Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: fp on July 10, 2011, 07:52:17 pm

Title: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 10, 2011, 07:52:17 pm

Dominion has been growing recently- and with that questions regarding competitive Dominon has started to come forth. Does it exist? How does it work? And so on. Another question is: How does one make it fair and fun?

That is a tricky question. Dominion certainly does have its unfun moments and unfun moments- and many times that are induced by unlucky occurrences: not going first, bad shuffles, or most especially poor openings.

Now we are going to compare the situation to Bridge. In Bridge, there are deals where one pair is clearly favored to gain points on the hand just based upon where the cards lie. In order to mitigate that luck factor, Bridge tournaments typically feature a “Duplicate Bridge” format where the exact same deal is played by a large proportion of pairs. The each pair scores points NOT based upon whether they win or lose on the hand, but how they perform relative to the other pairs.

A similar concept could be implemented with Isotropic (or similar electronic scheme) in Dominion.

Simply put, the idea is simple: Given a large number of players playing the same board, all of the players in first position (or second) will have the exact same shuffles.

The technical details are as follows:
At the start of the game, the game generates 80 (or however many) random permutations of the numbers 1 through 100 for each position (e.g. the first player and the second player) which is kept secret. For the i-th shuffle, the i-th permutation (restricted to the appropriate numbers) is used to determine the order for that shuffle. Where the numbers corresponds to cards in the order in which they were added to the deck.

Example 1:
This scheme guarantees that all of the players playing first have the same opening hands and that the players playing second have the same opening splits.

Example 2:
If the first permutation (restricted to 1 through 12) for the first player is (6,3,9,10,12,1,4,2,7,5,8,11), then the after the first shuffle, the two cards (the 11th and 12th cards) bought before the first shuffle will be placed in the 12th and 5th position. If the player playing first neglects to buy a card during his first two turns, the single card bought will be placed in in the 11th position (as the 12 in the permutation is ignored). The key point here is that in order to promote fair and fun games, ALL of the players playing first for this game will have a “dead” buy.

There are, of course, other finer details to hammer out, but before I present them in a boring detailed manner, I was wondering if this idea interests people at all. Keep in mind that players need not be aware of any of the details.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: ARTjoMS on July 10, 2011, 08:37:27 pm
Interesting, but unlike in bridge in dominion you can only win or lose (or tie). I suspect that many times (if this gets to a really high levels) it will be like one position player wins in all games (+0;+10;+99), and everyone gets 50% and you don't really learn anything. If it mattered by how much points we win or lose then i think this would raise this game to a whole different competitive level.

This would require huge concentration throughout the whole game in high levels and way more important decisions to make.




Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 10, 2011, 09:13:58 pm
That is a good point.

One potential solution to that is that players play 3-5 boards (e.g. games) in one round. That way, instead of Win, Lose, and Tie, there is closer to a continuum of outcomes: (for 5 games: 0-5, 1-4, 2-3, 3-2, 4-1, 5-0).
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 10, 2011, 09:29:17 pm
There are a number of reasons I don't think this would work very well, and the reason it's so different from bridge is that there are unlimited reshuffles of the deck. You can play thousand turn games - there are some possibilities with monument or bishop, possession, and a kc-masq type lock where the locking player is behind. These are inherent problems with dominion actually, but in real life any sane arbiter is going to declare a draw. Or maybe in some of these cases, somebody's actually going to win, but it might take a thousand turns.
Also, I don't really see how this helps actually. Guaranteeing player 1 and player 2 the same draw across all boards is great in terms of fixing the board-to-board luck skill, but what about the inequity between players 1 and 2? You can't really have them play the same game over, because now they KNOW what they're going to draw. So apart from it being a huge practical nightmare, I don't think it has much positive point.
Luck is simply part of the game, and you can't get rid of that - even in the bridge example, there are chances for the game theory to add some randomness. Bluffing is actually pretty big in high-level trick-taking-games, and while I haven't played a lot of bridge, from what I do know, I don't think it should be any different there.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: DG on July 10, 2011, 10:14:38 pm
I think it's still going to have problems. The card sequence effectively becomes random between players as soon as they use different action cards on turn 3. Consider a mint, market, trading post, wharf, treasury, outpost, tactician, harvest, hunting party, lab, venture, royal seal, ghost ship, rabble, ....
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: cherdano on July 10, 2011, 10:25:41 pm
Player A opens Ambassador/Silver, and player B opens Silver/Ambassador...
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: theory on July 10, 2011, 10:27:05 pm
One way around it (and which would change Dominion dramatically, probably for the worse) is to let players manually control their shuffles. 
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 10, 2011, 10:32:36 pm
One way around it (and which would change Dominion dramatically, probably for the worse) is to let players manually control their shuffles. 

That's not even dominion any more, but an entirely different game, where, assuming you can look at how your opponent stacks his deck, the later player you are, the bigger advantage you probably have.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 10, 2011, 10:42:28 pm
There are a number of reasons I don't think this would work very well, and the reason it's so different from bridge is that there are unlimited reshuffles of the deck. You can play thousand turn games - there are some possibilities with monument or bishop, possession, and a kc-masq type lock where the locking player is behind. These are inherent problems with dominion actually, but in real life any sane arbiter is going to declare a draw. Or maybe in some of these cases, somebody's actually going to win, but it might take a thousand turns.

While off-topic: Do you actually have an example where a game, optimally played would take thousands of turns?

Regarding the topic, it would practical, say after the 50th shuffle, to just make the shuffles random. Even though this might not duplicate the matter precisely, since most games do not go beyond 50 shuffles, this would not affect the duplication issue much at all. And if a game truly does take a thousand turns, there would other bigger issues (i.e. physical time) that would be more substantial.


Quote
Also, I don't really see how this helps actually. Guaranteeing player 1 and player 2 the same draw across all boards is great in terms of fixing the board-to-board luck skill, but what about the inequity between players 1 and 2? You can't really have them play the same game over, because now they KNOW what they're going to draw. So apart from it being a huge practical nightmare, I don't think it has much positive point.

That is a good question. In order to have an effective ranking, you have to have ways of effectively comparing players to another. The key here, while counterintuitive, is that the games do not rank player A against player B well, but rather help rank all of the player A's against each other (as with all of the player B's).

Quote
I think it's still going to have problems. The card sequence effectively becomes random between players as soon as they use different action cards on turn 3. Consider a mint, market, trading post, wharf, treasury, outpost, tactician, harvest, hunting party, lab, venture, royal seal, ghost ship, rabble, ....

Even if this were the case, I do not understand how this is a problem. The most important consequence of having duplicated shuffles is that the first few shuffles are the same. Thereafter, it is not as big of a consequence. What if only the first 3 shuffles were duplicated?
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: DG on July 10, 2011, 11:56:21 pm
Quote
Even if this were the case, I do not understand how this is a problem.


The hands can become completely different immediately. There is no point having an ordering if it becomes indistinguishable from random draws after the second shuffle since players have used different action cards. Just shuffle some cards and compare a herbalist/royal seal opening to a courtyard/trading post opening. Then try lighthouse/tactician.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 11, 2011, 12:44:59 am
Quote
Even if this were the case, I do not understand how this is a problem.


The hands can become completely different immediately. There is no point having an ordering if it becomes indistinguishable from random draws after the second shuffle since players have used different action cards. Just shuffle some cards and compare a herbalist/royal seal opening to a courtyard/trading post opening. Then try lighthouse/tactician.

The intention of the duplicateness is that the same choices yield the same results. The fact that different choices yield vastly different scenarios is expected. In any case, I do not see how having a fixed shuffle pattern is any worse than random ones in the rare event players do make vastly different choices. Specifically, while as you point out an ordering would not be relevant if the choices made are vastly different, it is important if the choices are very similar.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Superdad on July 11, 2011, 08:51:44 am
I also think that in a large tournament, having to re-order hundreds of different decks, possibly several times per turn, is a logical nightmare.

Each round would take hours.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Deadlock39 on July 11, 2011, 09:49:09 am
I also think that in a large tournament, having to re-order hundreds of different decks, possibly several times per turn, is a logical nightmare.

