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Go end game scoring question
I'm trying to learn Go and I'm very confused by how end of game scoring works. I've played a game against an AI player, and I don't understand the scoring that the computer came up with once the game was over. In the screenshot I've included, I don't understand why the points marked 1 and 2 are counted for white and not black. Can someone help me understand this?

As the best answer says, your programme does not manage this well. A good place to get information is Sensei’s Library, especially the beginners’ pages. Actually I think that if both the White (foolishly) and Black passed here (two passes end the game), 1 and 2 should be scored for Black, who currently controls these points. Did the computer really say the game was over, or did you assume that? Anyway, it has given you a prediction based on optimal play.

“the points marked 1 and 2 and white and not black” -- did you mean “... are white ...” or (better) “... count for white ...” .

@PJTraill Yes, this is after both I and the AI passed and the game finished (sorry, I fixed the language).

@TimK and @KMR are correct -- the game is not quite finished yet, because the stone in atari (that you labeled "2") needs to be resolved.
Having said that, it's worth mentioning that many computer programs are not good at figuring out ambiguous positions (like an unresolved ko that remains after a player has passed prematurely, for example).  Some computer programs are very good at figuring that out; some are not.
From the screenshot, I don't recognize the software you're using; but what should have happened was (assuming you were playing as Black and the computer was playing as White), after you passed, the computer should have played at 2 (thereby capturing the stone you labeled "1") and waited for you to move.  You don't have any significant ko threats, so you would pass again (or play a ko threat that doesn't work); and the computer next should have filled the ko by playing at "1".

This game isn't really finished. The stone at 2 is in Atari, so black needs to connect at 1. Then there won't be any points in those two locations.

The spaces at 1 and 2 will be counted for white if white was to make the next play, and area scoring is in use.
This is due to Ko.
White is able to capture the black stone at by playing into space 1, but black may not respond by playing space 2, as it would return the board to its previous state.
Once white has played space 1 they can follow up on their next turn playing space 2, to take their stone in space 1 out of Atari.

This is not due to the rules of go, but to the fact that an AI is scoring the game all on its own, and tasked with the responsibility of deciding which stones are dead and which stones are alive. The situation you've shown is somewhat unresolved, so the AI is struggling.
The AI is scoring the game and does something not done in real-life, which is to automatically decide which groups are "dead". For instance, the AI found that the two black stones on the southwest are dead.
But the AI got confused by the black stone left in atari, which can either live, if black plays first and connects it, or die, if white plays first and captures it. The AI somewhat arbitrarily marked it as dead (because white could capture it).
Even if the black stone dies, the extra point of territory marked for white doesn't make sense. I am guessing this game was played on BadukPop, so the game should be scored according to Korean rules, and there is no reason why the point marked "1" should be counted as White's territory. This is most likely a bug of the AI and scoring algorithms not really being designed to score properly a game where a stone is left in atari like that.
How scoring would have worked out without the AI
If the game had been played by two humans, rather than a human against an AI, the game would end in either of these two ways:

the humans will not notice that the black stone can be captured; they will leave it on the board and count one point of territory for black; or
the humans will notice that the black stone's situation is unresolved; they will resume the game, and either the black stone would be captured by white or connected by black, depending on who gets to play first.

The second possibility is the most likely.


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Betrayal at house on the Hill: Widow's Walk - Blueprint item
The Blueprint item from the expansion Widow's Walk states that you can move between rooms with dumbwaiters. Does this mean you can move between any room with a dumbwaiter even on a different floor? If so that makes several haunts unplayable if the Traitor has it.

Can you explain which haunts you think are unplayable, and why this would make them unplayable?

Some of the haunts require Traitor to get places and do things, others buff the Traitor until the heroes do X. In both circumstances being able to move from the basement to the roof for example for one space of movement may not make it unplayable, but incredibly one sided. May have been on a little bit of tilt when I said unplayable :P

In the base game there are situations that can make the game almost unplayable for one side or the other. The traitor being affected by the music box coupled with continuously bad rolls (in a scenario where they have no monsters to control), the haunt starting on only the second or third Omen when not much of the house has been explored (for haunts that involve hunting, specific rooms being found, or involve the rooms being systematically blocked), or the traitor trying to hunt someone through a circular house structure, are some of the more likely scenarios that can cause this.

That's fair I suppose, but I guess my question is still there, is that how it works? That much free movement is still op in my opinion for either side most of the time

Rule 1 of being a hero in Betrayal has always been "Don't let the Traitor reach the Mystic Elevator".  The blueprints are harder for th e Traitor to aquire than th e Elevator, so I don't think that they unbalance the game any more that it already is.

You might be missing the dumbwaiter icons in general allow anyone to move to different floors; that is their primary purpose.

Some room tiles include an elevator-like symbol on them, in addition to any Item, Event, or Omen symbol they might have. This symbol signifies that the room has access to a dumbwaiter, which players may use to move to a Landing one floor up or down. It costs 1 space of movement to use a dumbwaiter, plus 1 space to move onto the Landing.

So while it costs an extra movement, you do not need the blueprint item to make use of the dumbwaiters.
What the blueprint allows is to move from one dumbwaiter icon to another as a movement, as opposed to the normal use which requires you to move to the landing of a floor 1 below or 1 above where you are. So yes, the blueprint makes the dumbwaiters better, but it does not give them the ability to move to a different floor; that already was part of the dumbwaiter rules.

Ok I think that may have answered it somewhat, my question I suppose was can you use a dumb waiter room in the basement to a dumb waiter room on the roof with 1 space of movement with the blueprint?

@MarkShadix Yes, that's correct.

Yes, the lack of restriction on traveling to other floors is intentional. After all, that's the whole point of dumbwaiters. They are miniature elevators meant for food or other goods.

I don't think the real-life use of dumbwaiters is necessarily relevant to the game rules. Especially if you need a special item to use a dumbwaiter to travel from one floor to another.

@Gendolkari, You are gravely mistaken. The definition of words is quite relevant. Of course you are bound by the rules -- for example, I couldn't claim that a dumbwaiter couldn't be used to travel to another room on the same floor even though that makes no sense knowing what a dumbwaiter is -- but there's no point in repeating the rule the OP already stated. The OP is asking if the lack if restriction to travel to other floors is intentional, so one has to go outside the rules to answer their question.

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When using a Recon Drone for Tau Pathfinders in Kill Team (narrative campaign), how many other models can I use?
I'm currently playing in a narrative campaign as Tau Pathfinders, and I'm using the following operatives. Since I'm using the Recon drone, would this list be considered the correct number of models? Mostly curious if I can add an additional drone.
11 Units

Shas'ui Pathfinder
Assault Grenadier Pathfinder
Blooded Pathfinder
Communications Specialist Pathfinder
Drone Controller Pathfinder
Medical Technician Pathfinder
Weapons Expert Pathfinder
Weapons Expert Pathfinder
Marksman Pathfinder
Transpectral Interference Pathfinder
MB3 Recon Drone

I believe you don't "select" the Shas'ui Pathfinder, you always have them as the LEADER

Since I'm using the Recon drone, would this list be considered the correct number of models?

In a standard Pathfinder kill team you have:

1 Shas'Ui Pathfinder
11 Operatives from a list which includes the MB3 Recon Drone (which counts as 2 Operatives)

So yes.
In the original version of the rules you got 12 Operatives from the list, but the Balance Dataslate reduces that by 1.

Mostly curious if I can add an additional drone.

You can replace one of your operatives with a drone, but each done can only be picked once, so it would need to be a different type of drone.

Since you said you were in a narrative campaign, I should point out that the dataslate can change over the source of the campaign. Initially, however, it needs to match a normal kill team roster as yours does now.

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What was this game I played with friends about 10 years ago
I'd like to get some help identifying a game I played with some friends about 10-12 years ago but solely based on my rough memory. Any help is appreciated!

The game was played on a pretty big "board" (think 100x50cm) made of hard-plastic hexagons
The board was not rectangular but made of "modules" of those hexagons
You also setup hills by stacking the hard-plastic hexagons
Somehow, everybody got assigned playable characters together with a card describing the attack/defense (?) stats for every character
You then fought with your available characters (some expendable soldiers, some high-value characters)
I think I remember the types of characters as pretty diverse: I think there were guys with machine guns and some kinds of monsters

Unfortunately, this was before the age of smartphones and I do not have any pictures to help identifying the game.

This has a lot of similarity with Heroscape, details in favor for it:

Released 2004 until its discontinuation in November 2010
Modular layout with multiple Master Sets and Expansion Sets
Plastic hills and landscape
Multiple heros characters, troops and monsters

Image from Wikipedia


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In Uno what happens if you play a "wild draw 4" card and then a "reverse" card on top of it?
Does this mean that the player it reversed to has to pick up 4 cards instead of the next player it was originally intended for?
Or does this mean the next player picks up 4 cards and then you have another go as it reverses back to you?
I'm confused!

In standard Uno rules playing a Draw 2 or Wild Draw 4 forces the next player to draw the stated number of cards. You cannot respond to either of these with a Reverse.


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Tokaido: Crossroads - How are the extra points calculated for Legendary Items?
The Legendary Item cards from the Crossroads expansion of Tokaido are labelled with points along the right upper corner (i.e. 1/3/5/7).

I've read the instructions numerous times, but there's nothing in the section for Legendary Items that explains what these points are and how they are scored.

Do you get extra points for each Legendary Item the same way you get extra points for Souvenirs?
Do Legendary Items count as another family for the purposes of scoring Souvenirs. (Does that mean Buppatsu and Ema count as two families)?
Is there some other explanation for what the points mean?

In the process of preparing my question, I came across a clue: the instructions I found online depict the cards differently than the cards I have in my copy of the game. Specifically, the online PDF only shows the list of numerical values for Buppatsu and Ema. This suggests that the points listed on my cards are a misprint; the Legendary Items do not score any points beyond those described in the instructions.


