Board Game Arena

I'd like to improve my play by watching good players in real time. Questions about watching games:

1. I see that I can sort the games in progress "By relevance" or "By game", but I don't know what these terms mean. Relevance to what? I've tried each kind of sort but see no pattern.

2. It's easy to screen out the turn-based games (yellow clock icon). Is there a way to find the real-time games with higher-rated players? The trial-and-error method of clicking on game after game, to see the players' ratings, is inefficient.

Wistama wrote: ↑23 November 2025, 02:28 I'd like to improve my play by watching good players in real time. Questions about watching games:

1. I see that I can sort the games in progress "By relevance" or "By game", but I don't know what these terms mean. Relevance to what? I've tried each kind of sort but see no pattern.

2. It's easy to screen out the turn-based games (yellow clock icon). Is there a way to find the real-time games with higher-rated players? The trial-and-error method of clicking on game after game, to see the players' ratings, is inefficient.

The way you could use is by sending contact request to top players and you can see when they're online and you can watch their game as it progresses. Only caveat is that you cannot see the colours and tickets they have, so the knowledge that you can learn is limited.

Good luck!

Wistama wrote: ↑23 November 2025, 02:28 I'd like to improve my play by watching good players in real time.

What do you gain by watching in real time as opposed to one of their archived games where you could also see which tickets and cards they held? And you can pause and think about what you would do in each game state, then see what they did.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑23 November 2025, 08:35

Wistama wrote: ↑23 November 2025, 02:28 I'd like to improve my play by watching good players in real time.

What do you gain by watching in real time as opposed to one of their archived games where you could also see which tickets and cards they held? And you can pause and think about what you would do in each game state, then see what they did.

I'm still fairly new here and I didn't even know that option existed. You're absolutely right that it would be a great way to improve.

Would you spell out for me how I access that archive? Many thanks!

Wistama wrote: ↑23 November 2025, 16:25

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑23 November 2025, 08:35

Wistama wrote: ↑23 November 2025, 02:28 I'd like to improve my play by watching good players in real time.

What do you gain by watching in real time as opposed to one of their archived games where you could also see which tickets and cards they held? And you can pause and think about what you would do in each game state, then see what they did.

I'm still fairly new here and I didn't even know that option existed. You're absolutely right that it would be a great way to improve.

Would you spell out for me how I access that archive? Many thanks!

View a player's profile, go to X games played, and click the game you want to view.

Meeplelowda alerted me to the existence of the replay option, and Ceaseless showed me how to access it. That’s exactly what I wanted. Thanks to both of you!

I’m still curious about what sorting “By relevance” means. Now, though, it’s just an idle curiosity.

Wistama wrote: ↑25 November 2025, 17:10 I’m still curious about what sorting “By relevance” means. Now, though, it’s just an idle curiosity.

It's probably based on something that has not much to do with actual relevance of the match.
I would suggest taking a look at highly rated tournaments, such as Expert+ (500+) or Strong+ (300+), where both players in the match are highly rated, because there the games are pretty different from random normal or arena matches.

Here some examples:
20thAnniversary World Tournament • Semifinals
TTR strong and above players • Edition 16
TTR NEW Experts and Masters • Edition 13

ExaltedAngel wrote: ↑15 December 2025, 23:37

Wistama wrote: ↑25 November 2025, 17:10 I’m still curious about what sorting “By relevance” means. Now, though, it’s just an idle curiosity.

It's probably based on something that has not much to do with actual relevance of the match.
I would suggest taking a look at highly rated tournaments, such as Expert+ (500+) or Strong+ (300+), where both players in the match are highly rated, because there the games are pretty different from random normal or arena matches.

Here some examples:
20thAnniversary World Tournament • Semifinals
TTR strong and above players • Edition 16
TTR NEW Experts and Masters • Edition 13

Don’t share him that, people are gonna start to reverse ing my strats
Time flies tho, it’s been a year or so since the beginning of the event…

I really don't know what other strategies are there other than "Whoever has the Vancouver West-East/LA West-East routes wins" in vanilla Ticket to Ride. I don't think I have ever played a game of Ticket to Ride where a player with tickets beats a Vancouver W-E/LA W-E players unless it's the 1910 version that has more routes and gives bonuses to route completions.

Archisian wrote: ↑19 December 2025, 02:34 I really don't know what other strategies are there other than "Whoever has the Vancouver West-East/LA West-East routes wins" in vanilla Ticket to Ride. I don't think I have ever played a game of Ticket to Ride where a player with tickets beats a Vancouver W-E/LA W-E players unless it's the 1910 version that has more routes and gives bonuses to route completions.

If you are talking about 2p TTR, it's pretty much the opposite: vanilla TTR gives you chances to overcome the disadvantage in tickets, while the more objectives you add to the pool, the more having luck with tix is rewarded. If you are talking about 4-5p instead, I'm no expert, but generally whoever gets to play in a "free" area while the other players are competing for the same tracks gets an huge advantage, and this is why I don't enjoy multi as much as 2p. That, anyways, is not a matter of tix "stand alone strength", just of tix distribution and can apply to most if not all maps and setups of multiplayer TTR.

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=775733147
This is a game I played 2 days ago in which the player with Vancouver-Montreal (definitely the best of the "long tix") lost.
It's just the last I played and it came to my mind, but probably not the best example, since the game is pretty messy, iirc I played this from the phone while in bed and almost fucked up. Still it falls within what you were looking for. There are plenty of these examples anyways, I can even recall one game during 20th anniversary tournament in which someone won against his opponent who was holding "the golden 42" (Vancouver-Montreal 20 + Seattle-New York 22) which is the best pair of tix you can possibly have. Tickets are important, noone sane would ever deny that, but vanilla TTR is definitely one of the maps where the weight of luck is mitigated the most.