw green or white tokens needed to buy anything. Cannot reserve a card. Completely blocked from doing anything.

Mayb this is above my pay grade - I'm only 300 Elo - but what the heck was your opponent doing???

Reserving cards on the first 3 turns? And then somehow spending all the jokers and ending up without the tokens necessary to buy anything on the board, AND without buying any of the 3 reserved cards to be able to reserve another one to get a joker?

I've seen players aggressively reserve what they think the top cards are to ensure their game plan, then they get greedy and disregard the power of token warfare. Most players do it to a smaller extent, but you occasionally get one that really overdoes it. I suspect many players overlook it, forgetting that Splendor is a 2-player game and end up too focused on their own cards, but I'm usually a player so my experience with other players is usually as my opponent instead of someone else's, I don't spectate enough Splendor games to know for sure how others overlook plays from someone besides myself.

1) The two players had in their possession all the tokens except 2 blues. Gaining additional blues was not helpful to the blocked player. All the blocked player could do every turn was draw a blue token and return a blue token.

2) There is a limit of 3 reserved cards.

3) All the cards on the board required either White or Green tokens that the blocked player did not possess and could not obtain.

4) No new cards came up in the common pool, because Ceaseless simply kept reserving blindly from the first row.

Thanks for explaining.

Sounds like a case of unnecessary "torturing" of the opponent in the case of the winning player then - because surely at some point they would want to spend their non-blue gems to get a useful card? Thereby both returning potentially useful gems to the pool, and also revealing a new card.

What you descibe sounds like a purely artificial stalemate, consciously maintained by one player, where neither of them is making any progress at all.

There's a 3-card limit on how many reserved cards you can have at once, though as long as long as you buy them, there's no limit on how many times you can reserve over the course of the game.

Not unnecessary torturing at all. The non-blue tokens I want to spend are my gold tokens, which I can keep a constant supply of thanks to my reservations. They can no longer access those, meaning they're a safe renewable resource. My bonuses account for the rest of the expense. Row 1 cards are cheap enough to keep buying, allowing me to get enough bonuses to acquire all 3 nobles. On top of that, they have occasional 1-point cards to pad my score. Finally, when I feel secure enough with my bonuses, I can reserve level 2 cards from the top and buy them, finishing my opponent off without risking them interfering. It's a layout for a forced win and ideally someone would just concede when they see it's locked in.

It's not a stalemate. I'm making progress, and my opponent isn't. In a 2-player game, progress made by one player is compared to the other. Each player has their own ideas to win, so if you are too focused on your own plan and forget you have an opponent, they can catch you off guard and snatch victory from you. Anything that lets you account for your opponent like that is a huge deal. Always respect your opponent's ability to win until the game is over. Too many players see a path to victory and get burned in won games because they didn't do due diligence on addressing their opponent.

Thanks for explaining.

Sounds like a case of unnecessary "torturing" of the opponent in the case of the winning player then - because surely at some point they would want to spend their non-blue gems to get a useful card? Thereby both returning potentially useful gems to the pool, and also revealing a new card.

What you descibe sounds like a purely artificial stalemate, consciously maintained by one player, where neither of them is making any progress at all.

Sure, "at some point".

That "point" would be once all 3 royals had been acquired. Or when it would be possible to buy 2 consecutive cards that guaranteed a score of 15. Otherwise, why risk turning a guaranteed win into a loss? AT the start of the locked sequence, the player who was stuck had 4 points compared to 0 for the player who was not stuck.

I can even reserve level 2s off the top once I get enough bonuses. That way I can rank up the remaining points without risking counterplay. If I'm going second I can land the finishing blow from the visible cards to hit 15.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'd overlooked you deliberately spending golds to buy cards without "unblocking" your opponent. In that case, I agree, you are making progress and indeed it's better to take the 100% win.

This is such an unusual situation though - you did very well to read your opponent's problem and maintain this, but I'm not even sure how they ever got into this situation. I don't think you'd see it again in 10,000 games or more. So, while it's certainly an interesting situation for players of Splendor to ponder, I'm not sure it has any wider bearing on BGA. I don't disagree that the "50%" rule leads to unsatisfactory situations like the one you got into, but there are many other games where such situations (of being obviously totally lost but the progression is still well under 50%) are much more likely to happen. It's a common complaint.

