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How can I best assess the quality of a game of Scrabble?
As a child, I played Scrabble with my grandmother. At the end of each game, she would tally the total score (i.e. both players' combined), and consider the game a good one if the total was high, a worse game it was lower.

Is that a common way to determine whether a game of Scrabble is good? Is it the common way?
Are there any other common ways to determine a good game? (Perhaps — and, as a novice player, I'm just guessing — number of bingos, number n-ple-word squares covered by tiles, how many times the expensive tiles were used (across and down or just once), how many tiles were left unused at the end, how many squares were used along the edges of the board, vel sim.)

Either of those may depend on the level of play, in which case I'd like to know answers both for the novice level I played her at and for more advanced levels.

@closers - After editing, and in light of the answers provided, I don't agree that this is "primarily opinion-based". Please feel free to raise this on meta if you feel strongly, so we can discuss the boundary in more detail.

there isn't a good or a bad game of scrabble. There is simply a winner and a loser

Another measure of a good Scrabble game, used amongst serious tournament players: equity points loss. Let me explain.
As another commenter highlighted, sometimes strategy determines that you should play defensively and get lower score instead, in which case high-score may not measure how well the player plays (if that's your definition of good/quality, as opposed to excitement). Similarly, a game where a player has lousy tiles but played well given the circumstances may score lower than one where a player has abundance of easy bingos and can afford to miss one or two good plays and still win.
If what you want to measure if how well the player plays, one other way is to benchmark it against the theoretical best play. Usually what is used is the play made by a powerful Scrabble-playing software in similar circumstances. This is a common practice amongst serious Scrabble tournament players who are trying improve their play quality.
A couple of popular software that can be used for this are Quackle and Elise. I personally use Quackle so my explanation will be based on that, but the same concept applies for all software (and Elise plays better, albeit slower, than Quackle).
What I do is I will key in the racks (i.e. the 7 letters held by a player) for every turn, and also the actual move played, into Quackle. I will ask Quackle to also choose its optimum play (or list of possible plays, ranked in descending order from the best). Quackle can then run a simulation on what happens for the various plays, and calculate the equity point for each move.
Equity point is the nett point for a move, instead of the score itself. By nett point usually it means the score, minus the score of the opponent's reply, plus my score for the next move. This will account for both defence (reducing opponent's score) and tactics (sacrificing current score for me to score bigger next move). Since Quackle can calculate equity points for all moves, I can then compare the equity difference between my move and Quackle's best move. The number of equity point my move is lower than Quackle's best move's equity point, is the equity loss. The lower the equity loss, the better the play was. Sum up the equity loss for each play, and you have the equity loss for the whole game.
A 0 equity loss means a perfectly-played game (even if it's one which is lost to an opponent with better luck in that particular game). This is rare but has been achieved by a few top-flight players. I myself would be very happy with an equity loss below 50 for a whole game. To give a bit of a sense, missing a bingo can easily lead to equity loss of 50 in a single move. Similarly, failing to restrict opponent from scoring an extra 5 points each turn may add up over the 10 moves to be a 50 point loss (not accounting yet for suboptimal scoring on my part).
There are two flaws to this approach of benchmarking against a software:

it assumes the software used plays a perfect game. They don't - Elise
is better than Quackle, for example, and occasionally top players
have identified a better move than the software can (typically for
very unorthodox situations). But by and large, it's safe to say vast
majority of the times, measuring loss of equity is a good indication
of quality of play in a Scrabble game.
it takes effort to get the figure. One must key in the information
into a software to do its calculation. Serious players may put in the
effort, but casual players won't have this information and may prefer
a measure that can be seen at a glance (e.g. score).

I always thought a good game was one that was fun!

The quality of a game is not determined by the height or depth of the total score. A great example is a soccer match where the total score is 25 goals. Obviously, one or both teams did not know how to play defense very well. Does 25 goals indicate that the game was good? Not necessarily.
Let's examine a three games where we got a total score of 25.

One team scores 25 points and the other scores 0
One team scores 12 points in a row, and then the other scores 13 in a row
One team scores 13 points and the other scores 12, but the scores are interwoven

If we judge on total score, all three games are of equal quality. Obviously the first game is not a quality game, because one team was stomped and the other was not given a challenge. What are some other ways to measure quality? Let's try these metrics:

Closeness of the scores of each player at the end of the game
Closeness of the scores of each player throughout the game
The strategy and/or tactics of each player

A strategy of saving useful tiles may lead to a lower beginning score, but a large payoff at the end. A more aggressive strategy of grabbing points when you can may nab you the win, but you may be surpassed by a more patient player. My conclusion is that the quality of a game is based on closeness of the final score and the strategies each player employed to get there.

A commentator asked that I provide ideas on measuring good strategy. I can only provide a lower bound, as well as some additional notes.

A player who mulligans his hand repeatedly until losing, or simply concedes every game as soon as it starts, has employed the absolute worst strategy
A perfect players employs the absolute best strategy

All strategies in between are subjectively good or bad. Often in Chess, strategy employed in a game is reviewed by panels of experts. Books are written about good strategy in Scrabble. The strategy of a professional Scrabble player is probably good. The quality of a game between a guy and his grandmother may be undeterminable if neither player possesses expert knowledge on good Scrabble strategy, and a panel of experts is not available.

This seems a rather poor answer to the asked question about Scrabble.

@EricWilson Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

I guess I'm not as grumpy as I am baffled. What, soccer? What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

@EricWilson It's called an analogy. Scrabble is a game where you score points. Soccer is a game where you score points. You can judge the quality of a Scrabble game the same way that you judge the quality of a Soccer game. You cannot judge the quality of the price of tea in China in the same way that you judge the quality of a Scrabble game.

I guess my point is that I don't think that Scrabble and soccer are very comparable, once you get past the fact that, as you say, they are both games with points. Moreover, I don't think that your answer establishes much similarity beside this extremely superficial similarity.

It's called an analogy. Why you gotta be that way? :)

@EricWilson "Aside from the similarities you have established, you have not established any similarities." Your argument is tautological.

I'm afraid I'm with @EricWilson here. You have established that there is at least one game in which total score is a poor measure of quality. Equally, I could give examples in which total score is a near-perfect measure of quality (e.g. archery). Scrabble lies somewhere in between, but I would argue much closer to the archery end of the spectrum. Your answer really does very little to take the peculiarities of the game of Scrabble into account.

@user2390246 Archery is essentially a solo game, where you compete with yourself. A higher score means you did better. Scrabble isn't a solo game. A higher score doesn't mean you did better. Your opponent could have opened a line for you in order to make a high score himself. Likewise, your opponent could make sacrifices in order to close off high scoring lines. A close score probably indicates that the skill levels were close. Close skill levels make for a good game.

But even two poor players might finish the game with very close scores so the closeness of the game tells you nothing about how well anyone played. The other criterion of strategy, as you point out, is nebulous and seems like a rephrasing of the question. It indicates that the quality of a game of Scrabble is determined by the quality of the players' strategies, which you suggest is subjective. This answer basically boils down to "the quality of a Scrabble game is determined by how well the players play", or simply "the quality of a Scrabble game is subjective", which is rather uninformative.

All of those suggestions you proffer for judging the quality of a game are excellent ones. Remarkably, an extremely accurate mechanism for weighting them all appropriately, so as to correctly assess the total quality of a game, has already been invented.
Surprisingly, this mechanism ha been around since the game's inception, and is in fact a fundamental component of the game.
It is called the score.
Yes, just go back to your grandmother's knee and accept her worldly wisdom. By definition, the quality of each participant's play has already been judged, weighted by defensive and offensive maneuvers, and use of board bonuses and bingoes, and calculated to be their score on each play. Adding them up is in fact the way to judge the quality of a game.

Very well expressed, but still missing a point. Two experts playing defensively will have a much lower combined score than two novices who don't know/care what opportunities they open up for the opponent; would you really say the latter was a better game?

@TimLymington: Absolutely! A key difference between an expert and a novice is the ability to score even with bad letters and a closed board. Watching that process is a thing of beauty itself.