Each round would take hours.

This would certainly be implemented on isotropic or a similar system, and not done manually.  I am pretty sure the OP indicated this.

To second the comments that fp already made, it does not matter that different openings produce different results.  In this type of system (unless I am missing something) all the match-ups would be playing the same board for a game (or multiple games), and lots of players will be taking the same opening, (and potentially even playing identically for many more turns).  If you have 100 games being played and everyone who gets 5/2 opens Mountebank/Chapel, it isn't a fair comparison between all the players if some of them get Chapel/C/E/E/E and Mountebank/C/C/C/C turns 3 and 4, and some of them have Chapel, Mountebank and their turn 3 and 4 buys all collide on turn 5.  If this particular nightmare scenario was part of the predetermined random sequence for that game, then every single player in that position would experience the same "bad luck", and can still be ranked against each other according to how they handled it.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: rrenaud on July 11, 2011, 10:17:17 am
Imagine there are two strategies that are equally good in the long run, but which change the deck order dramatically.

Maybe silver/smithy vs silver/moneylender is a decent example.  The merits of smithy vs moneylender are unimportant, just assume that the strengths of two openings are about on par, but they follow very different deck paths.

If the estates are in position 9 and 10 and the moneylender/smithy is in position 5, then if you opened smithy, you will draw with your first turn, and then the estates at position 9 and 10 are going to be stuck in the shuffle and only seen once in the first two shuffles, but the moneylender player will see them twice.

It's not that smithy is a better choice in the long run over many cases, but for this particular deck order, it was a much better choice. 

Certainly duplicate dominion buys you something in the case where everyone continues to do the same thing, but once players branch (even if the choices are very close to each in 'overall winning space'), they can be very different for a particular controlled deck order.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Thisisnotasmile on July 11, 2011, 11:35:11 am
In addition to the above, what happens if I open Moneylender/Silver and so does the other guy. Then we both draw Moneylender with 4 coppers turn 3. We both trash a copper and buy a Gold. So far, we're exactly equal, right? Well no, I trashed the copper that was assigned the number "1" during randomisation and the other guy trashed copper "4". We've both done exactly the same thing, yet suddenly our decks will no longer shuffle in the same way.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Superdad on July 11, 2011, 01:36:14 pm
I'm not sure if this is what deadlock was trying to say, but pre-determining the cards can actually literally lose someone a game.

For example, lets say we have a chapel/Militia board and the shuffler decides that turn 3 will be: MCCCC and turn 4 will be ChCEEE.

Whoever goes first in that board is basically getting screwed by luck.

Turn 3 player A:
Militia, CCCC, buy gold. Draws ChCEEE

Turn 3 player B:
Miltia, CC, buy a $4. Draws his ChEEE

Turn 4, player A's chapel got messed up by pre-determined militia.
Turn 4 Player B gets a full 3-estate + 1 copper chapeling.

While this will happen with complete randomness, pre-determined randomness leaves a much more bitter taste in the mouth (my opinion).

Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Deadlock39 on July 11, 2011, 02:06:55 pm
I guess I wouldn't be bothered at all by pre-determined randomness.  Random is random and sometimes it will screw you.  In a tournament setting, I would feel better about being screwed by randomness if I knew that every other player that was in position 2 got screwed by the Militia too (assuming Player 1 opened with it).  Also, The randomness would the same for each pairing, but not for both players in the same match.   

From your example, everyone in first position that opened Chapel/Militia would get Militia, CCCC, and then ChCEEE, but player 2 wouldn't necessarily end up with Militia, CCCC.  It is true that that opening might (nearly) win the game for player 1 on that board (just like opening 5/2 with Mountebank/Chapel might). The important thing is that every person in first position in the tournament was given that same good luck, and when that set of games is looked at, player 1 will have won a disproportionate number of those matches.  For that particular match, player 2 wins, and player 1 losses can be weighted more heavily than the rest. 

rrenaud's point about openings of equal strength being effected differently does have weight, but I have no idea how big of an effect something like that could have on results.  If the psudo-random set used in one of the matches introduced that type of variance between strategies, it might be more significant than if it only happened in one or two games.  I'm not sure how to judge if it is more fair to affect a large set of players with this, or just a few.  My assumption would be that if an otherwise good player got hit with one of these bad luck situations, it would be easier for them to fall back into their correct place in the standings if a significant number of others were hit with the same problem.

In any format, you would need to play enough games to account for the random variance inherent in the game.  My non-mathematically-backed opinion is that the idea from the OP would help reduce variance across the field.

Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: rinkworks on July 11, 2011, 02:41:35 pm
The thing about the pre-determined randomness is, as Deadlock says, that every other tournament player in that position gets screwed in the same way.

The thing we're missing about what makes Duplicate Bridge work is that the object becomes not to win the game but to perform better than every other player in your seat.  It's possible to lose every single rubber in a Duplicate Bridge tournament and yet win the tournament -- because you did better than every other player in your seat at the other tables.  That's how the luck of the draw is eliminated from being a factor.  You can have Jack-high hands all night, but if you can hold your opponents to fewer tricks than the other people in your seat at the other tables can, you're doing really well.

The object of Duplicate Dominion would similarly change.  The object wouldn't be to win any individual Dominion game but to get the best VP score difference than the other people playing your seat.

I've thought about Duplicate Dominion before too, and while I don't think it can work for reasons others have already stated here, getting screwed by a bad Militia/Chapel draw isn't one of them.  Everybody in your seat who makes those same opening moves would get screwed in the same way, but some will recover from it better than others.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 11, 2011, 02:43:11 pm
I'm not sure if this is what deadlock was trying to say, but pre-determining the cards can actually literally lose someone a game.

For example, lets say we have a chapel/Militia board and the shuffler decides that turn 3 will be: MCCCC and turn 4 will be ChCEEE.

Whoever goes first in that board is basically getting screwed by luck.

Turn 3 player A:
Militia, CCCC, buy gold. Draws ChCEEE

Turn 3 player B:
Miltia, CC, buy a $4. Draws his ChEEE

Turn 4, player A's chapel got messed up by pre-determined militia.
Turn 4 Player B gets a full 3-estate + 1 copper chapeling.

While this will happen with complete randomness, pre-determined randomness leaves a much more bitter taste in the mouth (my opinion).

I think it are misunderstanding the concept here. The first premise is that you would have dozens of games with the exact same board. A particular predetermined shuffle only affects one player in each game and only once each game. However, the predetermined shuffles in the prescribed order are identical across all of the games for each player in the same position

To correct your example:
Suppose the shuffler determines for player A (the player in first position) will be: turn 3 MCCCC and turn 4 ChCEEE.
and for player B: turn 3  MEECC and turn 4 ChCCCE

Then for player C (playing first) and player D playing the same game in the tournament, player C will end up with MCCCC and ChCEEE just like player A in his or her game. And likewise player D will end up with MEECC and turn 4 ChCCCE

In this regard, the results between A and B as well as C and D can be accurately compared.

I should also point out that your example, in fact, as very little to do with prescribed shuffles rather more to do with the natural fact that Militia benefits the player that goes first.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 11, 2011, 02:52:24 pm
The object of Duplicate Dominion would similarly change.  The object wouldn't be to win any individual Dominion game but to get the best VP score difference than the other people playing your seat.

I feel pretty confident that players will despise the use of VPs as a primary tool for tournament scoring.

I think winning and losing needs to remain key.

In any case, is there anything bad about playing 4 or 5 games per round in order gain larger continuum of results?
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 11, 2011, 02:57:28 pm
In addition to the above, what happens if I open Moneylender/Silver and so does the other guy. Then we both draw Moneylender with 4 coppers turn 3. We both trash a copper and buy a Gold. So far, we're exactly equal, right? Well no, I trashed the copper that was assigned the number "1" during randomisation and the other guy trashed copper "4". We've both done exactly the same thing, yet suddenly our decks will no longer shuffle in the same way.

Just to clarify again, your shuffles are not the same as your opponent's. Rather, your shuffles are the same as all the other players in other games in the same position. So it is not necessarily the case that "we both draw Moneylender with 4 coppers turn 3."