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Othello/Reversi: Given the board state of an ongoing game, is it possible to programatically determine the moves the players have made?
Given the current board state of an ongoing game, (the position and color of the tiles on the board) is it possible to determine the moves each player made to arrive at that state?
Due to the number of possible board configurations that exist at each prior turn, I don't think it's possible, but I'm hoping I'm wrong.
If the game is only a few turns in, you can determine the moves easily, at a glance. (especially if you are familiar with the common opening moves). But by mid-game/late game, is it possible?
Can you utilize the same search algorithms used to drive an AI player (minimax w/ alpha pruning,for example) to go in reverse and determine the moves that have already been made?
Edit after reading @Zibelas comment :  If it's not possible to get the exact moves, is it possible to determine any set of moves that would result in the current board state? As long as the moves are valid and the board configuration ends up in the right place, then that's fine.
let's assume black was the first to move on a standard 8x8 board with 2 tiles for each player placed in the center of the board in the traditional starting configuration for a Reversi game. You also know that both players have moved the same number of moves, (so black is the next to move) .

It depends. Since it is possible to have the whole board filled with only one color, there are at least two different ways how you can reach that state (the second is a mirrowed version of the first). This means you can't say for sure that the given solution is the actual way the players played the game

If you're only looking for a list of possible move sets that lead to the current board state, that can be trivially proven to be "computable": have a program generate all possible move trees, and select from that any move trees that result in the target board configuration.  This program will take a very long time to run (possibly longer than the life of the universe; depends on how much you optimize it), but it's still a valid program that will terminate in some finite amount of time.

The less stones that are on the board, the higher is your chance that you can determinate the exact sequence of played stones.
But it is easy to prove that there are more ways to reach the same current state. if you imagine that the stones are placed on the board in a 4x4 block in the middle and white places them on this block to the right in the row 1 & 3 and black to the left of the block in the rows 2 & 4, you can switch the order of the rows and still get the same result.
Now let's talk about the brute force way to reach any solution that results in the current board. You can have at most 60 turns on a 8x8 board (64 places minus the 4 start chips). If we simplify the math and assume we have each turn 10 valid moves (the actual number is higher after a few turns), that means the total amount of different moves is 10^60. If a brute force program can calculate 10^9 moves per second, that still ends in around 3.17^43 years. Brute force is not the way to go. If the amount of stones is lower, brute force would be possible
But if we want to know the sequence that resulted in a board with maybe 20-30 placed stones, that can work, it should be possible to deduct the sequence of stones. There should be certain pattern that let you make for sure that a stone was placed there. The easiest would be corner stones. It might be more feasible to create a pattern matcher and reverse the board from there. How this would look in practice would be a better question for the coding Stack Exchange.

For any given board state, there are a limited number of moves from a valid previous state that could have produced what you see now.  Given that, yes, it ought to be possible, in principle, to programmatically determine a move sequence from a standard starting board that will produce the state seen.
That said, there is the problem of determining the validity of the previous state for each back-move computation -- and the more stones are on the board, the larger this problem becomes.  I'm no game theory mathematician, and can't say for certain, but it seems very possible that this prerequisite task is so computationally complex as to be impractical to determine.
This effectively becomes a problem of starting from the beginning state and working forward, likely a Very Large Number of times, to determine if a given state is valid -- which was the problem with brute-force computation of chess and go.  Only when it became possible to program software that played like a human (ignoring what we would consider obviously bad moves) did the problem become tractable (along with training AI the same way a human master would be trained, by exposure to a large number of games).
Like many game problems, then, while probably possible in principle, this may not be practical with real world computing without involving a well-trained AI to validate board states.

"I'm no game theory mathematician, and can't say for certain, but it seems very possible that this prerequisite task is so computationally complex as to be impractical to determine." I would be extremely surprised if that was true, especially since Othello has such a low depth/branching factor, compared to other similar board games. Also, if the position comes from a game played by a human, then you can use a heuristic to guide your search, by giving more priority to exploration of moves that could reasonably be played by a human.

@stef that's essentially what I wrote in my third paragraph.


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Frozen discard pile for Canasta
For the initial meld with the pile frozen, what are the rules for picking up the discard pile? If the minimum meld is 120, is the meld plus two naturals needed to pick up the pile, or just two naturals and a wild card and be able to use this as part of my meld.  I have always played that in order to pick up the pile I need the meld plus a natural pair in order to pick up a frozen pile, but just lately I've seen it where the person was able to pick up the frozen pile with 2 naturals plus wild card while the pile is frozen. Which version is correct?

You have to have enough cards in hand in addition to the top card to make your initial play in order to pick up the discard pile. As long as you have all the cards to meet the points for the initial meld you can take it otherwise, you can't
Canasta Rules

A frozen discard pile is unfrozen only by being taken. When the discard pile is topped by a wild card or a black three, at least one natural card must be discarded on top of the pile before the pile may be taken. Then, a player may take that card (and the pile) only with a natural pair of the same rank from their hand. Before touching the discard pile, the player should show the pair (together with any additional cards if needed to meet the minimum count of an initial meld).


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How are triggered abilities from permanents you own, but do not control, handled when you lose the game?
I was playing a game of Commander, having control of The Beamtown Bullies. With its ability, I gave an opponent a Hellcarver Demon. He then attacked someone with the hellcarver, and attacked with other creatures. This caused my lifetotal to become 0.
Now, while my cards get removed from the game, what happens to the trigger of the Hellcarver Demon? As far as I understood it still gets added to the stack, since damage did happen. And it does not get removed from the stack, since I do not control the ability (the opponent does).

The Hellcarver Demon's ability would still go on the stack and resolve.
First, the precise sequence of events in the combat damage step is as follows:

Attacking and blocking creatures deal damage. The Hellcarver Demon's ability triggers.
State-based actions are checked. You lose the game and all of your cards leave the game, including the Hellcarver Demon.
The triggered ability is put on the stack.
The triggered ability resolves.

For more detail on what exactly happens in step 2, we have to look at rule 800.4a:

When a player leaves the game, all objects (see rule 109) owned by that player leave the game and any effects which give that player control of any objects or players end. Then, if that player controlled any objects on the stack not represented by cards, those objects cease to exist. Then, if there are any objects still controlled by that player, those objects are exiled. This is not a state-based action. It happens as soon as the player leaves the game. If the player who left the game had priority at the time they left, priority passes to the next player in turn order who’s still in the game.

It's hard to prove a negative, but there is no rule that establishes that abilities on the stack have an owner, so nothing happens to the triggered ability in the first of those steps. The triggered ability is also not on the stack at the time that you leave the game, so the again nothing happens in the second step. Finally, we have to check the control of the object. Rule 603.3a says

A triggered ability is controlled by the player who controlled its source at the time it triggered, unless it’s a delayed triggered ability. To determine the controller of a delayed triggered ability, see rules 603.7d–f.

The source of the ability is the Hellcarver Demon, and the opponent controlled it as the ability triggered, so the opponent also controls the triggered ability. Therefore, the ability is also not exiled in that third step. Overall, this means that the ability sticks around, goes on the stack, and resolves.


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What is "Suzy's Game"? A playing card game passed down my family for three generations
My whole family plays this card game which we call Suzy's game. We call it that because a girl named Suzy taught it to my grandma. We don't know what the game is actually called or what the real rules are.
It's been a while since I played, but here are the rules I remember.
The game is played with two players and two decks. Each player has a "magic pile" of a few cards, with the top card always revealed. You win when you play the last card in your magic pile.
There are four piles in the middle of the table. You must play cards on those piles in ascending order. When a stack tops off, you return it to the deck and start a new one.
The strategy is to use your other cards to set up the middle piles in a way that allows you to play your magic cards. In front of each player are four piles, and they must put a card into one of those piles on each turn. You want to play on these piles in a way that allows you to drop them on the middle stacks in order.
On your turn you can play as many cards as you want from your hand or from the stacks in front of you. So ideally you have your stacks set up to play every card leading up to your magic card, then you play your magic card as the finisher. It's hard to explain but this feels extremely badass to pull off.
Finally there is some kind of interrupt mechanic, where you can force the other player to play into the middle if they have face up cards that can go there at the end of their turn. So if you need them to put down a jack so you can drop your king from your magic pile, you can make them play the jack, then play your king.
I think this interrupt mechanic goes so far that you can actually make them play a card, stop them, put down a card from your magic pile, then force them to continue playing until they have no more face up cards that can go in the middle. I believe that during this stage you can only play cards from your magic pile; you can't play cards from your hand or your own face-up cards.
This game was absolutely crazy to play with my grandma and honestly felt like being in a card game anime with how many reversals and counterplays there were.
What is this game actually called, and what are the official rules?

There are many different games that could fit this description. The first that came to my mind is Skip-Bo.

The object of the game is to be the first player or team to play out their entire stock pile(s)...for their pile with only the top card visible, and a hand of five cards, and the remaining cards are placed face down to create a common draw pile. The shared play area allows up to four build piles...They must play either the next card in sequential order or a wild Skip-Bo card...play continues until one player has played their final start card.

This fits many of your qualifiers but I don't recall any sort of 'interrupt' mechanic, and Skip-Bo is sold with its own special deck, not the standard 52.
Wikipedia states that Skip-Bo is a commercial version of Spite and Malice, a derivative of Russian Bank (also known as Crapette or Tunj), which in turn originates from Double Klondike (also called Double Solitaire). Double Solitaire and variations like Nertz are a little different in that all players play simultaneously - you don't take turns.
My best guess for your game is Spite and Malice or a variation.

Each player tries to play through his goal pile...If a player cannot play the card in his goal pile, he may attempt to block someone else from playing.
Play piles are community piles used by all players.
Discard piles belong only to the player who made them.
Each turn starts with a player drawing from the common draw pile to give themselves a five-card hand. They then make whatever plays they can until they have no more plays that they want to do, and then they discard a card from their hand into their personal discard area...One person may end up with a low goal card and, in reaching that one and then ending their turn, they will have unavoidably helped someone else to reach their higher number goal card...As play continues, many cards can accumulate in the discard piles. In order to make your goal card or prevent your opponent from reaching theirs, you can use cards from both your hand and your discard piles during your turn.

