Choice of cards to give at the beginning of a round

[9muso8]

Hi, what are your reasoning when selecting the 2 cards to give at the beginning of a round? Sometimes you have a very balanced hand and by giving topic cards you may decrease the chances to play one/two colours, sometimes you have a very unbalanced hand but would you keep it that way? I am not sure what works and what not, so I would like to hear your opinions, thanks!

[mnguyen715]

I've only played it twice so far, so by no means an experienced player. I agree that this is a difficult and subtle decision. Here are some of my thoughts (just for base game, no variant). Think about what colors you want to be strong and what colors you want to be weak. Whatever you have a lot of, your opponent likely has little of, and vice versa, and that becomes more and more true as you advance in rounds and the number of unknown cards decreases. Whatever you give to your opponent starts the round off stronger / higher up on the ladder. It's dangerous to have a starting hand with one or two cards of a suit that eventually becomes weak, where the other suits advance too far for you to be able to play, because that results in an almost guaranteed loss of a round when you end up with an unplayable card. So if you're considering giving your opponent a suit that you have two of, dropping you down to one, I think it's ideal if you are going first that round so that you can get rid that card. Now you've created a situation where your opponent likely has a lot of that suit, and it's starting from higher up the ladder, which can be good for them, but at least you can't lose because of being stuck with that card. Conversely, if you have a huge number of one suit, you might consider not giving your opponent one of them, and try to find a spot in the round to make a big jump and dump a bunch of them at one time. If you start with four of one suit, maybe you keep all of them, maybe you give your opponent one or two, and you'll likely be able to find a way to use whatever number you decide to keep. This isn't close to a comprehensive answer, but maybe it gives a few things to think about.