Major revisions of Help & Tips

[Sammy McSam]

I've been working on draft versions of the Help & Tips pages to complement one other with visuals and clear and concise explanations.
I plan to replace the English pages in a couple of weeks after any feedback is posted here or privately messaged. Thanks to Silene for providing initial feedback.
Draft Help Rules & facts
Draft Tips Convention-specific/advanced

Some contentious definitions to highlight:

Save: A (number) clue that marks a chop card to prevent discard.

"(number)": some conventions do not prohibit colour saves.

Early save: A save clue with a known playable card in the same hand, or does not mark the chop card¹. i.e. a play clue.

Encourages logical timing of saves = as late as possible.

Bluff: A play clue that causes a non-connecting unmarked card to play immediately.

Some conventions do not restrict bluff targets to only 1-away-from-playable cards.

Skip / steal: When a player gives a clue that could have been given by one of the skipped players.

Skip/steal interpretation moved to Tips with examples.

Convention: Agreed set of clue, play and discard interpretations.

Move action-focused language.

Draft Help
Draft Tips
En: https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Gamehelphanabi
En: https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Tips_hanabi

More languages (e.g. fr):
Fr: https://fr.doc.boardgamearena.com/Gamehelphanabi
Fr: https://fr.doc.boardgamearena.com/Tips_hanabi

[Blacktango]

Hi, very nice work!

I didn't understand what you meant about the skip => play.
Your text description seems to allow it, but the examples below give a bomb (= not a play skip) or a bluff (not a skip).

I have never seen the "empty clue double save" used on BGA after thousands of games. I think it can be useful, but so are the stalling empty clues and I don't know if I would recommend it.

The "Average clue tokens per played card" tip is cool, but really not the most important tip to know, IMO. For example, I think that knowing trash bluff is far, far more useful.
I would move it to the very end of the tip’s page.

Some minor notices:

Example 1: lie
Cathy receives a 3 clue that marks one card, when there are two matching 3 in their hand.

I would add a title for the gentleman discard, to separate the text from the finesse part.

The definition’s section is quite exhaustive (= long). I would move it to the end of the page, to keep the convention part more visible.


I would love to update the French wiki page with your beautiful infoboxes!

[Ant Stewart]

Awesome, thanks

I would perhaps add a bit about long finesse and layered finesse.

With skipping, I think having two possible plays with none suggested could be confusing. I don't think many players on BGA play the skip = play, so perhaps state that the other option is mostly played, and that playing skip = play should be agreed in chat.
Also I would mention that skipping at the start and end are often good practices (but don't skip for the finesse card at the start since you might stop the next player bluffing a 2 in your hand).


Under discards, perhaps mention that you should not discard in the first round of the game. Your first turn must be either a clue or a play.

For play refusal - I think that is called a scream discard elsewhere in the page and that is the term I have heard. Perhaps also phrase it with what to do if you see a scream discard.
"If the player before you has a play clue, but chooses not to play it (with the exception of 5s if flamboyants are on), this is a scream discard, you must not discard the card on chop, or play any of your play clues if you have one." Perhaps also mention, if you have no play clues, you can scream by skipping the chop card and discarding the next one, but this is very risky.

[Malo77]

Nice work.

I would sugget you edit the main hanabi wiki page directly so we can react / add details when needed.
Big updates may lose other peole changes and are difficult to proofread and correct by others.

My small suggestions/revisions:

Stall clue: A clue allowed in some case just to avoid discarding but does not infer a play from other players
e.g. some conventions allows clues like a 5 stall at the begining of game, or giving a clue when having a full hand

to add: Reclue: A clue that touches already clued cards (mostly after a save), to marks the leftmost as playable

Scream discard: An unexpected and not chop card discard to save one or two unique cards in next player hand chop
(last resort when next player has no play and there are 2 chop cards to save and/or no tokens left).

Bad clue
Mark 0 new cards (but better than a wrong play clue that causes a bomb)

Double bluff
Missing the other double bluff with 4 players situation: 1 blue on board. You clue a blue card (a 3) so the two next players play they first card.

[Travis Hall]

I guarantee that somebody will read the “Skip => Discard”, skip whatever detailed description you put in it, and come away thinking that the advice there is to always discard when skipped. And since that would obviously be bad advice, they’ll start using “Skip => Play” instead, and that is bad too. I’d advise finding a more accurate header. (“Skip means nothing”? “Skip is meaningless”?)

