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[GigaKnight]

Also, FWIW, I was curious about Richard Garfield's thoughts on luck vs skill and found this, which is about an hour long



I think this basically has the same content as what DXV was referencing.

The biggest thing that helps clarify DXV's statement in this thread is that Garfield defines luck as simply as "uncertainty of outcome".  By that definition, literally all games have some amount of luck (if nothing else, a meteorite could kill a player, after all) but, IMO, it's more interesting to talk about where they fall on the luck/skill axes.

[Donald X.]

From this, it sounds like you're content with the amount of luck in Dominion.  If all other things were equal, would you prefer a different amount of luck in Dominion?  More or less?

Related, for the shuffling mechanic, do you prefer the original (pre-Valerie) or the current (more conventional) approach?  Would you prefer a game where a card could potentially never be drawn (trapped on the bottom)?  Or is it a wash to you?

I am happy with the amount of luck in Dominion. Obv. it varies from game to game; some cards are swingier and some reward skill more. I enjoy the range; I like the feeling of the pressure being off that comes with the swingier cards, and the crazy moments when they swing especially far, but I also like the skill-intensive cards.

I prefer the shuffling how it is. I automatically did it the other way, without thinking, because I have done that kind of thing in multiple games, as a way to lesson the value of card-counting. In a game with one shared deck that we tend to go through in a single game, it can be good to track what cards are left, and some people really don't enjoy that. If for example you shuffle five from the bottom, then everyone can give up on card counting without feeling like they're playing poorly. It's a great trick for certain games.

So then for Dominion I did that automatically and then kept it just because I liked the amount of randomness the game had. Like I said, when the change was proposed, I worried about whether or not that was getting rid of too much luck, and as you know of course it was not. Shuffling at the bottom is more natural and that's worth something.

Dominion is an unusual case here, since you go through the deck many times and it's your own deck and stuff. For certain games with shared decks and an incentive to count cards, I do prefer not going through the entire deck. Sometimes it doesn't do anything; in San Juan I will not know what cards you drew and discarded (discards are face down and plentiful), so I don't have to worry about what's left when we get near the bottom.

[Donald X.]

Also, FWIW, I was curious about Richard Garfield's thoughts on luck vs skill and found this, which is about an hour long



I think this basically has the same content as what DXV was referencing.

The biggest thing that helps clarify DXV's statement in this thread is that Garfield defines luck as simply as "uncertainty of outcome".  By that definition, literally all games have some amount of luck (if nothing else, a meteorite could kill a player, after all) but, IMO, it's more interesting to talk about where they fall on the luck/skill axes.

I have seen some other version of that speech, probably hitting on some of the same things. I remember in particular him giving "guess the nth digit of pi" as an example of a high luck game that has no random element. Anyway the version I saw was good.

Chess-with-dice I first read about in the Duelist, and that article is online now, so here it is: http://www.wizards.com/magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/119

[Piemaster]

Say for example why do we limit ourselves to identical openings in a tournament?

IIRC wasn't it because the person running the tournament (WW?) decided he liked that rule and basically enforced it upon everyone else?  As far as I am aware there are no official tournament rules to Dominion.

[yudantaiteki]

Chess-with-dice (or in this case a coin flip) does not have less strategy than chess. It just has more luck.

They are not the same axis. That is in fact the whole point of the chess-with-dice example.

I think I prefer the Dualist article's assertion that the game has the same strategy but that strategy is not rewarded as much as regular chess.

That just gets into what constitutes a game "having strategy".  Someone else used a different example from the dualist with even higher luck -- every turn after you make your move, you flip a coin, and if you flip heads you automatically win.  Personally I think this game has little or no strategy.  There are strategic choices to make, but in the end they don't matter because statistically, no game is ever going to get out of even the opening phases.  The chance of anyone actually winning the game by checkmate rather than by the coin flip is close to zero.  For all practical purposes, endgame strategy does not exist in this modified game.  So while there may technically be the same strategic choices as in regular chess, the choices make no difference -- to me, this means the game does not have strategy.

But I don't think this is a perfect analogy because the coin flip is something external to the game.  You can introduce luck that affects the strategy as well.  For instance, let's say that you play chess, but when you make a capture, you have to flip a coin.  If you flip heads, your piece gets taken instead.  To me this increases luck *and* reduces strategy because you can no longer count on your strategic decisions to produce the result you expected.  To me, this is a closer analogy to a card missing the reshuffle in Dominion.  And in that sense, I think Garfield is wrong to say that the amount of skill and luck are unrelated.