Here is another interesting thing Nigel Richards perhaps the best Scrabble ever, has at the time or writing played 2549 internationally rated games. He has scored more than 300 in all but 10 of them. It's more than likely that in those 10 games he had sequences of incredibly bad racks. His average per game is 461.37 and average against him is 390.26 which makes up approximately 852 points per game.
How do more mortal players stack up? The current #8 rated David Eldar manages 442.95 per game and against him it's 401.08 he has gone past 300 , 98.7% of the time.
300 is a good benchmark. In my country the national scrabble league only allows players with an average score of more than 300 to take part in certain tournaments.

My daughter & I have a weekly "tournament". This weekend I won 8-2, but sometimes she comes out ahead. But the key benchmark we use is exactly this: We treat any score below 300 as "horrid". Gradually working up our averages, but 300 is a good breakpoint for "good vs. bad game".

Yes, total score is a good way to assess the quality of a scrabble game.
In fact, in the instructions for an old scrabble set that my parents have, this method is specifically recommended. I can't remember all the cut-offs, but they say that a points-total of 700 or over represents an excellent game (presumably in the context of casual, home play).
Why is this an effective measure? If you add up the points on all the tiles in a scrabble set, there are a total of 187. So this is the absolute minimum total score achievable (in practice a bit higher, since it is impossible to avoid scoring some tiles twice when adding words to the board). Players use their skill to get "added value" out of their tiles. They can do this by the use of bonus squares, perhaps targeted specifically at their high-scoring tiles, by scoring letters more than once (e.g. adding an S to existing words on the board), and by getting 50-point bingo bonuses. In general, the greater the skill of the players, the more value they will be able to add to the base score of their tiles.
As @TimLymington mentions, the measure is not perfect, since a good defensive player may be able to restrict their opponent's score. But in my experience this contributes only a small amount to the flow of high-standard games, since expert players are able to make good plays out of all but the worst situations. The more complex method described by @Ricky provides one way of, at least partially, taking this into account, but is clearly considerably more difficult to apply, and adding up a total score is a good approximation.
Note also that of the other possible measures that are suggested in the original question, most do in fact contribute to the final points score, and so are also useful, but coarser measures.


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Playing Settlers of Catan with a D12 instead of 2D6
Has anyone tried this?
Does it break the game?
Does it make it easier/quicker?
Assuming a 1 gave no resources to anyone and a 7 still invoked the robber how different a game would this make Settlers?

Significantly.  The thing about 2d6 is that you've got a range of numbers that have a certain probability of them showing up.
When you're rolling 2d6, your available numbers are 2-12.  You're dropping off the number 1.  Also, you have an escelating scale of percentage probability.  2's and 12's will happen 2.77% of the time (each).  3's and 11's will happen 5.55% of the time.  4's and 10's happen 8.33% of the time.  5's and 9's happen 11.11% of the time.  6's and 8's will happen 13.88% of the time.  And 7's will happen 16.66% of the time.
Result    Rolls with a 2d6        ≠  Rolls with a 1d12
------------------------------------------------------
 1        (impossible)                1
 2        1+1                         2
 3        1+2 2+1                     3
 4        1+3 2+2 3+1                 4
 5        1+4 2+3 3+2 4+1             5
 6        1+5 2+4 3+3 4+2 5+1         6
 7        1+6 2+5 3+4 4+3 5+2 6+1     7
 8        2+6 3+5 4+4 5+3 6+2         8
 9        3+6 4+5 5+4 6+3             9
10        4+6 5+5 6+4                10
11        5+6 6+5                    11
12        6+6                        12

As you can see, the closer you get to 7, the greater chances you have of something on those hex's from happening.  Because of this, the game has been weighted so that certain places will not show up as often as others.  That's part of the resource management and placement.  It's what makes the game interesting.
By using a 1d12, you have two things working against you.  One, you have a dead number that you won't be using.  And two, each other number will only show up 8.33% of the time (as much as 4's and 10's used to show up).  And they all have the same chance, so strategy would be very different.  I would think it would make it a whole new game.

One way to alleviate the dead number is to have the robber pop up when either 1 or 7 is rolled.

@JoeZeng Interestingly, that would lead to exactly the same odds (1 in 6) as in the 2d6 case...

Exactly why I proposed it. However, the other numbers would still be even.

First thing is, that it would make the numbers more or less unimportant, since they all have the same probability now (that of 4 or 10 before). This means good building spots are nothing you have to fight for anymore. Settlements will be more spread out from the beginning, because a starting settlement with a 2 or 12 is no problem anymore. So there will be more space for building.
Another effect of equal probabilities is, that you would not have important and unimportant settlements anymore. So it might take more time until buying your first city pays off.
More important on the long run is, that no resources can be scarce just because all of their fields have bad numbers in your variant. This probably makes all games the same, since differences in the island layout do not matter much anymore.
In the rules as you suggested them there will also be more cards in the game. You reduced the probability for the robber and (more importantly) for halving the cards from 1/6 to 1/12. This means having many cards is likely to go unpunished. Better use 1 and 7 for the robber events.
But if you really want to find out: Just try it! And maybe report the results here...

In my house, we only ever play with a d12. We combine it with a number of different house rules. I don't like sleeping on the couch, so my house doesn't use the robber. Instead on a 7, you simply grab any one card from the bank. You can use it for a robber if you want to though, for sure. But once we started with the d12, we never went back to 2d6.
On a 1, you get a development card. Why? Because we need something cool for the 1, and development cards didn't see as much play in our style. This also means that you get an extra card of some kind on exactly 1/6th of the rolls, which is the same chance of rolling a 7 with 2d6. What you do with 1 and 7 is up to you. I recommend experimenting, as there is a lot of design space available.
We always play with the 'roll again on doubles' house rule. (Or is it an official rule? I forget, they're all such a blur!) With a d12 there are no doubles, of course, so we use the 2 and 12 for doubles. This again makes for 1/6th of the rolls being doubles, the same with 2d6. This changes strategy slightly, as stacking on 2 and 12 can give you massive chain-rolls. Of course, you stand the same chance to have a drought for a while any time you stack numbers, so it balances it out.
The obvious big change is that there's less interest in 5,6,8,9. It allows you to balance your picks based on what you need, not just what the numbers are. It also reduces crowding around the 6 and 8 (and to a lesser extent 5 and 9, as expected). Because of the lower crowding, there is more room to grow uninterrupted. This leads to games with longer roads and faster expansions (made even faster by having equally good choices on whatever resources you need), and ultimately faster games. This wasn't planned when we started doing it, it just happened that way.

Interesting house rules. This could be a good way to make the game more fun. I'll have to propose this next time our game group tries Catan.

"Instead on a 7, you simply grab any one card from the bank." Do you still play with the "discard half your resources if you have more than seven", though? I know some house rule variants that don't play with this.

@Joe we don't because we usually play right before bed and we don't like being mad right before bed! Isn't that just silly? :-) We don't use that rule, but there's no reason you couldn't. We also didn't play with that rule using 2d6 though, which is why I didn't include it. It wasn't until we started using a d12 that we decided to split "the resource on 7, development on 1" into separate mechanics, which is why I did include it.

So if you don't use the robber, what do Soldiers do?

@AlexP Provide you with the largest army? I guess there would be no incentive to keep them in your hand though.

@Alex they act as if a 7 or a 1 is rolled, so you can either use them to get a new development card or 1 of any resource. The main reason we allow a new dev card is from -another- house rule that if you flip over a tile (another house rule, all tiles start face down) and it's a water tile, you get a dev card for that. So we have this game that uses the pieces from Settlers and we call it Settlers :-)

Hooray for violating the integrity of board games!

@Joe Actually we've ensured the game remains balanced. It's different, to be sure, but we've objectively removed elements of the game that turned us off so that we can continue to enjoy the game. We wanted to avoid the whole "money in the middle" thing. You'd think having lots of money in a Monopoly game makes it more fun, but it changes things much more than it seems. We didn't want to ruin Settlers like that, so we made sure the game stays balanced as we changed rules.

I actually meant it lightly (with an implied XD), but I suppose you could explain yourself as well.

Obviously if this works for you, then great, but in my opinion what you're playing isn't Settlers of Catan anymore, so I don't feel like this is a very helpful answer.

