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[Fabian]

I'm pretty sure that method has never been used in table tennis Qvist?

[Qvist]

Sorry, I think I've mixed it up. But that doesn't change the proposal or the premise. I'm pretty sure it is/was used in squash, badminton and volleyball.

[Captain_Frisk]

You could just score as if you're playing a tennis set.  (To be pedantic, as if you're a man playing the fifth set at a non-US Open Grand Slam.)

First to six wins.  Coin flip to see who starts with first place.  Regardless of who wins, you alternate seating order.  You must win by 2 games.  Ties do not count and are re-played.

There's a non-zero possibility you end up with Isner-Mahut.  More realistically, that won't actually happen.

The reason we have never discussed this before, I suspect, is because there has never been a way to fix seating order until now.

Where the analogy breaks down is that different Kingdoms reward P1 differently.  It'd be like playing a tennis match that starts on clay and then switches to grass midway through the set.

What about a bid system, where both players bid a certain number of VPs to be player 1?

I've been working on an analysis of this for an article.  For most boards, the answer appears to be "1 vp" 

[Fabian]

You could just score as if you're playing a tennis set.  (To be pedantic, as if you're a man playing the fifth set at a non-US Open Grand Slam.)

First to six wins.  Coin flip to see who starts with first place.  Regardless of who wins, you alternate seating order.  You must win by 2 games.  Ties do not count and are re-played.

There's a non-zero possibility you end up with Isner-Mahut.  More realistically, that won't actually happen.

The reason we have never discussed this before, I suspect, is because there has never been a way to fix seating order until now.

Where the analogy breaks down is that different Kingdoms reward P1 differently.  It'd be like playing a tennis match that starts on clay and then switches to grass midway through the set.

What about a bid system, where both players bid a certain number of VPs to be player 1?

I've been working on an analysis of this for an article.  For most boards, the answer appears to be "1 vp" 

Intuitively this seems like too much to me. In a situation where you can either play first but lose on all "ties" or play second but win on all "ties", you should prefer going first? Looking forward to the article, I'm sure it'll have more thought behind it than my 12 seconds in this post

Edit: After a further 6 seconds, it seems like it would be worth it on enginey boards and not worth it on BMish boards.

[blueblimp]

It's probably also worth it on attack boards, particularly cursing boards. If being p1 gives me a better chance to get a 6-4 curse split, that's worth 2VP plus 2 junk cards (multiplied by whatever probability of getting the 6-4 split).

[andwilk]

To cut down the possibility of long matches if a "win by 2" rule was implemented, would allowing the player who started as first player last to win the match after the first break with the required minimum number of wins create an unfair advantage?

For example, a best-of-7, win-by-2 match is being played where Player A goes first in the odd games, while Player B goes first in the even games. The first 6 games are split 3-3. Now in the 7th game, player A goes first, but player B breaks player A and wins the match because he "broke serve" first and has reached the minimum number of wins (4).

Does this option create too much of a 2nd player advantage?  (Essentially, we would be asking player A to get an additional 1st-player win that player B doesn't necessarily need to win the match.)

Edit: In case my position on the win-by-2 stance is unclear, I am in favor of some form of that being used in tournament play.  First player advantage is significant, and something should be done to mitigate it.  Yes, there are other factors at play here, but those are more random and can't really be controlled without changing the game itself (shuffle luck, kingdom selection, etc).  Also, I don't really like the idea of playing the same kingdom twice in a row alternating the first player.  A huge skill in Dominion is being able to read the kingdom cards and develop a game plan at the beginning of a new game.  It's not really the same game if you start playing the same boards twice in a row consistently.

[Fabian]

My opinion is that tennis style is great. Everything else is just making it more complicated (definitely), and less good (almost definitely). Play an equal number of games as first players (best-of-7, win-by-2 seem to me like they go together like chocolate and poison), until someone has 2 more wins (with a minimum of 4 wins or something, or 6+ if I got to choose) is perfect as far as I can tell.

[DIonized]

For example, a best-of-7, win-by-2 match is being played where Player A goes first in the odd games, while Player B goes first in the even games. The first 6 games are split 3-3. Now in the 7th game, player A goes first, but player B breaks player A and wins the match because he "broke serve" first and has reached the minimum number of wins (4).

If player B is up 4-3, he has not won-by-2.

[J.Co.]

I've always wondered how the game would be different if the rules were altered to something like "After the last Province is bought, all players get one more turn until it returns to P1." Might negate the P1 advantage some, but how much does it break the spirit of the game? Side note: I guess a marker or something could be used to keep by P1 to remember who went first.

[ftl]

It completely messes up how mega-turn competitions work.

Like, in a mega-turn game where both people try to mega-turn, people don't actually get that many points; you both build up your engine, and then somebody spends like 10 buys to end the game on piles and buy one green card or something. If P2 got an extra turn, you'd get a weird situation where P1 CANNOT end the game on piles without giving P2's mega-turn engine a turn to fire (without needing to spend any buys or coins on kingdom cards to end the game on piles!)

[Personman]

You could just score as if you're playing a tennis set.  (To be pedantic, as if you're a man playing the fifth set at a non-US Open Grand Slam.)

First to six wins.  Coin flip to see who starts with first place.  Regardless of who wins, you alternate seating order.  You must win by 2 games.  Ties do not count and are re-played.

There's a non-zero possibility you end up with Isner-Mahut.  More realistically, that won't actually happen.

The reason we have never discussed this before, I suspect, is because there has never been a way to fix seating order until now.

Where the analogy breaks down is that different Kingdoms reward P1 differently.  It'd be like playing a tennis match that starts on clay and then switches to grass midway through the set.

What about a bid system, where both players bid a certain number of VPs to be player 1?

This is how my play group played paper Dominion for years. Depending on the kingdom, the winning bid was usually 0, 1, or 2. I think I saw a few 3s, and maybe one or two that weren't obvious mistakes. Perhaps 15% of games were decided by a margin of the bid.

[Cadence20]

For example, a best-of-7, win-by-2 match is being played where Player A goes first in the odd games, while Player B goes first in the even games. The first 6 games are split 3-3. Now in the 7th game, player A goes first, but player B breaks player A and wins the match because he "broke serve" first and has reached the minimum number of wins (4).

If player B is up 4-3, he has not won-by-2.

Player B should be 1P on one more game and if he can "hold" he wins the match.