Spite and Malice is definitely the right answer. The interrupt mechanic adds another layer, letting you continue the other player's turn after they say they have finished.


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Recommended Acol bidding after strong NT rebid
The bidding has proceeded as follows:
1S     - 2D
2NT(*) - ?

(*) 15-17 HCP balanced, denies 4H. With both majors, 1H would have been opened.

Holding
S: 6 5
H: 9 3
D: A K J 5 4
C: K 10 8 6
What is your response playing Acol/Standard English at rubber scoring? Does it change if opener opened 1H instead of 1S?

How would AQXXX JTxx QT AQ be opened and bid? Are you seriously playing Canape - and not explicitly  saying so?

I would open a two-suiter, especially a touching two-suiter, with the longer suit. So, with your hand, I open 1S and rebid an appropriate number of hearts after responder's reply. And no, I don't play Canapé. Yet.

First, I'm assuming that 2N was forcing to game (or at least to 3N), as I believe is the case in modern Acol but might not be the case in 50-year-old Acol.
Second, I've never actually played cut-for-your-partner rubber, so the tactical considerations of whether you want the rubber to be over quickly or slowly (because your partner is weaker or stronger than the person you'd expect to cut next) aren't something I really understand.
Your choices are basically 3C or 3N.  The bid of 3C basically asks partner for the heart stopper; the bid of 3N is a bluff pretending to have both stoppers.
At matchpoints, there is no question I would bid 3N.  The opponents don't know you're missing a stopper; if they think you're missing a stopper they don't know whether it's clubs or hearts.  If you bid 3C and partner doesn't have a heart stopper, you've lost the board.  If partner bluffs, opponents will usually lead hearts (partner bluffing a heart stopper to bid 3N is more likely than you bluffing a club stopper with your 3C bid).  If partner doesn't bluff, you might not make 5 of a minor, and, if you do, your +400/600 will still lose to all the people who got +430/630 on a successful bluff.
At rubber, where +400 and +430 aren't so different, the odds don't favor 3N quite as much, but I think the bluff still has a lot going for it, especially since there are a lot of hands where 5 of a minor is not making.  (Give partner AKQx Jxx Qxx QJx and 5D is not so good.)
I might add that the odds do depend on your agreements for what suit you open with 4432 hands (where the 4 card suits could be any 2) - you might want to specify that in your question as I understand Acol players don't all have the same agreements.

2NT, even in modern Acol / Standard English, simply shows a strong NT hand (if the opening 1NT is weak). The strength depends on partner's response.
If the opening 1NT is 12-14 and partner responds at the one level, then a rebid of 1NT shows 15-16, 2NT shows 17-18 and 3NT shows 19 HCP.
If partner responds at the 2 level,  rebid of 2NT with 15-17 and 3NT with 18-19 HCP.
The NT response is a not forcing limit bid, but partner's 2-level response shows 8+.
I usually play with one partner per evening, so I've actually never even thought about the tactics of cut-for-your-partner :-)

@AlDante - the question is whether Qx Jx Kxxxx Qxxx is a 2 level response, or you need something like xx xx AQxxxx Qxx if you have only 8.  The first is not suitable for 3N if partner has 15 balanced; the second is as long as the 15 includes the K of diamonds. I believe modern English Acol (but not 50-years-ago English Acol) takes the 2N rebid after a 2 level response to be game forcing on the theory that 15 balanced opposite a 2 level response should always have chances for game, because the first hand is not a 2 level response in modern Acol.

I made enough playing rubber bridge, back in the day, to pay for expensive backgammon lessons. I never adjusted my game much except: (1) Don't sacrifice playing with the weakest player; (2) Tweak invitations a bit, but open and accept/decline the same; (3) If reasonable, play 3NT in your hand instead of partner's suit in his hand; and, finally (4) Don't create any ethical dilemmas for partner. That's it. If you try to get fancy you risk messing up and confusing an already outmatched player - and that can be really bad news.

That said - it matters if the weakest player is a regular. If they are, they have come for gentle lessons and are quite willing to pay for those. You want to be an opponent they search out each week, rather than avoid. Then you get a nicely weekly bonus, and they get the gentle lessons they have paid for. So, don't milk them for every penny - maybe once a session, as a reminder of to avoid bad habits, but no more than that.

26-28 points, looking at your hand I can't imagine something partner has that you're more than 50% for a slam.  Perfect hand maybe AKQx spades Axx hearts AJxx clubs, you're still two finesses away from the slam. 3NT seems pretty solid here no matter the format, unless you have good tools for identifying the heart stopper.

Yes, I don't think we are in slam territory. My question is more, can we be sure that 3NT is the best game? I left the question open because I am genuinely interested in all opinions.
What tools do you know of that would identify the heart stopper? 4th suit is not yet available...

This page lists three possible approaches. The one the author prefers is structured along Standard American lines with new minor forcing and the 2NT rebid over a two level response also being forcing.
The second approach, detailed here, is Crowhurst. A 1NT rebid is 12-16 HCP, responders 2C rebid asks for opener's strength and major suit distribution.
The third approach is what I currently play, with 2NT not forcing but obviously unlikely to be left in after a 2 level response.

Edit: I generated 10 hands to get an idea of what might be the most sensible contracts.
Some statistics:

75% of the time opener has a heart stopper

3NT makes 70% of the time (given reasonable distribution)

5m makes about 50% of the time (but often 3NT is a better contract)

There is one hand where 3NT does not make, but 5C has a 50% chance

There are two hands where 3NT makes, and 5m doesn't, and one hand where 3NT makes easily and 5m requires the CQ to be found.

There are 2 hands where 6 of a minor is a 50% chance.

So, based on this amazingly large sample, unless you like bidding 50% slams, 3NT seems to be the way to go.
NB: The screenshot is the first 9 hands, the LIN file should be all of them.

LIN:
qx|o1|md|3SK742HAQ4DQT73CA5,SQT983HJ65D92CJ42,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 1|sv|0|pg|| qx|o2|md|4SK874HAK8D72CAQ75,ST32HT762DQT8CJ94,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 2|sv|n|pg|| qx|o3|md|1SAKQTHA84D862CQ32,SJ732HQJ52DCAJ754,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 3|sv|e|pg|| qx|o4|md|2SKQT7HK72DQ9CAJ54,S9HAQT8654D732C72,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 4|sv|b|pg|| qx|o5|md|3SAK84HQ2D863CAQJ3,SJT972HKJT654DC94,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 5|sv|n|pg|| qx|o6|md|4SAKQ7H87DQT32CA42,SJT94HQT62D976CJ9,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 6|sv|e|pg|| qx|o7|md|1SAJ92HA65DQ872CA3,SQ873H82DT93CQ954,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 7|sv|b|pg|| qx|o8|md|2SAQ42HA2DQT876CA2,SJ83HJ8D32CJ97543,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 8|sv|0|pg|| qx|o9|md|3SAK97HQ76DT8CAQ95,SQTHJT8542DQ3CJ72,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 9|sv|e|pg|| qx|o10|md|4SAQ84HKJ7DQ8CAJ93,SKT72H4DT962CQ742,S65H93DAKJ54CKT86|rh||ah|Board 10|sv|b|pg||

I would bid 3C, forcing, denying a heart stopper and strongly suggesting 3NT. If opener bids 3H, fourth suit denying the heart stopper, then I would rebid my diamonds and a possible precarious minor game contract.
Situation is almost identical with a 1H opening. You can not support either major and a NT game is dependent on opener having the cover in these suits.

But is 3C forcing? What do you bid with a weak 5-5 in the minors?

@AlDante - I believe a weak 5-5 in the minors responds 1N to 1M, not 2D.

Original question has responder with 5 Diamonds and 4 Clubs and sufficient points to suggest game. A bid of 3C should be understood as this. Any new suit bid at the third level is game forcing.

In Standard English, which is Acol's modern successor, a new suit at the 3 level is forcing for one round, not game forcing. Over a 2 level response, as discussed above, it is effectively game forcing.
https://www.ebu.co.uk/documents/laws-and-ethics/convention-cards/foundation-levelv2-system-file.pdf


text:
Can I Activate Codie when Casting Burnt Offering on Codie?
I have 3 source (land/artifact) and codie on board. I'm attempting to activate Codie, Vociferous Codex's ability with tapping three mana source on board and casting Burnt Offering at instant speed. Does codie successfully add 5 mana to mana pool along with the instant-cascade-like effect?

I do recall someone showing me that this sort of action is legal but I don't recall the specific incident that represents something like this.

It's not clear what you're asking here - are you attempting to sacrifice Codie as part of the cost of casting Burnt Offering? If so, that's answered in many questions here already, for example here https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/20694/will-an-object-trigger-if-the-source-is-sacrificed-to-pay-a-cost

That question doesn't seem relevant here

Thanks, the SE question you sent was revolved around passive ability triggers which is different in this case.

No, there is no way to both sacrifice Codie to cast Burnt Offering and spend the mana generated by Burnt Offering to pay to activate Codie's ability.
Burnt Offering does not produce any mana until the spell resolves. If you sacrifice Codie to cast Burnt Offering, there is too broad a gap between losing Codie and gaining the mana, so there is no opportunity to activate Codie's ability using that mana.

It is possible to sacrifice Codie to activate a mana ability and spend that mana to pay for its ability. For example, if you control Ashnod's Altar, you can start activating Codie's ability, and while you are doing that, you can activate Ashnod's Altar's ability sacrificing Codie, and then you can finish activating Codie's ability using that mana to pay the cost.

It is also possible to activate Codie's ability while casting a spell and sacrifice Codie to pay that spell's additional cost if you already have the mana to activate Codie's ability. Practically speaking, this almost always has the same effect as activating Codie's ability before starting to cast that spell.

