How to cope with being a bad player?

[FrankJones]

Playing friendly mode games against a good player and asking for and following strategic advice can make almost anyone a > 50% winning player in a game.

[Archisian]

Play games for the fun of playing rather than just winning?

I have no idea what my win-rate is, and couldn't much care. I know, because BGA told me in my end-of-year wrap-up that my highest ELO for any game is 284 - so I'm obviously not expert at anything. When I win a game, great. When I don't win a game, I still usually had fun playing (if not, I generally don't play that game again). Sometimes I look at how I played and how my opponents played and try to think what I could do differently next time, but I'm not prepared to spend a lot of time analysing. But I also play a lot of different games too, whereas I notice people who do well often play a lot narrower spectrum of games, but play the ones they're good at a lot more than I do. My biggest number of plays is 362 on Can't Stop, mostly because I was entering the daily tournaments regularly for a while. Beyond that, I have a couple of mid-length games with plays in 100-200 range, nowhere near the thousands I've seen some players accrue (although I don't know, maybe they were in expert range by their 100-200th game and just play one game a lot because they like it). I prefer the diversity.

I mean, judging by this thread: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46272, I think you can certainly learn to be an expert at probably most games if you want to, though some may come more naturally to you than others. So if you want to do that, maybe try some of the suggested strategies in that thread.

For me, I think it's a different experience when I play board games in real life as opposed to online. In real life, I don't really care that much about losing when I'm among friends and they were really chill back when we all had the free time to be able to meet up and play board games.

For online though, I view it as a way to practice and improve my skills. I mostly play Wingspan and I asked a few months ago about how to improve. I followed the advice and I improved from 25% win rate to 50% now. However, it seems I have just plateaued. The advice I used in recent games hasn't been getting me wins. So, I try to keep that advice in my back pocket while trying to analyze the field more. But it seems that really doesn't help either. Maybe because I'm dumb and I just don't see the right cards to get in a given situation.

[Archisian]

I’m also not really good at any game. Maybe at least quite good at Wingspan with European expansion and Oceania as I’ve played that a ton, but take the expansions away or add Asia, and I’m “just okay” at Wingspan again. Funnily enough, the games I’m best at aren’t even the ones I enjoy the most. I like complex games like Nucleum, Darwin’s Journey or Gaia Project more than I like Wingspan and 7WD. I totally agree that it’s not too great to get beaten by a mile every time, so I do use the restrictions when opening a table - I see you’re premium as well. There are still games I’ll hardly ever win when restricting to Apprentices, but at least it feels like I might have a chance for at least the first half of the game, and that’s enough for me to have fun. Some games are more fun to lose than others, esp Euro games with low interaction. Gaia Project is still an interesting puzzle when I’m behind, while in 7WD (edit: which I guess is a Euro as well, but an atypical one), it’s really hard to find any motivation in the same situation.

To be generally good at board games, I think you need certain traits. If you’re, like me, bad at remembering what cards have been played or which tiles are left, you’ll never be a more than decent player in many board games.

I think my problem is that, when given a certain situation, I just don't know what's the right move to make. For example in Wingspan, I follow the general advice of 2 forests birds and one wetland bird. However, there are many games (A lot of the time recently), where I get either no forest birds or no wetland birds in my opening hand. Pair it with the fact that usually goes last, it puts me in a huge disadvantage. I'm not sure what is the right move to make in order to even have a chance to win. It seems that once you get the basic strategies down, the better players just "know" what are the right cards to take and play. I just don't have that.

[Archisian]

This is what a properly functioning rating system does. Unless you are one of a handful of the best players, the system will get you close to 50%. Win some games? Rating goes up, making it harder to gain and easier to lose. And vice versa when you lose a few. Working as intended.

So it's kind of one of those things where I accept my place? Like Bill Parcells said "You are what your record says you are."

[Meeplelowda]

It seems that once you get the basic strategies down, the better players just "know" what are the right cards to take and play.

The better players don't just "know" things. They either figured them out through playing a lot or studied them somewhere. It seems self-evident that this would be the case, but I can't tell whether you think it should be otherwise, and if so why. Every endeavor from tennis to chess has its fundamentals. That's the low hanging fruit. And because many people can't even be bothered to learn and practice the fundamentals, that can get you a long way and you will do well against those people. But to move beyond that takes work, and it's not linear. The next 25% improvement isn't going to be as easy as the first 25% improvement.

