Board Game Arena

In a another thread, some one says there is 435 possible pairs on on begining tickets (2 amoung 30).

In fact, I suppose only 434 (or less) are used.
If you pick :
Calgary- Salt Lake 7
Miami - Boston 12
Any other ticket (28 combinations)

I think your choice is always the 3rd ticket with one of the 2 first. True ? Then, if this is correct, we can suppose Calgary - Salt Lake /Boston Miami is the worst ticket, and no one ever chooses it.

What do you think of that?
Is "Calgary - Salt Lake /Boston Miami" a worst ticket ?
Do you think there is any other "worst ticket" than this one ?

Cedroc92 wrote: ↑09 March 2025, 09:13 If you pick :
Calgary- Salt Lake 7
Miami - Boston 12
Any other ticket (28 combinations)

I think your choice is always the 3rd ticket with one of the 2 first. True ? Then, if this is correct, we can suppose Calgary - Salt Lake /Boston Miami is the worst ticket, and no one ever chooses it.

What if, depending on the 3rd ticket, you choose Calgary-Salt Lake in some cases and Miami-Boston in the other cases? I guess it's more like a rock-paper-scissors situation: which is the worst?

@Jelby
My be I was not clear, here is what I was meaning.

If the 3st ticket is...
Van-Montreal, I choose : Van - Monreal / Calgary- Salt Lake
Miami-Toronto, I choose : Miami - Toronto / Miami - Boston
Duluth - Houston, I choose : Duluth- Houston / Calgary Salt Lake
....

Finally, sometimes I take Calgary- Salt Lake, and sometimes I take Miami - Boston. But I never take the pair Calgary- Salt Lake / Miami - Boston, whatever the 3rd ticket.
That is why I think the pair Calgary- Salt Lake / Miami - Boston can be said as "worst ticket".

I think the terms ''worst ticket'' are not precise regarding the way you want to approach this discussion.

We could easily understand why one player could never take Calgary & Boston. Since it is impossible to complete both (and win !), you could consider in every cases Boston-Miami as a penalty (-12). Therefore, any tickets that holds a lower value than 12 should be taken over Boston in every case. Even tickets in the East such as Dallas-NYC should be taken with Calgary rather than Boston, since you get more versatility with one ticket, (for blocking or finishing fast, depending on the strategy). Regarding the tickets of equal or higher value (12/13/13/16/17/17/20/20/21/22), you can take any 16+ with calgary and try to complete it, making it a decent pair, and in some cases, a pretty dangerous one. That leaves us with Montréal-NO, that would be the only ticket that I could see with Boston. (Since both could be considered high value tickets, we could try and ditch longuest, make points, conditionally to having the start)

So, in my opinion, Calgary-Salt Lake is actually... a gift to be given when paired with Boston Miami, since it makes the choice way easier to discard one of *if not the* worst ticket in the game.

I also think that the point of this thread, if we use the terms ''worst tickets'' is actually useless. What I mean is, we could say ''what is the combination that will NEVER be taken by a player'', which would be more accurate. (Probably 13/Van+17/Portland for me) We could refer the ''worst ticket'' as one who is difficult to be paired with, and that nearly guarantees defeat. If we want to redirect this thread, however, I'd be really interested to know which 3 starting tickets are the worst, regarding the possible winning outcome of the game. I personnally think Vancouver-Santafe(13)/Dallas-NYC(11)/Boston-Miami(12) could be considered one of the worst hand to be dealt with.

Thanks for your answer.
You are right : I wanted to say "Looking for the worst pair" instead of "worst ticket".

I did not realised that 13/Van+17/Portland is one of the worst pairs. If the 3rd ticket is Miami-Boston, I think I take it.

I doubt many would intentionally keep a really bad pair of tickets by choice. It's very hard to come with 3rd that you would keep that 7+12 combo..

However, I have one in mind: La-Mia + Vancouver-Montreal. I actually keep those two, and discard the third ticket, as a challenge

Well I've actually done that, @Admitted .

It's pretty good, and I've won lots of times with that. Probably the worst pair could be Seattle to Los Angeles and New York to Atalanta.