Board Game Arena

Hi,
I wanna talk about some situations that I personnally dislike, which is to take chips of a certain value, knowing you are not in that position (or extremely unlikely you are on it), here is some examples:
1) You have K/2 preflop, others fighted for the 6 chips, finished 5&6, and so you pick 5 first to show strength, and then pick 4
2) You have a 2/2 preflop, and you pick 1, then 6, then 1, then 6
3) You play with 3 cards on the table, you are 1 turn (nobody showed flush's strength) and there is 3 spades on the table. River come and it's a forth spade. You have the 2 of spades. So you pick 6 once to show strength/show you hit flush, and then pick 4.


Here is what I'm personnally doing on those cases:
1) I take 4 directly.
2) Like most of the community I just pick 6.
3) I just pick where I think I am, which is 4. And then fight a lot for it since I know people will think my hand is weaker than what it really is.


From the rules:

The chips show an increasing number of stars, which indicate the strength of the chips. They are the method through which you communicate your estimation of the strength of your own hand (pocket cards + community cards) relative to the other players. If you take the chip with the most stars, you are signaling that you believe you currently have the strongest hand at the table. If you take the 1-star chip, you believe that you have the weakest hand.

But even not thinking of the rules, do you want everyone to ignore what is going on and pick 3/5/3 because their hand are J8, and 3/6/3 because their hand are JT? Because I feel like that's where the community lean into.

I personnally think that to take the first example: two players fighting for 6, and all others at 2 or below, you take 4 after that which mean your hand is between T2 and KQ: you ranked yourself relative to others players. And then you adapt conventions from there.

I think I will finish by stopping playing this game because conventions like that seem to take a bigger and bigger place.
And I feel like over time, that should make the game way less interesting since you learn some conventions, and then give away 50% or 33% of your hand immediately, which reduces misscomunications which is imo where all the fun of the game came from.


Often people said 'it's a cooperative game btw', but you can cheat so easily on this game while still following the rules. It will just take time, and could be picking X chips Y times. So if you try to maximise the amount of informations you send, you start by following 'high card promesse', and then why not give away your second card too, that way everyone know you have Q4/Q5/Q6. And that way you will win.
If you disagree (and imo you should), imo that mean that you stop to send information at one point, and what I propose/ask here it's just one step further.

It's hard for me to explain all of that that's why I tried to explain it multiples times. And people rt me for that, but I'm curious about other's opinions on it.
Thanks


btw, from another forum post 'Strategy guide' by Str8tsknacker someone else said:

FSKFSK wrote: ↑27 July 2026, 05:40While "take the first white chip based on your hand range" is true, stealing the White 6 chip from someone else shows a stronger hand than taking White 6 from the center. Similarly, taking the White 1 from someone else shows a weaker hand than taking the White 1 from the center.

And it's totally something I do, you show strength not overall but depending of others.

In your scenarios:

1. I don't mind the K2 pulling the 5 once and yielding it, while the others fight for the 6. It does give information to the table, and gives information to a possible Q high that its maximum is a 3. In the reduced info scenario, if this Q then starts fighting for 4, you have no idea if it might be a better K or not.

2. I see the logic, but I think this type of play generates more confusion than benefit. What will we do with 33, or 44? Better just to communicate clearly first time.

3. Raise enough to show improvement, so I would agree with pulling a 4 roughly. Pulling the 6 again just creates possible confusion - raising fairly strong on a 4th spade should always be a flush.

I've been thinking more and more about ways to give/get more info. I think moving a chip N times to show you have a card of value N is taking it too far and breaks the game. Someone the other day pretended to hit the river just to get more info for Retina Scan/Fingerprint Scan. It actually worked but did cause confusion at the table, and overall I'm unsure if this type of thing is worth it or not.

If you start making rules "If you have X, pick chip N, then put it back and take chip M.", the game becomes solvable.

There are 216 ways you can take a chip and put it back 3 times (6*6*6). If you assign each of the 169 possible starting hands to one of those combinations, the game is completely solvable. If you're doing that, there's no point playing the game at all.

I agree with FSKFSK. If someone on my take starts with these "morse code shenanigans", I'll simply look out of the window and after some time, I'll hit the continue button. It's one thing, if you put your chip back in and leave it there for others or negotiate with someone close, that's fine and part of the game. But if you know, you have the highest chip, there is no point.
Now, what about retina scan and finger print? If someone has all the highest chips and was not challenged, then good luck. I don't want to see putting the chip back in 1-2-3 it or more times to know if it's 1 pair, 2 pair, trips or something else. Sometimes I will take the chip from them to see how they fight for it, but that often leads to confusion after the test is done. And yeah, maybe this is something other people find weird and often it's accompanied with comments.

Yes, there are certainly times when over-communication is more confusing. But we do have resources at our fingertips to use to try and increase our chances of victory.

There are 216 ways you can take a chip and put it back 3 times (6*6*6). If you assign each of the 169 possible starting hands to one of those combinations, the game is completely solvable. If you're doing that, there's no point playing the game at all.

Probably no one wants this! But that is also not the goal of the game. I don't need to know your exact cards. But I do want to figure out if my hand is stronger or weaker than yours, and the others at the table. So the more clear the communication the better. So scenarios, for example, where two players know they are tied but kicker cards could ruin it, or the team needs to know which card on the flop you connected with, some communication techniques can be helpful.

