Board Game Arena

pretty sure many of us have met Master level players who have achieved it playing 2p games, but play 3+ player games at Strong level at best - in this case level filter for tables is useless. the easiest solution I can think of is to split hanabi into 2 different games: Hanabi 2p and Hanabi 3+p. what do you think about this? maybe something else could be done to mitigate this issue

Hello, as far as I know, this is not possible given how BGA works.
There is only one ELO queue per game. Implementing such a feature would require the game to be duplicated, resulting in two different entries in the game list.
This would undoubtedly cause a great deal of confusion for players.

And then there should be separate ELO for 3-player and for 4-5, and for avalanche or not, and for flams or not...

The difference between 3p and and 4-5p is minor, while 2p is indeed a separate game with different conventions - arguably finesse, layered finesse etc make little sense for it. They save 2s. They have special rules to avoid double discard and so on. So yes, I'd prefer to see 2 different game entries in the games list: Hanabi Duet and Hanabi Party. But that's just me

Probably they should just get rid of ELO and show number of games played by table size / variant. Hanab.live does this and it makes a lot more sense.

@Blacktango: I get that this would break their model either way. Fortunately they have some programmers

I think this discussion belongs here:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41776

It died, but your complaint shows it's still relevant.

The major concerns regarding ELO:
- Black Powder doesn't affect ELO at all, even though it makes the game more challenging.
- Number of players affects ELO greatly, while that's hardly a factor compared to number of colours and number of hand-cards.
- Since almost all variants should get perfect score >90% of the time, non-perfect scores shouldn't be rewarded.

I don't know how to lobby harder with the powers that be to get this change implemented.

my issue is not with ELO itself, but with different conventions of 2p and 3+p variants: e.g. 2p Masters bombing reverse finesses, ignoring layers etc - they simply don't have such concepts and are not used to it. Happened too many times already.

Unfortunately this is true for so many games, but the current system has no way to handle a solution. And I don't think BGA cares enough to change it and find one that works

Let me paraphrase the topic of this conversation:
Doea the esteemed bga community belie that the conventions of 2p and 3+p versions differ enough that a Master 2player cannot demonstrate the expected level of cooperation? And similarly, a Master 3+player cannot follow the existing 2p conventions?

And the resulting question is, therefore: should there be 2 separate Hanabi instances on bga: Hanabi Duet and Hanabi Party (naming is of course merely suggestive) - to eliminate inconsistent Elo and game variant skill level

dmpr0 wrote: ↑19 January 2026, 13:18 my issue is not with ELO itself, but with different conventions of 2p and 3+p variants: e.g. 2p Masters bombing reverse finesses, ignoring layers etc - they simply don't have such concepts and are not used to it. Happened too many times already.

I am not familiar with the bga community of this game,could you tell me what do the "finesses" "reverse finesses" "layers " terms mean?