Board Game Arena

Dear BGA community,

while most BGA games are competitive, some are cooperative. BGA found a good ELO solution for cooperative games like Hanabi or Sky Team to prevent players from cancelling games instead of finishing them. Yet there is a specific game category that still has troubles finding its own way to deal with ELO - the games that are both competitive and cooperative, played in fixed teams, like Tichu and Spades. (There are surely more games like that, I simply don't know them. Belote? Decrypto?)

The thing about Tichu is that it is played in fixed teams that can be chosen at start. Surely you can choose random teams, but many people enjoy playing with their best friend, as husband and wife or brother and sister. Getting partnered with a random player to play against your wife with another random player is just not the same experience.

In former times the problem with the teams was that you automatically draw against your partner. That means, winning as a high ELO player would give you 0 ELO if you play with a low ranked partner because all the points you got by winning are lost by the draw with your partner. This got changed, as the ELO exchange with your partner is now always 0. This was a good change, but sadly a big problem remains.

The gaming moderation - probably an automatism - detects ELO cheating if you play too often with the same person. Over the years several accounts got moderated for possible ELO cheating for having the same partner too often. While this might be actually a case in most competitive games, in Tichu having a fixed partner is a common thing. Since there is no ELO-exchange with your partner, you cant give him free ELO for just playing with him. The ELO-exchange always happens with the opponents who are those who join the game first, never the same.

The largest tournaments in real-life for tichu are with fixed partners. Here at BGA playing with a fixed tichu partner will lead into account termination. That leads tichu players to these questions:

• How many different fixed partners are needed not to get moderated?

• Is it possible to make an exception rules for games like Tichu regarding playing with the same person?

• Should ELO at Tichu be hidden because of the cooperative aspect with your partner?

This topic intends to clarify unresolved issues, not challenge moderations. The moderations happened and are accepted. What we try is to prevent further moderations - we want to comply with the rules and therefore want to know the ruling in this special case.

Thanks to everyone who is helping to resolve this case.

primrose1234 wrote: ↑07 October 2025, 09:17 Since there is no ELO-exchange with your partner, you cant give him free ELO for just playing with him.

There are other ways to cheat besides dumping Elo. In partner games, sharing what should be secret information is one way.

I would hope that there was more to the moderation than they simply played with the same person too often. Of course, that's the explanation you'd expect a colluding player to give, but it's not necessarily the whole truth.

But I agree that anything that discourages routinely playing with the same partner in 2 v 2 games is silly. That's how those games are classically played.

Unfortunately this is a tough nut to crack. Some people refuse to accept that online play differs fundamentally from over-the-board in that for some games it's very easy to cheat and hard to reliably detect it. For some games BGA simply removes Elo to disincentivise cheating, or at least not give a visible reward for it. I don't claim to know how best to handle partner games.

primrose1234 wrote: ↑07 October 2025, 09:17The gaming moderation - probably an automatism - detects ELO cheating if you play too often with the same person. Over the years several accounts got moderated for possible ELO cheating for having the same partner too often. While this might be actually a case in most competitive games, in Tichu having a fixed partner is a common thing.

The problem as far as Tichu is concerned is that the moderators are not necessarily familiar with the game and, if they are to some extent, certainly not assessing the probability of outcomes in a given exchange or hand. Statistically, we can easily automate the identification of collusion through highly irregular rates of passing success, which I define as making the best possible combo. However, the eye test alone in the form of the replay is sufficient.

Cheating almost always means the partner passing the sole card that could complete a quad or flush bomb, often passing low/lowest to partner, and/or breaking their own combo, such as a straight or trips to do so despite having reasonable alternatives. In other words, experienced non-cheating partners don't make these types of exchanges which, more often than not, would hurt both hands if done blindly. This phenomena of sabotaging one's own hand is all but absent among {presumably) non-colluding, experienced players, who often exchange the exact same card (swapping Ks, As, etc), or pass high with a poor hand and low with a possible tichu bet worthy hand. Colluding partners don't show these patterns consistently, unless the deal presents no optimal options. When choosing among several singles for the pass, they'll pass the one most ideal, even if it's lower than what's given to an opponent.

Moderators are simply guessing on the likelihood of boosting ELO with multiple accounts on the basis of a steady partnership, high ELO, and reports from other players who are either being vindictive because of a loss, wrongly suspect cheating because of success, or have other motives like wanting to get those players off the top of the leader board.