Arena spamming useful?

[RazorOz]

Maybe. I don't know how much flexibility you have, as I don't play turn-based or Arena
If not managing your turns, you can sometimes manage what you do in the game: concede or rush to game end to finish early, take useless turns to finish late.

You have to take your turns in order the action was on you. Maybe you can do the latter, but there's not a huge amount of games I imagine you can do that.

[Purohueso]

I don't think there is an advantage per se, maybe because I mostly play games that you can't delay very much, so it's more just about how many games you can handle. Yeah, it does help on the volume of games, but I go more for the simplistic I'm playing more, rather than aiming to win. Having fun really.
I don't think I'm playing very complex games, you can get back on it by looking at the state of the board and using some brief notes, but probably would play 1 by 1 for those games.

[RazorOz]

I don't think there is an advantage per se, maybe because I mostly play games that you can't delay very much, so it's more just about how many games you can handle. Yeah, it does help on the volume of games, but I go more for the simplistic I'm playing more, rather than aiming to win. Having fun really.
I don't think I'm playing very complex games, you can get back on it by looking at the state of the board and using some brief notes, but probably would play 1 by 1 for those games.

There also comes a point of diminishing returns I think. It depends on the player and the game, but for example say you have 2 players of equal level, and one player is playing 10 turn based games, and the other 100. You may think the latter has an advantage, except the simple reality is if you're playing that many games you aren't going to be able to play them to the best of your ability like the player playing 10 games is more likely to be able to do. It will depend a bit on the game, with the more complex/thinky the game is the more this will be true, but if you're in 10x the games as someone else you simply aren't going to be able to put as much thought into your plays as someone playing 10x less.

[tbhp]

I don't think there is an advantage per se, maybe because I mostly play games that you can't delay very much, so it's more just about how many games you can handle. Yeah, it does help on the volume of games, but I go more for the simplistic I'm playing more, rather than aiming to win. Having fun really.
I don't think I'm playing very complex games, you can get back on it by looking at the state of the board and using some brief notes, but probably would play 1 by 1 for those games.

There also comes a point of diminishing returns I think. It depends on the player and the game, but for example say you have 2 players of equal level, and one player is playing 10 turn based games, and the other 100. You may think the latter has an advantage, except the simple reality is if you're playing that many games you aren't going to be able to play them to the best of your ability like the player playing 10 games is more likely to be able to do. It will depend a bit on the game, with the more complex/thinky the game is the more this will be true, but if you're in 10x the games as someone else you simply aren't going to be able to put as much thought into your plays as someone playing 10x less.

I don't know. This is based on the assumption that the person playing more games isn't putting in the sufficient amount of time to think about each game. Maybe they are playing a lot of games and are also taking the time they feel they need to perform at their level.

Also, there's a point where the amount of thinking becomes diminishing returns. Is a player spending two hours of their life over a game more likely to win than a player of the same level spending just one hour on the game? The winrate may be slightly higher, but maybe not enough to outweigh the advantage of playing a ton more games and therefore having more opportunities to get on a significant win streak.

[RazorOz]

I don't know. This is based on the assumption that the person playing more games isn't putting in the sufficient amount of time to think about each game. Maybe they are playing a lot of games and are also taking the time they feel they need to perform at their level.

Also, there's a point where the amount of thinking becomes diminishing returns. Is a player spending two hours of their life over a game more likely to win than a player of the same level spending just one hour on the game? The winrate may be slightly higher, but maybe not enough to outweigh the advantage of playing a ton more games and therefore having more opportunities to get on a significant win streak.

I speak from a variety of experiences. Firstly, my own is I normally play around 10 turn based games comfortably, when I've experimented with playing around 20, I've felt I play worse, and results suffer. Those numbers will vary per person and for whatever game you're playing (ie. how much thinking is required). I've also noticed a number of players I know well try the mass play Arena strategy where they will join like 80 games simultaneously, and I've never seen it work out well, they always end up worse off than the prior season when they didn't deploy this strategy, and consequently give it up in the seasons after.

The final thing I've noticed is I always find it very apparently that when I'm playing someone in 100+ turn based games, they make mistakes I wouldn't expect someone of their level to make, normally linked to failure to assess the game state. Which ties in to the reason I don't think it works, yes some people might have more time than others, but you're under far more time pressure the more games you enter, I know from my own experience, that's the bit I don't like, waking up in the morning to 15+ games on my turn, if it was 50+ I think my head would explode. You can't possibly be putting in as much thought as someone with a couple of turns to play, otherwise you would just never get anything done. The other element is maybe more game dependent, but I normally leave a turn based game with a good idea of what I want to do next turn, and what I think others are up to, that becomes harder and harder to do the more games you're in, you forget your own plan, and again mistakes creep in.

I'm assuming nobody is spending 2 hours over a turn though, whereas the difference between spending 2 minutes and 2 seconds can be huge. It would be an interesting analysis but I suspect the vast majority of games, the players winning Arena are not mass playing, they will play a lot, but not in a fashion where they're over playing, particularly in any game which requires a fair amount of thinking. For example you mention about having more opportunities to get on a significant win streak, that's only really relevant at high luck games, like yes at something like Can't Stop the mass play strategy probably works, because minimal thinking is required, and Arena is essentially who can play optimally and go on the luckiest win streak, but most games with more skill, the winner of Arena isn't decided by going on the luckiest win streak, and the same players will reach the top of Arena every season.