There are some people who take some games very seriously, to the point of running simulations or making spreadsheets to crunch data. Or they just grind an order of magnitude or two more games than the average person. Many (most) people don't want to put in that kind of work, which is fine. But they also shouldn't feel entitled to perform as well as the people who do put in that kind of work.

[FrankJones]

This is what a properly functioning rating system does. Unless you are one of a handful of the best players, the system will get you close to 50%. Win some games? Rating goes up, making it harder to gain and easier to lose. And vice versa when you lose a few. Working as intended.

So it's kind of one of those things where I accept my place? Like Bill Parcells said "You are what your record says you are."

Have you tried viewing game replays?

I've had a good run of success going from low 300s Elo to near 500, rarely losing.
I've had good results from other games by reviewing game replays of other players to see what I might be missing.
I struggle with Viticulture, so I watched a game or two. I'm still no sure I grasp the game yet, but if I decide to start playing ranked games, I'll likely view a few more first.

[Meeplelowda]

I've had good results from other games by reviewing game replays of other players to see what I might be missing.
I struggle with Viticulture, so I watched a game or two. I'm still no sure I grasp the game yet, but if I decide to start playing ranked games, I'll likely view a few more first.

This is the type of work I'm talking about. To be clear, I have not put in the kind of work to "git gud" at any game. So I don't expect my Elo to climb out of the 200s on any but a handful.

[Archisian]

It seems that once you get the basic strategies down, the better players just "know" what are the right cards to take and play.

The better players don't just "know" things. They either figured them out through playing a lot or studied them somewhere. It seems self-evident that this would be the case, but I can't tell whether you think it should be otherwise, and if so why. Every endeavor from tennis to chess has its fundamentals. That's the low hanging fruit. And because many people can't even be bothered to learn and practice the fundamentals, that can get you a long way and you will do well against those people. But to move beyond that takes work, and it's not linear. The next 25% improvement isn't going to be as easy as the first 25% improvement.

There are some people who take some games very seriously, to the point of running simulations or making spreadsheets to crunch data. Or they just grind an order of magnitude or two more games than the average person. Many (most) people don't want to put in that kind of work, which is fine. But they also shouldn't feel entitled to perform as well as the people who do put in that kind of work.

Sorry, I meant to say "know" as in they sort of automatically know which cards are going to work. Like in Wingspan, the best players will see the opening hand, the end of round goals, birds in the tray and who starts first and they know which card(s) to take. I'd definitely be willing to watch games and for them to explain in the moment why that cards was the best one to take in the current situation. At the end of the game, it's harder for me, personally, to gain a lot of value. Because yeah, all the information is out there in the end, but it's easy to see why in hindsight. I'm more looking for right in the moment, turn by turn, if that makes sense.

[Andrei3009]

You can just not worry about the results of the game and try to have fun.

If you consider yourself a bad player, then you want to improve your skills. The fastest way to improve in games in general is to start thinking differently, switch to analysis mode. For example, for me, most games don't have any themes or beautiful pictures, all the cards have only properties and values, and my brain simply discards the rest. I try to think within the framework of optimizing points, collecting the most effective combination, etc. I had a funny case when a random guy walked past our gaming table and said he loved Japanese-themed games, and I was a little shocked, because despite more than a hundred games, I never noticed it.

Not everyone has this mindset and not everyone should have it that way, I sometimes envy people who get so much pleasure from the gameplay regardless of the outcome of the game, but the more questions you ask yourself, the faster you will learn

If give more constructive advice, then you should first analyze your replays, especially those where you lost and even better, where the opponent would be 100-200 ratings higher than you. When reviewing your games, you need to constantly question "where I lost", "what I could have done differently" and so on, and then apply the solutions you found in other games. I also advise you to play in turn base , where you can analyze each move for a very long time, you can ask yourself each move "how the game is going", "another plan would work", each move turns out to be like watching a replay but during the game itself

Wingspan is a difficult enough game to always know what to do in it, even I, having a good experience, often get lost at the start.

[Ceaseless]

BGA told me in my end-of-year wrap-up

We have those? Where did those pop up? Was there a special spot or did they just show up? (I could see myself having completely forgotten about them if they didn't stand out, lol.)