In any case, you still make an excellent point- that the same cards could be assigned different positions, and which one is trashed would affect the randomness to a large degree. This is something that would have to be taken care of in the details. But it is not far-fetched to say that if a card is trashed, the one with the lowest position is the one that is trashed.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Deadlock39 on July 11, 2011, 03:08:45 pm
I agree that VP total or differential can't really be used.  It certainly doesn't make sense in the race for the ultimate Goons engine, and it would punish a player for buying that last curse to win the game on piles with only a 1 VP difference.  I think playing sets of games would cover most bases. 

Oh, and the Moneylender, which Copper thing. Isotropic doesn't let you choose which Copper you trash, and unless there is some incredibly bizarre coding going on, Isotropic (or any other computer implementation of Dominion) is always going to trash the same Copper from both identical hands.  This issue would be handled automatically by the nature of how computer programs work.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: ElVampiro on July 11, 2011, 03:23:13 pm
The object of Duplicate Dominion would similarly change.  The object wouldn't be to win any individual Dominion game but to get the best VP score difference than the other people playing your seat.

I feel pretty confident that players will despise the use of VPs as a primary tool for tournament scoring.

I think winning and losing needs to remain key.

In any case, is there anything bad about playing 4 or 5 games per round in order gain larger continuum of results?


I disagree ---  I think that this HAS to be way to play duplicate dominion.     If you compare it directly to duplicate bridge, your side may have 0 face cards, however if you keep your opponents from making one less trick than everyone else (thus giving you a -420 instead of a -450) you have the top board!   

I think duplicate dominion would have to be kept as simple as possible:


IMHO, the whole idea of trying to keep the shuffles randomized in the same order has to be completely thrown out.   The only thing you can keep constant between two sets of people playing Dominion are the set of Kingdom cards in play.

-ElVampiro
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 11, 2011, 03:42:43 pm
I'm going to go out on a limb and say there is no way whatsoever to make comparison of VP differentials fair. Not even by forcing the same shuffle order for every shuffle. rrenaud hit the nail on the head: different strategies (even if equally strong) will be affected differently by the shuffle order. There is also the issue that VP differential rewards suboptimal play that goes for big VP differentials (increasing the incentive to build a Goons engine, for example) while punishing optimal play for victory-even-by-the-thinnest-margin.

For a sufficiently large, electronic tournament there might be some marginal fairness gain by implementing some light duplicate principles:

1. All tables play the same board for each game.
2. The initial deck order is randomized for each seat, but duplicated per-seat between tables.
3. Players are awarded points based on placement in each game, based on the placing record for that seat and that board across all tables.
4. (possibly helpful?) The shuffle order immediately after the opening (and only this one shuffle) for each seat is duplicated between tables.

The point system could be as simple as this for a 2p tournament: If your seat won X% of the time on that board, you get (100-X) points for winning and 0 for losing. A multiplayer tournament would probably need a more sophisticated system based on placement.

#4 suffers from the aforementioned problem rrenaud pointed out, but I'm of a mind that it probably increases fairness by some better-than-negligible amount. The first shuffle after the opening is (in my estimation) much more important than the opening shuffle in introducing variance, and the biggest reason to lose a game because of this shuffle is that a key card got buried at the 11th or 12th position of the deck. That is to say, it's going to be relatively rare that rrenaud's problem is a major factor if only that one shuffle is duplicated.

With less logistical cost, you could implement everything except #4 in a practical, face-to-face tournament. I think that would be a pretty good format, given enough tables.


This is not remotely as fair as duplicate bridge, but I think it's much more fair than any Dominion tournament system that uses VP differentials, and it's probably more fair (at a significant logistical cost) than a basic tournament that only uses duplicate Kingdoms without duplicating anything else nor awarding points relative to the performance of other players in the same seat at other tables.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Axe Knight on July 11, 2011, 03:58:04 pm
For a sufficiently large, electronic tournament there might be some marginal fairness gain by implementing some light duplicate principles:

1. All tables play the same board for each game.
2. The initial deck order is randomized for each seat, but duplicated per-seat between tables.
3. Players are awarded points based on placement in each game, based on the placing record for that seat and that board across all tables.
4. (possibly helpful?) The shuffle order immediately after the opening (and only this one shuffle) for each seat is duplicated between tables.


It's not quite as scientific as your solution, or nearly as complicated as some mentioned here but in the informal tournament I'm currently organizing, I have two rounds.  The first round everyone is divided into groups, with each group having the same $2/$3/$4 card in the supply each round.  In addition, several games are played 1 on 1 within the group to attempt to weed out instances of randomness and bad draws.  The best players are likely to win out in the end given a sample of several games.  Since the order is not completely random, it also compares strategy based around (potentially) the same opening.  It is only after this that they would make a "cut" to round two, with only one or two people in each group winning.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 11, 2011, 04:09:22 pm
I should mention, one of my favorite things about the relatively practical system consisting of my suggestions #1/2/3 is that it allows you to more fairly randomize the starting hands between different players on the same board. If I lose because of a 4/3 split against a 5/2 Witch, well, I was expected to lose so my opponent doesn't get many points. And if I pull out a miraculous victory, I get extra credit! I think playing a bad split (or not fumbling a good split) is an interesting an important skill that is lost by forcing identical starting hands within the same table. I play identical starting hands on isotropic, but mainly because it reduces variance and I fancy myself a pretty good player who wants variance reduced as much as possible ;)
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: HiveMindEmulator on July 11, 2011, 05:01:13 pm
You can't get nearly the sense of "duplicate" from dominion as you can in bridge. In bridge, nothing random occurs after the cards are dealt. So you fix this one random event, and you're good. In dominion there are too many shuffles occuring throughout the game, and they can't really be enforced to be "fair" in any reasonable way. Even if you fix the permutation the shuffle comes out in, unless you specify it to the players beforehand so they can discard in a strategic order, it will end up being "random" because they may end up discarding or buying cards in an arbitrarily different order.

All in all, I think the amount of fairness added is minimal compared to the amount of effort required to do the shuffling. I doubt this is any better than just playing more random games.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Razzishi on July 12, 2011, 06:15:21 pm
The technical hurdles do not seem insurmountable.  With Young Witch, Black Market (as done on isotropic), Colony/Platinum, and Potion, there would be by my count at most 341 (see below) different cards in a two-player game.  A permutation of these 341 would require 341 entries each of which has one of 341 different values.  At 2 bytes per entry, this makes each potential shuffle 682 bytes.  At 100 per game (which is quite generous) and 100 games per tournament, that's around 7 megs of data, so storing the permutations needed for a tournament is not a problem.  Generating random permutations should not be a problem.  You then need to determine a standard way of assigning numbers to each card available and have a function that takes a list of cards by number along with a permutation and generates the correct order of just those cards.  While not trivial tasks, they don't seem like they'd be altogether too difficult.

The question then becomes how much data you can collect, and what information you're able to extract from the data.  In Bridge there is such a sliding scale of performance that generally there are quite a few different possible performances, while in Dominion two-players games have only 3 outcomes, with ties being somewhat uncommon.  You need to have a lot more games played to get the same amount of information as you get from Bridge hands, and each game of Dominion takes longer.  There would have to be some test-runs done to see just what kind of variance we could expect in a single game, and how many games are needed to reasonably differentiate between performances.

Numbers: 8 * 4 (Colony, Province, Duchy, Estate) + 10 * 12 (10 Kingdom cards, Bane, Curse) + 12 (Platinum) + 30 (Gold) + 16 (Potion) + 40 (Silver) + 60 (total Copper supply) + 3 * 2 (each player's starting Estates) + 25 (Black Market deck)
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: timchen on July 12, 2011, 06:20:19 pm
I think this idea is not going to help.

Unlike bridge, where comparing results with identical boards and position can be meaningful, in Dominion it is pretty much meaningless.
To be precise, the biggest difference is that the randomness in bridge only occurs before the cards are dealt. One therefore, can respond
to the different hand/distribution in the following bid and play, and strive for a good score.