Codie's activated ability is a mana ability. To quote, "Codie's activated ability is a mana ability. It can't be countered or responded to, and you can activate it while casting a spell. If you do, that spell is "the next spell" you cast this turn." [mtg:Codie, Vociferous Codex]

You're right. I missed that.

I corrected that mistake. The conclusion is still the same

You're absolutely right. I've been caught up with "601.2g If the total cost includes a mana payment, the player then has a chance to activate mana abilities (see rule 605, “Mana Abilities”). Mana abilities must be activated before costs are paid", but burnt offering is not a mana ability so it can't add mana to mana pool prior to passing priority and resolving the spell. "spells aren’t mana abilities."(605.5)


text:
Does casting Tainted Strike on a creature with toxic keyword cause both toxic and infect to trigger?
When determining the effects of combat damage, given that toxic is defined as "Any time a creature with toxic deals combat damage to a player", does casting Tainted Strike on a creature with the toxic keyword allow both infect and toxic to give the defending player an arbitrary amount of poison counter?

Yes, damage to a player from a creature with both Infect and Toxic will cause that player to gain the poison counters for both abilities.
Rules 120.3b and g say

120.3b Damage dealt to a player by a source with infect causes that source’s controller to give the player that many poison counters.
120.3g Combat damage dealt to a player by a creature with toxic causes that creature’s controller to give the player a number of poison counters equal to that creature’s total toxic value, in addition to the damage’s other results. See rule 702.164, “Toxic.”

And if you give it poisonous also, it will give those poison counters as well!

also 113.2c, multiple instances of the same ability function independently. When that's not the case, the rules take pains to spell it out (e.g. 702.2f, multiple instances of deathtouch are redundant) and are, imo, usually intuitive anyway (possible sticking point would be lifelink, but if you see the fine-grained detailed of how it functions, it makes sense)

Lifelink does, however, stack with the pseudo-lifelink that was used before the lifelink keyword actually came into existence (and which also stacks with itself). (Not all of those search results are quite the same thing, but you get the idea.)


text:
How to Bid a Double Void
Background: This was not a setup, but it wasn't random either. Many of our supplies were water damaged, so we had a lot of distractions. Here is what probably happened: If a new deck is put through a shuffling machine only twice, you will get something like this [see new conclusion in follow-up at bottom]. If I am using the shuffling machine, I usually put the cards through at least 7 times. You can comment on the weirdness of the hands, but that is not my question.
Question: Can South open 2C (strong)? Is there a better opening bid? How can N-S get to 7D?
Some tables were at 6H in the West. Some at 7D in the South. I was North, partner opened 3D or 4D (can't remember) and we eventually let E-W play 6H.
7D will make on a likely Ace of Clubs lead. If not, you can use a ruffing finesse on the Club Ace.

Shuffling follow-up:
I ran some tests with a new ACBL deck. The remaining pictures show the entire deck before dealing. Note that the aces are adjacent to the deuces of each suit, not the kings.

After one perfect riffle shuffle. Note that I didn't actually use the machine for this test, I interleaved the cards by hand. This creates 7-6-0-0 distribution with odd and even ranks. 2-4-6-8... 3-5-7-9...

After two perfect riffle shuffles. This creates 13-0-0-0 distribution in each hand.

After three perfect riffle shuffles. This creates 7-6-0-0 distribution with consecutive ranks.

After four perfect riffle shuffles. A given hand will have all 4 suits of a rank. One hand will have all the face cards.

Three riffle shuffles give the result closest to the deal in this question. The shuffling machine won't interleave perfectly, so there will be slight variations. Most likely cause: I was distracted and only did 3 machine riffle shuffles instead of my usual 7 or more.
Conclusion: Be careful when using machine shufflers on new decks.
I read somewhere that cards should be shuffled a minimum of 7 times. I normally do this with a few cuts interspersed.
I am the only one who uses the machine shuffler. I get there early and start shuffling. As other people arrive, they shuffle by hand.

Given the near perfection of the machine shufflers, it's unlikely that 7 riffle shuffles is enough. I'd go for 9 or even 10. In practice, I always did a quick scramble followed by 7 or 8 hand-riffle shuffles to get a chance at good randomness.

As South you care only about 2 cards: the minor suit aces. Those are roughly:

11% to both be in Partner's hand (as ⅓ * ⅓) ;
44% to be split between partner and opponents (as 2 *  ⅔ * ⅓); and
44% to both be absent from partner's hand (as ⅔ * ⅔) .

However opponents can almost certainly outbid you in at least one of the majors - perhaps even in notrump. Your goal should be on how to best shut them out of the auction; so you should make the best pre-empt available, which is to open 6 diamonds. This is 55% to make; forces the opponents to guess at the 6 or 7 level with the least possible information; and might encourage partner to take the sacrifice (?) in 7 diamonds holding the diamond ace and something else.
Opening two clubs - or, in fact, anything else below 6 diamonds - I believe simply earns any bad result you get, by giving opponents additional information before their guess at the slam level.
Finally, there's a vital caveat for whenever you are considering an opening of 2 clubs: that call should ONLY be made with hands that either:

requires only one additional call to complete a description for partner, who then takes over the auction; or
requires only one call from Partner before taking over the auction in hand.

This hand resembles neither of these cases - and should never be opened 2 clubs on that basis alone.

It's true that just based on your own hand, you have a 55% chance to make 6D. But just based on your own hand it is very unlikely that opponents are anywhere close to a slam. Your hand already contains 12 points. I think your analysis works only with the meta argument: my hand looks like the shuffling was broken, hence opponents hands will look like that as well.

@quarague - but it's quite possible for opponents to have a good sacrifice, and you want to make it hard for them to find it.  In a good field, if your slam makes, +800 could very well be a bottom board.

@quarague a common piece of advice is "if you have a regular hand, other players likely have a regular hand; if you have a shaped hand, other players likely have a shaped hand". Here you are missing 26 major cards; on average each opponent holds more than 8 of them. At my level (which is hardly stellar), an opponent with 6+/x or 5/4+ in majors will make some noise over a 2C-2D auction. Whether their partner will then find a sacrifice at the 6 or 7 level, I am not sure, but why give them a chance?

I'm not sure whether I open 1D or 5D or 6D or 4N (which ace (not how many) do you have?) as South.  (Opening 3D or 4D can't be right; you can see you will almost always make at least 5D no matter what anyone else has.)
If South opens 1D, West should bid 4N - showing an extremely distributional hand with hearts and clubs (the 2 lowest unbid suits) - this is an extension of unusual 2N at a higher level.
I would expect West would bid 5H over either 4N or 5D.  It's not clear whether or not to bid 6H over 6D.
Everyone is guessing at this point.
Note, looking at all the hands, N/S shouldn't be allowed to play 7D; E/W have a good sacrifice at 7H.
2C with this South hand is extremely unwise - as you can see from this hand, West next bids 4H or 5H or 4N (any 2 suiter, or maybe specifically one of H/C or S/D, depending on agreements), and N/S get to start at the 5 level with neither of them knowing what suit their partner has.

Other answers have told you why you shouldn't open this 2♣ (they can and will outbid you, and you won't get to show your suit easily).
But you asked "Can South", not "Should South".  That is a legal question, and depends on where you play.
The Laws themselves don't restrict any meaning for any call; but in Duplicate Bridge, they allow the Regulating Authority to regulate meanings of calls.  Many, including the one for North America (ACBL), do restrict 2♣ openings with "tricks but not points" (more particularly, "tricks, but not defensive points"), because of hands like these where you make your strongest call and they likely have game (or even slam!)
In the ACBL, in a limited game, you may not open 2♣ on hands like these; in the open games, you may, but must Alert your opponents to your tendencies.  Other RAs do different things.
But you were talking about a mechanical shuffler, so very likely you are not playing duplicate, sanctioned or otherwise.    The Rubber Bridge Law 40 effectively says "you play 'normal bridge', unless your agreements have been explained beforehand or you and your opponents agree to explain them when bid.  Oh, by agreement, restrictions can be made on partnership understandings" (and the house rules, or the club rules, almost always do).
So, whether you can is up to the game you play in.  Whether you should is up to your partner, and how conservative your opponents are.  Oh, and how comfortable you are with, if you do "convince" them to stay out of your 2♣ auction, the explosion when they realize they can make 4♥ (on a slightly different hand).  That explosion is unpleasant, as someone who has been the director when it happened at my club can attest.

Our club played ACBL games for many years, but we haven't recently, we don't have an official Director anymore. We play a casual duplicate game. Some people also play at ACBL clubs, so we try to follow ACBL rules for consistency. Are you saying that mechanical shuffling machines are not allowed in ACBL games? Can you point to the rule number so I can educate myself.

No, any shuffling method approved by the Director that produces random hands is acceptable (Law 6E4).  Just almost always if the hands are dealt with mechanical assistance, it is with a dealing machine these days (that deals a randomly generated board).  It was just a guess that a shuffler for only one deck at a time was used in a non-duplicate game.

Having said that, if the shuffler is used only twice on regular boards, well, you can see the evidence of the previous board in this hand from a sorted deck.  The same lack of randomness will show up on all the rest of the boards, if players are looking for it (recognizable on a passout, say, or when North had ♠AKQJT8764 on board 4 last week).  This hand itself is evidence of "not 'wholly random expectations'" required for boards.  In fact "inadequate shuffling", mechanical or hand-done, is well known for creating flatter hands than expected.


text:
Why/when can you back out from casting a spell with Assist?
It's been previously established that if you begin to cast a spell whose cost you are able to produce enough mana to pay for, you must do so:

[...] you are committed to completely cast a spell you've decided to cast. (source)

No, you cannot choose to stop casting a spell once you have announced that you want to cast it. (source)

In contrast, the assist keyword ability has had this said about it:

If they don't want to pay, you can either foot the entire bill yourself, or choose to back up and not cast the spell at all. (source)

This appears to rely on the player's ability to back out from casting a spell even though they would have been able to cover its cost. Nothing in the rules for assist seems to grant the player this ability, so where does it come from?
Follow up question: When casting an assist spell, are you able to back out only if the other player paid exactly zero mana, or can you also back out if they didn't pay as much as you would have liked (even if you could have paid the rest of the cost)?