This is what a properly functioning rating system does. Unless you are one of a handful of the best players, the system will get you close to 50%. Win some games? Rating goes up, making it harder to gain and easier to lose. And vice versa when you lose a few. Working as intended.

So it's kind of one of those things where I accept my place? Like Bill Parcells said "You are what your record says you are."

That quote is just talking about the present skills, it doesn't mean you can't improve. Though I believe the point you are quoting is trying to say a proper pairing system should have players face similarly skilled opponents so that instead of your winrate going up as you improve the skill of your opponent goes up instead. So a 100 goes 50%, becomes 200 level skill, and after they win enough to be 200 they go 50% vs 200s instead of 100s. BGA's pairing could use some work though, so we don't always get this ideal.

I think my problem is that, when given a certain situation, I just don't know what's the right move to make. For example in Wingspan, I follow the general advice of 2 forests birds and one wetland bird. However, there are many games (A lot of the time recently), where I get either no forest birds or no wetland birds in my opening hand. Pair it with the fact that usually goes last, it puts me in a huge disadvantage. I'm not sure what is the right move to make in order to even have a chance to win. It seems that once you get the basic strategies down, the better players just "know" what are the right cards to take and play. I just don't have that.

You are generally not getting unplayable hands with any degree of regularity. There will be the occasional unfortunate slump, but hands tend to be reasonable or there wouldn't be players consistently performing solidly. The 2 Forest 1 Wetland advice is only one aspect of the game. It's commonly given because it's one of the first and most common, hurdles players deal with, plus a massive effect on your game if not followed properly, That doesn't mean all of your troubles go away upon following it, now you have to handle the next step. Some of it will be fundamentals, and some will be paying attention to details, etc.

It seems that once you get the basic strategies down, the better players just "know" what are the right cards to take and play.

The better players don't just "know" things. They either figured them out through playing a lot or studied them somewhere. It seems self-evident that this would be the case, but I can't tell whether you think it should be otherwise, and if so why. Every endeavor from tennis to chess has its fundamentals. That's the low hanging fruit. And because many people can't even be bothered to learn and practice the fundamentals, that can get you a long way and you will do well against those people. But to move beyond that takes work, and it's not linear. The next 25% improvement isn't going to be as easy as the first 25% improvement.

There are some people who take some games very seriously, to the point of running simulations or making spreadsheets to crunch data. Or they just grind an order of magnitude or two more games than the average person. Many (most) people don't want to put in that kind of work, which is fine. But they also shouldn't feel entitled to perform as well as the people who do put in that kind of work.

Sorry, I meant to say "know" as in they sort of automatically know which cards are going to work. Like in Wingspan, the best players will see the opening hand, the end of round goals, birds in the tray and who starts first and they know which card(s) to take. I'd definitely be willing to watch games and for them to explain in the moment why that cards was the best one to take in the current situation. At the end of the game, it's harder for me, personally, to gain a lot of value. Because yeah, all the information is out there in the end, but it's easy to see why in hindsight. I'm more looking for right in the moment, turn by turn, if that makes sense.

It's not a magic skill, these things are learned, or intuited thanks to past experience with similar enough circumstances they could extrapolate from and sort out the differences. There's no guarantee they gave the perfect answer either, they're working with the knowledge and skills they have to give the best response they can.

What do you mean by 'it's easy to see why in hindsight"? What new information was revealed to make it clear that without it made it impossible to work out a proper idea before? I'll make a reference to a recent past post here.

Have you tried viewing game replays?

I've had a good run of success going from low 300s Elo to near 500, rarely losing.
I've had good results from other games by reviewing game replays of other players to see what I might be missing.
I struggle with Viticulture, so I watched a game or two. I'm still no sure I grasp the game yet, but if I decide to start playing ranked games, I'll likely view a few more first.

Sorry for the tag, just meant to reference the post but I think you end up getting notified as though I'm replying to you when I actually mean to use this as a note talking to the OP.

Viewing replays isa very useful tool. Many players think they're sorted out the game, I take a look at their replays, and several mistakes pop out, often game changing. You can frequently see missed fundamentals show up. I've had the same thing done when my own games have been looked at, whether it be from another player or if I'm looking at my own games.

They also offer chances for discussion, looking at ideas using a game you were an active participant in, making it easier to follow that game's examples as well as ideas used on your end of the scene. You get what you put into it, not just in time spent being there, but in the thoughts and effort you put into that time to go over ideas and see what you should fix.