how to communicate in this game

[Iltisman]

I wonder if there is any common sens on how to communicte in this game. to me it seems obvious that you always assess your cards based on whats on the table. You start with a high card so you are rather high. on the flop, turn, river yyou reassess your cards and in general they can only get better or stay the same, so you never take a lower number UNLESS someone else raises there number and replace you. Of course, you pay attention to others and their signals. if flop shows 3 heart, there is a good chance that someone might sport a flush... yet if no one raises, you don't go down either because apparentlyy noone got any better and you most likely didn't get any worse. I would like to hear your oppinion on this issue. Thx

[Romain672]

Hello, yeah it's mostly what top elo players are doing.

I like personnally if the games goes slowly/people waiting for others to take one or two lower my chip, knowing that if a low chip waited they usually have something (if you take 1 first round and got nothing good, you should take 1 pretty fast).

You can read the tips page here: https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Tips_thegang , or more specifiquely "Correcting mistakes" ( https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Tips_ ... g_mistakes ).


And you can goes down in value in 4 situations: mistake/correction from earlier, frequently with 2 pairs on the table, rarely with 1 pair on the table, and take 1 if you got the weakest possible hand (like having QJ and 3399K on the table).

[FluidDruid]

I generally approach the game as finding who has the highest card during the white chip round. Its a matter of finding who has the best kicker in some board situations. Once everyone has decided their strength the following rounds should generally be grabbing the same chip as the last round if you have no improvement and grabbing a higher chip if you do. If multiple people improve then it's a matter of passing the chips back and forth to determine confidence. But I find that the only reason to grab lower is if one person's hand improved above yours. I definitely do not recommend grabbing a lower chip to indicate that you hit nothing on the flop after pre flop until someone shows improvement, even on the turn or the river i think the sentiment holds true. I personally find that behavior confusing but once you see a player do it a couple times it is just about adapting to play styles and understanding what people are trying to communicate through the chips.

[elamate]

I think your have a good idea how to valuate the clue. First round that where can be go wrong, if people think different value to diffrerent chip number.
When i sit down the table one of the player say that 10 is the 4 star and this is 6 player game so i assume that pair, A,K is 6 Q,J is 5, 9 is 4 or 3 and so on. First round and ifrst take always highest card and i assume they have the worst second card, the card imporve when we fighting for the specific chip.

[Romain672]

I generally approach the game as finding who has the highest card during the white chip round. Its a matter of finding who has the best kicker in some board situations. Once everyone has decided their strength the following rounds should generally be grabbing the same chip as the last round if you have no improvement and grabbing a higher chip if you do. If multiple people improve then it's a matter of passing the chips back and forth to determine confidence. But I find that the only reason to grab lower is if one person's hand improved above yours. I definitely do not recommend grabbing a lower chip to indicate that you hit nothing on the flop after pre flop until someone shows improvement, even on the turn or the river i think the sentiment holds true. I personally find that behavior confusing but once you see a player do it a couple times it is just about adapting to play styles and understanding what people are trying to communicate through the chips.

Yeah I mostly agree, I gave my full opinion on the 'correcting mistakes' earlier. Since it's really confusing I like to only do those changes in the river.

But you gain informations with the flop/turn/river. Per example if you fight for highest token, and someone unrelated get a pair of 7, then now both players which fight previously can rank themselves depending of that 7. If both of them goes higher than that 7 pair, then now 88 is pretty weak, while it was average before the flop.
And so now if preflop you put the other player on 66, then now your hand become worst because you gained information.
But again I would advise to do that correction right at the end (even if in that example since there was lots of fight preflop, that could be obvious post flop).

Another example is if a King is coming up and no one touched anything. Then now if you have A2, you need to put the other player into A3 or QJ, which is a really big gap and can again change rating because you gained information (and that example is much more trickier, so I would strongly advise to correct river, if the low kicker matter). Same if you got QJ, then you should put the other player to A2 or QT. [edit: A2/A3/A4 are identical, so if they know that too above A2 it's A5]

[MasN]

As a high number, you can take a low number in some cases.

Ex1, as a signal. I have 5 chip, AK, board is Q72, other players have not taken chips yet, I am bored of waiting.

If I take the 5 chip again, it will confuse people who hit a pair, I can take 1 chip here as a signal. Many times people blindly take current chip and someone below them improves and game is lost in the showdown. Therefore, in this case you should not take 5. If you take a chip, must be lowest available chip.
Also note that you cannot take 1 with 55 here. Taking 1 specifically means "I lose to any pair on the board." With 55, treat your hand as a 2, with a kicker of infinity. Because your white chip is higher, people will respect your kicker (may assume A2, which gives correct result).

If someone has worse hand than me, it is their responsibility, not my responsibility to take the chip from me and force me to take higher.