[DStu]

But I don't think this is a perfect analogy because the coin flip is something external to the game.  You can introduce luck that affects the strategy as well.  For instance, let's say that you play chess, but when you make a capture, you have to flip a coin.  If you flip heads, your piece gets taken instead.  To me this increases luck *and* reduces strategy because you can no longer count on your strategic decisions to produce the result you expected.  To me, this is a closer analogy to a card missing the reshuffle in Dominion.  And in that sense, I think Garfield is wrong to say that the amount of skill and luck are unrelated.

Na, that is too far on the other side now.  This would somehow mean that when a card misses a reshuffle, your opponent get to play it for free...

[Piemaster]

It's always difficult when you start trying to grade games according to how much luck they have relative to the amount of skill.  The thing is, with any game, the better players get at it the more luck it seems to have. 

If I played with a full set of Dominion against a brand new player (and I tried my hardest) then it isn't inconceivable that I would win the first 20-25 games quite easily.  And that's not because I'm great at the game, just because it would take that many games for an average Joe to get close to even competent at the game to be able to compete with a run-of-the-mill 20-something on Isotropic.  The game would essentially have a near-zero amount of luck in terms of the outcome. 

But then if we kept on playing he would improve enough to win the odd game here and there, occasionally through good play, but mostly due to luck.  Further on still, we could get to a point where we are quite evenly matched in terms of skill.  Some games would be determined by one of us picking the better strategy, but a large number would come down to luck.

Then if we kept on playing on and on into infinity we would get better and better at picking the optimal strategy until eventually there would be little to decide our games except for luck.

I'm not saying anybody has got to the point where they routinely choose the perfect strategy yet, but when a player of isotropic level 40+ plays against another player of level 40+ then they are both going to have a very deep understanding of the game and will often both decide on the same optimal strategy.  Or if they decide on different ones they are likely both of similar value.  Occasionally you may get a curveball kingdom which allows one of them to make a decisive decision to win the game, but ultimately most of their games are going to come down to luck to a large degree because, well, what else is there?

[yudantaiteki]

Also, to me we're talking about two different kinds of luck when we talk about (a) a situation where the rules of the game intentionally put luck into the game via coin flips, dice rolls, e.g. and (b) luck via external things like "I might accidentally come across a great strategy" or "the grandmaster might be sleepy".

The rules of chess have no luck built into them.  The rules of Dominion do.  Both games can be affected by the external luck of the better player making a mistake or being drunk/sleepy, or the novice accidentally using a good strategy.

In addition, the chess example can be complicated by considering the following two situations:
1. Play a normal game of chess.  At the end, flip a coin, if the coin comes up heads the person who won actually loses instead.
2. Play a normal game of chess.  At the end, roll a 6 sided die.  If the die comes up 1 or 2, the person who won actually loses instead.

These are different situations because in #1 it makes no difference whether you checkmate the other person or not because your chance of winning is 50% regardless.  But in #2, checkmating gives you a 2/3 chance of winning vs. 1/3 for the person who got checkmated.  So in #1, your chess strategy has no effect on the outcome but in #2 it does.  I have no problem saying that #1 has less strategy than chess, while #2 has the same strategy (but with the strategy having less effect on the outcome than in normal chess).

EDIT: I should make it clear that I'm happy with the luck/strategy quotient of Dominion and I don't see the need for a house rule.

EDIT 2: You can add a third situation to come up with luck reducing strategy but not completely eliminating it: Play a normal game of chess, but if you try to take a piece with a Queen or Rook, you have to flip a coin, and if it comes up heads you have to skip your turn instead of taking the piece.  There's still strategy in this game but it's not the same strategy as regular chess.

[Davio]

Enforcing a house rule is trying to make Dominion into something that's not.

It's a strategic game with luck.

If you want to take away the luck factor, you will inevitably break other things.

For example let's say you want to diminish first player advantage by giving the first player 3 Curses instead of 3 Estates so second player starts with a 6 VP lead, that's a whole Province, woohoo! Now there will be a lot of games where this doesn't matter at all (Curses and Estates get trashed early) or a lot (no trashing, rush games), so what have you done exactly? Replaced one luck aspect (first player advantage) by another: the layout of the kingdom.

