Can we stop conceding with one move to go?

[Fuchur]

I guess that there are games where the statistics provided by BGA can be useful to learn better tactics or even find "broken" games (in the sense that there is a dominant strategy). I still believe that EARTH (like many other games mentioned in one of my previous posts) has to many differents cards and to many interactions between these for it to be helpful to count how many actions of each type you have performed.

That's fine if you want to have an opinion about the game Earth.
You're wrong, to whatever extent an opinion can be wrong. Nothing in your statement about the game makes any sense at all. The number of cards and interactions in the game is irrelevant to the fact that there exist very strong correlations between some specific stats and winning.

Well, as far as i remember your statistics were basically counts of which action was taken how many times by any player.
Then there might be a correlation between the number of points and, for instance, the number of cards planted.

But obviously it won't be a winning strategy to just spam the planting action, no matter WHICH cards are in your hand and not to take great care WHICH cards are planted WHERE on your grid.

As for all of the other games i've mentioned in a previous post there far to much individual cards with to much specific interactions between them that the basic statistics you're so proud of could help to choose which one to play at what moment.

[Fuchur]

Good luck with your search !

As you are familiar with statistics you obviously know that one crucial part of each study is to clean the data before you start analyzing it.
So, in the case of BGA one has to carefully separate the games where all players tried their best to win the game from those where at least one player was making clearly suboptimal moves --- otherwise the correlation between strategy and outcome will be spoiled.

It might be (from your point of view that the statistics are all-important) better if BGA would suggest any player to concede the moment it detects a bad move, or, easier to implement, ask each player how he evaluates his own play. If he thinks he has made mistakes no statistics should be calculated as these would be biased.

Given my status as one of tb best players at the game "Earth", I would say my "search" has indeed gone well.

You haven't even inquired as to how I use any of those stats. You're making broad statements about a game you know little about and (if I recall correctly) said you are not good at.

I said the statistics are valuable. I never said they are "all important".

Your final sentence makes no sense.

Well, i will explain it to you.

The statics themselves help indicate whether one player is playing well or playing poorly.

This is rubbish. You take the end scoring to judge which of the players has played best.
Then you take the statistics to understand what are the differences between their playstyles -- and, if you push your analysis hard enough, you might be able to find a correlation.
But these statistics are spoiled if one of the players isn't playing the "best he can", for instance has, at one moment of the game, a misclick or a silly mistake which makes him loose crucial points. His overall strategy might be better but you won't recognize it by looking at your statistics.

[arya-banana]

sometimes people do things we don't like sorry

doing something to stop people from conceding with one move to go is like doing something to stop yall from going on and on about it

it's not the right thing to do

Not a very good point. Sure, we can't literally force people to keep playing a game, but we can enforce punishments for those who leave. We already have punishments for offenses that are not as serious as deliberately leaving a game (like running out of time for reasons outside of one's control), so it should be a no brainer in my opinion.

Why would you punish someone for conceding when conceding is not against the rules?

The suggestion here is to prevent people from doing something that is normally allowed because it hurts your feelings or robs you of satisfaction.

That does not cross the threshold to enforcement of rules or disallowing something.

[FrankJones]

So, you claim that you are in the top five because you have studied the statistics of Earth ? Are you sure that you haven't gained your place by playing a lot and thinking a lot about best strategies to follow ? Would you have gained that skill without playing, just on looking at these statistics ?

No, I did not claim that, and I would appreciate it if you would not make such statements that obviously do not reflect what I actually said.
Studying and analyzing statistics is one component of my accomplishments at the game. Obviously the other things you said also contributed.

And no, analyzing statistics doesn't has as condition that you need to be (already) good at the thing there are about.

You're entitled to your opinion. I'm equally entitled to assert that someone who is not good at a game is less capable of understanding the use and value of various statistics for that specific game.

I would think that would go without saying. In general, I pay more attention to anything strategy-related posted by high-achieving players rather than low-achieving players.

As i don't see the statistics of Earth (nor any other game) i obviously can't see any value in them. All i can say is that the statistics YOU showed me are clearly not worth all the fuss you're making.

Emphasis added to highlight the bizarre absurdity of someone not good at a game stating with 100% certainty that a lengthy list of 40+ statistics are "CLEARLY" not as valuable as I am suggesting they are.

What exactly qualifies you to say which statistics do and do not matter for a game you barely know anything about?

This is just a really bizarre hill for you to be choosing to die on.

I can confidently say that if someone were discussing a game I know little to nothing about, I would have no idea which statistics, if any, were useful or to what extent.


Can you give any examples of BGA statistics that you DO think are useful? Or are you just asserting that none of the 1400+ games here provide any useful statistics?

Sure, you can continue to proclaim, without supporting evidence or argumentation, that no statistics on BGA are useful because you say they're no useful, but that's not exactly a compelling argument.