[FrankJones]

There are perhaps other games in which this could happen too. It's also possible for a game to reach a stalemate situation in which neither player can make progress, but lacks an option to "offer draw". I've only played one game here that has an "offer draw" button.

[Ceaseless]

That is a hilarious game replay.

Can't buy any cards. Can't draw green or white tokens needed to buy anything. Cannot reserve a card. Completely blocked from doing anything.

Mayb this is above my pay grade - I'm only 300 Elo - but what the heck was your opponent doing???

Reserving cards on the first 3 turns? And then somehow spending all the jokers and ending up without the tokens necessary to buy anything on the board, AND without buying any of the 3 reserved cards to be able to reserve another one to get a joker?

I've seen players aggressively reserve what they think the top cards are to ensure their game plan, then they get greedy and disregard the power of token warfare. Most players do it to a smaller extent, but you occasionally get one that really overdoes it. I suspect many players overlook it, forgetting that Splendor is a 2-player game and end up too focused on their own cards, but I'm usually a player so my experience with other players is usually as my opponent instead of someone else's, I don't spectate enough Splendor games to know for sure how others overlook plays from someone besides myself.

Thanks for explaining.

Sounds like a case of unnecessary "torturing" of the opponent in the case of the winning player then - because surely at some point they would want to spend their non-blue gems to get a useful card? Thereby both returning potentially useful gems to the pool, and also revealing a new card.

What you descibe sounds like a purely artificial stalemate, consciously maintained by one player, where neither of them is making any progress at all.

There's a 3-card limit on how many reserved cards you can have at once, though as long as long as you buy them, there's no limit on how many times you can reserve over the course of the game.

Not unnecessary torturing at all. The non-blue tokens I want to spend are my gold tokens, which I can keep a constant supply of thanks to my reservations. They can no longer access those, meaning they're a safe renewable resource. My bonuses account for the rest of the expense. Row 1 cards are cheap enough to keep buying, allowing me to get enough bonuses to acquire all 3 nobles. On top of that, they have occasional 1-point cards to pad my score. Finally, when I feel secure enough with my bonuses, I can reserve level 2 cards from the top and buy them, finishing my opponent off without risking them interfering. It's a layout for a forced win and ideally someone would just concede when they see it's locked in.

It's not a stalemate. I'm making progress, and my opponent isn't. In a 2-player game, progress made by one player is compared to the other. Each player has their own ideas to win, so if you are too focused on your own plan and forget you have an opponent, they can catch you off guard and snatch victory from you. Anything that lets you account for your opponent like that is a huge deal. Always respect your opponent's ability to win until the game is over. Too many players see a path to victory and get burned in won games because they didn't do due diligence on addressing their opponent.

Sure, "at some point".

That "point" would be once all 3 royals had been acquired. Or when it would be possible to buy 2 consecutive cards that guaranteed a score of 15. Otherwise, why risk turning a guaranteed win into a loss? AT the start of the locked sequence, the player who was stuck had 4 points compared to 0 for the player who was not stuck.

I can even reserve level 2s off the top once I get enough bonuses. That way I can rank up the remaining points without risking counterplay. If I'm going second I can land the finishing blow from the visible cards to hit 15.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'd overlooked you deliberately spending golds to buy cards without "unblocking" your opponent. In that case, I agree, you are making progress and indeed it's better to take the 100% win.

This is such an unusual situation though - you did very well to read your opponent's problem and maintain this, but I'm not even sure how they ever got into this situation. I don't think you'd see it again in 10,000 games or more. So, while it's certainly an interesting situation for players of Splendor to ponder, I'm not sure it has any wider bearing on BGA. I don't disagree that the "50%" rule leads to unsatisfactory situations like the one you got into, but there are many other games where such situations (of being obviously totally lost but the progression is still well under 50%) are much more likely to happen. It's a common complaint.

I initially thought it would be a "that's a once in a lifegame situation" when I first saw it, but while rare, it's not quite that rare.

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=735448113 Last month
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=721340828 The month before that

[Fuchur]

Do you enjoy these games where the other player has nothing to do ?

I guess that your partner didn't and won't probably play again against you (this is pure speculation), so you might have to wait longer to complete your tables (i guess that isn't any problem for splendor) -- but there are other games with extremely small playerbases.

Just wondering whether you want to play or only win.