We've used the d12 several times, and I enjoy the change of pace. When using the d12, we've always treated the one as equivalent to the seven. That seemed like the most obvious choice. The idea of picking up a development card is intriguing.
We have the event card expansion that is intended to replace dice. It's goal is to keep the probability curve similar to the 2d6 game play while smoothing out streaks. Within a given shuffle you'll eventually hit all the numbers. It also adds earthquake events that just serve to extend game play. Overall when trying to simplify the game i prefer using the d12 to the event cards.
The strategy with the d12 becomes more about settling on the resource types you need for your preferred style of play and possibly competing for ports instead of just competing for the numbers that come up the most often. It greatly decreases the chance for one player to get into a situation where they're really not competing with everyone else. I don't think it diminishes the fun of the game at all.

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How can we keep Ren Faire fresh?
After you've played Ren Faire with the same group for a while, the performance requirements seem old.  All of us have had to bellydance, act like a hyper kid, etc, etc.  I suppose we could crank out some more ideas for performances, but I'm wondering how others have kept it fresh.
How do you keep the performances from being "same old thing?"

This sounds like a job for peer pressure.  Perhaps the other players should have to vote on whether any particular performance is sufficient, with an understanding that doing the same old thing won't suffice.  Sing a new song, make up some new bellydance move, improvise a new reason for a tantrum... if players aren't doing it on their own, apply social pressure.  It doesn't have to be good, just new.
(I've never played Ren Faire, but I've seen games of Once Upon a Time get stale until the group applied social pressure to make people actually do something with the cards they play instead of just saying "and there was a prince there, and a horse, and a robber, and...".)

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What is the French  card game Paquet Voleur called in English?
In Quebec, Canada, we have a card game called Paquet Voleur. This roughly translates to pile thief. Basically, each player has cards in his hand and there are cards on the table. The goal is to make pairs of cards with one card from your hand and one card on the table. You then put that pair, face up, in your "pile". The twist is that people can make pairs with the top card on your pile and take your whole pile.
Does this game solely exist in Quebec? I'm trying to find the English name for it if not.

Stealing Bundles


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Learning new Scrabble words?
I downloaded the zyzzyva program and have been using it to sharpen my anagram solving skills, but it isn't great to learn new words with. I'm probably not using it right, but it seems like there are better ways.
I watched a few Scrabble games from the tournament and they of course know all sorts of words. How do they learn them though? What's the best way to go about learning and making sure you retain what you learn?

Learning and retaining a bunch of words is easy; any basic flashcard system can help you do that.  However, all those fancy Scrabble words you stuff into your brain won't help you win any tournaments unless you can get them back out again on demand.
The tricky part isn't retention, it's recall.
Now, ideally, you want to start learning new words when you're about five or six years old, and just read absolutely everything you can get your tiny little hands on.  Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, what have you.  That will give you a few decades of practice with your vocabulary, which you can then pull out at your leisure when you're ready to hit the world of serious Scrabble.  All the best players I've met have been avid readers for most of their lives.
Of course, not everyone lives in an ideal world.  Sometimes you're stuck being twenty years too old to start afresh; you have to play the tiles life deals you.
Worry not!
As mentioned earlier, learning the words is easy.  Write all the words you want to learn on flashcards.  Read through a dozen or so at a time (your mileage may vary, adjust according to taste and local custom), wait a few minutes, then try to write them all back down again.  Lather, rinse, repeat.
Once they're in your brain, they're pretty much in there for good.  However, in order to pull them out at will, you need to use them.  Use them a lot.  Use them every chance you get; the more avenues of attack you open up, the easier it is to recall them later.  Write words down.  Say them out loud.  Read them back.  Translate them into Spanish.  Model them out of Play-doh.  Be creative.
I've not used the Zyzzyva program myself, but it sounds like an excellent resource for developing recall.  You don't want to limit yourself to only the one system though.
The traditional method of learning new words, one which will have English teachers worldwide nodding their heads, is the simple yet effective "Use it in a sentence."  This may not always be the easiest route, especially when dealing with the wonderfully archaic words Scrabble professionals so know and love, but it's a great starting point.  Try to work whatever words you learn into your daily conversation; don't concern yourself with the fact that you now sound like a total nerd, that's just a sacrifice you'll need to make.  This is Scrabble we're talking about here.  Serious business.
Another effective tool is to do a lot of word games.  A LOT of word games.  Do the word search and the crossword puzzle in your local newspaper.  Go to your local magazine rack, they almost always have a huge tome that says something like "Super Giant Book of Awesome Word Puzzles".  Buy one and solve them all.  It'll be worth it.
One trick I personally use is to do a normal crossword puzzle one day, and then the next day I pull out a sheet of graph paper and redo the puzzle entirely from memory as a diagramless.  Effective, but not for the faint of heart.
Also, learn all the two-letter words.  It's crazy how useful those can be when you're playing combinations.

yes learn as many 2 letter words as you can for sure, but while this answer is good if you are going to play clubs or tournaments you need to make sure you are using the official scrabble dictionary word lists and not just any words.

There are many ways on how you can improve your vocabulary to get more points in Scrabble. Learning new words is easier if you read a lot.  Whenever you encounter difficult words, you can write it down and look for the meaning in a dictionary.  It is easier to remember a word when you completely understand what it means.  Using Scrabble Word Finder tools like the one from http://blogmybrain.com/scrabble-word-finder/, will help you to know a list of difficult words which you can use in Scrabble.  Try also to play Scrabble regularly, so you can practice and hone your skills.  Read more information about the tips and tricks in Scrabble, so you would know  how to play the game and spot the high scoring letters.

'Difficult words' are not necessarily useful in Scrabble: for one thing, many of them have more than eight letters.  This is good advice, but improving your vocabulary and improving your Scrabble skills are two different things (though related).

Thanks for your comments.  There are really a number of ways on how one can improve his or her game in scrabble.  I just merely cited the different ways on how one can improve his or her vocabulary, in relation to scrabble.  Indeed, there are many other possible ways to do it, depending on the preference of the users.

There are lot of resources to learn new words. Since Apalabrados (Angry Words) game went out, many word-finding web applications have been built. You can try http://www.angrywordstricks.com that has a huge English dictionary.

Since there are many out there, what separates angrywordstricks from the others? Can you elaborate on how it helps the player learn (as opposed to just solving a particular board state)? Also, do you have any affiliation with the site?


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Is there an online platform for collaborative development of a board game?
I`m interested in developing a few variants of a DIY board game in open source fashion.
For a start, I need to choose an online platform for that.
What could be a solution for public elaboration and publicizing? Is there something like SourceForge (a hosting, bug tracking and community site for open source software), but for board games?

I don't think that there's any single thing designed for this; it's quite a small niche. However, you might be able to piece something together.
To me, a wiki sounds like a very natural fit for hosting and editing the rules for your game. But the general idea seems solid: you can have a page or many, organized how you need, for the rules, include pictures when necessary. You can easily create offshoot discussion pages, linked to as appropriate, group them into categories/listings, put boilerplate at the top to indicate status of the discussions, and so on. An alternative with a steeper learning curve and and startup effort for contributors would be to simply keep your rules in text format in a hosted version control repository and then use other features of the hosting (particularly issue tracker) to do the other things.
You'll probably want to do a lot of iteration and playtesting. I've been pretty impressed with what I've seen people pull off with Vassal modules. Vassal is a generic game engine, which lets you create boards, pieces, cards, tiles, and so on. You can play the games with others online. There's a designers guide as well as a FAQ page on creating modules. This would give you the platform you need to test things out. You'd probably want to store the module in some sort of version control; unfortunately it's an all-in-one file, edited within vassal, so you won't be able to much in the way of branching and merging, if there are many collaborators. Depending on the scale of your project, it might be sufficient to simply have file hosting, and store numbered versions, or you might want more.
Note that SourceForge might actually be a great candidate for all of this! It supports project wikis, file hosting (for your vassal modules), and revision control repositories (perhaps for your rules, if you don't want them on a wiki). You just have to decide how you're going to use it. Just think: a board game isn't that different from a computer game. It's just written in a "programming" language that humans, not computers, understand!
(I know this isn't a terribly complete or specific answer; perhaps others can contribute more.)

Great insights, thank you! Vassal is definitely something to try. I guess I`ll just go with a personal wiki - sourceforge is a megastructure, which claims to be for software in definition, so hooking into it seems risky.

