Hello fellow players
I am the kind of player, who likes to question my partner's moves, when they make no sense to me and are being repeated. It's not the best of habits to have, clearly not a very popular one amongst many players, but Tichu is a team game, so we also have accountability to others, besides just ourselves.
Learning from our mistakes, when identified and concisely explained, should be the goal of every player. Me, I am very receptive to and embrace anything, that could improve my game. And yet, often when I confront my partner, particularly those from the southwest of Europe, they straight-out reject you without any or poor arguments, call you names, and possibly red-thumb you. Now, I don't care a whole lot about any of that, but the stance they take, after someone is merely trying to make them into a better player, is just weird. Unsolicited advices? Certainly, but again, it's a team game, remember?
Consider the following situation (and this lack of understanding the game I like to point out a lot)
You have a partner that called T. Won two single card tricks with an Ace (so clearly, the Dragon is with him). He has two cards left, leads with an 8.
I will pause here for a while, because my first problem is already very visible. My partner is making 0 effort to end on a trick I can beat. He will end the trick with the dragon as his last card, making his Tichu, and who cares about the rest, right? The player after him gets to lead for free. I believe you should always at least try to end your tricks on combos, your partner can beat and retain the lead. You not always can, and not always it is safe to do it, but if you have certain level of experience, you know when a bomb is still a realistic threat.
To continue our hand, his 8 is being passed over by the opponent, and because I am sure my partner has the dragon, I play Q. The other opponent passes over, and I am already happily selecting my single 2 as my next lead, when, to my surprise, my partner takes the trick with his Dragon. So I asked him, why he'd taken that hand, and he said because he had a T call to make. Now, this begs a rant from my side about him not caring about anything else in life, other than his T call. The hand went on to finish with 120-80 score. If he'd let me lead with my low single, this, based on what I had later seen my opponents play, would have been a 1/2 finish. And this isn't a theoretical. This is not a "who could've known" situation, not an "if this and if that". I shed that low single in that moment, i go out 2nd. There was no reasonable way of stopping it. You could argue, that my thinking could be, oh, he passed on a queen? Oh, his T call must have been ruined then, I better salvage the situation with some dubious combos other than single cards. Come on. Very few people in the world are this incompetent.
I am not upset about that missed opportunity, I am upset about continuously missed opportunities. Players, including myself, sometimes make wrong decisions. Decisions, that sometimes cost games. What I am saying is, when you make that bad decision repeatedly, I have a reason to think, you don't know it's wrong and/or why. So I tell you. Just as I would like to be told. But then, very few players react positively to unsolicited advices, which is very worrying, given the nature of this game - a team game.
I am the kind of player, who likes to question my partner's moves, when they make no sense to me and are being repeated. It's not the best of habits to have, clearly not a very popular one amongst many players, but Tichu is a team game, so we also have accountability to others, besides just ourselves.
Learning from our mistakes, when identified and concisely explained, should be the goal of every player. Me, I am very receptive to and embrace anything, that could improve my game. And yet, often when I confront my partner, particularly those from the southwest of Europe, they straight-out reject you without any or poor arguments, call you names, and possibly red-thumb you. Now, I don't care a whole lot about any of that, but the stance they take, after someone is merely trying to make them into a better player, is just weird. Unsolicited advices? Certainly, but again, it's a team game, remember?
Consider the following situation (and this lack of understanding the game I like to point out a lot)
You have a partner that called T. Won two single card tricks with an Ace (so clearly, the Dragon is with him). He has two cards left, leads with an 8.
I will pause here for a while, because my first problem is already very visible. My partner is making 0 effort to end on a trick I can beat. He will end the trick with the dragon as his last card, making his Tichu, and who cares about the rest, right? The player after him gets to lead for free. I believe you should always at least try to end your tricks on combos, your partner can beat and retain the lead. You not always can, and not always it is safe to do it, but if you have certain level of experience, you know when a bomb is still a realistic threat.
To continue our hand, his 8 is being passed over by the opponent, and because I am sure my partner has the dragon, I play Q. The other opponent passes over, and I am already happily selecting my single 2 as my next lead, when, to my surprise, my partner takes the trick with his Dragon. So I asked him, why he'd taken that hand, and he said because he had a T call to make. Now, this begs a rant from my side about him not caring about anything else in life, other than his T call. The hand went on to finish with 120-80 score. If he'd let me lead with my low single, this, based on what I had later seen my opponents play, would have been a 1/2 finish. And this isn't a theoretical. This is not a "who could've known" situation, not an "if this and if that". I shed that low single in that moment, i go out 2nd. There was no reasonable way of stopping it. You could argue, that my thinking could be, oh, he passed on a queen? Oh, his T call must have been ruined then, I better salvage the situation with some dubious combos other than single cards. Come on. Very few people in the world are this incompetent.
I am not upset about that missed opportunity, I am upset about continuously missed opportunities. Players, including myself, sometimes make wrong decisions. Decisions, that sometimes cost games. What I am saying is, when you make that bad decision repeatedly, I have a reason to think, you don't know it's wrong and/or why. So I tell you. Just as I would like to be told. But then, very few players react positively to unsolicited advices, which is very worrying, given the nature of this game - a team game.