Be aware that while the card images are pretty and perhaps good for those who are used to seeing that representation of the cards, there may be some difficulty reading them for people who are colourblind. Colourblindness comes in many types, so some colourblind people may have no trouble, while others might find it difficult or impossible to use them. In the actual game, the cards have symbols to distinguish them for colourblind people. (The use of images to convey information is especially problematic for people who use screen readers, but I don’t know if Hanabi is playable on BGA at all for someone using a screen reader.)

“Standard” is the default convention setting, and thus is used when the table creator hasn’t chosen to specify a convention. I’m not sure it’s accurate to describe a convention called “Standard” as a result of this. A “Standard” table may actually be assumed to use the Finesse convention simply due to that being the most common convention on the site, or the table creator may intend for those joining who want to use a convention to discuss that.

[Travis Hall]

Under discards, perhaps mention that you should not discard in the first round of the game. Your first turn must be either a clue or a play.

Or perhaps not. There are certain circumstances where discarding in the first round of the game is actually the best thing to do. Strict avoidance of discards leads to a lot of wasting of tokens, loss of bluff opportunities, or even bad clues. I’d rather have players think about whether there is something they should be doing rather than discard than to have them clue automatically.

For play refusal - I think that is called a scream discard elsewhere in the page and that is the term I have heard.

Play refusal and scream discard are not quite the same thing. Some moves are both, but some moves are only one.

A scream discard could be a discard of any card in hand when the player has a known play, and this would also be play refusal; but a scream discard can also be done by a non-chop discard when the player does not have a known play, and without the known play, this is not a play refusal.

Play refusal could have a different meaning, too. For example, Alice clues 2 to an off-chop playable 2 in Bob’s hand, but Bob sees a playable 1 in finesse position Cathy’s hand. Not knowing whether his 2 needs to wait for the 1, Bob may discard to wait for a possible reverse. Sometimes this may even result in a play from hesitation from Cathy. So describing what to do after a discard of chop while refusing to play may get quite advanced.

[Jellby]

Under discards, perhaps mention that you should not discard in the first round of the game. Your first turn must be either a clue or a play.

Or perhaps not. There are certain circumstances where discarding in the first round of the game is actually the best thing to do. Strict avoidance of discards leads to a lot of wasting of tokens, loss of bluff opportunities, or even bad clues. I’d rather have players think about whether there is something they should be doing rather than discard than to have them clue automatically.

I agree. Not assuming discards are forbidden in the first turn also allows cluing plays on chop in the second turn: If I didn't save your 1 on chop the first turn, it probably means it's not 1k.

[Travis Hall]

Sammy, some of your descriptions of moves really don’t say why the move works. That means your descriptions are going to encourage attempts to memorise moves by rote, and a lack of ability to adapt and recognise variations and combinations of moves.

For example, under Trash Bluff, you say “Cathy now knows that her 1w is trash and this was a trash bluff.” While this is true, how does Cathy know that? (Because to draw a bluff response, the clued card must not be immediately playable, and in a game without Black Powder any 1 that is not playable will never be playable. Hence, it is trash, and should be discarded.)

And your Double Bluff description is just plain wrong. You say that Alice will clue green to Donald, whose 2g is already marked 2. Bob plays 1w. That’s a basic bluff, not a double bluff. A green clue drew 1w, which does not connect, so Donald already knows his card is not playable and Cathy has no reason to respond. The example that you are trying to set up involves Alice cluing 2, not green, so that Donald can’t see the disconnect in the response. To simplify the example, you should take away the previous marking on 2g as well. Then Cathy has to play a bluff response to prevent misfire of 2g. Also, nothing about that requires the use of 1-away-from-playable bluffs.

You should probably cover finesse-bluff before double bluff, too.

[Travis Hall]

Even the description of finesse doesn’t say why Bob responds to the clue.

[HanabiGrandMaster]

Draft Help Rules & facts
Draft Tips Convention-specific/advanced

I like that you want to separate facts, and "social interaction". Facts cannot be debated; social interaction shouldn't, because there's no accounting for taste (to each their own).

Some suggestions for the facts:

When blackpowder was introduced on BGA, it was referred to as P (powder). Using K (blacK) came over from users who also played on Hanabi.live. Using K seems just as weird to me as using E or L for blue. It also works in French:
R = red/rouge;
Y = yellow/yaune;
G = green/vert;
B = blue/bleu;
W = white/blanc (there's already a comment that blanc/bleu both starts with B, hence English notation is used);
M = multicoloured/multicolore
P = powder/poudre.