Feel free to hold off on accepting the answer if you want to encourage other people to post! I'm also happy to edit things into my answer if people have specific suggestions.

ok, let`s wait for some more insights :)

I'd recommend something like Tabletop Simulator. It lets you set up an online digital table (you can add a password so that only your collaborators could get in, or playtesters). In there you can create custom components and even use the built-in ones for quicker prototyping.
Then for keeping track of rules and so on, you could use Google Drive, which allows you to give editing privileges on documents or spreadsheets, etc. So then you can all edit at the same time, comment in threads on particular rules, add suggested changes before accepting them, get notified of all changes, that kind of thing.
The other people's ideas are good too. I guess they all revolve around using a digital, online tabletop application, and a collaborative editing tool. You can just add these to the list ;P


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Who gets the points when calling Muggins in a three-player Cribbage game?
If two players call "Muggins" at the same time (in a three-player Cribbage game), and both players call the correct number of points, which player is awarded the points?
I have looked at several sources but found nothing (ACC, Pagat.com, The House of Cards and more).
In the meantime, my friends and I have made a list of 3 possible solutions and we are "evaluating" them:

Both players are awarded the points;
Each player is awarded only half the points (rounding to the upper value);
The player to the left (from the underpegging player) is awarded the points.

Whomever calls it scores it. The rules at American Cribbage Congress do not address muggins outside of 2 player, but the wording requires that it be called before pegging it. Since, in 3 player, there is a dealer, a pone, and another pone, it's simplest to let whomever caught it score it.
Further, in 30 years of playing cribbage, in both 3 and 4 hand, whomever catches it claims the points. This is incentive to pay attention to opponent play and score calls.

I'm not sure this quite addresses the question.  The question is about what to do if two or more players simultaneously call Muggins.  In such a case, multiple people have "caught it" - so, who gets to score it?  I'm sure this is a very rare case, but it is the root of the question here.

Player order is how I've always resolved that, but noting that the partner is ineligible to actually score the muggins, but it prevents losing the points.

I have been playing 3 player games with my kids.  Since there is no direct wording in the rules, this is what we agreed upon.
In the event of a muggin, the player next to score catches what he can. Then the third any missed by the others.

I can't find any reference for this either, and I never play with Muggins, but I think the answer is fairly clearly your option 1. I'll go through the thought process.
Cribbage is basically a race, Muggins is a penalty for sloppy play and missing your point count. In a two player game, the penalty takes the form of your opponent getting the points instead of you. In a three player game:
In scenario #1
The player who missed the points is still "behind" by the same amount whether one or both of his opponents get the points. So it doesn't matter much if both players get the points.
In scenario #2
The player who missed the points is penalized more if only one opponent notices compared to if both opponents notice. Why?
In scenario #3
If only one opponent is awarded the points and gains the advantage, even though the other opponent also noticed, the other opponent is penalized as much as the player who missed the points. Why?
Unless there are good answers to my "why?" for #2 and #3, I think the only fair way to call Muggins is to award both players the points.


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What's a good strategy for Shadows over Camelot?
What are viable strategies for trying to win Shadows over Camelot? Our group always seems to lose when we play. :(

There are different ways to lose.  If you enhance the question with how you tend to lose we can be more specific.

Shadows Over Camelot is actually unbalanced towards the Knights winning.  In fact, the base game has even been solved (guaranteed victory) when playing with 7 players.  The key to that victory lies in the special white cards.  Since they're reshuffled (both decks are reshuffled when you reshuffle one) when you run out of cards, what the Knights should do is keep their hands mostly full as often as possible, thus they can quickly cycle Merlin cards and other whites, instead of 'saving' them.
Therefore, when starting the game, everyone should spend time drawing up white cards at Camelot, until they reach their limit of 12.  Only then should someone go questing.  The only exception to this is Lancelot's armor.  The first knight who has a full house should immediately go claim the armor, as it's the most powerful tool for white victory in the game.
Because of this strategy, the most important Knight roles are King Arthur (for passing cards) and Sir Galahad (for playing the special whites for free).  In general, Arthur gives the specials to Galahad, then he stays at Camelot drawing them and playing them (Merlins included).
Remember, this is a race against time, so movement is the enemy.  Every time you move to a quest, you should lose a life to perform the quest's heroic action.
Now that bad blacks, life (through piety), cards, and even redrawing (through convocation) are dealt with, all that remains is how to complete quests.
As I said, the Armor is the most important.  Get that quickly.  Ignore the Dragon, for the most part.  When fighting Picts and Saxons, your goal should be to complete the quest with 2 or 3 picts/saxons on the board, since then, effectively, those would have been 'wasted' black cards (i.e. don't be too safe and not put any mercenaries on the one you're working on, and, of course, don't lose the quest).  Try to keep the Grail and the Sword, JUST SHORT of victory, until the armor is attained.  If you complete these quests too early, you'll just be adding catepults.  While this is happening, always take black cards, as they're the easiest.  Cats are much more expensive to deal with.
Once you've gotten the armor, and defeated a pict/saxon or two, then gang up to get the sword, draw back up on grails, and then gang up to finish the grail.  Since black cannot 'gang-up' on a quest, you're sure to have victory with the overwhelming numbers.  You do the Grail last (hopefully with a Heroism card on it), and get 4 white swords for it.  (Heroism is key to winning as well).  The traitor won't matter, since even flipping two won't affect the outcome.  Don't waste time on accusations.  The first person to accuse will be the traitor, so if he accuses, accuse him back and it's dealt with.
Late in the game (during the gang-up phase).  Use life points and cats to avoid drawing the black cards.
In terms of special blacks, most aren't that bad.  The ones to really worry about (i.e. use 3 merlins to stop) are Mists of Avalon (always), Vivian (always), and Dark Forest (if the grail is in danger of being lost, only).
Here's how a typical game might go:

Lancelot's Armor obtained (+ Heroism)  2 white swords.
Saxon's defeated (3 white total)
Picts lost (3 white 1 black)
Black knight lost (3 white 2 black)
Excalibur Claimed (+Heroism)  (6 white 2 black)
Dragon Lost (6 white, 4 black)
Grail Found (+Heroism) (10 white 4 black)

Traitor unrevealed (8 white 6 black)
White Victory.

Great answer. Could you give a source for the game being solved? Thank you!

I tried to find it on BGG, but I failed.  I believe it was in the strategy/files download section (instead of the forum).  If anyone finds it, please link it.  It was quite interesting, involving drawing up all the cards, adding catapults to be able to accuse, accusing around the table, and keeping piety going so no one ever had to draw a black card.

Spend the entire 2 starting rounds drawing cards at Camelot. This gives you a better idea of which quests you have a good chance of winning and which you need to move towards right away to keep from losing. Otherwise you're just moving around blind without having enough of the right cards for a specific quest. When I play I actually deal out 10 cards to each player and then have each of us perform 2 evil actions right from the start, so this happens automatically and saves time (players can choose to do otherwise if they wish though).
In accordance with the first point, movement is your enemy because it in itself doesn't do anything to help you win. Sure it gets you closer to somewhere you might need to be, but the movement itself is not beneficial. Avoid moving somewhere unless you know you're either going to be able to win the quest quickly and decisively, or plan to spend at least 3 turns there actually doing useful things (playing cards).
Prioritize. If there are already 3 relatively high black cards on the black-knight quest, you can probably consider just giving up and losing it so you can spend time winning other things (like that d*mn holy grail...). Likewise, if you're really close to winning a certain quest, consider burning a life or having another player move there and help you win before something bad can happen.
Know when to use Merlins. I tend to not use them to remove catapults as their other 2 uses are usually better. Removing a standard black card from a quest can buy you the time you need to win, and being able to cancel a really bad black card without having to use any heroic actions is invaluable. Try to save them for when you need is strongest though, like when you're about to lose something a really critical quest.
Know how to use the special powers. King Arthur's ability is invaluable for getting the right cards to the right people and many of the others are equally valuable. I won't go into detail about each one, but try to take advantage of them as much as possible.
Cooperate as much as possible without giving any one player enough power to lose the game for you if they are the traitor. The advantage of coordination is well worth the downside of confiding your plans to the traitor, and as long as you don't let one player take 3+ merlins from winning a quest (or similarly give them too much power) you should should okay.
Prefer to draw a black card for evil actions unless you have a good reason not to, like being 1 card away from losing a question you are also very close to winning. This makes sure you can place catapults and burn life when you really need to avoid pulling a black card that might lose you the game.

See here for advice on how to play if you're the traitor!


