Simon blogs

[Silken Healer]

Does Yahtzee count as a board/card game? No boards and no cards

[chaos_defrost]

(At least in the US) Yahtzee comes with a notepad with scorecards and a cup to roll the dice in, which if you're being a bit cheeky about it, can count as the board, so you could argue that it has both cards and boards

Also checked out the Yahtzee analyzer for a bit and got a Yahtzee first try ah hahahaha, not sure if that's scripted or not but sure, you take those.

[mobius]

Gin Rummy (and many variants of Rummy) was common here in U.S. My favorite to play was so-called "Contract
Rummy". Works similar to 'plain' Rummy except as follows;

1) there are a set number of rounds, the version I played always had 5.
2) each hand has a specific assortment of hands you need to make before you can discard, to go out (get rid of all cards, thus ending the round). 2 sets or 2 runs or 1 run and 1 set etc. I can't remember the exact rules for each round anymore except that it got  more difficult as the game progressed.
3) I don't remember if this was singular to this particular game or not but a player could "buy" a (1) card from another player by taking another card from the pile, but only 1 per turn or something like that.
4) Every round played like normal rummy (players lay their cards down whenever and first person to throw their last card away ends the round). But the final round functioned like Gin Rummy; in order to lay out you have to have all the cards in your hand fit the contract, thus the first person to lay out also ends the round and everyone else is stuck with all the cards in their hand.

The rest I think functions mostly like Rummy. After the final round the player with most points wins.

There's also this game called Rummikub; which I never played but looks like a mix between Rummy and dominoes... no idea how it works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rummikub

here's another Yatzhee like game I've not really played but heard of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farkle

[Dominator_101]

I've mostly played what I think is typically called Rummy 500, which rather than solely holding cards in your hand you instead play your sets visibly, and can play cards on the other player's sets as well. It also involves being able to pick up one or many cards from the discard pile. I enjoy the additional strategical elements that it involves. In general I prefer this version to Gin, but still enjoy both.

Rummikub is pretty fun. It kind of plays like Rummy (you're trying to make sets of at least three matching/three in a row), but one of the things I like most about it is that you can mix and match tiles that are on the board as long as everything ends up a valid set. So for example if I have a a red five, blue five, and green two, and the board has a green 3-4-5 set, I can play my 2 at the front to make it 2-3-4, then yoink the 5 to make a 5-5-5 set as well. Sometimes I'd end up rearranging half the board just to get one or two tiles out of my hand.

[Simon]

Right, the appeal of Gin is that it's a potentially reasonable 2-player game. I've tried it, and it felt like it was still lots of luck, but possibly there is indeed more depth.

The other Rummies are better with more players than with 2.

Before, to me, Rummikub had always looked like an arbitrary Rummy-style ruleset that merely sold well because of its nice tiles. But you sound as if the ruleset holds up by itself, and it should be playable with two standard decks with standard jokers. I'll see when I get the chance to try it.

Thanks for the ideas!

-- Simon

[Simon]

Esoterics with Simon

I've learned the mate with bishop and knight against a naked king.

There's an interesting limit to how well you can study it purely with a computer. The defending computer wants to prolong the mating sequence. Its favorite way to prolong the B+N endgame is to flee with its king into the wrong corner, from where it takes the most moves to mate. But from that wrong corner, the remaining moves are easy: The attacker can apply a largely fixed pattern.

The computer would pose a bigger problem to the human by avoiding starting points to common human patterns, even if it allowed shorter mates that an engine might find.

-- Simon