Killing random + EV? Lets calculate

[slav4ella]

I was in this situation 6 player game as Paul Regret VICE right after sheriff who is GRINGO, I have a volcanic, 2 BANGS, barrel, a miss, and general store took a cat balou. I’ve cat balou the last player to avoid any strong cards being played against sheriff who is WILLY! Willy grabbed a 3 range gun from general store because sheriff has Mustang therefore that’s why I cat balou Willy to rid of the gun, it was unsuccessful, but I did get rid of a duel. The next person (at that time, role unknown to me) is Rene Kit, with my defense ability he won’t be able to reach me and the chances of the next person is an outlaw, I took my chances and started shooting him with all I got. He took damages but was still in the game. He then cat balou my volcanic, salooned, and ended his turn. The next one is obviously an outlaw, BART puts me in jail, ended his turn, the next outlaw had a long enough range gun who is SLAB! No way I can avoid the hit! Targeted me therefore I am down one LP. Then next OUTLAW who is WILLY cat balou sheriff, puts down scope and his Remington 3 range gun and targeted me. I have one miss and a barrel, barell failed of course but I was able to use my miss. Willy then played Indian causing another LP of mines. Sheriff then puts Kit in jail (role unknown at that time since it’s only 2nd round). I didn’t get out of jail, Kit Rene didn’t either. Bart then uses Gatling, barell came in clutch for me. Slab couldn’t shoot probably has no BANGS, Willy then ends me. As a Good Samaritan I just left the game and left it at that but SOMEHOW I don’t know who started the conversation but I believe sheriff was upset and just made a comment and here goes OUTLAW WILLY!!! Saying that VICE F***ED everything up! lol it’s funny how I got blamed for just playing my role as a Deputy lol and here I am just a weak defenseless character versus the Strongest characters in the game and for them to blame me for the whole game!?? lol hilarious to me!! So yup! Whoever is in the situation, just shoot!

Yeah, you were playing your role — but you could’ve played it way better.

1) You picked a terrible VICE character.
Paul Regret is probably one of the worst choices for VICE here. Almost anyone else would’ve been stronger.

2) You played General Store at the worst possible position.
That’s a huge mistake when you’re sitting right after the Sheriff. You’re basically handing your opponents the best cards while the Sheriff is the one most likely to get the leftovers. In your exact seat, you basically never want to play General Store.

3) You dumped all your BANGs — and you shouldn’t have.
Sheriff Gringo is a pretty strong Sheriff and not easy to kill. And when you’re right after him, that’s actually a good table position for the Sheriff: at least two outlaws need range to even reach him.
So the correct plan is to save as many cards in hand as possible — ideally keep 3 cards.

There’s also a high chance Indians show up in the first cycle — around 40%. You don’t want to die fast and put the outlaws into the comfy line of: kill the rene/vice first, then deal with the Sheriff later.
So in that situation you usually shoot once (at most), safe 1 bang for indians.

4) Cat Balou:
Yeah, playing it on Willy to try to hit a BANG or a weapon is fine. But if you had the option to hold it, holding is better. The best use is to wait until an outlaw actually drops a weapon and starts reaching the Sheriff — then remove the weapon.

[Goku_2020]

While i agree with your stats, think from the perspective of the person who just got shot and didn't even get to play


So while u maybe able to win the game, not great to feel when you are in that position.

[Michael_n_CO]

If you kill a random player, they usually get very angry and start talking about the red thumb.

Send link to this post to this angry guys xD

I did it more, but the numbers lead a dance

I have seen people threatening red thumb for sheriff shooting randomly on opening turn. Some people hate math

[kuzestanx]

While i agree with your stats, think from the perspective of the person who just got shot and didn't even get to play


So while u maybe able to win the game, not great to feel when you are in that position.

The whole game is built on player elimination. I understand what type of player you're talking about, sure. But when we sit down to play, we should understand we're not the only ones who can eliminate.

Moreover, we need to understand that other players want to win as much as we do. Random elimination is what's useful here. However, not everyone in the community is that empathetic yet.

[slav4ella]

BIG UPDATE
I collected a database in which I researched over 9,000 samples of Sheriff games. I’ll make a separate post about the database methodology.

In this post specifically, I want to update some numbers that were previously based mostly on intuition. I used to assume that the average Sheriff win rate for an average player was around 40%. But reality turned out to be very different.

I was using my own Sheriff win rate — around 40% — as a reference point. But for the average Bang! player, the Sheriff win rate is actually around 31%. (from this database)

So the situation discussed in that post, in a vacuum and without accounting for characters, looks even better than expected. If we take the real average win rate of 31%, and after the kill that win rate becomes close to 50%, then random killing becomes even more profitable than I originally thought. (for the random kill from helper)

In the actual data, the average Sheriff win rate rises to about 45% after the first Outlaw dies. But here I’m using 50%, because the Sheriff’s win rate after the first dead Outlaw is calculated across all situations where an Outlaw died. In those games, the Sheriff may have been damaged to different degrees.

But the situation where the Sheriff remains at 4-5 HP -- the win rate is quite high.

So the jump from the average Sheriff win rate of 31% to around 50% makes the situation with a random kill even more profitable than expected. (for the random kill by vice)

I’m also attaching research on characters and their win rates. When a character has more than 500 games, that win rate is already quite close to reality. (FOR THE AVERAGE BANG PLAYER) With 500+ games per character, the margin of error is roughly within a 3% range.


Now about sheriff"s random kill, for example, if you end up playing Sheriff as Willy, whose win rate appears to be around 20% — maybe 25% at most, in my estimation — then your goal should be very clear. When you pick Willy, you should always have one main task: if you draw a bunch of Bang! cards on your first turn, you should try to kill someone.

That is your game plan. You pick Willy with the strict plan of trying to kill somebody.

I also want to point out that my assumption that the win rate drops to around 20% when you have no defensive cards turned out to be close to reality.

At the moment, the actual number is around 22% if you have zero defensive cards.

And if you are playing a character whose Sheriff win rate is already only around 20–25%, then that drop can be even more devastating.

Big upadate