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What's the current state of Magic: The Gathering online play?
I'd like to get back into this game, but the real appeal for me is the collecting aspect, especially trading cards and not knowing what to expect from a foil pack. It seems there are a lot of different options for online play, but what is the best way to replicate the experience of real-world collecting, deck building and playing online?
If you could perhaps detail some of the most popular methods of play and the kind of features they have, it would be appreciated. I don't imagine there's a client that supports all the cards yet? It would appear the only way to build a collection like in real life would be to play the official Magic: Online game. But it would be ultra swell if there were some free way of collecting cards.

What do you mean a free way of collecting cards? If it's legal, then it's not going to be inherently free, because that's their source of money (though a smart trader might be able to slowly work his way up), and if it's illegal or otherwise completely free, then there's no point in collecting; you can just have everything.

Yeah sorry, bit of a silly statement in retrospect. I was thinking that there might be a client that just interacted with Gatherer that could simulate booster packs -- and that it wouldn't be a problem due to the absence of manufacturing costs. But yeah, nevermind.

There are two typical ways to play MTG online:
With the official client, where you spend money and build a collection of cards, just like with paper cards, except virtual. The community is very strong. The last number I seem to recall was that MTGO creates about as much revenue as the global paper MTG (and that was back in 2007), so the online player population is about as large as the offline population, except everyone is in one place, so it is infinitely easier to find a game at any given time. Managing large collections and building decks from it is of course also much easier.
The other way is to try one of the countless free clients out there, some of which provide rules checking. I'm not well informed of that scene, but a quick google search should get you started in no time. Of course, there is not much of a collecting aspect there, because you just put together your deck from the whole pool and play, but OTOH it's absolutely free, financially.
As for having a collection aspect AND doing so more or less free: AFAIK you could do that in the official online game. Money buys you tokens, and tokens buy you cards and entry fees to tournaments. In tournaments, you can win tokens. So, as the legend goes, if you're good enough, you can "go infinite", basically playing and increasing your collection for free. The existance of such players has been doubted, however, and I've never played MTGO, so I wouldn't know for sure.

I think "going infinite" is a nearly unachievable dream - I'm pretty sure very few people make a decent living solely out of playing Magic competitively - but certainly drafting MTGO is a lot less expensive than it looks.  If you keep an eye on card values and sell back what you've drafted at the end of every game, you can recoup a good percentage of your costs.  (If you're lucky and open a chase rare, you can pay for your draft with a single card.)  And then, if you win more games than you lose, you win prize boosters too which you can put towards your next drafts...

It should be noted though that selling cards to pay for playing more Magic is pretty much the antithesis of the OP's stated collector impulse.  If you get attached to your collection then it's going to be a lot harder to make money out of it: it's comparatively rare for the value of Magic cards to go up instead of down.

It's my understanding that only the very best pro players (like, top ~20 in the world) have good enough win percentages that they can sustain their MTGO activities solely through winnings and selling drafted cards. For the vast majority of us, it requires some input of money to keep going, although the better a player you are, the less your average cost is.

It's very hard to go infinite just by drafting. However, you can do a lot better if you play Constructed daily events, since you only have to build your deck once and can enter it into as many events as you'd like.


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Identify card game similar to Kalookie
Several years ago I was taught a card game that was called "Oh Sh*t."
Recently I looked it up online and found another card game with the same name, but completely different rules, so I'm hoping someone on BG.SE knows what the game I was taught should actually be called.
Overview

Cards - 2 x Standard 52 card decks + Jokers
Jokers and 2's are wild cards
Each round, players are dealt 11 cards.

A full game consists of 8 rounds, with the ending condition for each round being the first person to play (lay down) all their cards.
Play within each round is regulated based on a contract to which each player must conform, before they are able to play their hands:

Round 1 - 1 set of 3 cards
Round 2 - 2 sets of 3 cards
Round 3 - 1 set of 4 cards
Round 4 - 2 sets of 4 cards
Round 5 - 1 set of 5 cards
Round 6 - 2 sets of 5 cards
Round 7 - 1 set of 6 cards
Round 8 - 2 sets of 6 cards

A "set" is a series of cards of the same rank, but runs of values are not permitted (eg, a set of 7, 8, 9 is not allowed) - wild cards (the jokers and 2's) can substitute for any card needed to complete the set, but there must never be more wild cards in the set than actual value cards.
Players are also issued 10 buys/lives at the beginning of the game, with which they can purchase additional cards from the deck at the beginning of their turn.
At the end of each round, scores are tallied, and accumulated until all rounds are completed.
If you can shed some light on the real name for this game, it would be appreciated.

There's a contract rummy game called Farmer's Rummy that sounds like what you're describing.

Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks a bunch!


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Three beginner clarifications about Cribbage
I started playing Cribbage on my phone 2 days ago and want to play with my friends, so I have some questions:

How do you determine who leads the next hand? I know the after the deal, the Pone leads, but after that, who leads?
After scoring a play, does each player take back their cards so that they can score their hands later?
Are cards shuffled every time the dealer changes?

Welcome to the site!  Generally it would be better to split your questions up so that each one can be answered individually.  Not everyone who knows the answer to one question will be able to answer all three.

The non-dealer leads the play for each hand.  If either player is unable to play a card without breaking 31, he calls "Go" after which the opposing player plays any other cards in his hand that are playable.  The player who called "Go" then leads the next play, starting at zero. During the show, when the hands are scored, the non-dealer also leads.
During the play, each player places his own cards face up in front of himself, calling out the current total of played cards.  The cards in each players hand remain separate at all times so the hand may be scored at the end.
The cards are shuffled with every deal.

These rules are based on the standard two player game.  For three players, the game is played clockwise with the player to the dealer's left leading the play and the show for each hand, and the player to the left of the last person to play a card leading after a "Go".

Just to double check, if 31 is reached then there is no change in lead.

If 31 is reached, play just alternates like normal.

@goldPseudo has done a good job of covering all of the rules questions here.  I would just add one more thing I've done just as a personal practice, regarding #2:  At the end of a round of play (31 is reached, or neither player can add any further) I generally turn my played cards face-down before the next round begins.  This helps to avoid confusion between cards played in different rounds.  However, do be careful to keep these cards away from the crib.


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Which tournament format best emphasizes winning (as opposed to avoiding last place)?
I've played enough Settlers that I think I could do well in a tournament. However, a cursory glance at upcoming tournaments suggests that most Settlers tournaments use a Swiss scoring system that distorts the incentives of the game significantly. To take one specific example:
http://www.boardgamers.org/yearbkex/setpge.htm
Using this format, it is theoretically possible in three rounds to have:

Player A wins 1 game 10-6-6-6 for 5+4=9 tournament points, and 2 second place finishes for 3 each, or 15 total.
Player B wins 2 games 10-9-7-7 for 5+1=6 tournament points each, and last place in the other game for 1 point, or 13 total.
Player A gets more points than B because of one strong victory and 2 second place finishes.

I have always played Settlers to win, not to avoid coming in last place. Playing with this format, I would emphasize avoiding last place over winning. I might also attempt to cooperatively engineer a certain number of victory points per player on the third round if I had 1 win and 1 second place finish coming into the game and some of the other players were in similar situations.
I would personally rather play a tournament where the emphasis is on winning as opposed to avoiding last place finishes and possibly brokering third game deals. Do such tournament formats exist? If so, what is the name of the tournament format(s) that best emphasize(s) winning (as opposed to avoiding last place)?

I don't quite see the problem with the scoring you linked to - first place gets disproportionate amount of points (5) compared to the runners-up (3, 2, 1 respectively); winner gets the victory margin as bonus for the overall score; number of games won is the first tie-breaker at equal score. That looks like a heavy emphasis on winning to me. As far as brokering deals is concerned, that's an inherent (if not sportsman-like) consequence of a Swiss system. I also don't see why a strong first and 2 second places are inherently worse than 2 weak wins and a last place.

In other words: In any kind of scoring system you will have edge cases, and if you remove one set of edge cases in favor of number of wins, you just create a new set. You can remove those edge cases too, ad infinitum, until you arrive at a point where only wins count - but that's classic single elimination and no longer Swiss of course, and hardly appropriate for a multi-player game.

@Hackworth Interesting comments. In particular, your comment about edge cases seems like the kernel of a good answer. Can you take a shot at reworking your text and posting as an answer?

