Board Game Arena

I'm curious if others have this kind of experience with 7 Wonders.

A few days ago my ELO was 411. Over the next 15 games it fell to 250, the lowest I've been for a very long time. During that sequence I finished last 6 times and second last 4 times, against a variety of high and low ELO players. Almost nothing I did worked. I drew crummy hands and was constantly stuck with difficult decisions - it was very frustrating! I even finished last with Hali B once!

Then, I won 9 of the next 10 games and climbed back to an ELO of 394. Everything decision I made turned out well. I even won with Olympia!

7 Wonders is a swingy game, but I've never had such an extreme sequence. I don't think I was consciously doing anything different in the bad run compared to the good run. While I can often point to errors in my play, some of the games in that bad sequence were simply impossible to do well in. That's just the nature of the game.

It would be good to have a tournament like in Bridge, where every table plays exactly the same hands. I'd be fascinated to see how others play the same cards and wonder.

You can look at it from different angles:
- look at Elo as a range, not a number. You probably just found your range.
- look at how can you improve your range. From your stats I'd expect a range 240-380 (anything outside is just an extremely bad/good luck). It definitely can be improved.
- look at "luck" as a function of your own state (being tired / not fully awake / slightly drunk / distracted affects the game quite a lot) or specific opponents (there are some who prefer to be the last, as long as someone else isn't the first).

Deleted

Even if I did agree with your assessment of the game, what could the admins do about it? The publishers/game designer decides the rules, and BGA just follows them.

laggercat wrote: ↑26 February 2023, 21:53
It would be good to have a tournament like in Bridge, where every table plays exactly the same hands. I'd be fascinated to see how others play the same cards and wonder.

That would be very interesting in many games

ExaltedAngel wrote: ↑24 May 2023, 21:44

laggercat wrote: ↑26 February 2023, 21:53
It would be good to have a tournament like in Bridge, where every table plays exactly the same hands. I'd be fascinated to see how others play the same cards and wonder.

That would be very interesting in many games

I agree. For Agricola, this is already possible. You can set a seed code before game start leading to the exact same cards in the exact same order related to the seed. (You cannot do it via BGA tournaments but you could privately organize a tournament where every table gets the same setup.)

3 things IMO:
1. The implementation of ELO is quite swingy on BGA, which contributes to this
2. Over the large number of games some swings are expected or almost guaranteed and the human mind mostly remembers the swings
3. When being on a downstreak you tilt playing worse making it even worse, when on the upstreak with confidence boost it can also help you

I don't think this is anything too specific to 7 Wonders

I will note that I've had games in a row with the exact same wonders come up, and it makes me wonder about their RNG.

ElThoesen wrote: ↑18 June 2023, 22:48 I will note that I've had games in a row with the exact same wonders come up, and it makes me wonder about their RNG.

Sigh

Roll a dice in real life and sometimes the same number shows up 3 times in a row

Frankly it would be suspicious if you DIDNT get runs of the same board 3 times in a row, the way that ipods on "random" actually have algorithms to make them less truly random and more mixed up.