Assist is described in rule 702.132a:

Assist is a static ability that modifies the rules of paying for the spell with assist (see rules 601.2g-h). If the total cost to cast a spell with assist includes a generic mana component, before you activate mana abilities while casting it, you may choose another player. That player has a chance to activate mana abilities. Once that player chooses not to activate any more mana abilities, you have a chance to activate mana abilities. Before you begin to pay the total cost of the spell, the player you chose may pay for any amount of the generic mana in the spell’s total cost.

Assist creates probably the only situation in the game where you don't know how much it is going to cost you to cast a spell until you get to the point of paying that cost. So it makes sense in that particular case that you can decide whether you want to pay that cost at the point where you find out what it is.
The rules don't specify the exact criteria for when you can decide to back out, but the way I see it, the point is to allow you to back out if the cost is greater than expected. So, if the other player pays the maximum they can pay, there is no justification for backing out. On the other side, if the other player pays too little, and you can't afford the rest, you have to back out. In between, it's ambiguous.

The ambiguity is unfortunate. It seems like a totally case-by-case basis whether or not you're allowed to back out from casting a spell, as the rules of the game itself don't seem to forbid it, but in practice it is generally disallowed. The reason I asked is in situations where I want to cast an Assist card, but I can't trust my opponent to pay as much as I'd hope they would. I wanted to know if I can back out.

"totally case-by-case basis" is overstating it. It's consistent except for this one special case.

That's true, but any potential special cases aren't stated anywhere in the game rules themselves, nor is the fact that you generally can't back out from casting a spell in the first place. That seems to have come from an external ruling.

Strictly speaking, taking into account only the comprehensive rules, when casting any spell that costs mana, you could choose not to activate mana abilities and then fail to pay the cost and be forced to back out of casting it. Rulings have been made essentially saying that you can't do that because the only real application is angle-shooting, but they're not strictly based on the comprehensive rules. I think that's what's being invoked here: whatever mana your opponent generates, if you don't generate enough to make up the difference, you can't cast the spell and you back out.

Yeah, seems that way. I just wish it was more clear when backing out from casting a spell is an intended mechanic and when it is a violation of fair play. I guess in my example scenario, I'd need a judge on the scene :v Thanks for your answer and comments!


text:
When casting a spell that lets you distribute X +1/+1 counters among creatures you control, how do you submit less than X creatures?
I cast Stolen Goodies, the adventure half of Picnic Ruiner:

Distribute three +1/+1 counters among any number of target creatures you control.

I controlled three creatures, but I only wanted to add counters to two of them. I selected the two creatures, but clicking submit did nothing. I spent most of my timeouts trying to submit the two creatures before I gave up and clicked the third, which automatically submitted all three.
The next part of the spell was to determine how many counters to put on each creature. It automatically started each creature with 1, and clicking the down arrow wouldn't let me decrement it to zero, so I was forced to give each creature one.
What am I missing here? Is it a bug, or did I just not understand how to use the interface?
UPDATE:
I played a bot match to recreate the scenario, and clicking the orange submit button with only two creatures highlighted does select the two creatures. I have to assume that I experienced a bug earlier. I accepted Hackworth's answer because he explains why I couldn't add zero counters to a creature I had selected.

I could not reproduce your first issue. The second issue works correctly as per the rules.
I could submit 1, 2, or 3 creatures at will and distribute the counters among them. You may want to submit that issue as a bug regardless.
The second issue, that you could not decrease the number of counters to zero on any of the chosen creatures, was not a bug but a correctly implemented rule:

601.2d If the spell requires the player to divide or distribute an effect (such as damage or counters) among one or more targets, the player announces the division. Each of these targets must receive at least one of whatever is being divided.

It's bad UI though to force the user/player to pick the creatures and do the distribution in two separate steps. The effect would be the same if they were done in a single step where leaving some creatures to get zero counters would be accepted, or if it was possible to backtrack from the distribution step and leave some creature out. The game would of course have to treat creatures getting zero counters as not targeted at all, but that's not exactly difficult to do. Well, at least the screenshot the Cancel button.

@ilkkachu It's bad UI, but Arena takes a strict interpretation of the Comp Rules just in case it ever matters, and those are the steps according to the Comp Rules. First you select creatures, and then you assign counters among them. I'm not great on the gritty details in this area, but maybe your opponent can perform some kind of action in response to you selecting your targets but prior to your assigning counters or something like that? Or there might be something in the future where the distinction between those steps would be relevant for some corner case or specific card behavior.

@JustinHilyard No, Arena does not strictly implement the rules. In one example I know of, they fudge the spellcasting process in order to make a better UX which caused them extra dev time for a certain card. Specifically, Arena apparently determines a card's mana value while the card is in hand rather than after making all relevant choices during the spellcasting process as would be correct: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/on-whiteboards-naps-and-living-breakthrough

@Hackworth There's no "after making all relevant choices" because it limits the choices available in advance. Are you saying the process is "fudged", because the UI has been modified to disallow declaration of spellcasting for the blocked mana values, rather than telling the player that it's impossible AFTER they make their choices? Because that latter would be a HORRIBLE UX choice, and would only happen in real play by your opponent spotting your mistake and telling you afterwards (or calling a judge).

@MattSach What I'm saying is that the MTGA rules engine does not actually know the rules. The real interactions are apparently all offloaded onto individual cards which work only until they implement a card with an interaction they didn't think of and something breaks. Had they strictly implemented the rules beforehand, the case I've linked to would not have happened.

Yes, that's true, but also by design I believe. Given that any future unknown card may "break the rules" to a certain extent, it makes perfect sense (to me) to implement this way. If they're doing their job properly, any "breakage" by a new card should be found prior to release, as described in that article, and provision made for it.


text:
How did this hand from the 2008 WSOP eliminate Scott Montgomery?
In the 2008 WSOP, played as No Limit Texas Hold 'Em, Scott Montgomery placed fifth. Looking at how hand scoring works, I do not understand the manner in which he was eliminated.
Here is a screenshot from the video of the critical moments of Peter Eastgate' path to winning, at 14:18, the moment the six of diamonds was drawn.

According to PokerStar's narration, this was the only possible card that could secure Eastgate a win, and it was drawn against all odds--interesting stuff. However, I do not understand why this made Eastgate win or why it was his only chance.
From what I can tell, 'No Limit' just means there are no restrictions on  betting. Otherwise, it is standard Texas Hold 'Em in which aces score the highest.
In this case, the best hand for Montgomery was a three kind of kind aces against Eastgate's three of a kind of sixes. As a tie for the same kind of hand, aces score higher.
What am I missing here in the rules of Texas Hold 'Em?

"against Eastgate's three of a kind of sixes." - what is your reasoning here? Which cards do you think count for Eastgate's hand?

You have incorrectly identified Eastgate's hand.
Montgomery's hand is AAAQ6 (Three of a Kind, Aces).
Eastgate's hand is 666AA (Full House, Sixes Full of Aces).
On the turn, the two remaining sixes are the only cards that improve Eastgate's hand that do not also improve Montgomery's hand (an Ace would give Eastgate a full house as well, but Montgomery would also improve to Four of a Kind).

That is correct for the casrds visible but there still seems to be something missing here. The 6 of clubs would also give Eastgate a full house beating the three Aces. However 2 out of 44 cards would come to about 5%, whereas the odds show only 2%, which corresponds to one card and also matches the description 'the only card giving a win'. So apparently the 6 of clubs was already out, maybe some other player open folded with it.

@quarague Correct. The six of clubs was folded at 12:28 in the linked video.


text:
In Munchkin, do you level up after breaking down a door, if you don't kill a monster?
Take the following sequence of events:

I break down a door and pickup a door card which is not a monster.
I loot the room and pick up a card and put it in my pack.
No other players take any action.
I end my turn.

Should I level up in this case?
EDIT: For anyone else asking this question, it was based on a mis-reading of the rules. You do NOT represent leveling up by moving to the next room. You are meant to use tokens or a counter to track your level. Don't be thrown off by the fact that there are 10 rooms and you need to get to level 10 to win.
EDIT2: OK, I'm more confused about this. It seems there are different versions, which don't even have the board with 10 rooms. In which case, I guess the rooms on the board DO represent levels, but is meant to be used like a level counter, not a representation of players physically entering rooms. I guess if it was a later edition, it would make sense that it might not entirely mesh with the rules as originally written.

How is this question unfocused?

A basic principle of games in general is that you generally can't do something unless there's something that says you can. Just because the rules don't say you can't level up, that doesn't mean you can.

While I understand people downvoting this question, I don't understand the VTC, and, like John, I understand even less the reason given. It really seems like someone just came across this and said "This is a stupid question" and then randomly picked a reason to VTC.

@Acccumulation well it implies in two ways that I enter the room (break down door, loot it), and the rooms are the levels, hence my confusion

@JordanMorris where did you get that the rooms are the levels? that is absolutely not the case, levels are an abstract measure of your characters power and not your advancement through the dungeon.

@n0m4d3 to represent that your character has gone up a level, you literally move them to the next room

@jordanmorris that is very different from the rules i know where you use Tokens to represent your level https://munchkin.game/site-munchkin/assets/files/1138/munchkin_rules-1.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj5u6GC1PWAAxUqbPEDHTgECSAQFnoECA0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw02BH6Okt3VKjWewLLYg0vZ

@n0m4d3 thanks, looks like I completely missed the part about level tokens/counters. Given that there are 10 rooms, and you move forward to fight, and level when you win a fight, that totally threw me off! No wonder people think I'm crazy with this question

"there are 10 rooms" Are you refering to the board that tracks levels? Because I'm pretty sure that's a Deluxe Edition thing. Or, at the very least, something that's not in every edition of the game. I mean, I get that it'd be hard for you to know this, if you've only seen editions that do have it.