@Hackworth Seems double elimination could be a viable tournament format for Settlers, where not winning counts as a loss no matter what place you come in. Once you lose twice, you're out of the tournament. What's issue(s) do you see with double elimination?

I read that link as implying that winning margin is only used after total point score, as a tie-breaker.

@AlexP Perhaps I interpreted incorrectly as the scoring description was not perfectly clear. However, this example seems fairly clear: "EXAMPLE: Player Bob has 2 first place wins and a third place finish - he would have 12 tournament points, plus the total win margin, as his tournament score." Maybe someone with lots of tournament experience can pipe in with a comment on whether winning margin is typically used to break ties or add to overall tournament score.

@JoeGolton A common thing in MTG is round score, then game score (rounds are best-of-3, so a round win might be a 2-0, a 2-1, or a 1-0 if time was called) as a tie-breaker, then a bunch of stuff like "opponent win percentage" (basically an aggregate of all your opponent's scores) as subsequent tie-breakers. Looking at the "Tournament Scoring Overall" part of your link, I get the impression that they are using raw 5-3-2-1 scoring, then the number of first-place finishes, and then the margin of victory (and then some other junk, including a 2d6 roll if it gets to that).

@AlexP If you get to a point where you need to roll 2d6 to figure out who wins a tournament, your're doing it wrong.

@CaulynDarr Chance is a valid method of deciding the winner after all reasonable methods have been exhausted. After all, if 2 or more players are tied after numerous tie breakers, then by all rights you could say they have played an equally strong tournament, and the more, increasingly arbitrary tie-breakers you make up, the more the process devolves into randomness anyway. Example: several important, national football leagues, even the World Cup have essentially a coin flip as the final tie breaker: http://www.theoffside.com/world-football/tie-breakers-for-football-teams-level-on-points.html

@CaulynDarr This is more like rolling 2d6 to decide between 16th and 17th place.

@Hackworth  In that situation I would declare them both a winner and split the prize equally.  Especially if there where actual prizes to be given out.  It's not fair for one player to walk home with $50 more worth of swag than a guy who played equally well.

@CaulynDarr Sometimes the prizes aren't fungible. MTG qualifier events have "the envelope," for example, which is an invite to the next Pro Tour event. You can't split that in half. So you end up needing multiple tiers of increasingly-arbitrary tie breakers. You'll need them something like one time out of thousands, but you have to have something on the books to handle that.

@JoeGolton It depends on the details of course, but the general problem I see with single- as well as double-elimination for Settlers and any game with more than 2 rivals per match is simply "who to kick" after a match. Eliminating 3 of 4 players per match makes for a very short and probably boring tournament and IMHO does not do the element of randomness in Settlers justice. However, eliminating fewer than the 3 losers once again creates ties, which have to be broken by a yet another scoring system. So for certain kinds of games, an elimination system is just inherently bad.

@AlexP Exactly what I wanted to write about splitting prizes as well. Also correct with the "increasingly arbitrary" tie breakers - you can only make up so many justifiable tie breakers. Adding more will be exactly like flipping a coin anyway, so why not cut it short right then.

This is a pretty universal tournament problem.  I've seen the same situations in Warhammer 40K tournaments as well.  Basically the problem occurs when you have less than the mathematically required number of rounds for the amount of players, and reward players according to degree of victory.
In a 1-on-1 winner take all tournament you need X rounds where 2^x = number of players.  With games that have more than 2 competing players, you'll need even more rounds to determine the true winner. With games that can take 2-3 hours to play, it is not feasible to set aside the 15+ hours required to handle just a 64 man tournament.  Most tournaments can only feasibly support 3 or 4 rounds.
The theoretical goal of a tournament is to have only one player at the end who won all of their games; the "best" player.  In normal tournament situations you won't be able to find this theoretical best player for more than 8 to 16 people.  So most tournaments try a few different compromises to make a tournament work in these constraints.
Swiss format is the most common form.  In these types of situations you apply a score to the results of a game.  At the end of the day, the player with the higher score wins.  There are drawbacks to this approach. One, when you reward degree of victory, you reward players that play easier opponents, and penalize players that have close games.  So even if you won all your games you could still lose the tournament because you weren't brutal enough in your victories.  I've even seen people lose tournaments to people they beat.
In the 40K tournament community we call this the "clubbing baby seals" effect. It can sometimes allow a mediocre player who has been lucky to be paired with far weaker opponents to outscore a better player who was unlucky to be paired with his peers and only manages marginal victories. You can read this blog post I made illustrating the effect in better detail.
You probably want to know some alternatives to get a better result out of your tournaments. Here are some solutions that the 40K community has tried:

Limit the number of players to the number of rounds you can hold. This means that you will only have 1 undefeated player at the end of the tournament. Only count wins and losses and don't bother with marginal victory scoring.
Allow players with equal records to share the victory. If at the end of the tournament you have 3 3-0 players, they all share an equal prize.  This can be a bit unsatisfying because you don't have 1 winner, but you don't have anyone lose out due to arbitrary scoring.
Accelerated or Opposite Seed pairing. These approach use seeding to vary opponents to try to overcome the inherit disadvantages of the Swiss Format. They can theoretically reduce the amount of rounds you need to get a clear winner. Accelerated can be hard to pull of if you don't have preexisting player rankings. Opposite Seed pairing is a slight alteration where you just pair high degree of victory winners against low degree of victory players for the first few rounds. The idea here is to test for the seal clubbing effect.

Your analysis is pretty much only relevant for 2-player games.  When you have a 4-player game such as settlers, things are much more complex.

@ChrisDodd.  True, but I don't think that invalidates the suggestions and analysis.  It's only a question of degrees.  A 4 player game would need even more rounds to get proper pairings, but the solutions I proposed could still help.  I'm not discounting that there might not be some other solutions that work only in a 4 player situation, but these are the things that helped the 40K community solve similar root problems.

The tournament format that most emphasizes winning is single-elimination. I mean, literally: if you don't win, you're out.
The problem with single-elimination is that it the order of elimination doesn't necessary tell you something about a player's overall achievement. Assuming the tournament winner is legitimately the "best" player, we really can't say who is "second best" based on tournament standing alone. If the winner's first-round opponent was actually the most difficult match, maybe he or she is really the "second best" player, despite getting out immediately. So you'll know who's first but everyone else's place in the standings is kind of a crapshoot.
The single-elimination format is also rather frustrating for high-variance games (I would say Settlers is one), and being knocked out early can be very dissatisfying for tournament participants.

Most Swiss systems do emphasize winning, in the sense that they're literally counting wins as the main scoring system. One pitfall in Straight-Swiss is that it's possible for a player to functionally win the tournament before getting to the last game -- this is similar to what happens when one player scores 3-0 in a "best of five" match. A popular way to avert this is a "Top N," where top-scoring players from the Swiss rounds come together for a single-elimination bracket.
Top N has the benefit of making sure the top players are actually pitted against each other, and the single-elimination part of the format does promote a heated final where everyone is playing to win. However, this actually encourages what you've called "brokering third game deals" in the last rounds of the Swiss -- if I can get into the Top 16 with a third-place finish in my last Swiss game, for instance, there is no reason to play for the top.
As best as I can tell, the Swiss system will always produce some irrelevant matches and predetermined outcomes. The best you can do is to tweak where those occur in the tournament structure. Top N is a compromise that keeps those features out of the finals, at the cost of filling the final round before finals with a series of tricky forfeits and draws.
It's my opinion that it's better to accept "brokered" draws (with a prohibition on bribery and collusion to keep the game fair) than to try to force people to play irrelevant games. What you can do to discourage intentional draws and forfeits, however, is to associate an incentive with your overall ranking going into the Top N. In current Magic: the Gathering tournament rules, for example, Top 8 games give the higher-ranked player the ability to choose his or her position in the turn order (instead of deciding randomly, as they do in the preceding Swiss rounds).