Or you're tired of being on the wrong end of 5/2 starts? Well, suck it up and play another game.
Dominion is made to play under an hour and often under 30 minutes, so you can easily move on to the next game.

[WanderingWinder]

Say for example why do we limit ourselves to identical openings in a tournament?

IIRC wasn't it because the person running the tournament (WW?) decided he liked that rule and basically enforced it upon everyone else?  As far as I am aware there are no official tournament rules to Dominion.

I'm mostly staying away from this discussion, but I'll jump in on this. First, I haven't run any (playing) tournaments (I ran a sim tourney). You are right though, that it's just because whoever has run the tournament has said 'make it so', and they've done this with varying amounts of player input.
This argument doesn't seem like it's a convincing one, because it's not like there's a rule somewhere that says 'in tournament play, use identical start hands), and so of course you can argue 'well people LIKE this and use it', but then you would have to acquiesce to people agreeing to the amount of randomness in the game, inherent in the luck of the draw.

[Piemaster]

I'm mostly staying away from this discussion, but I'll jump in on this. First, I haven't run any (playing) tournaments (I ran a sim tourney). You are right though, that it's just because whoever has run the tournament has said 'make it so', and they've done this with varying amounts of player input.

Sorry about that, I couldn't remember who ran the large tournament in question.  I thought it might have been you, but I knew I could easily have been wrong, hence the question mark.

This argument doesn't seem like it's a convincing one, because it's not like there's a rule somewhere that says 'in tournament play, use identical start hands), and so of course you can argue 'well people LIKE this and use it', but then you would have to acquiesce to people agreeing to the amount of randomness in the game, inherent in the luck of the draw.

That's why I am very much against this as a house rule.  The better players in the tournament will want to enforce it because it takes some of the variance out of the game, which in turn gives them a greater chance of winning.  And because the better players are often the ones with the most clout or held in the highest regard, their opinions will often be given the most weight, even if their suggestion is entirely selfishly motivated.

[DStu]

I ran a sim tourney

... which solved the randomness problem via "play more games". ;P

[Eevee]

I don't think dominion has a lot of variance. In fact, I rather dislike playing the top 5 or so players, because I feel the only way I ever beat them is if some kind of a jack-big money (or something else super simple) is the dominant strategy on board.

Sadly I don't have council room to back me up here, but my feeling is that I, a level 40 player, win way less than 30% of the games against the level 50 guys and that's with me using veto as a tool to make the board as easy as possible (compared to Stef who iirc vetoes random at least against me). So idk maybe I suck, but to me dominion feels really fair and has pretty much the amount of variance I'd like it to have.

[aaron0013]

I highly doubt timchen intended this thread to be an international debate on luck factors, but this is cool

Thanks for the interesting input Donald X.

[greatexpectations]

Sorry about that, I couldn't remember who ran the large tournament in question.  I thought it might have been you, but I knew I could easily have been wrong, hence the question mark.

the tournament in question was likely the 2011 DS.com championships. someone proposed using identical starting hands and theory was on board with it. there was a whole discussion about it in that linked thread. shockingly, some like it, some don't, and most opinions are heavily influenced by how it might affect them in the tournament.

[dondon151]

And it is not uncommon for variants that reduce the impact of luck to be adopted for tournament play, even if no such variant is detailed in the official rules.

[Piemaster]

Sorry about that, I couldn't remember who ran the large tournament in question.  I thought it might have been you, but I knew I could easily have been wrong, hence the question mark.

the tournament in question was likely the 2011 DS.com championships. someone proposed using identical starting hands and theory was on board with it. there was a whole discussion about it in that linked thread. shockingly, some like it, some don't, and most opinions are heavily influenced by how it might affect them in the tournament.

Ah yes that's the one, it was theory not WW (apologies WW).  While there was a 'discussion' about it, the discussion was after the decision had already been made.  I was new to the community at the time so I didn't say anything, but it left something of a bitter taste in my mouth that one player was basically changing the rules of Dominion (after the tournament had started no less) in order to favour the stronger players.

[Davio]

And it is not uncommon for variants that reduce the impact of luck to be adopted for tournament play, even if no such variant is detailed in the official rules.

Well, the thing is, how are you going to compare results?