In Dominion, however, whenever you shuffle you have the randomness. One cannot foresee how the randomness can affect various strategies
and do things about it. Having the same result when playing identically does not mean much here, as mainly we will be comparing between
different play, where the rank of each play is not helped by keeping this shuffle the same.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: adf on July 13, 2011, 10:46:38 am
Bluffing is actually pretty big in high-level trick-taking-games, and while I haven't played a lot of bridge, from what I do know, I don't think it should be any different there.

There is zero bluffing in competitive duplicate bridge. If you make a bid, an opponent can ask for clarification on the bid, and you have to tell him exactly what caused you to make the bid (cf. http://web2.acbl.org/laws/auction.htm#law20F).
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 13, 2011, 10:55:30 am
I don't read that as them having to tell you why you bid, say 2 hearts, rather THAT you bid 2 hearts. Maybe I'm mis-reading it. Probably. But man, if you have to explain why you bid something, why not just tell them your cards? That seems to defeat the purpose.
But actually, there's not only bluffing in the bids, but probably moreso in the play (at least in my experience with other trick-taking games). If there isn't any bluffing, it's pretty easy to work out what the optimal play is, I don't understand how it isn't incredibly boring with everyone doing the same thing.
Again, I don't play bridge, so I imagine I'm probably wrong. But I'm quite confused.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 13, 2011, 12:03:34 pm
"Bluffing" bids (generally called psych bids) are absolutely legal in bridge, so long as there's no agreement between partners about when they will be employed. When I make a bid, the opponents can ask my partner to explain what it means, and for a true psych bid my partner will be just as deceived as my opponents and will tell them something about my hand that is not true. Under no circumstances am I ever allowed or required to explain my own bids during the hand. If on the other hand I make a psych bid, and through experience my partner recognizes it as a psych and acts accordingly, that's illegal, because this situation represents a tacit, secret agreement between us in violation of the bidding conventions we have made public to our opponents.

Similarly, if my partner and I have agreements for card play on defense (generally signaling) I can unilaterally violate them during the play of the hand, so long as my partner is equally as deceived as the opponents. Or as declarer I can make any unconventional card play I like in an attempt to deceive the defenders.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: DG on July 13, 2011, 12:19:11 pm
The explanation for the bridge protocol is that you're not allowed to use a bid as a planned deception. An example would be a case where both partners knew that a bid 3 clubs signalled a long heart or spade suit and the partner should then bid 3 hearts to transfer suits. If the partners told the opponents that 3 clubs was a strong natural bid showing clubs it would be completely misleading and unfair.

Allowing players to ask the meaning of any bid prevents the most cryptic bidding system from beating the most effective bidding system.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: rspeer on July 13, 2011, 12:22:42 pm
I don't read that as them having to tell you why you bid, say 2 hearts, rather THAT you bid 2 hearts. Maybe I'm mis-reading it. Probably. But man, if you have to explain why you bid something, why not just tell them your cards? That seems to defeat the purpose.
But actually, there's not only bluffing in the bids, but probably moreso in the play (at least in my experience with other trick-taking games). If there isn't any bluffing, it's pretty easy to work out what the optimal play is, I don't understand how it isn't incredibly boring with everyone doing the same thing.
Again, I don't play bridge, so I imagine I'm probably wrong. But I'm quite confused.

Your confusion is understandable. Bridge is wack. You really do have to tell your opponents what your partner's bid means if they ask.

The really strange thing is that there are many entirely reasonable bidding conventions that will get you thrown out of bridge clubs. Even if you put them on your convention card and explain them when necessary. These are mostly conventions that would force old people to have to adapt to your strategy instead of playing the game the way they always have. It's kind of like people who yell at you when you play Possession, except the club organizers are on their side.

Now, this is not the same as there being no hidden information, as you imply. Bridge has enough going on in it to be interesting as it is. But the arbitrary restrictions on gameplay (and the fact that the same play might be legal or illegal based on what you are thinking at the time) do irk me. If anyone knows of an "anything goes" bridge club, where you are allowed to play "illegal" conventions, I might actually get into the game.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 13, 2011, 12:40:56 pm
I want to make a thousand comments here, but I'll limit it to three.
Quote from: DG
Allowing players to ask the meaning of any bid prevents the most cryptic bidding system from beating the most effective bidding system.
How is being cryptic not part of being effective? Game theory, man, game theory.
Second, I don't understand how any of these rules are actually enforceable.
Thridly and finally, I'm now much, much happier I don't play bridge.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: timchen on July 13, 2011, 01:47:07 pm
I want to make a thousand comments here, but I'll limit it to three.
Quote from: DG
Allowing players to ask the meaning of any bid prevents the most cryptic bidding system from beating the most effective bidding system.
How is being cryptic not part of being effective? Game theory, man, game theory.
Second, I don't understand how any of these rules are actually enforceable.
Thridly and finally, I'm now much, much happier I don't play bridge.

It's funny to see this turning into a bridge discussion. :P
Let me say something for bridge, as a player playing it for more than ten years.

Firstly, I don't think DG's statement is true. Note that under the constraint of open information, there can still be cryptic bidding systems. I once played a system which opens a major with only 3+ cards. It is cryptic in the sense that you can hold a variety of holdings with that same bid and make it harder for your opponents to judge the situation and intervene. It is generally the case that your own constructive bidding becomes less effective, but sometimes you can adjust the information flow so that you become precise in later rounds, where it is a lot harder for opponents to do competitive bidding. Of course, all of these adjustments to the bidding system has to be determined before game and written on the system card.

If we think about the possibility of not having to explain their own bid, it becomes a whole different game. It is still fair in the sense that both sides can do the same thing, the problem is that the bidding becomes less interesting. I would imagine that one could invent some sinister convention to lure opponents into traps, (such as, agreement A becomes B after a single use) but in the end, people would probably just give up on guessing what the other side means and focus on their own. There are thus less information exchanging, and more guesswork involved.

These rules are enforceable, through the use of a convention card. Basically every pair has to fill in a summary of their bidding system, and show it to their opponents. The opponents do not have to look through it; they can ask about bids on the table. The explanation, however, has to match what is written. For the psych bids, you cannot do it regularly to the extent that your partner is expecting it. If some opponents are in doubt that you have private agreement, they can notify the director, and he will usually take notice of it. If the same situation happens again before long, he will assume that your partner can "expect" the psych, which makes it a private agreement, and do suitable adjustments (and warning!).

Oh and a correction to a statement above: with screens in use (which cut the table in half, so that you can only see one of your opponents), it is possible and happens quite regularly that you have to explain your own bid to the opponent sit on your side. In that situation, it is important to tell him what the bid is supposed to mean, instead of what is in your hand.

Bridge is a very interesting game. The learning curve is a bit steep comparing to other table games I think; but once you understand the game, you will start to appreciate the right mix of luck and technique in the game.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: DG on July 13, 2011, 02:06:08 pm
Quote
How is being cryptic not part of being effective? Game theory, man, game theory.

Yes a cryptic bidding system can be the most effective, in the same way that a thuggish sportsman can be the most skilful as soon as the opposition all have broken legs. It's not the fair way to conduct the game.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: theory on July 13, 2011, 02:39:01 pm
David desJardins wrote a good post (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/527209/conventions-in-tichu-and-bridge) in a Tichu discussion about Bridge conventions, in response to a rather heated discussion about conventions in Tichu that originated here (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/526444/sevenspirits-partner-passing-convention).
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 13, 2011, 02:42:36 pm
Oh and a correction to a statement above: with screens in use (which cut the table in half, so that you can only see one of your opponents), it is possible and happens quite regularly that you have to explain your own bid to the opponent sit on your side. In that situation, it is important to tell him what the bid is supposed to mean, instead of what is in your hand.
My bad, I've never played at a high enough level to be using screens.

In any case, you can still psych without being required to explain that it was a psych.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 13, 2011, 03:42:26 pm
Quote
How is being cryptic not part of being effective? Game theory, man, game theory.

Yes a cryptic bidding system can be the most effective, in the same way that a thuggish sportsman can be the most skilful as soon as the opposition all have broken legs. It's not the fair way to conduct the game.