I think the 5-3-2-1 structure you've cited is, in general, a good example of a Swiss-style format that emphasizes winning over second-place finishes and promotes a reasonable level of competition in the final Swiss round before Top N.
For starters, first is disproportionately more valuable than the other results: a first-place finish and a last-place finish are worth as much as two second-place finishes; and finishing first, second, and third is worth more than finishing second three games in a row.
Note also the role of wins in tie-breakers:

1) Top overall score [of three rounds of Swiss] (15 being max)
2) Most 1st place wins
3) Top winning margin (Ex: a game ends 10-7-7-6, thus the winner has a
  +3 margin; All margins are summed)
4) Win in game 1
5) Win in game 2
6) Win in game 3
7) Highest dice roll -- 2D6

Here the margin of victory is used only as a tiebreaker, as an attempt to factor in the decisiveness of wins if players are tied for quantity of wins.
Finally, this bit is important:

Playoff rounds will be seated by rank (see below) but the game format will be the same
...
Tournament Playoff Round:
Once the top 16 players are set, seating will be done according to the following chart:
Table 1 - #1,5,9,13
Table 2 - #2,6,10,14
Table 3 - #3,7,11,15
Table 4 - #4,8,12,16

So, there is some incentive to finishing the Swiss rounds with the highest rank possible: you can get a leg up in the turn order (I'm assuming the tournament organizers consider this an advantage in Settlers).
That said, because I don't consider going first to be always preferable in Settlers, I'd do something like this instead: "After the board is laid out, players at the final tables get to choose their seats in rank order." A little bit of extra privilege (and strategic depth) for placing first!

I like your answer and comments with issues around single elimination. But how about double elimination? Is this just too time consuming or is there some other reason double elimination is avoided? I personally would be thrilled to play in a double elimination tournament, and would like it even better if the most highly ranked players (i.e. past tournament performance) were were not forced to play each other in early rounds.

@JoeGolton My guess is that it's because Swiss already produces similar results. In larger tournaments, played tend to drop once they've accumulated enough loses that they know they're locked out of Top N. The overall outcome is very similar to double- (or triple-) elimination with a few knocked-out players playing what are de-facto rated side games.

Wow I hadn't carefully looked at the seating before. Going last in Settlers is usually a very significant advantage (you get to place two settlements in a row so can have the most strategically coherent setup, while also usually getting the most dots of production as well). So if they're saying that the 13th through 16th seeds go last in their respective games, then that means there's an incentive to manage what place you come in your last game prior to the final 16 - coming in #1 through #4 isn't too bad but coming in #5 through #12 is a big disadvantage.

I'd say the starting position depends on the board, if there are 2 very good settlement positions, then going 2nd is better than 1st. If there are 5 reasonable places, then going last is definitely the best option. Sometimes you end up with only 1 good space on the board for Ore, and in that case going first is a huge advantage! Detailed stats would be good to see. Maybe some simulations?

As someone who has played in Settlers tournaments hopefully I can shed some light on how the tournaments are run but can not comment on Swiss vs other tournament system. The first round of a sanctioned Settlers tournament is Swiss as you described with Wins ranking first, then total points, then a percentage of strength of win used to break any ties. After the 3 games are played, all players are then ranked and the top 16 go on to a single elimination semi-final/final setup. At PAXEast, they run two qualifying rounds and you can play in both of them to try to generate the highest possible score over the weekend. i.e. If I get zero wins and 27 points which is not likely to get me in the finals I can play on Saturday and get 2 wins which will most likely guarantee a spot on Sunday.
Ranking in the top 16 does not determine seating position in the semi-finals. Players are seated to a board based on ranking but then have to roll for position. Even at a very large event like PAXEast, Mayfair has a REALLY hard time finding enough people to play. Usually a single win will get you in the semi-finals. But once you are in the semis, everything game from there to world championships is win or die.
Sanctioned qualifiers this year could send you to the World Catan Championships so your tournament host should be very strict and check if a player is eligible for your specific qualifier. PAXEast was a sanctioned qualifier which meant Canadians were not eligible to play (They have their own qualifiers north of the border). Some players had dual citizenship US/Canada and thought it was ok they could play in the qualifier throwing all the numbers off. One had reached the semi-finals only to be told they had to leave because they shouldn't have played in the first place. Many of us found this very annoying because people who finished in top places may not have done so if the mix was correct.
One thing I will say is that tournaments are very fun and I would highly encourage anyone who plays Settlers to give it a try. You will meet great people and have a great time.

Greg - can you add to your answer (or comment here) how well the Swiss part of the tournament format works to preserve the character of trying to win a Settlers game (as if you weren't at a tournament)? What prompted me to write my question was considering entering a tournament for the first time but being really turned off by the description of the tournament scoring system. Did you find that in the Swiss format portion of the tournament, people play differently than in the single-elimination portion?

Since wins are given the highest priority in the Swiss part of the tournament, the game play is really no different in the qualifiers vs the finals. A win will get you in so everyone is going for the win. The pressure to win is just ratcheted up during the single-elimination rounds. It is fairly rare that someone will have zero wins in the Swiss round and qualify for the finals based on points.
I would equate this to The Amazing Race. During the Swiss rounds you are playing to not be in 17th place or lower. A win almost guarantees that. 2 wins definitely does.

Origins, run by Mayfair, prior to 2007 used to do 3 games and it was 1) wins 2) total points 3) "Quality of Points," or your points as a fraction of the total points. After 2007, you played 4 games, randomly against opponents.
The top 16 would play in a 1-game playoff with the winner of each playing in the final.
The 4 games qualifying match was really grueling. I think most people qualified for the playoffs with 3 wins. There were occasionally 2 wins 37 points or 2 wins 36 points, but that was usually right on the edge.
This does cause some gaming of the system (for instance, some people would just deliberately take longest road and the 2 points to raise their score, knowing they would lose; some people would drop out midday after losing their first two or three matches; two friends, if one had been knocked out of contention, might be tempted to throw the game the guy still in contention).
Let me throw a wrench into the works. The top seed usually has a bull's eye on his/her forehead. Psychologically, people think that the person to beat is the guy with 4 wins or 3 wins/39 points or whatever. Say a person won the first three matches; should he or she still strive to win the fourth match or maybe stop around 5-6 points? That's part of the metagaming :)

In researching a scoring system for our own tournaments I modified the latest F1 scoring system (2015).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_World_Championship_points_scoring_systems#Points_scoring_systems
For 4 player games take the 25, 18, 15, 12... and subtract 12 from each so you get:
13, 6, 3, 0
For the OP's example it would be:

A: 13+6+6= 25
B: 13+13+0= 26

B wins.
This scoring system also works well for other 5 and 6 player games (just subtract so last place always gets 0 points).


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Can Russia make a truce with Japan (without USA/UK knowing)?
Just played a 16 hour game of Axis & Allies (classic). I thought the guy playing Russia just didn't know what he was doing, but it turns out he had made a deal with Japan to just leave him alone. Thus it basically became Russia kept to himself while the UK battled Germany and the USA fought Japan. Needless to say the Allies lost handily.
Is this allowed? Can a player basically switch teams or have a truce with the other team? Without any other players knowing?

Well, the win/loss rules don't allow you to "switch teams". So he still just loses along with the rest of the Allies. Most board games don't really support a player deciding to throw the game for the other team.

Sounds like y'all should be playing a game with more fluid alliances like [tag:diplomacy] or [tag:empires-in-arms]!

The thing was Russia didn't make the truce to help the allies, he did it because Japan was his brother (in real life) and didn't want to kill him. IMO, Russia defected from the allies and went by himself as a third world power, albeit very sneakily with us knowing.

Related: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/3615/can-russia-and-japan-follow-a-mutual-hands-off-policy-in-axis-and-allies

It looks as if your friend has read too much history and not enough of the rulebook.  Russia did have such a truce with the Japanese (actually, there was no declaration of war until Germany had been beaten), and I'm sure Stalin would have loved it if the US and Japan had pounded each other into shreds while the Red Army was busy.  But Stalin, whatever else he may have been, was a good game player: the troops he transferred from Siberia to Moscow kept him in the game that turn, and allowed him to win on one front while keeping the other at status quo till the last turn, when he made a dash for the Far Eastern victory points.
Getting back to the question: of course secret inter-player agreements are 'allowed', if only because there's no way of stopping them.  But they only work if both players believe it is in their interest to keep to the agreement.  In A&A, it's a zero-sum problem; this Russian strategy benefits either the Axis or the Allies, and all the information to work it out is available to everybody. In your game it was a very bad plan; but in Stalin's game it worked like a charm.
A friend of mine summed up a similar situation as "Everybody's happy? Then somebody's miscalculated."

In Bridge we have an old adage: "If both sides lead the same suit - one side is crazy."