[FrankJones]

I guess that there are games where the statistics provided by BGA can be useful to learn better tactics or even find "broken" games (in the sense that there is a dominant strategy). I still believe that EARTH (like many other games mentioned in one of my previous posts) has to many differents cards and to many interactions between these for it to be helpful to count how many actions of each type you have performed.

That's fine if you want to have an opinion about the game Earth.
You're wrong, to whatever extent an opinion can be wrong. Nothing in your statement about the game makes any sense at all. The number of cards and interactions in the game is irrelevant to the fact that there exist very strong correlations between some specific stats and winning.

Well, as far as i remember your statistics were basically counts of which action was taken how many times by any player.
Then there might be a correlation between the number of points and, for instance, the number of cards planted.

But obviously it won't be a winning strategy to just spam the planting action, no matter WHICH cards are in your hand and not to take great care WHICH cards are planted WHERE on your grid.

As for all of the other games i've mentioned in a previous post there far to much individual cards with to much specific interactions between them that the basic statistics you're so proud of could help to choose which one to play at what moment.

No, there were more statistics listed than just which actions were taken.

Your last sentence is just a tired rehash of your main point which you have continued to repeat without giving any support to the opinion.

Just because a statistic does not tell you exactly which card to play in every situation does not invalidate the usefulness of statistics. If your opinion is that no statistic is useful unless it tells you exactly which card to play in each scenario, then, yeah, no statics are useful. But in saying that, you have invented your own definition of "useful" that does not align with reality.

[FrankJones]

Good luck with your search !

As you are familiar with statistics you obviously know that one crucial part of each study is to clean the data before you start analyzing it.
So, in the case of BGA one has to carefully separate the games where all players tried their best to win the game from those where at least one player was making clearly suboptimal moves --- otherwise the correlation between strategy and outcome will be spoiled.

It might be (from your point of view that the statistics are all-important) better if BGA would suggest any player to concede the moment it detects a bad move, or, easier to implement, ask each player how he evaluates his own play. If he thinks he has made mistakes no statistics should be calculated as these would be biased.

Given my status as one of tb best players at the game "Earth", I would say my "search" has indeed gone well.

You haven't even inquired as to how I use any of those stats. You're making broad statements about a game you know little about and (if I recall correctly) said you are not good at.

I said the statistics are valuable. I never said they are "all important".

Your final sentence makes no sense.

Well, i will explain it to you.

The statics themselves help indicate whether one player is playing well or playing poorly.

This is rubbish. You take the end scoring to judge which of the players has played best.
Then you take the statistics to understand what are the differences between their playstyles -- and, if you push your analysis hard enough, you might be able to find a correlation.
But these statistics are spoiled if one of the players isn't playing the "best he can", for instance has, at one moment of the game, a misclick or a silly mistake which makes him loose crucial points. His overall strategy might be better but you won't recognize it by looking at your statistics.

No, it is not rubbish.

And you actually think the end scores is what determines who played best? Seriously? So, no one has ever lost a game despite making the best plays possible against an opponent who made mistakes but just had better luck or better cards?

I'm starting to wonder whether you actually understand games at all.

The fact that players in any game might make mistakes does not negate the vast collection of statistics gained over a large sample of games played.

If I look at the statistics of a master level "Earth" player and the statistics of a low-level player (not their Elo or W-L record or points scored, but the statistics I listed), I assure you I could pick which is the master level player and which is the low Elo player. It's truly bizarre that you seem to believe otherwise.

[FrankJones]

sometimes people do things we don't like sorry

doing something to stop people from conceding with one move to go is like doing something to stop yall from going on and on about it

it's not the right thing to do

Not a very good point. Sure, we can't literally force people to keep playing a game, but we can enforce punishments for those who leave. We already have punishments for offenses that are not as serious as deliberately leaving a game (like running out of time for reasons outside of one's control), so it should be a no brainer in my opinion.

Why would you punish someone for conceding when conceding is not against the rules?

The suggestion here is to prevent people from doing something that is normally allowed because it hurts your feelings or robs you of satisfaction.

That does not cross the threshold to enforcement of rules or disallowing something.

The point being made is that maybe in some circumstances Conceding should be against the rules. (It already is, in some circumstances.)

It's sort of odd to suggest that nothing is wrong with doing [Something] because "[that something] is not against the rules."

Discussion and analysis of potentially problematic and questionable behaviors and actions is how we arrive at rules in the first place, and how we modify them as time passes.

[Fuchur]

So, you claim that you are in the top five because you have studied the statistics of Earth ? Are you sure that you haven't gained your place by playing a lot and thinking a lot about best strategies to follow ? Would you have gained that skill without playing, just on looking at these statistics ?

No, I did not claim that, and I would appreciate

Well, and I would appreciate it that you would watch your language

it if you would not make such statements that obviously do not reflect what I actually said.
Studying and analyzing statistics is one component of my accomplishments at the game. Obviously the other things you said also contributed.

Well, which of these were more important ?

