Board Game Arena

When I play against Premium players I often see that they are much "luckier" than me, for example immediately get from the central pile the matching green cards, or if they take a plus resource token they immediately draw the respective resources, while I do not draw any with my token. Do I understand it correctly that the game on this site is designed to favor Premium players, i.e. is rigged?

Seriously ?
Human brain is very bad at figuring out if what they have experienced is reasonable or not in terms of probabilities.
If you want to be taken seriously :
1) establish a test protocol that isn't affected by human bias (for instance, choice to record or not MUST be made before data is seen)
2) Figure out a metric (again before getting the data) to measure luck
3) Record data resting scrupulously the protocol
4) compute the luck metric according to your data
5) compute the likelyhood (in French we call it a fonction de vraissemblance, I don't know the proper English term, this has precise meaning in statistics) of getting a result for that metric as extreme as you got under the assumption that the game is perfectly fair.

Do all that, publish your protocol, publish your data, get a result below 0.1% (might require a big data set to achieve that) and we can talk.

Without every single point above being respected (with all the mathematical knowledge that implies), I'm 99.9% sure you are just either victim of your perception bias or unlucky or a bit of both . (And given the size of BGA, it's expected that people get luck and unlucky streaks and that other *think* they got a very unlucky streak when they got a mildly unlucky one)

I believe the English term is simply "likelihood function."

refriedwhiskey wrote: ↑29 January 2026, 15:30 I believe the English term is simply "likelihood function."

In this case, I'm more inclined to go with "confirmation bias".

Resolute445 wrote: ↑31 January 2026, 14:07

refriedwhiskey wrote: ↑29 January 2026, 15:30 I believe the English term is simply "likelihood function."

In this case, I'm more inclined to go with "confirmation bias".

I was responding to Phoxtrot's #5 point...but yeah.

I am not a premium player, and over 5 days of Azul game play, I went from my high of 435 EOL to 275 !! I have not changed any strategy or game play methods. Sure, part of the game has "luck", but it was like a "switch" was flipped, that limits the success of non-premium players. I have no proof, just posting for wider community of my recent experience.

Makes sense with the new rand dice changes: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=48481

Just turn on the 'home advantage' if you're premium.

cosmosis wrote: ↑20 April 2026, 09:16 Makes sense with the new rand dice changes: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=48481

Just turn on the 'home advantage' if you're premium.

That was an April fools...

VerrVeon wrote: ↑22 January 2026, 19:06 When I play against Premium players I often see that they are much "luckier" than me, for example immediately get from the central pile the matching green cards, or if they take a plus resource token they immediately draw the respective resources, while I do not draw any with my token. Do I understand it correctly that the game on this site is designed to favor Premium players, i.e. is rigged?

Have you considered the possibility that premium players might spend more time playing the games and therefore get better at them? Which cards come up are not just a matter of luck - each wonder has slightly different decks, and knowing the dynamics of the decks as well as the theory of probability helps in predicting which deck best to use to get the best results.

tonkoch wrote: ↑22 April 2026, 07:38 Which cards come up are not just a matter of luck - each wonder has slightly different decks

Thank you! I didn't know that