Comparing results doesn't matter at all for single matches, but a lot for tournament play. Otherwise, it basically invalidates any results even more.

If you're going to break ties based on points (which is a bad idea, but still) and you have one table where players are going heavy Gardens (without rushing) and some Salvager board where one guy keeps the lead by trashing Province for Province every turn, you can't really compare this.

So you want the same set on every table so the results have more meaning. Otherwise you might end up with a "bad" player winning with 3 straight BMU games (because the kingdoms favored it) and a "good" player crafting 3 beautiful engines in the finals.

What I'm saying is that tournaments shouldn't really focus on reducing luck, but on providing comparable results, which often comes down to trying to remove said luck. Can you compare a guy with three 5/2 starts on Mountebank/Witch boards vs. a guy with three 4/3's? Keeping as much as you can the same for all players is the best way I feel.

Of course real life tournaments may have limitations, a limited number of physical sets for instance, so you just have to deal with whatever the organization has conjured up.

[Drab Emordnilap]

I have seen some other version of that speech, probably hitting on some of the same things. I remember in particular him giving "guess the nth digit of pi" as an example of a high luck game that has no random element. Anyway the version I saw was good.

Not to be pedantic, but isn't "Guess the Nth digit of pi" the same measure of skill as "Keep track of the cards remaining in a deck so that you know what the last card is"? Either way, it's only random unless you put the work in to memorize/calculate it, and then it's a skill? Or in the "Guess the Nth" game, are you not told what N is?

[DStu]

I have seen some other version of that speech, probably hitting on some of the same things. I remember in particular him giving "guess the nth digit of pi" as an example of a high luck game that has no random element. Anyway the version I saw was good.

Not to be pedantic, but isn't "Guess the Nth digit of pi" the same measure of skill as "Keep track of the cards remaining in a deck so that you know what the last card is"? Either way, it's only random unless you put the work in to memorize/calculate it, and then it's a skill? Or in the "Guess the Nth" game, are you not told what N is?

It's not about skill, it's about luck. And for example for N=9^(9^(9^(9^9))), good luck with calculating this.  And the problem with luck in Dominion was not about knowing what the last two cards in your shuffle are, but about what they are and that you can't play them twice in two shuffles, no matter how good you know them.

[Drab Emordnilap]

It's not about skill, it's about luck. And for example for N=9^(9^(9^(9^9))), good luck with calculating this.

I would still say that this is a challenge of skill. Just because someone (or anyone ever, obviously) doesn't have the skill necessary for the challenge doesn't mean it's no longer a skill. And sure, you can just guess and then it's purely luck based, but you can just play random squares in Tic-Tac-Toe too, it's still not a game based on luck. I know there's a pretty big difference of scale there, but I feel like it's the same principle.

[DStu]

It's not about skill, it's about luck. And for example for N=9^(9^(9^(9^9))), good luck with calculating this.

I would still say that this is a challenge of skill. Just because someone (or anyone ever, obviously) doesn't have the skill necessary for the challenge doesn't mean it's no longer a skill. And sure, you can just guess and then it's purely luck based, but you can just play random squares in Tic-Tac-Toe too, it's still not a game based on luck. I know there's a pretty big difference of scale there, but I feel like it's the same principle.

We can go back and play "Who can name the higher number?", and construct a number which by construction is not computable by the (assumed) computational capacity of the universe. Take this number as N, and name the Nth digit of Pi.  Of course, given your skill to compute this number exceeds the one of the universe, you could solve this, but for any less extreme notion of "skill" the best you can do is a random guess.

Edit: When it exceeds the (assumed) laws of nature, it somewhere stops to be a skill for me.  Can as well say it is a skill to know which number the dice that is thrown now will show, just because the (assumed) laws of nature don't let us view in the future doesn't make it a random guess.

[rrenaud]

I think you are basically recovering the notion of bounded rationality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

[DStu]

I think you are basically recovering the notion of bounded rationality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

Yepp, sounds like it. But especially I propose to call everything that is not covered by ths bounded rationality "random".  Or at least "luck".

[dondon151]

Well, the thing is, how are you going to compare results?

Comparing results doesn't matter at all for single matches, but a lot for tournament play. Otherwise, it basically invalidates any results even more.

I'm not sure how this is relevant. You don't need to compare skill levels between different matches. Tournaments are bad at that anyway with poor or non-existent seeding.