Would anybody be able to become a outstanding player of Earth (or any other of the games i mentioned) just by looking at the statistics provided by BGA -- without looking what was played at which moment ?

And no, analyzing statistics doesn't has as condition that you need to be (already) good at the thing there are about.

You're entitled to your opinion. I'm equally entitled to assert that someone who is not good at a game is less capable of understanding the use and value of various statistics for that specific game.

I would think that would go without saying. In general, I pay more attention to anything strategy-related posted by high-achieving players rather than low-achieving players.

Well, for once i agree with you -- good players might know more about good strategies than bad players. But, again, that has nothing to do with analysing statistics. Otherwise we shouldn't let statistics being done by statisticiens ...

As i don't see the statistics of Earth (nor any other game) i obviously can't see any value in them. All i can say is that the statistics YOU showed me are clearly not worth all the fuss you're making.

Emphasis added to highlight the bizarre absurdity of someone not good at a game stating with 100% certainty that a lengthy list of 40+ statistics are "CLEARLY" not as valuable as I am suggesting they are.

What exactly qualifies you to say which statistics do and do not matter for a game you barely know anything about?
[/quote]
Perhaps the fact that you, as the auto-proclaimed master of Earth wasn't able to give any example of a statistic worth talking about ?

This is just a really bizarre hill for you to be choosing to die on.

I can confidently say that if someone were discussing a game I know little to nothing about, I would have no idea which statistics, if any, were useful or to what extent.

Aren't you the guy who said that the chess statistics provided by BGA weren't good for anything ? Are you also a grandmaster of chess ? Or how can YOU judge these ?

Can you give any examples of BGA statistics that you DO think are useful? Or are you just asserting that none of the 1400+ games here provide any useful statistics?

Do you have a memory problem ? I have no access to any statistics provided by BGA, so, obviously, i can't give any examples of game-statistics worth talking about.

Sure, you can continue to proclaim, without supporting evidence or argumentation, that no statistics on BGA are useful because you say they're no useful, but that's not exactly a compelling argument.

I've never said that. There might be games (on BGA) and game-statistics (provided by BGA) that could be useful --- i'm saying that the ones you were giving for Earth weren't of much use.

[Fuchur]

8<

The statics themselves help indicate whether one player is playing well or playing poorly.

This is rubbish. You take the end scoring to judge which of the players has played best.
Then you take the statistics to understand what are the differences between their playstyles -- and, if you push your analysis hard enough, you might be able to find a correlation.
But these statistics are spoiled if one of the players isn't playing the "best he can", for instance has, at one moment of the game, a misclick or a silly mistake which makes him loose crucial points. His overall strategy might be better but you won't recognize it by looking at your statistics.

No, it is not rubbish.

Yes, it is. (and we can go on for weeks like this )

And you actually think the end scores is what determines who played best? Seriously? So, no one has ever lost a game despite making the best plays possible against an opponent who made mistakes but just had better luck or better cards?

I'm starting to wonder whether you actually understand games at all.

The fact that players in any game might make mistakes does not negate the vast collection of statistics gained over a large sample of games played.

If I look at the statistics of a master level "Earth" player and the statistics of a low-level player (not their Elo or W-L record or points scored, but the statistics I listed), I assure you I could pick which is the master level player and which is the low Elo player. It's truly bizarre that you seem to believe otherwise.

It's not the statistics which are telling you who has played best (even if he might have lost due to stupid mistake or bad luck) but your understanding of the game. You have to be a good player to see this.

But there might good strategies that you aren't aware of and so you won't be able to recognize them, especially if the outcome of the game doesn't reflect the quality, due to bad luck/silly mistakes.

In order to identify a new -- better -- strategy you'll need a lot of games matching this strategy against various others (in order to balance out bad luck and mistakes) and look at the average outcome.

This is the way alpha go learned to play : Playing billions times, see what pays out. Pure statistics, making a machine the best player on earth. Try doing this with the statistics provided by BGA.

[tbhp]

sometimes people do things we don't like sorry

doing something to stop people from conceding with one move to go is like doing something to stop yall from going on and on about it

it's not the right thing to do

Not a very good point. Sure, we can't literally force people to keep playing a game, but we can enforce punishments for those who leave. We already have punishments for offenses that are not as serious as deliberately leaving a game (like running out of time for reasons outside of one's control), so it should be a no brainer in my opinion.

Why would you punish someone for conceding when conceding is not against the rules?

The suggestion here is to prevent people from doing something that is normally allowed because it hurts your feelings or robs you of satisfaction.

That does not cross the threshold to enforcement of rules or disallowing something.

Well, when someone concedes on me, it feels a lot more like they did something wrong than when they simply run out of time (in which case I just let them play and don't hold it against them).

We are here to play games, so it seems logical to me the worst thing a player can do is to sabotage a game by interrupting it before its natural conclusion. When someone takes too much time to play, at least they aren't disrupting the normal process of a game.