A few choise quotes from the rules.
First, on the subject of Levels, we have Character Stats:

Level: This is a measure of how generally buff and studly you are. When
the rules or cards refer to your Level, capitalized, they mean this number.
You gain a level when you kill a monster, or when a card says that you do.
You can also sell Items to buy levels (see Items).

I'm going to ignore the buing of levels and "when a card says that you do" parts here, because they don't seem to be in constest. Here's what the rules say about how to gain Levels by killing monsters.
On Rewards:

When you kill a monster, you get one level per monster, unless the
monster card says something else, [...]

On Conflicts Between Cards and Rules

You go up a level after combat only if you kill a monster.

On Asking for Help

You level up for each slain monster. Your helper does not go up
any levels . . . unless the helper is an Elf, in which case they gain one level for each monster slain.

I'd say the rules are pretty clear on this one; going up a level has less to do with kicking down the door, and more to do with killing a monster (either by finding one when you kick down the door, or by "finding one" when you Look for Trouble. Also note that you can either Look For Trouble or Loot The Room
I guess your character is too busy searching every nook and cranny of the room for even the tinyest bit of treasure to do anything else untill your next turn.

"When you kill a monster, you get one level per monster".
This does not say there is no other way to level up.

"You go up a level after combat only if you kill a monster".
Again, this does not say after combat is the only time you can level up. The emphasis on "kill" suggests the point of this instruction is merely that surviving combat isn't enough to level.

In fact, killing monsters isn't the only way to level up, because you can, for example, buy levels, so I don't think it's fair to say the instructions are unambiguous on the point of my question.

"too busy searching every nook and cranny of the room".
Without entering said room?

@JordanMorris Generally, you can't expect the rules to exclude every situation where X doesn't happen. The rules give exactly three ways to gain levels; killing a monster, selling items, and when a card tells you to. They even clarify that you don't gain levels when helping or running away.

I believe you are mistaken as to what Levels represent. They don't represent your advancement through the dungeon/building, but your character's experience and skills.

"you can't expect the rules to exclude every situation where X doesn't happen", except they do this a lot, as you've pointed out, and given the analogies used for levels being rooms, and the actions implying entering these rooms in at least two ways, I doubt I'm the only person who has wondered this question

I didn't include the other ways to level up, because I didn't want to complicate the answer, but rather focus on the clearing of the room. Also, you seem to have fallen to the classic trap of the game-designers-lacking-a-thesaurus (though with Munchkin, this may actually be intentional joke) https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html


text:
Can the Pukka 1-shot the Fool?
In Blood on the Clocktower, the Fool is immune to their first death:

The first time you die, you don't.

This ability, like all abilities, goes away if the character is drunk or poisoned.
The Pukka's ability seems like it could potentially counteract the Fool:

Each night, choose a player: they are poisoned until tomorrow night, then die. You act on the first night.

While the Fool is poisoned, they are not immune to their first death. However, this wording of the Pukka's ability (specifically the "they are poisoned until tomorrow night, then die") is unclear - "until" and "then" make me think that perhaps when the Fool dies to the Pukka, they are not at that moment poisoned, and therefore their ability would trigger to prevent that first death.
With no other interactions involved, can the Pukka kill the Fool on their first attack?

Yes, it appears the fool can be killed without their ability working if targeted by the pukka

If Pukka is in play, nobody is safe. The Fool and the Sailor can not be protected by their character ability etc. Also, since the Pukka chooses who to kill a full night earlier than normal, it is beneficial for all good players to reveal their characters and information to the group publicly as soon as possible. Sometimes, with other Demons, it can be beneficial for some good players to not reveal who they are, so that the Demon attacks certain players and leaves others alone - but with the Pukka, this is not the case. Reveal everything, and work as a team to bring that pesky poisoner to justice!


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Does the Professor know who's dead?
In Blood on the Clocktower, the Professor can only target dead players with their ability:

Once per game, at night, choose a dead player: if they are a Townsfolk, they are resurrected.

The rules for Bad Moon Rising go so far as to say that the Storyteller will indicate when someone is not dead:

Unbeknownst to the Professor, that player was regurgitated by the Shabaloth and is now alive. The Storyteller shakes their head no, because the Professor must choose a dead player.

Does this imply that the Professor can know who just died, earlier in the same night?
We ran into a case where in the first day, nobody was executed, then that night the Grandmother died to the Demon. The Professor woke to potentially resurrect someone, but because nobody had been executed the first day and the night's deaths had not been announced, the Professor wasn't aware the Grandmother had died.
Should the Professor have been informed about the fresh corpse, to potentially resurrect them?

The Professor does not have any secret knowledge. Looking at The Professors rules in the linked PDF there's no indication that the Storyteller would ever tell The Professor when they wake up in the night if someone has died that same night.
The Professor only knows who is dead when Dawn arrives and the Storyteller lets the group know who, if anyone, has died. That's how The Professor gets their knowledge in the game. One of the last lines of The Professor examples has:

At dawn, after declaring which players died, declare which player is alive again.

Let's work with the example in the question:

Unbeknownst to the Professor, that player was regurgitated by the Shabaloth and is now alive. The Storyteller shakes their head no, because the Professor must choose a dead player.

The Shabaloth eats 2 players every night and may, the following night, regurgitate one of the two players. In the given example The Shabaloth eats 2 players and the following Dawn The Storyteller shares with the group that 2 players are dead.
This gives The Professor information on who the 2 dead players are, one of which they (The Professor) may resurrect the following night. Unfortunately, in the given example The Shabaloth goes before The Professor, regurgitating one of the players which changes their status to "alive". When it is The Professors turn they coincidentally choose the regurgitated player and the Storyteller must inform The Professor that the chosen player is not dead by giving them a head shake:

The Storyteller shakes their head no, because the Professor must choose a dead player.

In this instance, The Professor does get the knowledge of a player coming back to life specifically because:

The Professor can only choose dead players.
The player was dead the previous night and would be up for consideration.

The rules state in multiple places that The Professor must choose a dead player specifically. This means they have prior knowledge of who is considered dead players, even if that knowledge changes in the same night they resurrect.
I would consider the above example an edge case. Otherwise, The Professor could have a lucky guess one night and resurrect a dead player the same night they died which the rules do not touch on at all.

The above is my interpretation of the linked rules. The rules will not cover every edge case. When in doubt, The Storyteller will always have the final say.

This quote indicates the Professor gains some amount of "secret" knowledge not yet divulged to the group:
"Unbeknownst to the Professor, that player was regurgitated by the Shabaloth and is now alive. The Storyteller shakes their head no, because the Professor must choose a dead player." In this example, the Professor has learned, before dawn, that the living status of another player has changed.

@MagRoader I've expanded on my answer to include your example. While The Professor does have secret knowledge before dawn, once dawn hits that will be public knowledge to the whole town. The Storyteller would inform the town that Player XYZ is now alive though they will not explain the how or why.


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Does Scrabble alllow inflection and agglutination in various languages?
In English, words are pretty much independent dictionary units, though we do have "socks" alongside "sock", "agglomerator" alongside "agglomerate", and the like, but other languages have more flexibility in word variants.
In German, "little" can be kleiner, kleine, kleines, kleinen, kleinem; and "learn" can have 40 forms.
In Turkish,  evlerimden is made out of the parts ev-ler-im-den  and means "from my houses."
In Yupik, tuntussuqatarniksaitengqiggtuq means "He had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer."
(Of course, not all these necessarily have an official set of Scrabble rules, but they illustrate the variety that is possible.)
I ask because I want to play Scrabble in various languages like Hebrew or Yiddish where there are no official rules yet.
If you're familiar with non-English Scrabble: Are all possible forms of a word allowed in various language? Only a base form?

I'm French and yes, the French official scrabble dictionary contains all forms of all words. This makes some letters extremely valuable, for instance most words take an "s" in plural, so letter "s" can easily be added anywhere on the board.

The hard thing you'll have to do if you want to create a scrabble set in a new language is to determine the number of copies and value of each letter tile.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_letter_distributions#Hebrew for instance

Yes, all forms of a word are allowed, as long as they are "real" and not slang (but much slang becomes real after enough time & usage.)  That is fundamental to Scrabble. Hebrew has a far more interesting problem: vowels. Because vowels are not separate letters, a lot of words are much shorter than in other languages. Which could have significant effects on the number of Bingos and on game play in general.

Thank you @manassehkatz-moving-2-codidact. So in German, Turkish, and Yupik, in principle, all the above-mentioned would be allowed?

Yes. No reason not to allow the words.

@Stef -- Official Hebrew Scrabble has been sold for decades. So we have points and frequencies, which presumably are reasonable. But the rules in the box say nothing about conjugations, and attached prefixes  and suffixes (in Hebrew, some prepositions are attached so that the equivalent of "in water" for example, would  be "inwater", while "and your dog" would be "anddogyour". So I a trying to figure whether to allow those, and I guess the answer is yes.

This supports that approach https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/25243

In most languages, all the inflected forms are allowed.
However, the Swedish Scrabble Federation's rules state:

Endast fetstilta ord i SAOL är tillåtna. Reglerna som följer med
spelet säger att endast grundformer är tillåtna.

"Only the bold words in Svenska Akademiens Ordlista are allowed. The rules that are supplied with the game say that only base forms are allowed."


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MTG: Blocking with multiple units
New MTG player here and this is driving me nuts. How does the following work in magic the gathering?
Scenario 1: A player attacks with a 2/2 creature. The opposing player blocks with 3, 1/1 units. Do all 1/1 units die? Does the 2/2 also die? Do al 3, 1/1 units deal damage?
Scenario 2: A player attacks with a 2/2 creature. The opposing player blocks with 3, 1/2 units. Do all 1/2 units die? Does the 2/2 also die? Do al 3, 1/2 units deal damage?
Scenario 3: A player attacks with a 2/2 creature. The opposing player blocks with 3, 1/3 units. Do the 1/3 units survive? Does the 2/2 also die? Do al 3, 1/3 units deal damage?
Don't think about why you want to do this. I just want to know the rules for this :).