Conventional Leftism differs from BGA standard: it allows for finesses, and it changes the focus of a clue to the left-most-logical card, instead of the newest unmarked card. (Sometimes called: 1-clue-1-play.) Example:
Bob has (new --> old) B5, G4, W3, Y1, B2.
The B2 was saved earlier; it is marked with 2. B2 is now playable, since B1 is on the table.
In CL, Alice can give blue-clue to mean: play B2, save B5. In Standard blue-clue would mean: play newest blue-card (it is B3) after playing B2.

Move 1.8 Conventions to the tips & tricks. The conventions, and definitions are not fact. Examples:
"Marked" is used on BGA, "Touched" is/was used on hanabi.live. "Early save" is used by some players to indicate a save-clue that saves a card that isn't in danger of being discarded (often used to avoid complications due to convention restrictions); but some other players use the term to describe saving non-unique cards. "Non-unique" is mostly used on BGA, hanabi.live use(s/d) "critical".

You can include in the fact section:
According to this open source program https://github.com/Quuxplusone/Hanabi
you can get perfect score in the standard (5-colour) variant in 94%, 98%, 98%, and 96% of the decks for 2P, 3P, 4P, and 5P games respectively (when cheating / using perfect information).

Going to the tips & tricks:

I love that you start with the maths as an introduction to "why conventions are needed". However, I would not use the last two lines, where you calculate cluetokens / card. It's more useful to think of 22 tokens : 25 card = -3 (so you're three tokens short, and need to make at least three tokens count double); or 39 tokens : 35 cards = +4 (so you can use four tokens for stalling/re-cluing).

I would follow up with a strategy section. If you assume you want to play APARP (as perfect as reasonably possible), you should start with the assumption that you can mimic cheat-bot (see facts) and get perfect score pretty much all the time. Dropping a "first" card gives you a chance that the "second" card is at the bottom of the deck, and it will prevent you from getting perfect score. In addition, if a second 3 is one card above the bottom of the deck, there is a 50-50 chance that the order of the 4 and 5 is "bad" (Alice draws 3; Bob has 4 and 5 vs Alice draws 3 and has 5; Bob has 4). For other than 2player variants, the calculations are more complex, and you need to factor in excess clue-tokens (for stall clues), but as a rule of thumb you can say that it's roughly 50-50. This also goes for lost 2s with the two cards above the bottom deck. WIth this approximation, you can calculate a "penalty score" X:
+1 for every lost first 4;
+1.5 for every lost first 3;
+2.5 for every lost first 2.
The chance that you lose due to "bottom deck" is X /N (where N is number of cards remaining in the deck). This means that the primary choice a team should make, is whether to aim for "guaranteed" perfect score, or "likely" perfect score.

After the strategy choice, comes convention. Convention tells you what meta-information you assign to the clues. This is completely arbitrary, and unfortunately the source of a lot of toxicity. This player https://boardgamearena.com/player?id=83880676 once proposed something extremely-meta: Use red-clue to indicate play position 1; use yellow-clue to indicate play-position 2; etc. Use 1s-clue to save 1 card; use 2s-clue to save 2 cards, etc. People would call this "cheating", and "it wasn't logic", but this meta-information is just as arbitrary as the assumption that a marked card is useful (junk cards aren't marked).

As a final word, which is a second source for toxicity: ELO. Using the ELO tables as described, removes the correlation between skill and ELO. Not getting perfect score should, in my opinion, be assigned negative ELO-points, since perfect score is almost always possible. In addition, the tables that are linked imply that it is easier to get perfect score in 2player mode, while this is the hardest variant to play (because the team members have the least amount of information). Also, the "elasticity factor" for ELO is extremely low. Since you can get a maximum of +10, or -10 points, it takes >70 perfect games to become master, or >50 games for a rank-inflater (~1200 ELO) to drop below master (master = 700 ELO). Since you can filter tables on ELO (and not on skill), you want there to be a correlation between skill and ELO, and preferably one that matches the (arbitrary) levels set by BGA (100, 200, 300, 500, 700). I've recommended to cap ELO for hanabi (and other cooperative games) at 1000 points, where 1000 points should reflect: has gotten perfect score in the last 20 - 30 games. (100.0%). (And 700 points means has gotten perfect score in 70.0% of the last 20 - 30 games.) Perhaps this can somehow be addressed in the wiki?