That's such a bad analogy. I'm going to assume you didn't mean it to be intentionally insulting, as you've always seemed a nice enough buy. Broken legs cause great, real harm that extends far beyond the reach of the game.
What I'm suggesting is more like not having to tell the opposing team what play you're running.

Apparently this flies in the face of how bridge is played... everywhere, but not against the general rules of the game I've read (in decades old books albeit). I was unaware of these rules against subterfuge, and I don't like them - but then I don't have to play bridge.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 13, 2011, 03:43:19 pm
David desJardins wrote a good post (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/527209/conventions-in-tichu-and-bridge) in a Tichu discussion about Bridge conventions, in response to a rather heated discussion about conventions in Tichu that originated here (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/526444/sevenspirits-partner-passing-convention).
Interesting. I'd never heard of Tichu before, and it certainly seems interesting, though I'm not sure I'll ever get into it.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 13, 2011, 03:46:51 pm
Also, I'm sure you guys would never want to play bridge with me either, because a) I'd come up with the weirdest convention within the rules, but more importantly b) I'd take forever analyzing out the game to its solution. This takes out so much of the hidden aspect of the game that I would probably start working it out to probabilities based on the little information remaining unknown to me.
What I would like for bridge, analogous to other trick-taking games, is that if you want to stop all the signalling, you actually need to bid it up pretty quickly and actually go more for your hand. But then, I'm quite happy to not play bridge and play the other trick-taking games that are out there, which I enjoy quite well.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 13, 2011, 04:09:56 pm
What I would like for bridge, analogous to other trick-taking games, is that if you want to stop all the signalling, you actually need to bid it up pretty quickly and actually go more for your hand.
This is called preemptive bidding, and it's very much a part of modern bridge! A good convention system strikes a balance between preemptive bids that try to steal bidding space from the opponents vs. more deliberate and slow bidding that tries to communicate enough information between partners to find an optimal contract. There are huge progressive bonuses for bidding and making certain numbers of tricks (9 tricks at notrump, 10 at spades/hearts, 11 at clubs/diamonds, 12 in any denomination, 13 in any denomination), so when the partnership has a very strong combined holding they want to figure out exactly how many tricks they are likely to take.

There are also big penalties for bidding too high and being defeated by several tricks, so you can't be completely reckless in bidding too high with too little information: the opponents may double you and get a much better score than they could have achieved by simply bidding and making a contract.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: rinkworks on July 13, 2011, 04:36:04 pm
Fair warning:  No Dominion talk here, only Bridge:

Quote
Also, I'm sure you guys would never want to play bridge with me either, because a) I'd come up with the weirdest convention within the rules, but more importantly b) I'd take forever analyzing out the game to its solution.

Despite its reputation as a social game, Bridge really IS played to that degree of analysis.  It's not by accident that it's the only other game besides Chess that routinely has a game analysis column about it in daily newspapers, alongside the crossword puzzle.  Most moves in Bridge can be made pretty quickly -- sometimes all you can do is follow suit, so you do -- but for the ones that require difficult strategical considerations, it's normal to take a fair amount of time figuring out what to do.  It's a lot slower a game than Dominion, but I guess what I'm saying is that Bridge players wouldn't be frustrated with you for taking your time with it, because if you didn't like slow, analytical games, you wouldn't be playing Bridge in the first place.

The thing about bidding conventions, though, is that there is really a lot less room for experimental conventions than you'd think.  It would be like making up your own openings for Chess.  You absolutely *can* do it -- but whatever you're liable to come up with out of the mainstream is virtually guaranteed to have been tried before and found lacking.  (Which does not mean they wouldn't be reasonably competitive, playable, or fun, but I digress.)

Two further things limit the space available for exploring new bidding conventions.  One, the few standard conventions are sufficient for the vast majority of hands.  It's unusual for an experienced partnership not to be able to settle into a good contract with natural bids and the standard conventions.  (An exception:  When the opposing team is also bidding, but that will interfere with any and all conceivable conventions.)

Two, there is a practical limit to the number of conventions you can usefully play, for the simple reason that every artificial bid you use is a natural bid you can't use.  If you play with the Gerber Convention (where bidding 4 clubs when clubs has not previously been mentioned by the partnership does NOT mean clubs but asks the question, "Shall we try for a slam or grand slam?"), then you are no longer able to use 4 clubs as a natural bid, and, should the occasion arise when you would have wanted it to be natural, you are stuck trying to figure out how to cope with the inability to do so.  But it's a good convention, because it allows you to do something you often want to do at the expense of something you rarely want to do.  But the number of worthwhile trade-offs you can make like this are limited:  You need most of the possible bids to be natural bids, unless your convention is arbitrarily silly, like "clubs mean diamonds and diamonds mean clubs".

Again, I'm not saying there isn't room for experimentation, and definitely not that it wouldn't be fun to experiment even if you never improve on the traditional conventions.  There is just less potential for that sort of thing that it might seem.  What makes Bridge such a satisfying game for analytical thinkers is not its breadth (as in inventing whole new approaches) but its depth (working out the complex situations that arise in the normal course of the game).

You might want to give the game a shot sometime.  You seem like the kind of person who would really take to it.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 13, 2011, 04:50:46 pm
To play devil's advocate, it's worth noting that there are legitimately competitive convention systems (e.g. strong pass) that are generally banned outside of very high-level play simply because they are so difficult to defend against without specific preparation. These systems aren't necessarily better than less unusual systems--there are known defenses after all--but they will befuddle club-level players who can't really be expected to be familiar with defending against them.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 13, 2011, 09:15:52 pm
Back to Dominion:

A silly question- is playing random game boards in random positions something players are interested in on a competitive level? Specifically, in the long run, the number of bad shuffles and openings will be even for all players, so the fact that some players may get luckier in some circumstances than others is acceptable, and in part expected. Are people okay with that?

I ask because the whole premise of duplicate Dominion was purposed on the basis that luck should be reduced in part in order to separate the top players from one another.

In any case, as it stands, I really like the simplistic idea guided as suggested:

Quote
1. All tables play the same board for each game.
2. The initial deck order is randomized for each seat, but duplicated per-seat between tables.
3. Players are awarded points based on placement in each game, based on the placing record for that seat and that board across all tables.
4. ... The shuffle order immediately after the opening (and only this one shuffle) for each seat is duplicated between tables.

I guess the simplistic question is: Does this appear more fair than normal random games? (I think so)

While here, let me elaborate other potential consequences (or implementations) of Duplicate Dominion:

Since all players are playing the same board in the same positions, players will be able to be more intimate upon the discussing that particular board. Players are more likely to engage the community on a topic (in this case a particular board) if they have experience with it.  More engagement, means more Dominion.

Since there are many games with the same board, it is easier to gather data about the effect specific card combinations. Right now, the best data we have is on individual cards and opening pairs. However, in this data, the context is removed. Being able to show players the circumstances when a more powerful card is actually less powerful than an alternative would be an excellent tool for getting intermediate players more excited about Dominion strategy.

Players can propose boards, and in some thematic way, that could be a contest in and of itself. (Say, for example, challenge players to design boards that will have the lowest winning scores). For a small proportion of players, the most enjoyable aspect of the game is coming up with interesting and/or twisted boards. However, that aspect is nearly absent (or not reinforced) online.

Continuing from the previous point, the Boards may not be typical and that is when the most interesting things occur. To a large degree one of my biggest concerns is that many of the Dominion games played online use random boards. To many, that might seem perfect- random means anything can happen, anything goes. However, oxymoronically, randomness is also very predictable. On a random Dominion board "with high probability" you will have a Kingdom cards with cost $5, and one with cost $3. And also, "with high probability" a money strategy is reasonable. And further, in a 2-player game, "with high probability" Thief, Workshop, and Counting House are bad buys, and Montebank and Witch are excellent buys, and so on and so forth. It would be interesting to challenge players with boards where the roles above are reversed: Thief, Workshop, and Counting House are good buys and/or the Montebank and Witch are poor buys.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Thisisnotasmile on July 14, 2011, 04:26:15 am
Note: I'm going off topic too.

