One year on as a premium member and I feel such a loser

[ahyangyi]

Patchwork is a hardcore game disguised as a casual.

I mean, it is a perfect information deterministic 2p game, just like the majority of Mark Steere games. The jigsaw puzzle nature of the game allows a pretty large strategy space. But unlike the Mark Steere games where most players just give each game a few tries, Patchwork playersplay hundreds of games to perfection.

The other "cute looking hardcore" I would name is Santorini, though its hardcoreness is somewhat more apparent.

( And let's give Mr. Steere another random plug )

[Ceaseless]

I study and try really hard to strategise my plays on BGA but no matter what I always lose across a number of games: Azul, Patchwork, Jaipur and most famously Forest Shuffle which is just impossible to win and believe me, I research and I try and I vary opponents strength but even an apprentice is sure to beat me! I manage to maintain an average ELO of 250 at Wingspan and reached 300 once or twice (did a little dance) but that's about it.

What are you doing to study and attempt to strategize?

Losing is part of life but even in real life you do not lose all the time. There's a balance. I am no genius but surely I can't be that useless? I play table top games in real life and I would say my winning rate is about 35% not 1% as it is on BGA. I feel I ought to win every now and again. Am I alone in this? This is not a Casino set up, right where the house always wins?!?

As far as IRL goes, it could just mean that your opponents on BGA are stronger than your opponents IRL, assuming you're playing the same games. It's not like you never win on BGA, you're just losing a bit more than your claimed IRL values, excepting Wingspan, your main game, with a bit of a gap for Forest Shuffle in particular.

It would be hard for the house to always win without an actual house. Your opponents are in the same boat as you, it's not like they're tallying the score for BGA wins, from their perspective you're the opponent from BGA they were paired with.

[MarkSteere]

( And let's give Mr. Steere another random plug )

[dschingis27]

The feeling of despair and having the odds stacked against me are real but a hard cold look at the figures the next day painted not such a horrible story after all:
Forest Shuffle (definitely the most punishing gaming experience, shame, could be a sweet little game)
Games played: 99
Victories: 13
Winning percentage: 13.13%
==
Azul
GP:39
V: 9
Winning percentage: 23%

I can only really strongly recommend you to restrict your opponent level to "average", I suspect this should improve your BGA experience a lot. I checked a little bit of your Forest Shuffle history and Azul history, and you play a lot of games against 300+ Elo players. These players are labelled "Strong" for a reason, many of them have played hundreds of matches or some even 1000+ matches already. For a player like you with mild to moderate experience, I'd say it's not that far from normal to lose so many games against them.

Maybe you overestimated a little bit how quickly you can get good at these games, IMO reading strategy guides and stuff is not an equal substitute to many hours in actual game experience. I'd say the fact you lose so much against experienced players is a sign that you are a normal human being and not a sign that you are a particularly bad player.

And it is normal that there are some games that you just cannot get into, some games are not for some individuals. I call myself a very good boardgamer but every now and then I encounter a game that I just cannot get behind, I cannot get good at it.

tl;dr Take it easy. Don't take up out of reach challenges in your free time when you want to have fun.

[FrankJones]

I needed to vent my frustration of losing so much and I read the answers to my post with interest and they will help me make some changes rather than give up on BGA entirely. I learned the word 'pubstomper' for instance. The feeling of despair and having the odds stacked against me are real but a hard cold look at the figures the next day painted not such a horrible story after all:
Forest Shuffle (definitely the most punishing gaming experience, shame, could be a sweet little game)
Games played: 99
Victories: 13
Winning percentage: 13.13%
==
Jaipur:
GP: 20
V: 5
Winning percentage: 25%
==
Wingspan
GP: 791 (I know)
V: 332
Winning percentage: 41.97%
==
Patchwork
GP:23
V: 5
==
Azul
GP:39
V: 9
Winning percentage: 23%

I haven't played Forest shuffle, so I cannot comment on that.

The other 3 games are very difficult games to win consistently at.

[Ceaseless]

I needed to vent my frustration of losing so much and I read the answers to my post with interest and they will help me make some changes rather than give up on BGA entirely. I learned the word 'pubstomper' for instance. The feeling of despair and having the odds stacked against me are real but a hard cold look at the figures the next day painted not such a horrible story after all:
Forest Shuffle (definitely the most punishing gaming experience, shame, could be a sweet little game)
Games played: 99
Victories: 13
Winning percentage: 13.13%
==
Jaipur:
GP: 20
V: 5
Winning percentage: 25%
==
Wingspan
GP: 791 (I know)
V: 332
Winning percentage: 41.97%
==
Patchwork
GP:23
V: 5
==
Azul
GP:39
V: 9
Winning percentage: 23%

I haven't played Forest shuffle, so I cannot comment on that.

The other 3 games are very difficult games to win consistently at.

Not a fan of Jaipur?

[FrankJones]

Whoops. I forgot that 5 games were listed.

I've played Jaipur a few times. Camels and gems, or something like that. I forget whether that's a difficult game or not. From my best recollection, I would say it's not as difficult as Wingspan or Azul or Patchwork.

[cigma]

What are you doing to study and attempt to strategize?

I think that's a crucial question here. If you want to win more often, you shouldn't avoid these games you already played, but try to get better at them. You managed to do so in Wingspan, so you can manage it in other games as well

I recommend watching replays of good players, going through them step by step. Ask yourself what you would do next from their perspective, and if they do something different, try to find the reason why.

You may ask other players for personal feedback or strategy tips, maybe in the game's specific forums.

You can also search for strategy guides, e. g. at https://boardgamegeek.com/.

[NohatCoder2]

Simply playing a game is not enough to get better, you have to develop your thought process, this generally means thinking about the game, often doing some maths.

The most basic thing in a lot of board games is simply knowing the approximate value of something, which cards/action spaces/whatever are generally better than the other ones. In a lot of games simply having a good idea about this can get you to 200-300 elo. A slightly more advanced model takes into account that there is usually some stuff that is better early and other stuff that is better late in the game.

Specifically for Patchwork, the game is very much about getting the best pieces for yourself, you generally shouldn't worry all that much about whether a piece fits your board well. There is a tremendously wrong algorithm for calculating piece value that seems to be prevalent on the internet, so avoiding that and using a better one could get you ahead of a lot of people.

The basic score value for a piece is 2*[area]+[button income]*[remaining income phases]-[time cost]-[button cost]

This should be weighed against the opportunity cost of that piece. The opportunity cost is generally too complicated to be put to a single formula, and it varies greatly depending on the game state. Throughout the game you have to consider what pieces any moves lets your opponent get. In the beginning of the game, time cost and button cost should be considered as approximately equally important, but if you manage to build a sufficiently strong button economy then time cost will eventually be more important. Also by the end of the game the area of a piece may be considered part of the opportunity cost as filling up the board eventually prevents you from getting more pieces. Early in the game button income should be treated as even more important than the above formula suggests, as you would rather have your points in buttons that can be reinvested.

[NohatCoder2]

And a really important general piece of advice: Play some games with turn based time controls, and take your time thinking about your moves. Think about your opponent's moves as well, how do you think they are going to respond? What cards/actions/... will they take? Do the maths, how many points will each option likely give you by the end of the game? Do the upsides/downsides that don't directly translate into points make up for any points difference?

Your reasoning doesn't have to be flawless, a lot of the time you may be guessing more than you are calculating, and your reasoning will be wrong and/or incomplete a lot of the time. But it is the basis for improvement, if you employ a strategy and you lose miserably it is a great basis for thinking about the flaws of your strategy, so that you might improve it.