As a rule, if you have a low chip and did not improve, you must not allow anyone to drop below you. They are allowed to try, and they are in their rights to if they think it will help communicate. (exception: 3 pairs may drop) (exception 2: if you have strong belief hand was ranked incorrectly in the first place. eg, say you have kq hole card, and you allow someone to go above you because you think they have a. but board has a, and they indicated they did not pair. then you can go above them, because you have good evidence previous ranking is wrong).

[Drakenero]

I'm a newibe so still trying to get the hang of things, but I ran into games where players would accuse me of playing "wrong" when in reality I'm updating my odds based on what information I have at the moment. I've always thought that it'd be reasonable to start with the highest chips if you draw, say, A/10 (highest card + connector) and then go down if at the end I only have a high card, because logically speaking someone else should've improved their odds and thus rank higher than you (plus, a high card is weak on the whole ranking).
The "your hand can't get worse" statement is really misleading; yes, I know your hand can't get *worse* per se, but compared to other players it can. If someone else signals they've gotten stronger and I haven't, it seems natural to reconsider where I belong in the order.

[Romain672]

I think a lot in probabilities. You did 5 games in Hanabi.
In Hanabi I learned to not assume that something unlikely didn't happen.
Per example if someone tell you that you got red 1 and red 2, it's really unlikely, the chance of it is around 1/1600. But there wasn't many cases where they would have done the clue.
Them giving the clue mean either:
- someone made a mistake: either them by giving it, or yourself when you read it/you did your reasonning
- you got really got in fact red 1 and red 2
- there is something else rare going on (maybe your red 2 is still in your hand but not where you think it is, maybe you got two red 2 in hand, maybe another player will react to the clue...)

So when a player will act a certain way that can change a probability from ~0.07% to ~90%.

Here in the gang, the thing is that everyone will do your reasonning, so everyone will know that their hand is worst over time.
But if you run into a situation where no one touched a pair, and everyone try to get a chip one or two below them, nobody will ever take the chip 4 & 5.
After seeing that situation one or two times, people will realise that they don't have to goes down, they can just stay where they are and take the same token (only initially in the bottom 60% of players, and only if the card didn't open straight+flush which is most of the time). Some players will instead still prefer to take one lower them to really make sure that everyone will know they didn't touched anything.
Even if you try to take a lower token, from their pov, that make no sense, so they will take the token back, until you finally stay at 5 (note that asking one or two times for a lower token is still fine in some cases to make sure, but more is totally unecessary).

But for sure if someone gets stronger, then you should be below them, unless that 'stronger' is a correction/mistake from earlier. On those cases, there could be a whole minute of trying to clarify what's going on (and sometimes it's a pair of 2).

.

You talked about connectors too, that's a really interesting subject, but on this game, they are extremely difficult to play because others players doesn't know you got a connector and think you hand is stronger than what it really is. If your hand never improved the whole round, then now your hand is far weaker, and others still don't know it.
So I strongly advise first to put no value on them, take lots of experience, and after reconsider them (and still putting no value on them have upsides).

[MasN]

I'm a newibe so still trying to get the hang of things, but I ran into games where players would accuse me of playing "wrong" when in reality I'm updating my odds based on what information I have at the moment. I've always thought that it'd be reasonable to start with the highest chips if you draw, say, A/10 (highest card + connector) and then go down if at the end I only have a high card, because logically speaking someone else should've improved their odds and thus rank higher than you (plus, a high card is weak on the whole ranking).
The "your hand can't get worse" statement is really misleading; yes, I know your hand can't get *worse* per se, but compared to other players it can. If someone else signals they've gotten stronger and I haven't, it seems natural to reconsider where I belong in the order.

The issue isn't that you hand can't get worse compared to other players. The issue is that if it has, they will tell you. Therefore, if the other players are indicating they have not improved, then your hand must still be good.

[MasN]

Let me give an example.
Let's say it is a 6-player game, and your hand comes, it is 24. You get the white 1 chip.

Now the flop comes, it is 27K. You have improved. How good is your pair? Well, you may reason, most people probably did not hit a pair, perhaps your hand is #4 on average. Therefore. you take the yellow 4 chip. Do not do that! What matters in this game is you communicate your hand well, and let the table help get the chips in the proper place. Therefore, you take the yellow 2 chip, showing you have the minimal improvement.

Now, it may be the case that the person with white 2 then takes yellow 1. Person with white 3 takes yellow 2. Person with white 4 takes yellow 3. Person with white 5 takes yellow 4. Person with white 6 has yellow 5. Here, new players will often hesitate: "I only have pair of 2s. It is not likely I am the 6."

Take the 6! You have shown your values, and the table has told you that you are 6. What matters is not whether on average a pair of 2s is a 6, but whether in this case, a pair of 2s is a 6, and in this case, it is.