Two, there is a practical limit to the number of conventions you can usefully play, for the simple reason that every artificial bid you use is a natural bid you can't use.  If you play with the Gerber Convention (where bidding 4 clubs when clubs has not previously been mentioned by the partnership does NOT mean clubs but asks the question, "Shall we try for a slam or grand slam?"), then you are no longer able to use 4 clubs as a natural bid, and, should the occasion arise when you would have wanted it to be natural, you are stuck trying to figure out how to cope with the inability to do so.  But it's a good convention, because it allows you to do something you often want to do at the expense of something you rarely want to do.  But the number of worthwhile trade-offs you can make like this are limited:  You need most of the possible bids to be natural bids, unless your convention is arbitrarily silly, like "clubs mean diamonds and diamonds mean clubs".

I'm not a bridge player because I've always assumed Bridge is just a basic trumps game with some bidding system that I can't be bothered to learn because I'm lazy and also because I know how to play trumps games without bidding systems. Anyhow, the discussion in this topic has interested me and I might look into learning Bridge properly in the future. Something I don't quite understand though, is related to the above quote:

If you have to explain to your opponents what your bid means, if they were to ask, and you must write down for them before you even start the game exactly what your bids mean, why would you need to do this? Why substitute "4 Clubs" for "Should we go for a Grand Slam?" when you can keep "4 Clubs" meaning "4 Clubs", and if you want to know whether you should go for a Grand Slam or not, say "Should we go for a Grand Slam?". After all, your opponent's know what the "4 Clubs" bid means, and if they don't they can ask and you have to tell them. Why have these bidding systems when you can't use them to do anything that you couldn't do with the English language?
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 14, 2011, 07:20:15 am
Why substitute "4 Clubs" for "Should we go for a Grand Slam?" when you can keep "4 Clubs" meaning "4 Clubs", and if you want to know whether you should go for a Grand Slam or not, say "Should we go for a Grand Slam?".
Because you aren't allowed to discuss your hand directly. You must only communicate about your hand through the bidding system, and the meaning of any bid* should be known from your publicly disclosed system. When your opponents ask your partner what a bid means, your partner tells them what they understand it to mean from your bidding system. You don't get to bid willy-nilly, then explain each bid on the fly however you want.

The reason the opponents may ask for clarification on any bid is that the "convention card" you must supply to them is only a shorthand summary of the system, and complex bidding sequences may not necessarily be obvious in meaning just from looking at the card.

*except a psych bid that will equally deceive your partner
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: rinkworks on July 14, 2011, 11:26:11 am
I'm not a bridge player because I've always assumed Bridge is just a basic trumps game with some bidding system that I can't be bothered to learn because I'm lazy and also because I know how to play trumps games without bidding systems.

guided already answered your question, but I thought I'd mention that the other thing that makes Bridge different from other trumps games, besides the bidding system, is the dummy.  Basically when the bidding is over and the first card to the first trick is played by the opposition, one member of the partnership who won the bid is denoted the dummy.  The dummy lays down his entire hand and sits the rest of the hand out.  The other member of the partnership plays from both hands.

The level of intrigue that arises on both sides -- on the part of the player who must now play from and coordinate between two separate hands -- and on the part of the opposition -- now having significant knowledge about some of the cards out against them and where they are -- totally changes the game from any other trump game I know of.  (Maybe others have this property as well that I don't know about.)
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 14, 2011, 11:59:54 am
Bridge is the most complex and challenging of the popular trick-taking games by about a factor of two ;D It's in a whole different league of depth and strategy from, say, Spades or Euchre. The one and only downside of Bridge, if you ask me, is that it requires an enormous (and ongoing!) commitment to learning and careful study if you want to play well. And indeed, even if your satisfied being a rank amateur the game doesn't become particularly rewarding until you put a lot of effort into learning the (extensive) basics of bidding and card play.

If I want to play a partnership card game with people who aren't interested in getting really serious about study, Tichu and Sheepshead are my go-tos. Also great games, just not remotely the same level of depth so they're much easier to learn to play with some base level of competence.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 14, 2011, 12:10:54 pm
Off topic again.

Why do bidding conventions has to be disclosed in Bridge? What would be so bad about letting people bid however they want without disclosing it?

This is the part of Bridge that scares me the most- there are rules and upon rules regarding what types of bidding are and are not allowed- which for the most part seem arbitrary. Just as an observer, (although this probably has been mentioned above) it appears that many of these rules are created by players who did not want to adapt to a new creative strategy, and instead, just got rid of it altogether. And many of the rules (this is coming from a mathematician mind you) are not well-defined.

I am someone that would love coming up with new, twisted, weird conventions but having to keep them within arbitrary rules seems limiting- especially since the legality of the use of such a convention could subsequently be penalized at the whim of a director.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 14, 2011, 12:15:13 pm
Bridge is the most complex and challenging of the popular trick-taking games by about a factor of two ;D It's in a whole different league of depth and strategy from, say, Spades or Euchre.
Man, I haven't played much bridge, like I said, but I want to disagree with this. Obviously euchre isn't all that deep, with only 24 cards. But spades I would say is simply a different kind of depth. There's a lot more uncertainty, which IMHO creates more strategy and leaves room for more skill in the game. Certainly there's much more of the logic puzzle kind of analysis in Bridge, but that's not the only kind of logical strategy that goes on in a card game. How much competitive spades have you played?
Also, a big part of your argument is based on what counts as "popular". Certainly bridge is the most popular card game (sans-solitaires) there is, so any level of exclusivity you want to put on based on popularity is going to include bridge. But I'm not sure Euchre is even the third-most-popular.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 14, 2011, 12:19:52 pm
How much competitive spades have you played?
None, but I am familiar with the game. How much Bridge have you played at any level? I think you are simply not grasping the depth of the game. Setting the trump suit via the auction is a big deal. Unlimited bidding rounds is an enormously huge deal. The structure of scoring bonuses related to contract denomination and level is also a highly significant strategy consideration. The issue of Vulnerability adds another layer. Compared to Spades we're talking about perhaps 80% as much card-play complexity in suit contracts (setting aside the issue of notrump contracts) vs. 50 times the bidding complexity.

I cannot think of another trick-taking game that has half the depth of bridge. I used the word "popular" simply to rule out any obscure games I am not familiar with at all. There is no particular game I am trying to weasel out of including.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 14, 2011, 12:24:10 pm
Why do bidding conventions has to be disclosed in Bridge? What would be so bad about letting people bid however they want without disclosing it?
Read the DdJ post from BGG that theory linked on the previous page.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 14, 2011, 12:46:46 pm
How much competitive spades have you played?
None, but I am familiar with the game. How much Bridge have you played at any level? I think you are simply not grasping the depth of the game. Setting the trump suit via the auction is a big deal. Unlimited bidding rounds is an enormously huge deal. The structure of scoring bonuses related to contract denomination and level is also a highly significant strategy consideration. The issue of Vulnerability adds another layer. Compared to Spades we're talking about perhaps 80% as much card-play complexity in suit contracts (setting aside the issue of notrump contracts) vs. 50 times the bidding complexity.

I cannot think of another trick-taking game that has half the depth of bridge. I used the word "popular" simply to rule out any obscure games I am not familiar with at all. There is no particular game I am trying to weasel out of including.
I think I've played about five games of bridge. As for the popularity point, that's what I figured, but I don't how many trick-taking games you know. I think I know (and have played) about a dozen, if you don't include different forms of bridge, different forms of spades, etc. as different, and probably like 50 if you do. I don't think you're qualified to make the comparison without having played the others at a high level; I'm also probably not qualified having not played nearly enough bridge. I'm sure you don't understand nearly all of the complexity of these other games, as I'm sure I don't understand nearly all the complexity of bridge. We can guess at them, but they'll probably be pretty far off. And that's ok.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 14, 2011, 01:11:54 pm
... Up to fifty-two Unlimited bidding rounds is an enormously huge deal...

Just being nit-picky. It is still a big deal.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 14, 2011, 03:03:25 pm
Just being nit-picky. It is still a big deal.
There is no limit to the number of bidding rounds except that you run out of bidding space, as opposed to Spades where there is one round. When I wrote that I was intimately aware that there is in practice a finite limit. In order to speak clearly it is sometimes best to give up some small amount of precision where precision is less important than clarity.

