Frontloading Hanabi communication

[gtmac]

After playing several games of Hanabi online , I am mostly impressed with players' willingness to play within the spirit of the game by not communicating in game information outside the bounds of gameplay. I think that Hanabi requires an "advanced" spirit of the game mentality. As a group you have to really want to play the game without extraneous communication with the possible exception of coaching new players on general strategy.

It is that last piece that can be occasionally problematic. I feel there is a difference between (a) communication a game convention to new players that can be logically derived from repeated play as a opposed to (b) one that just makes the game easier.

As an example of (a), there is standard convention that if you have no information about your cards, that you should discard the card furthest to the right. While this does make the game easier, because you know when you can afford to not give someone information because their rightmost card is safe to discard, it can be logically derived because it is the card you've had the longest without getting any information about it.

However, as an example of (b), it was suggested to me that if given general information about a group of cards, some of which may be playable, that you should always play the left most card. I don't see a logical derivation for this. It seems to me that having this as a convention just means that you can "get away with" providing more information than the structure of the game allows for. What's the difference between "frontloading" that communication by making sure everyone knows to play that way and outright telling someone in the middle of the game, "These three cards are yellow, but I mean for you to play the one on the left."

Not to mention there may be many situations where you need to communicate information about a group of cards without the intent of communicating that any of them are immediately playable.

What do you guys think? What do you get out of the game? Is it just about solving the puzzle or is about the limited communication too?

[Jest Phulin]

Whenever I think about this topic, I look at the Bridge community. The bidding process allows for 15 words to be said ("no trump" is really one word -- one never bids "no spades"). However, when using standard conventions, a plethora of information can be exchanged about the cards in one hand.

A similar situation is happening with Hanabi. By developing conventions within the rules, extra information is allowed to be exchanged, leading to higher scores.

[sprockitz]

I think your 2nd example can be logically derived as well. The leftmost card is the newest card, and therefore the most likely card to be marked for play. Since this is generally the case, it makes sense to make it always the case and only give the clue if this is the scenario. It is along the same line of logic as the discard from the right convention.

[gtmac]

Except that a card marked for play has far less reliance upon how long you've had it than the current state of the board.

[The_Mormegil]

Unless it is the first turn of the game, you already elected not to tell the player any information about his other cards on previous turns, prioritizing other (more relevant) moves. This turn, something changed. What? It could be that the board state changed, and this has nothing to do with the order of the cards in your hand. It could be that the previous moves were more important, and nothing actually changed except the lack of more important information to provide. It could, however, also derive from the fact that the player has drawn a new card. If you drew a card last turn, and people suddenly want to tell you information about that card, you may infer that it is important to the game state. If it might be playable, your allies may want you to play it. It is therefore more likely to be the correct card to play in a set of cards IF it was a card you drew last turn. The point here is that while it might not be the card they are referring to, it is more likely to be so than other cards in your hand, given no other context.

However, one might extrapolate further. If on previous turns your allies prioritized different information, that information could have been more important to the game state. Given their choice to provide you with information now, it might be because it is now the best possible information to give. Why didn't they tell you before? While it is possible that there always was something more important to say or do, it is also possible that there wasn't such information to be provided until a point where better options were available - namely, that you drew the relevant card after more interesting options were made possible. The leftmost card is therefore STILL more likely to be the relevant one, even if it is not the turn directly after you drew it.

All in all, it is not a certainty, but you could expect this behavior from a fellow player, and as a player you could risk playing the leftmost card of a set when given general information. It is possible that it will result in a mistake, but sometimes risks are worth it.