Anyone play without conventions?

[inspor]

Looking for players that want to play without conventions. Just with the normal game rules. That's all.

[Travis Hall]

You can’t. The first time you ask yourself, “Why did my partner give me that clue?” you’re implementing the most basic of conventions. Unless you’re going to ignore the clues your partner gives you and just play stuff at random, you’ll use some conventions.

Some people make a distinction between natural conventions, which can be deduced based on knowledge of the rules of the game, and unnatural conventions, which can’t. You can certainly do very well without using unnatural conventions. (Only using off-by-one clue targets for bluffing is an unnatural convention - very useful, but I’ve never found a way to deduce the meaning without explanation external to the game.) But natural conventions go surprisingly far. The deductions build on each other. Even trash bluff, trash pull, and trash push can be deduced, when you get enough layers up.

[Faedur]

Hello.

Of course you can.
The first basic way to play the game is to wait to have both number and color before playing a card (or with only one clue if there cannot be any mistake, like giving you a 2 in your hand and all 1 are on table).
You can even play with children. The original score table of the game is friendly understanding with that.
Of course, you can notice that it is really harder to get high score this way.

I am very tired of gamers who despic less than quasi-perfect score ; they forgot the original purpose of the game : first, to be a game, second, to seek mutual comprehension betwen people and not performance. So I will be happy to play with you Wompki.
Althought I really understand and enjoy the satisfying high-level braining of this game, but we are human beings, not bots.

According to Travis Hall, you can quickly use natural instinctives methods that will grant an easier game and a better score. Though I would not call it "convention" at this stage, because you can play it without coopting it before game, just wondering "what the other player try to tell me ?"
Even high levels tricks are not convention because they just result on good comprehension of the situation.
The natural playing is to see what move can be done. A convention is set when you have to play the move that should be done. It is very a different way of thinking.
At last, some specific conventions are obviously unatural and cannot be deduced without agreeing on it before.

Enjoy everyone !

[Travis Hall]

At last, some specific conventions are obviously unatural and cannot be deduced without agreeing on it before (like giving number meaning a save and giving color meaning a play

Really? You can’t figure that out fir yourself, without being told in advance?

Remember that the understanding of Hanabi strategy is layered. Each level builds on the one before. So suppose you’ve figured out that to get better scores, you can’t wait for a card to be marked with both colour and number before playing it. When you receive a clue touching a single card, you’ve starting playing it. You’ve also figured out that you should discard your oldest card by preference, if not marked.

You’re playing a game, and one of your partners gives you a clue that says you have one 5, and it is your oldest card. No 5 is currently playable.

What do you think the clue means? Do you play that card?

[Romain672]

At last, some specific conventions are obviously unatural and cannot be deduced without agreeing on it before (like giving number meaning a save and giving color meaning a play

Really? You can’t figure that out fir yourself, without being told in advance?

Blue 3 has been discarded a while ago.
You spend your last two turns discarding. There was no emergency. You discarded two useless red 1.
Now you receive a blue clue in your chop.

Or another example. Yellow 1 is already played. Blue 3 has been discarded. Your next player bluff y2. Your previous player clue you 3 in your chop.
For me you should play safe, and don't assume a play when it can be a save.
But I mean, it maybe look natural to assume a save, but natural things are sometimes not best.

Another great example of convnetions is discard the oldest. I think more people naturally tend to do that, but discarding earliest is not bad neither, it's just two completely differents roads.

The natural playing is to see what move can be done. A convention is set when you have to play the move that should be done. It is very a different way of thinking.

On the other hand, you can have conventions which give meaning to most clues available, but you can still wonder why your previous player decided to do a complicated move instead of a simple move (answer: because something else is going on, maybe you got exactly card X, maybe he want you or someone else to play something too).
Every convention added will increase the complexity to follow what is going on, increase risk of bomb, but will decale the amount of read you can do. Instead of thinking why they clued your next player instead of your second next player, you can ask why they clued X Y turn ago instead of doing X.
This is different game.
(I'm not completely disagreeing with you, just partially)

[Travis Hall]

Romaine, how about you answer the more specific question I asked. Remember, Hanabi strategy is layered.

Edit: Or are you trying to provide additional examples to back up my point? I’m honestly not sure.

[Romain672]

Romaine, how about you answer the more specific question I asked.

You just ask a question which got no sense to me, of course you don't play your 5, but it's not a convention.

After, depending of how you played before that clue and how others played before that clue (and depending if you agree on some conventions or not), you will do differents things.
If by default you discard your newest, that 5 don't make sense, except if you are close to end game/if there was 7+ clues remaining, so it has extra meaning.

[Faedur]

It seems that there is a big misunderstanding on my last parenthesis so I prefer to remove it to not focus on. I don't even know how to explain it got this far... Sorry 'bout that

[Faedur]

Another great example of convnetions is discard the oldest. I think more people naturally tend to do that, but discarding earliest is not bad neither, it's just two completely differents roads.

It is a natural smart move to discard oldest. If nobody told you about your cards for several turns, that's truly you can discard the oldest one and give them another round to tell you something if needed before you discard the next oldest one.
It becomes a convention when you say "discard right" (because BGA's interface gives new cards on left side so old cards remain on the right), especially in first turns when you have no card older than other.
Conversely, discarding the earliest may be very dangerous if your partners hadn't time to tell you something about it (because another sequence was to be played). If everybody agree to discard the earliest one, teaching teammates have to tell something in the round if there is a play or a save, it is pure convention indeed.

[Romain672]

It is a natural smart move to discard oldest. If nobody told you about your cards for several turns, that's truly you can discard the oldest one and give them another round to tell you something if needed before you discard the next oldest one.
It becomes a convention when you say "discard right" (because BGA's interface gives new cards on left side so old cards remain on the right), especially in first turns when you have no card older than other.
Conversely, discarding the earliest may be very dangerous if your partners hadn't time to tell you something about it (because another sequence was to be played).
If everybody agree to discard the earliest one, teaching teammates have to tell something in the round if there is a play or a save, it is pure convention indeed.

You kinda answered yourself with that last sentence.
And about the time factor, many cards are useless so you will gain back your time there. And with oldest discard convention, that's the same thing, sometimes you can be forced to discard a playable card.

I don't find it again, but recently, someone come to the forum saying he has been always playing with discarding newest. And it's not the first time I saw it.