Have you read the "Attacking and Blocking" section of "How to Play"?

A good thing to remember is that each creature deals total damage equal to its power. When an attacking creature is blocked by more than one creature, it deals its damage distributed as you choose among its blockers (note that it must assign lethal damage to each blocker before assigning damage to the next). Each blocking creature deals its damage to the attacker.
Remember: all damage is dealt at the same time!
To answer your scenarios:
Scenario 1: No more than two* 1/1 blocking creatures will die, and the 2/2 will die (it gets dealt 3 damage, 1 from each).
Scenario 2: Exactly one 1/2 blocker will die, and the 2/2 will also die.
Scenario 3: All 1/3 blockers will survive, because 2 damage is not lethal to any of them. The 2/2 also dies.
*Note that the attacking player may wish to assign all damage to first blocker, killing only one

It's also worth noting that the attacking player chooses the order that the blocking creatures get dealt damage, so in scenario 1, for example, the attacker gets to choose which two of the blockers will die.


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Why can I no longer find the "Big Deal" card game under that name?
Why can't I find the card game "BIG DEAL"? I used to have it several years ago but can't find it anywhere since? It had cards with images of different valuables a person might own- 'Gold bars' 'cash under mattress' 'stamp collection' etc. Were there legal issues?

I’m voting to close this question because we can't answer why a game is no longer for sale.

@JoeW There certainly are games where we can answer that question e.g. Ankh-Morpork is out of print because of a licensing dispute between Pratchett's estate and the publisher.

@philip-kendall Yes! that's almost exactly it, though I'm baffled as to why the game under the old name just doesn't turn up any results. Legal stuff?

@bensvensson changing this to "where can I buy" makes this 100% off topic; I'd suggest you revert the edit if you want any chance of it being reopened.

@philipkendall thanks. Gosh being new here is hard There's so much to know before anything. Golly, okay I suppose reverting the question would be best.

@bensvensson welcome aboard, regardless! It takes a bit to adjust to SE's format, since it is different from most (all?) other online forums. Hope you stick around.

This game is now known as Cover Your Assets and is readily available in 2023. Based on the publishing history on BoardGameGeek, my hypothesis is that is was renamed when the publisher changed from Schmidt Spiele to Grandpa Beck's Games in around 2018.


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Does promotion in Checkers end a turn?
I've been playing checkers for quite some time. Recently a question arose which puzzled both of us:

Can white move along the red line, i.e. eat the first black checker, reach the end, gain promotion, and then keep moving and eat two more checkers, or does promotion end the turn, with white remaining at the end?
I suppose the variant I play matches closest with English draughts, just with white starting.

You need to be specific about exactly which variant of "checkers" you are playing as there are many, many variants which have different rules.

@philip-kendall Done. Thanks. Gosh, I had no idea there were THAT many!

Since the board you're showing is 12x12, wouldn't it be Canadian checkers? Canadian checkers follow the same rules as International checkers (10x10), meaning the piece will not be crowned but continues on to capture the other pieces.

@dennis-e You're quite right, however, I found some random online checkers game to illustrate the problem, that isn't the size board I play with. I'll edit accordingly.

Admittedly without citation, the Wikipedia page for English draughts states:

If a man moves into the kings row or if it jumps into the kings row, the current move terminates; the piece is crowned as a king but cannot jump back out as in a multi-jump until the next move.

The same "turn ends" rule can be found in e.g. the WCDF Rules available from the American Checker Federation.


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Can a Speed roll count as a Might attack?
My friends and I disagreed playing the zombie attack of Haunt 21.
The rules say that zombies are only killed by attacks from Might weapons. Any other attacks will only stun them.
Some people say that since Speed and Might are both Physical attacks, a Speed attack counts as a Might attack and will kill the zombies.
Specifically, the Revolver says to use a Speed roll "instead of" a Might roll. So we couldn't agree on whether a Revolver would kill a zombie or stun it.
Can anybody weigh in on the specific case of whether a Revolver kills Zombies or, more generally, whether Speed rolls should count as Might rolls?

When you say role do you mean roll? If so, could you please update the question? As non-native speaker I find it difficult to make sense of it otherwise.

Yes, it should say "roll".

No, the Revolver cannot kill a zombie.
Speed and Might are 2 completely separate traits, and neither ever counts as the other. Same with Sanity and Intelligence. The fact that there is a higher category called "physical traits" doesn't matter. After all, Intelligence and Might both belong to a higher category called "traits" also.
The rules say specifically:

You can destroy a Zombie by defeating it in
combat with any weapon that requires a
Might attack.

The revolver does not require a Might attack; it requires a Speed attack.


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Does a card moving from Exile to Exile count as being moved?
I know the Commander replacement effect allows you to move your Commander to the Command Zone if it would be exiled or put into its owner's hand, graveyard or library from anywhere.
My question is if you flicker (exile and return) your commander with the likes of Venser, the Sojourner (without sending it to the command zone then so it returns at the end step) and your opponent casts a spell to Exile anything that would enter (e.g. Hallowed Moonlight), does that count as your Commander moving from Exile to Exile, thus allowing you to apply the replacement effect, or would your Commander be stuck in exile?

I would think that if the Hallowed Moonlight moves the commander to Exile, the replacement effect would still allow you to move him back to the Zone. As essentially it should mean "anywhere it says Exile, return to hand, Destroy... so on and so fourth, move to the commander Zone instead." so you should be able to move him back. However I'm not too sure as I have not played Commander before.

You can also apply the commander replacement effect to the first instance of exiling from Venser.  By the time Venser's ability resolves, you will have the full information of whether or not Hallowed Moonlight is in effect.

Hallowed Moonlight instructs you to exile. This is what the replacement effect in question replaces.

903.11. If a commander would be exiled from anywhere or put into its owner’s hand, graveyard, or library from anywhere, its owner may put it into the command zone instead. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event. This is an exception to rule 614.5.

As such, you may indeed return the Commander to the Command zone, even if the instruction would otherwise have done nothing at all.
As confirmation, 406.7 does presume than an exiled object can be exiled.

406.7. If an object in the exile zone becomes exiled, it doesn’t change zones, but it becomes a new object that has just been exiled.

406.7 is what I was looking for, because I wasn't sure if Exiling from Exile had an effect.

It implies that something "moving" from exile to exile becomes a new exiled object. Which would then give me the chance to send it to the command zone.

No, the fact that you were instructed to exile it is what gives you the chance, not the fact that it became a new object.

Fair enough. 406.7 is what stopped me from being confused about it.

Interesting that 406.7 and 400.8 are almost identical with the only difference being "is/becomes"

@Ivo there's a lot of duplication or restatements in the MtG CR in different sections that would care about the same thing in different ways. though this is probably the slightest difference I've ever seen.

@Andrew damn, you're responding to a comment I made 9 years ago

@Ivo Yesterday's edit brought the question to my attention XD

Answering my own question here, just figured it out:
Rule 400.8 says:
If an object in the exile zone is exiled, it doesn't change zones, but it becomes a new object that has just been exiled.
I seems this does give the player the chance to send their Commander to the Command Zone as a replacement effect.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Can radiant pokemon count as rule box?
Is it true that Radiant Pokémon are counted as "rule box Pokémon"?

Radiant Pokémon are rule box pokemon, because they have a rule box that reads "Radiant Pokémon Rule".  For example, Radiant Greninja:

You can see the "Radiant Pokémon Rule" just below the picture of the Pokémon.
This is further clarified in the Pokémon TCG Rulebook in appendix 5:

All Radiant Pokémon appear with their special Shiny coloration and have the Radiant Pokémon Rule, which says you can’t have more than 1 Radiant Pokémon in your deck. A Radiant Pokémon is considered a Pokémon with a Rule Box. Note that “Radiant” is part of the Pokémon’s name, so your deck could include 4 Greninja and 1 Radiant Greninja. Radiant Pokémon are always Basic Pokémon and do not evolve from or into any other card.

(Bolding added)

Yes, some of the Radiant Pokémon are Rule Box Pokémon.
Rule Box refers to any Pokémon that has a text box that says the word “rule,” such as “V rule” or “TAG TEAM rule.”  If your radiant Pokémon has that, it is rule Box one.
Here is the list of Pokémon that are considered to have a Rule Box:

Pokémon V

Pokémon VMAX

Pokémon-GX

Prism Star Pokémon

TAG TEAM Pokémon

Pokémon-EX

Mega Evolution Pokémon

Pokémon BREAK

Ugh, this is a chatGPT answer.  Very close to correct, but very chatGPT.

@Joe i can assure you, no chatGPT was involved in the process of answering it.

That's ... very disappointing, then.  It's inaccurate, in any event; Radiant Pokemon are a particular kind of card, and all of them are rule box pokemon (they're sort of similar to Prism Star pokemon).  I'll be honest, though, I don't believe you: posting a link to a 2021 article (in chatGPT's timeframe) and failing to understand from context that Radiant Pokemon are a specific thing (which again from 2021 before they existed, ChatGPT wouldn't) seems very much like it's LLM... and if not you just googled "rule box pokemon" and pasted the first link from google, which isn't much better.

Please see the edit that was made to the post itself. The original answer was just the first two paragraphs

That doesn't make your answer any more correct or any less just "google and paste first response without understanding it", though... it's still largely incorrect and outdated.