And for whatever it's worth, the maximum number of auction rounds possible before running out of bidding space is 80, or rather 79 3/4 (319 total calls) :P

Code: [Select]
P  P  P  1C
P  P  X  P
P  XX P  P
1D P  P  X

...and so on!
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 14, 2011, 03:10:28 pm
I'm sure you don't understand nearly all of the complexity of these other games, as I'm sure I don't understand nearly all the complexity of bridge.
I'm highly confident in my assessment of the relative complexity of Bridge vs. Spades, even acknowledging that I have not actually played high-level Spades. I have good familiarity with advanced card-play on defense against suit contracts in Bridge, which will be quite similar to Spades card-play (though somewhat less complex due to the extra information provided by the auction and in the Dummy). Use of signaling is extensive, for example.

I'm definitely not willing to grant that we're both making equally ill-informed guesses based on symmetrical lack of knowledge so somehow we both have an equally valid point. If you disagree with my assessment, OK, I'm not willing to spend a lot of effort trying to convince you. For whatever it's worth, I think you'd really enjoy Bridge if you decided to get into it.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: fp on July 14, 2011, 03:30:13 pm
This is a silly, and slightly off topic question:

What if players had to Bid (say in points) for which opening/position they got?
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 14, 2011, 03:36:17 pm
What if players had to Bid (say in points) for which opening/position they got?
For Dominion? Makes perfect sense to me, if the players are interested in doing it. You still can't compare VPs between different tables though, even with duplicate boards.

The bidding method I've suggested in the past (for those who can't stand first-player bias, and I am actually not one of those people who can't stand it) is that you can bid in half-point increments starting from 0, and you can duplicate the current high bid. Tied highest bids are broken randomly. There's a separate auction for each seat starting with the 1st.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: rrenaud on July 14, 2011, 03:43:18 pm
We had the bid for points discussion already.

In terms of "what should you bid", I think this is pretty reasonable, the bias removal method might even be clever ;P.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20.msg438#msg438

Is the game with bidding more fair? Of course.  Is it more interesting and fun?  I don't know.  Is it more complicated? Certainly.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 14, 2011, 03:46:07 pm
I'm sure you don't understand nearly all of the complexity of these other games, as I'm sure I don't understand nearly all the complexity of bridge.
I'm highly confident in my assessment of the relative complexity of Bridge vs. Spades, even acknowledging that I have not actually played high-level Spades. I have good familiarity with advanced card-play on defense against suit contracts in Bridge, which will be quite similar to Spades card-play (though somewhat less complex due to the extra information provided by the auction and in the Dummy). Use of signaling is extensive, for example.

I'm definitely not willing to grant that we're both making equally ill-informed guesses based on symmetrical lack of knowledge so somehow we both have an equally valid point. If you disagree with my assessment, OK, I'm not willing to spend a lot of effort trying to convince you. For whatever it's worth, I think you'd really enjoy Bridge if you decided to get into it.

I'm not trying to say our lack of knowledge is symmetrical or our points are equally valid. I clearly think mine is better than yours, you clearly feel the reverse. That's fine. What I am saying is that they're both from incomplete experiences (which does not mean the same level of incompleteness).
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: timchen on July 15, 2011, 01:05:55 am
I have to second guided here, that bridge is a lot more complicated than any other trick taking games I can think of.

The reason? With the rule of dummy it makes huge difference. Without a dummy, lots of times you can do nothing but guess.
There are skills there too, but being overly scientific really does not yield much.

For example, how often can one side get to 12 tricks or more, without dummy? I would say less than 1/50.
Play with dummy, in my experience it is between 1/10 and 1/15, probably closer to 1/10. The difference is that after seeing both hands
it is much easier to develop tricks (or getting the tricks you should be getting.)

Starting from this, since one side can get a lot more tricks, it is possible for the bidding to be more scientific as well. And then the scoring system follows (with some twist) to reward the accurate bidding and good play.

Now, there is also a good reason why it is hard to convince people. The problem is, you cannot really appreciate the game unless you know how to play it. Knowing the rules are just not good enough. In fact, after you know how to play it it then becomes boring to play with people who only knows about the rules, as they cannot really make any intelligent decisions at the table. Indeed, for 4 novices, playing bridge would feel almost the same as playing spades.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 15, 2011, 11:15:11 am
I have to second guided here, that bridge is a lot more complicated than any other trick taking games I can think of.

The reason? With the rule of dummy it makes huge difference. Without a dummy, lots of times you can do nothing but guess.
There are skills there too, but being overly scientific really does not yield much.

For example, how often can one side get to 12 tricks or more, without dummy? I would say less than 1/50.
Play with dummy, in my experience it is between 1/10 and 1/15, probably closer to 1/10. The difference is that after seeing both hands
it is much easier to develop tricks (or getting the tricks you should be getting.)

Starting from this, since one side can get a lot more tricks, it is possible for the bidding to be more scientific as well. And then the scoring system follows (with some twist) to reward the accurate bidding and good play.

Now, there is also a good reason why it is hard to convince people. The problem is, you cannot really appreciate the game unless you know how to play it. Knowing the rules are just not good enough. In fact, after you know how to play it it then becomes boring to play with people who only knows about the rules, as they cannot really make any intelligent decisions at the table. Indeed, for 4 novices, playing bridge would feel almost the same as playing spades.
But this shows again that you're unfamiliar with the other games. The bidding in Spades is pretty darn, well, as a scientist I can't call it scientific, but logically-founded and precise. In the play, I've played other games with dummies, and in general, it's slightly less interesting in the play. You can do a lot better than 'just guess' basically all the time. There's a LOT of skill, and (once again, as a scientist) you can't really be scientific, but knowing what you're doing yields great benefits. I'd expect to beat someone like you, who clearly has decent experience with trick-taking games in general, but little experience with spades in particular, 97 or 98 times out of your first hundred games, assuming we were each matched with comparable partners to ourselves. Not meaning to insult, just that there's actually a pretty good learning curve involved.
How often can one side take 12 tricks or more without the dummy? Did they get to set the trumps? Probably 1/25ish, assuming they took the bid. Without getting to set trumps, it's much much less likely. But it doesn't necessarily strike me as more interesting if one side can just roll over the other with good frequency.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: timchen on July 15, 2011, 04:50:45 pm
Yes you are right, I actually have zero experience playing Spades. Is there an official rule? As what I found from wikipedia, it looks pretty similar to some card games we played casually, without dummy or partnerships. In that game described in wikipedia, you can beat me probably 9 out of first 10 I believe, but after that it should be pretty even. 98 out of 100? I don't think so. It is not even due to my skills; in bridge I don't think a world champion can beat you 98 out of 100 times say, on 100 boards in a MP pairs game. (Well, assume that you have reasonable trick taking and bidding skills, to the point that makes you claim you can beat me 98/100.)

How do you set the trumps with a single round bid? Anyway, what I am interested in is the chance of bidding a slam (12 tricks) and have reasonable chance(~50%) to make it. In bridge this happens every 10-15 boards. How is that number in your experience of Spades, maybe putting every player at your caliber? I don't think it can be as high as 1/25. The game is just not as precise without dummy. It is certainly true that you can easily do better than purely guessing, but I think if you compare it to bridge, the difference is enormous. There is no certain hold off, throw in, planned squeezes, or even finesses for example.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 15, 2011, 05:10:46 pm
Probably 98 is too much. I'd expect something like 9.8 out of 10. Probably over 90 of 100. There is a big luck factor, but there are a LOT of tricks you can throw in, and if you don't have familiarity with the game, well... Let's say I'd expect it to be at least 50 level difference on isotropic, down to like 40 after 100 games probably. There's really that much complexity.
"How do you set the trumps with a single round bid" - doesn't happen in spades obviously. But there are games like Euchre and 500 where you can.
In spades, you can't set trump. Spades are trump. Reasonably bidding that high is almost never the right play, simply because the penalty for not making is very high, and the gains for going 12 instead of 11 are very very low. If this weren't a concern, I'd imagine that one side or the other would have 50% chance of making 12, oh... about 1 out of 100 hands? Very tough to guess though, especially since there is generally some penalty for making extra tricks, which adds extra complexity and dissuades people from going all out.
If the bridge world champion couldn't beat me that often, it's down to two things: one, bridge matches are shorter, IIRC, than spades, which ups the luck factor, and two: bridge is a game where he has to, to some extent, tell me what he's doing, so my bidding might be sorta bad at first, but not SO bad, my trick-playing will carry over pretty well, I think I could adapt to the dummy, and with the extra information I have, I'd go into serious analysis mode. On the other hand, I'd probably find it very hard to not inadvertently cheat by going off of the bidding system, at least without some practice.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: timchen on July 15, 2011, 08:39:53 pm
No, I guess we have a misunderstanding here. Bridge can be scored board by board, and so can any game you mentioned, I suppose.