Now, what about retina scan and finger print? If someone has all the highest chips and was not challenged, then good luck.

Do you really want to leave all your hard work in communicating with teammates all game long up to a guess at the end? For me, this feels like taking the train into the city only to flip a coin to decide which building I should enter. And then going directly home if I choose incorrectly.

For example, I saw a teammate go 1 to 6 with an obvious flush, but to guess the Retina Scan, the team had to determine which two cards between 2-6 (7 was lowest card on board) they were holding. That's a 40% (2/5) chance that the team wins. After playing the game, I don't mind some clever communication to help increase the chances of winning and not leaving it up to a coin flip.

In the end, I do ask myself: Is it simple? Is it clear? Is it helpful?
If so, why not give it a go!
If not, then win or lose, it is just a game after all.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑04 August 2026, 01:13If you start making rules "If you have X, pick chip N, then put it back and take chip M.", the game becomes solvable.

But imo, the community already do something similar: 'if you have a King as high card, pick chip 5 regardless of what is going on, and then play the game normally'.
It doesn't make the game solved, but it reduces the amount of insteresting's spots.

Bender3002 wrote: ↑04 August 2026, 06:47Now, what about retina scan and finger print? If someone has all the highest chips and was not challenged, then good luck. I don't want to see putting the chip back in 1-2-3 it or more times to know if it's 1 pair, 2 pair, trips or something else. Sometimes I will take the chip from them to see how they fight for it, but that often leads to confusion after the test is done. And yeah, maybe this is something other people find weird and often it's accompanied with comments.

The scans are giving me the most problems with my gameplay. People are assuming that you follow the previous rules (which is fine since it seem there is more people which follow them), and so that will decrease the value of doing something else.
Imo on that case, preflop/postflop/turn you ignore scan. River you try to guess what others will guess.
If it's the same you do nothing (you pick 6 once).
If it's not the same, you can show a lot of extra strength by picking 6 multiples times, show strength by picking 6 one more time, show weakness by picking 1 once, and show weird things by doing something else (switching between others tokens, take once another token, and so on).
This way of playing has the advantages to keep the scans which should work the same (since even if you have the best hand possible, if you still only pick 6 once if that should make sense), and to make others situations still be interesting.

FluffyWuffy1 wrote: ↑03 August 2026, 20:191. I don't mind the K2 pulling the 5 once and yielding it, while the others fight for the 6. It does give information to the table, and gives information to a possible Q high that its maximum is a 3. In the reduced info scenario, if this Q then starts fighting for 4, you have no idea if it might be a better K or not.

If someone else have Q and start fighting for 4 too (that don't happen to me since I will wait others before picking 4 with K2/K3/K4), then now both players have the range Q2~KQ. If you assume both players waited a lot to pick their chip their range is imo QT~K4. And so you play normally, but worst than if you was playing with 'high card promesse' convention.

FluffyWuffy1 wrote: ↑03 August 2026, 20:192. I see the logic, but I think this type of play generates more confusion than benefit. What will we do with 33, or 44? Better just to communicate clearly first time.

To have seen in twice, the first time I didn't understood it. Then learned it. And then it totally feeled cheating. But for swapping between 1&6/2&6/3&6/4&6/6 that's clear. And that let you classify pairs more easily.
It's just TT/JJ which are the most annoying, but with time, you going for 5&6 initially, but always wanting to finish 6 should be clear.
But that's just not an interesting way to play imo.

Now, what about retina scan and finger print? If someone has all the highest chips and was not challenged, then good luck.

Do you really want to leave all your hard work in communicating with teammates all game long up to a guess at the end? For me, this feels like taking the train into the city only to flip a coin to decide which building I should enter. And then going directly home if I choose incorrectly.

If the round would have been hard work (fighting for chips), then it should be fairly easy to guess it or narrow it down. I don't need an artificial morse code at the end.

For example, I saw a teammate go 1 to 6 with an obvious flush, but to guess the Retina Scan, the team had to determine which two cards between 2-6 (7 was lowest card on board) they were holding. That's a 40% (2/5) chance that the team wins. After playing the game, I don't mind some clever communication to help increase the chances of winning and not leaving it up to a coin flip.

Well, that's the game. For me it's not rewarding, if the one with the 6 starts shenanigans with the chip to indicate what value he's holding. He can as well write it in the chat directly, it's the same.

In this game, there are scenarios where you just lose the round.

If someone has J9 and someone else has J8, and they're in the wrong order for white chips, you're going to lose unless an 8 or 9 shows up.

On one round, the board had a 4-flush. One player had a 3, another had a 5, and another had a 6, all of the flush suit. That was pretty much a guaranteed loss.

For "guess what the 6 chip has" cards, it can be nearly impossible and you can't win without cheating. One round, it was obvious the 6 chip had a high pocket pair, but it there was no way tell which.

You can have "conventions" to deal with this situation, but they're equivalent to cheating. You might as well type your hand in chat if you're going to have advanced conventions to tell your hand exactly when it's close.

Romain672 wrote: ↑04 August 2026, 17:04

But imo, the community already do something similar: 'if you have a King as high card, pick chip 5 regardless of what is going on, and then play the game normally'.

Just to clarify, that's based on mathematical probabilities, not just conventions. It is like stating that you have a 50% chance of rolling a 4, 5, or 6 on a six-sided die. So even people playing The Gang and not on BGA are using that math as a starting point.