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Theoretically Optimal Bridge System (In the mathematical sense)
I'm wondering from a mathematical perspective, what the best theoretically possible bridge system is.
I know this is a bit of a muddy question, such as what systems are allowed, and what criteria best is, so I'll try to rigorously define it.
In human terms, "Bidding must be deterministic, but may be defensive. Try to maximize IMPs." (To keep things simple, assume hands are scored using doubly dummy analysis, but this could be extended to include information given during the bidding in gameplay.)
To be mathematically precise:
Find a system S*, so that for all systems S, and summing over all possible bridge hands, the total sum of IMP(Table(S*, S, S*, S), Table(S, S*, S, S*)) >= 0.
Wherein a system is defined as a function that takes as input:

The current game state. (Specifically, the vulnerability, the bid, the declarer, and how many passes until end of bidding.)
A bridge hand.
For each of the four players, the set of bridge hands that player is representing.

And gives as output:

A legal bid, including pass.

For instance, a player playing Standard American is first to bid, and they pick up AQJ6c 9d K632h Q984s.
Then, we apply the function
SA(No sides vulnerable, no bid, 4 more passes to end auction, hand = AQJ6c 9d K632h Q984s, {all possible hands}, {all possible hands}, {all possible hands}, {all possible hands})
This evaluates to 1c.
Then, the next player playing the optimal system S*, and picking up hand H, would apply to get their bid:
S*(No sides vulnerable, 1c by E, 3 more passes to end auction, hand = H, {all possible hands SA would bid 1c with}, {all possible hands}, {all possible hands}, {all possible hands})
Note that if the first person was instead playing precision, their bid would instead be:
S*(No sides vulnerable, 1c by E, 3 more passes to end auction, hand = H, {all possible hands Precision would bid 1c with}, {all possible hands}, {all possible hands}, {all possible hands})
which may or may not be the same bid.
This problem is difficult: there are 52C13 possible bridge hands. That means there are 2^(52C13) sets of bridge hands. The number of systems, which takes sets of bridge hands as input, is much larger than that. It's likely that even if S* were found, it would be too difficult to use in practice.
EDIT:
I would like to clarify:
I'm asking about the optimal system, from a game theoretic perspective. "Depends on what system your opponent is using." makes sense when you talk about systems from a human standpoint, but is a non-answer in the game theoretic sense.
To use an analogy from chess. From a human perspective, a strategy is something like "castle early, protect your king", which is great against "go for a quick checkmate", but less great against "prioritize development".
From a game theory perspective, a strategy is something like: "If white, open d4. If black, and white's first move is a3, open e5. If white's first move is a4, ..." (due to combinatorial explosion, a complete strategy wouldn't even fit in a library)
There is an optimal strategy, which does not depend on the opponent's strategy, because the definition of "strategy" includes responses to all possible opponent moves.
(Note that if you were to score a strategy by time to mate, the optimal strategy would not be maximally exploitative; but it would be unexploitable.)
Take the example of a maximally constructive and artificial system, A. Now, modify A so that it plays more destructively, and call it A+. It should be uncontroversial that A+ is +EV against A. One may point out that A++, which is more destructive than A+, is +EV against +A, and from there, it's a race to the bottom. But of course it has to stop somewhere: a maximally destructive system would always bid 7NT, and that's clearly not a winning strategy. Where does it stop?
One may claim that it depends on the opponent's system, but again, see the definition of system used above: a system function is allowed to output different values for the same bids, if the bid represents a different subset of the 52C13 possible bridge hands.
(There is some real life basis in this as well: players will overcall more aggressively against artificial systems than natural systems.)

Barring significant advances in general purpose AI, I don't think this is a problem with a meaningful solution.

The reason this is unanswerable is that the optimum bidding system - from a single partnership perspective - is to bid more destructively than your opponents can or will choose to do. Just look at the history of EHAA (Every Hand An Adventure) like systems in the 1960's and 1970's that, gradually, led to the proliferation of bidding restrictions now in place world-wide.
The reason, in turn, for the above is that bidding systems are a Prisoners' Dilemma game-theoretic situation. It's always advantageous to back-stab the other Prisoners (by adopting a more destructive bidding system than opponents);,as long as they can't back-stab back. So Rules Promulgation authorities have chosen to retain bidding systems, even at the highest level, because they view this as necessary for the long term financial success of the game.
On the constructive side, the optimum bidding system is completely artificial - but assumes and requires opponents will never make even the mildest of destructive calls, such as opening sound pre-empts or weak twos, or making  sound weak jump overcalls.
Thus some degree of destructive bidding must be required, to cripple totally artificial bidding systems, while still banning totally destructive bidding systems so as to facilitate the long-term survival of the game. It's a tight-wire that has largely been walked successfully so far.

Thanks for answering. The response does not quite answer my question (I've edited my question to clarify), but it's still helpful: that from empirical evidence, the optimal bidding system, is at least sufficiently destructive to threaten the long term financial success of the game, hence the restrictions in modern bridge. (Also, new to this site. Should I accept this? It doesn't answer the question, but it might be the most helpful answer I will end up getting.)

@HanGuo: I won't object to having this accepted - but don't feel rushed to do so. It's well understood that questions without an accepted answer get more attention; so if you opt to wait a few days, or even longer, that is not unusual.

Strongly disagree about EHAA - it is an incredibly aggressive system, but while it did cause some regulation in the ACBL (and from there to the world), it clearly wasn't the trigger for this (as shown by the fact that EHAA played by the book and never "upgraded" is legal for the 0-5 game and for world championships, unlike...) - it was the fall into "fully dominant" systems.  WBF HUMs, basically: Strong pass systems and "shortness or length" opening bid systems.  Your point clearly stands - but as a player, I need to push back on the "EHAA Is illegal and all its players are c-words" stories...

@Mycroft: Your words - and not words (or names) I would use in this reference. I use EHAA as an examplar for the class of destructive bidding systems such as you mention not because it is the worst, but because it is the best known from the era when I played several times a week. I'm not sure the EHAA you reference is the same as was played in the early 70's, where a small number of players definitely used it as an excuse for maliciously destructive bidding. I learned bridge in 1963, from a Goren/Sheinwold AutoBridge set, and was an avid duplicate player from 1972 until 2009.

Absolutely agree - there were many who played EHAA "the way they wanted" ("10"-12 NTs on average 9s) even after regulations that prohibited it - they're the classic for "if you play right to the legal line, you don't get to use judgement and cross it". But the system itself didn't lead to much (sure. "minimum 10 HCP for NTs", but others played that) regulation.  It truly was the Strong Pass (and Little Major, and Suspensor) that went "too far" - even played "as described" it was "too difficult to defend, even at top level". Not that they didn't have "disclosure issue" stories, either...

If that's what you mean by "stories about...", then fine.  My "story about" EHAA was playing it in the NABC Mixed in Chicago, and having the DIC of the event come up to me and tell me "you can play it, but you can't call it EHAA.  We've had 3 queries on it already".  In 2015.  It's Not The System, it was the players insisting "their judgement" should allow them to bypass the rules (never happens now, though /s).  And there is a huge difference between "we preempt on 50% of hands, but we do pass with 1HCP" and "we bid 1[he] on all 0-7; pass shows strength", IMO not in the same class at all.

I strongly disagree with the above statement. To say that “from a single partnership perspective - is to bid more destructively than your opponents can or will choose to do” is a very one-sided view without any firm theoretical backing.
It is possible to create systems that balance aggression and constructiveness simultaneously. The theoretical basis for such systems has been laid out in the seminal book on the subject (also mostly forgotten and unknown), The Weak Opening Systems by Lukasz Slawinski.
Slawinski points out the main weaknesses of popular systems, the primary one being that most popular systems use a traditional and “common sense” strength for opening bids, rather than the most common strength.
Slawinski notes that the most common five-point range is 8-12 HCP, and most opening bids should be used to show this range.
He also demonstrates how much information each opening bid should carry, clearly showing that traditional systems are quite incorrect in this respect. It can be shown that each bid can carry an amount of information equal to the sum of the two previous bids. Let’s say we play a system that uses relay bids and can show the exact hand shape by 3NT.
Clearly, 3NT can carry only one meaning as we cannot relay over it. The same goes for 3S; we cannot relay over it. 3H can have one meaning as well - we can relay with 3S, but there is only one answer. 3D can have two meanings - we can relay with 3H and get two answers. 3C can have three meanings, 2NT can have five meanings, etc. (a meaning in this context is one bit of information being the exact hand shape in a specified HCP range).
The number of possible meanings for each bid should look familiar to anyone with even a fleeting interest in mathematics:
3NT - 1
3S - 1
3H - 1
3D - 2
3C - 3
2NT - 5
2S - 8
2H - 13
2D - 21
2C - 34
From a game theory point of view, the best bidding system should open the most frequent hands as often as possible, and all opening bids should carry the maximum information based on the Fibonacci series shown above.
A number of such systems were developed, mainly a whole bunch of Weak Opening Systems (commonly but incorrectly known as Strong Pass Systems), but they failed for two main reasons:
They were almost immediately classified as HUM (highly unusual methods) and were so strictly regulated that they were essentially banned. People who were used to the so-called traditional methods simply refused to accept such ideas.
Playing such systems places a much bigger memory and mental strain on their users. It takes a lot more to learn such complex, usually relay-based systems, especially for casual players.
The other important part of a “mathematically perfect” system is to use relatively high openings as often as possible. For example, from a simple mathematical point of view, it makes more sense to play, say, Multi 2D as showing 8-12 HCP (55% chance) than, say, 4-10 (30% chance despite being a seven-point range). It would also make more sense to use 2D as showing both majors at least 4-4 than showing a six-card major (about twice as likely).
To reiterate my answer: the best “mathematical system” should use bids that are as frequent as possible, at as high a level as possible, and each bid should carry close to its theoretical maximum information load.

To give the other answer credit: as you say, it's not the "strong pass" that's the problem, nor is it the 8-12s; it's the "weak opening".  And if people were willing to play a 1♣ fert, I'd say "go for it".  But they don't.  And instead of one call showing "weak hand" (pass), now there's 5 (yes, I've seen a 2♣ fert), and separate defences have to be created and tested for each.  That was what was deemed too difficult, until you got to KOs of world championships.  Is that a little too high?  I think so.  Australians and Poles don't.