For a single board, I believe Bridge is already the one which involves the least luck factor. Even so, (in duplicate situations) you cannot win every time. There are always decisions which are right for one distribution and wrong for the other. Still, it can only be more luck-dependent in games without dummies. This is simply the reason why I am saying that you cannot beat anyone with reasonable skill to the game 98/100. Now if you talk about a series of boards to form a match, I guess I could probably beat you in a 8-board session 100/100 of the time, given what I can read from your posts here.

Frankly speaking, after reading the rules for all the games you mentioned, I don't see how they are significantly different from one another. And bridge is just the even more scientific, complicated version of all of them. The only reason you would say that you can beat someone who is reasonable at bridge that much in a trick-taking game, I imagine, can only either be that you are only scratching the surface of the trick-taking games (i.e., thinking the average level of play too incompetent), or that you are trying to offend me.

Or maybe just some naive way of comparing the complexity: how much time do you think you need to get to the level you are at for those trick-taking games, when there is a teacher who knows all the techniques and will teach you everything he knows? For the game of bridge, I think it takes at least a year for an average guy to reach my level, if he spends, say, ten hours per week on the game.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: Thisisnotasmile on July 16, 2011, 04:17:41 am
I think bridge has been played enough in this thread now...

/me buys a Colony
/me buys a Colony
/me buys a Colony
/me buys a Colony
/me buys a Colony
/me buys a Colony
/me buys a Colony
/me buys a Colony
/me buys a Province
/me buys a Province
/me buys a Province
/me buys a Province
/me buys a Province
/me buys a Province
/me buys a Province
/me buys a Province
/me buys a Duchy
/me buys a Duchy
/me buys a Duchy
/me buys a Duchy
/me buys a Duchy
/me buys a Duchy
/me buys a Duchy
/me buys a Duchy
/me buys an Estate
/me buys an Estate
/me buys an Estate
/me buys an Estate
/me buys an Estate
/me buys an Estate
/me buys an Estate
/me buys an Estate
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: ARTjoMS on July 16, 2011, 07:44:42 am
I'm not sure how this has went so far off topic, but there is no way that other card game comes close to bridge in complexity at high levels. Even the very top pairs don't play perfect bidding/card defense methods, because of memory reasons (or time it is needed to put ideas together in working mechanism). Still, many top pairs have written their bidding agreements on hundreds of pages, and i wouldn't call these systems particularly complex.

Random chance in one board is quite high in bridge, but it is compensated by enormous amount of deals you play to determine winner.

Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: mcshoo on July 16, 2011, 05:53:30 pm
I thought my first post was going to be about dominion, but this thread was enough motivation to get me to register.  I wanted to chime in and say that I agree with guided and would say that bridge carries significantly more depth and complexity than spades.  I play and love both greatly, and I'd like to believe that I'm decent at both, though by no means expert level.  It’s no contest, bridge is way more complex. 

Spades has 1 round of bidding - your given hand value goes up or down depending on the bids before you, your opinion of your opponents, and the score.  There are only 14 different calls (and a number of them aren’t used ever), and because of the limited nature of the bidding, only a few calls carry special meaning beyond the simple, “I think I can take n tricks.”  Maybe a bid of 4 promises either the A or K of spades, and a bid of 7 promises a hand that you think your partner can go Dnil with. 

Bridge has many rounds of bidding – each successive bid can change the value of your hand. There is a lot you can communicate as a result of having so many different calls, and the calls can carry different meanings depending on what has been bid before.  For example, a 1S bid is different when opening [According to my systems, it promises 12-15 high card points, and at least 5 spades] than responding [6-9 high card points and 4 spades] than competing [7-12 points and 5 spades].  In spades, I’ve only commonly come across two or three bidding conventions, but in bridge the possibilities are nearly endless.  There are entirely different systems (sets of bidding convensions), and a good bridge player not only needs to be familiar with his own system, but also with the dominant systems that other people are playing.   

WW I think you'd probably be great at bridge, but you're not going to learn it nearly as quickly as a bridge player can learn spades.  But if you want to play - bridgebaseonline is the place to go.  We could set up a dominion players bridge game sometime =D
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: guided on July 18, 2011, 12:07:36 am
my bidding might be sorta bad at first, but not SO bad
Yes, it will be SO bad, and it will remain so until you've dedicated tens or hundreds of hours of study to it. Modern bidding systems can fairly precisely convey a great deal of information, and there are huge incentives for determining exactly how many tricks your team's combined holding can take. Novice bidders will be utterly and routinely smoked by bidders who can reliably distinguish between situations where they can take (say) 9 tricks vs. 10 tricks.

Something that nobody else has emphasized about luck in bridge is that serious bridge is played with duplicate boards, and you are scored against other teams playing the exact same set of hands. There's very little luck at all, even on a hand-to-hand basis. Occasionally a board will play toward your bidding or signaling system's particular strengths or weaknesses, so that you'll score better or worse than people playing a different but equally strong system, but this isn't a major factor over the course of a many-hand match.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: WanderingWinder on July 18, 2011, 12:43:28 am
my bidding might be sorta bad at first, but not SO bad
Yes, it will be SO bad, and it will remain so until you've dedicated tens or hundreds of hours of study to it. Modern bidding systems can fairly precisely convey a great deal of information, and there are huge incentives for determining exactly how many tricks your team's combined holding can take. Novice bidders will be utterly and routinely smoked by bidders who can reliably distinguish between situations where they can take (say) 9 tricks vs. 10 tricks.
Actually this quote is taken out of context: I was saying that this would be a reason why the world bridge champion (if such a person exists) wouldn't be able to beat me essentially all the time. In fact, I imagine that (s)he WOULD beat me all the time for a while. But also I'd probably instinctively bid defensively (read, high) rather a lot, and have the cards to back it up sometimes.
mcshoo, thanks for the link. I may play some just to get a better feel for it, though I don't think I'll ever be too big into it. But all this discussion makes me want to know for myself.
All: I'm starting a thread on bridge in the Board Games section so as to not continually be off topic here. Further comments on the bridge topic should go here, though obviously stuff about duplicate dominion should remain to be posted here.
Title: Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion
Post by: zorch on September 13, 2011, 08:56:16 am
First time poster, fwiw also an experienced tournament bridge player (1500 mp).  The idea of duplicste Dominion is rather interesting, and while a good balance of elements should be identified to level the field, that shouldn't be the main concern once you accept the broad duplicate concept.

Aying Dominion this way will be a different game.  Period.  You will think about the game abit differently, the results, over a large number of trials will ne different, and you will address somewhat different concerns.

No one has touched upon one of the other elements of Bridge, namely the different forms of scoring.

   At "pairs" or "board-a-match" the object is to neat the other lined up card holders by any margin.  U then score 1 pt for each pair u beat. 

At imp pairs or teams it is the amount by which u beat them that matters.  Small gains or losses asre largely irrelevant.

You think and strategizr differently... Somewhat... At each form of scoring.

So it would be with Dominion.  !ut the differences would add some richness and vasrierty to the gasme, while also having their own built in limitations.  It sounds like it would be worth trying, if only, as WW points out, for the ability to report the choices made from multiple executions, afterwards... And the faste that befell those choices.