[nik592]

Maybe. I don't know how much flexibility you have, as I don't play turn-based or Arena
If not managing your turns, you can sometimes manage what you do in the game: concede or rush to game end to finish early, take useless turns to finish late.

You have to take your turns in order the action was on you. Maybe you can do the latter, but there's not a huge amount of games I imagine you can do that.

BGA does give you games in order of oldest first (I believe), but if you're not late to play on a game, you can skip over it and delay taking your turn to play others. I do this regularly (usually because I don't have the headspace or the screen real estate to deal with a complex game so I leave it for later).

[Shivaware]

Maybe. I don't know how much flexibility you have, as I don't play turn-based or Arena
If not managing your turns, you can sometimes manage what you do in the game: concede or rush to game end to finish early, take useless turns to finish late.

You have to take your turns in order the action was on you. Maybe you can do the latter, but there's not a huge amount of games I imagine you can do that.

BGA does give you games in order of oldest first (I believe), but if you're not late to play on a game, you can skip over it and delay taking your turn to play others. I do this regularly (usually because I don't have the headspace or the screen real estate to deal with a complex game so I leave it for later).

There are special rules for Arena that force you to play your turns in order. See this thread.

[nik592]

You have to take your turns in order the action was on you. Maybe you can do the latter, but there's not a huge amount of games I imagine you can do that.

BGA does give you games in order of oldest first (I believe), but if you're not late to play on a game, you can skip over it and delay taking your turn to play others. I do this regularly (usually because I don't have the headspace or the screen real estate to deal with a complex game so I leave it for later).

There are special rules for Arena that force you to play your turns in order. See this thread.

Ah, there's special rules when you're playing multiple of the same game (in Arena). I don't tend to do that, so I've never experienced it. But I realise that's what this thread is discussing - I just didn't realise there were special rules specifically for that scenario.

[charliec247]

The key to winning an Arena season isn't to spam games. It's to maintain a high win percentage. Assuming that you can do that, the advantage to spamming games is that it helps you recover from losing streaks and gives you more shots at reaching the top. However, with each game you start you also have the risk of losing so that's something you need to be wary of especially if the game has high variance. While high up in the standings, each loss sets you back around 30 Arena points while wins get you 2-10 points, so often you need 5-6 wins just to win back the points you lost once.

I won Season 24 of Point Salad by spamming games. I would have 20-50 games going on at the same time. There were three benefits to spamming games:
1. I conceded games as soon as I could confirm that I had lost them. This minimizes points losses as it is better to lose with fewer points. This left me with a better chance of putting a win streak together to rocket up the standings.
2. It puts opponents, specifically the current leader, in a position where it is difficult to determine whether they should start a new game to pad their lead and prepare for your ascent. The only reliable information they have is the actual points gained after you picked up a win. They can analyze your current games, but even if you are guaranteed to win a particular game the points you gain may not be enough to overtake them. If you time this well you can leave your rival without enough time at the end of the season to catch you, or force them into a situation where they're out with a single loss, especially for games where real-time games don't fire often. This was exactly what happened to me - before the 5-day turn-based cutoff I was down at least 30 points but once all the turn-based games finished I was up by 30 with 2 days to go, leaving the former points leader in a single-elimination situation.
3. It helps you get out of losing streaks, as mentioned above. I went as high as 1845 but went as low as the 1500s throughout the season but amassing a win streak by spamming games helped me climb out of the hole each time.

I tried to defend my title in Season 25 with the same strategy and that season was easily defined by one word: burnout. I felt so burned out throughout the season that I constantly misplayed and lost games that I could have won. This was exacerbated by the fact that Point Salad wasn't the only game I was playing turn-based Arena on, so in reality I had at least 70 games of Arena going on at the same time (plus casual and tournament games, which totaled to 100+ games). The worst part was that when I felt burned out, I couldn't just stop immediately because I actually had to finish those games in order to drastically reduce the number of ongoing games. Yes I could take a 2-day break (all my games were 1-move-per-day, so a 72-hr timer), but I'd still have to come back to a bunch of games, many of which I have to dig myself out of a previous misplay, plenty of which weren't recoverable, which added to the misery. I guess I should have quit games at the cost of seriously tanking my karma and ELO. I only ended up contending for the title this season because I took a break after reducing the number of turn-based games and came back locked in, but that burnout and misery throughout the season was very real, and for Season 26 I'm just looking to play at a manageable pace instead of spamming games to frenetically try to win another title.

As long as you maintain a high win percentage, particularly at the end of the season, the amount of total games doesn't really matter. By comparison, I won Season 24 of Point Salad playing 728 games while I won Season 22 of Fluxx playing only 138 games, but in both scenarios I had a strong win streak at the end. The players at the top are all VERY good, even for high-variance games, but it is possible to do well without devoting a ton of time to it.