It sounds to me like the USA player made the mistake here, not the Russians.  Having Japan ignore/not attack Russia is a big boon to the Allies, IF they concentrate on conquering Germany as quickly as possible, and pretty much ignore Japan in the early going.  Since concentrating on Germany gives the Allies the best chance of success regardless of what the Axis do, they should be doing that anyways.

SOMEONE goofed on the ALLIED side.
You can say that person was the U.S. player, who got bogged down in a war against Japan instead of concentrating on Germany.
But the other person that was slack was the Russian player. The WHOLE PURPOSE of making a non-aggression pact with Japan was so that Russia could work with the UK to concentrate on Germany. This country can't defeat both Russia and the UK (who start with 54 IPCs versus 32 for Germany) unless Japan is reducing the income of Russia and the UK in a big way. In this context, with Russia being "spared," Japan's conquering Australia, New Zealand, and India won't do it, especially if she has her hands full with U.S.
Unless Russia sat by and did nothing while Germany defeated the UK, Japan neutralized America, and the (enlarged) Axis powers finished the game by ganging up on Russia.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
What are legal ways to use the Dispatcher's special ability in Pandemic?
I don't quite understand what the person playing the Dispatcher role is allowed and disallowed to do.

If the Dispatcher wants to move i.e. the Medic's pawn, does he need the approval of the owner or can he do it against the Medic's will?
When making a flight with another pawn, does the Dispatcher use his cards or the player who's pawn is flying?
Can the Dispatcher move his pawn to the city with another pawn or does this only apply to moving other pawns?

Hopefully, since it's a co-op game, the first question isn't generally an issue.

Generally no, but definitely could happen if there were involved 2 conflicting plans to save the world and 1 player with ability to move other pawns without a question.

From the Pandemic Rules:

The Dispatcher may move other player’s pawns on his turn (using any of the available Basic actions) as if they were his own pawn. He may also spend an action to move a pawn to any city that contains another pawn. He may only move other players’ pawns if they permit him to do so.
  Note: For the Charter Flight action, the Dispatcher must play the card corresponding to the current location of the pawn he wishes to move.

The questions:

If the Dispatcher wants to move ie. Medic's pawn, does he need approval of the owner or can he do it against Medic's will?

No, he can only move pawns if they permit him.

When making a flight with another pawn, does Dispatcher use his cards or the player who's pawn is flying?

Uses his cards.

Can the Dispatcher move his pawn to the city with another pawn or does this only apply to moving other pawns?

He may move any pawn to any city that contains another pawn, so he can move himself to where another pawn is.


text:
How can I teach other people game rules?
I am a game enthusiast. I mostly enjoy board games, card games and things like party games that require no preparations. My friends know that about me, and they seem to treat me as an official Rules Explainer; if there are some new people willing to play with us, or some players that need to refresh their memory and hear the rules one more time, I'm going to be the person asked to explain the rules. Even if someone else suggested playing that particular game.
So, I often have to teach other players game rules. Each time I do it, I try to do it better and learn from previous experiences. I'm constantly trying to improve my skills.
What are the best practices in teaching other people game rules?
Off the top of my head some of the many things to talk about include:

When should I mention the goal of the game?
How much of the rules should I expect my fellow players to understand before playing a complex game for the first time?
How can I avoid introducing new rules in the middle of the game (it's frustrating for other players, they can feel tricked, and accuse you of not mentioning it before to your advantage, and so on...)?

What about answering questions? Usually my answer would be "I'm going to talk about that in a moment", but I don't want to discourage players from asking questions if they don't quite get something. And I don't want to seem rude, saying "not now" again and again. On the other hand, answering such questions might be confusing for other players. What if most of the players understood the rules, but not the whole group? How should I deal with the short attention span?

You may end up with long, vague answers here, because you're asking a lot of questions at once, and a lot of it really depends on the people and the games. If you can be more specific, it might help get you better answers. There's a big difference between explaining a party game to family members and explaining a complex game to hardcore, competitive gamers.

You're right, however I feel we may just as well end up with some great, valueable and useful answers. I'm willing to take that chance, I know there are many people here, who I could learn a lot from. I'm looking for general suggestions, practices that are good and applicable in all cases. But if that makes it easier, I'm mostly interested in tips for explaining rules to no-gamers, lite gamers, friends and family members. Somehow, explaining rules to hardcore gamers seems a little easier to me.

Here are some things you can do. Keep in mind for the first game I'm usually more interested in teaching people how to play than winning, especially if I know the game well. This method might not work as well with a mixture of old hats and newbies.

Play with an open hand (maybe even have the other players do the same). This of course only works in games with secret information (card games especially). Make bad choices and explain why they are bad choices while you make them... especially if you can use those choices to illustrate points. So something like "Now I'm going to play Card X ... in a real game I wouldn't know (though I might guess) that you've got Card Y in your hand which is a perfect counter to my play."
On your turn explain why you are doing things, what benefit you might expect to get and how it would ruin everyone else's day. On their turns point out things they could do to make your life more difficult.
Take backs! Let them have them all they want where possible. Where chance is involved you might do a thing a practice time or two first so people can see how it works, especially if it's complicated.
If the game is complicated explain up front that you're going to parcel the rules out in digestible chunks. In Small world, I usually don't bother explaining going into decline until the second round. It's largely irrelevant to your strategy before then ... largely.

If despite all this you still win, that's okay, hopefully you've done a good job of explaining how you got there, and they'll trash you on the next game ...

I've come across a great article on the subject, wrote by Mario T. Lanza. It's available to read on The Games Journal.
The Finer Points of Teaching Rules
If you're interested in improving the way you explain rules of the games, I strongly suggest reading the whole article. Author mainly focuses on explaining his method of teaching the rules.

The Incremental Approach
In short, The Incremental Approach has you:

Set up the board and components.
Distill the game down to a few sentences. (Less than a minute.)
Paint an overview for the whole game. (1 to 3 minutes.)
Expand the overview using details—the finer points.
Cover the exceptions, if any.
Teach basic strategies and offer "fair warning." (1 or 2 minutes.)

However, that's not all. The article is really good and also addresses key issues mentioned in the question. Let me give you some more example quotes from the article:
Mentioning the goal of the game

The general objective, the means of attaining it, the scoring, and the
game-ending conditions are key aspects of the rules for all games. As
such, they are worthy of repetition. Cover them with a progressive
layer of depth as you drill down into your explanation. A listener's
growing understanding often enables him to grasp a rule that was
initially unclear. Repetition is neither wordy nor inefficient; it
improves clarity, understanding, and remembrance of the rules.
Besides, it's easy for your listeners to miss a detail when they're
being bombarded by so many.

Answering questions asked during explanation

You should undoubtedly expect some of your anxious listeners to
interrupt you with questions. Knowing which questions to answer
immediately and which to postpone is of utmost importance when giving
cohesive explanations. If your rules presentation will eventually
answer a question, politely say, "We'll get to that in a minute."
Questions meant to clarify the rule you most recently explained should
be addressed immediately.
Whatever you do, don't detour to answer every misplaced question as
this disturbs continuity, decreases clarity and disorganizes an
otherwise structured explanation. Although you may eventually cover
all the rules despite these many detours, your audience may actually
have a harder time remembering them. Through practice you'll develop a
knack for effectively handling, even anticipating, questions. More
often than not simply saying, "We'll get to that in a minute" will be
fine. People just want the comfort of knowing that their unanswered
questions will, indeed, be answered. Only when your audience is
entirely confused or is having a difficult time following, should you
consider revising your methods. Normally, if you use any thoughtfully
organized approach, this won't be an issue.

Let me finish with what I see as a motto from the article: Because there will always be new games to play, there will always be new rules to teach.

When explaining a game, I go through the following:

How do you win?  (i.e. What are you trying to do?)  For Risk, this is "eliminate all other players".  For Catan, this is "first player to 10 points".  This is important to have first because it's the context for the rest of the explanation; everything else should be in service of the goal.
What are the main pieces/components?  It's important to have an overview of the most important things you're dealing with, but keep this high level and focused on core elements.  For Risk, this would involve be: the map, units, ownership of territories (leave risk cards for later).  For Catan, this is the board, settlements/cities/roads, and resource cards (leave development cards, longest road, largest army, and the robber for later).
What is the structure of game play?  This typically means explaining the structure of a turn, although not all games are turn-based.  If there are any particularly complex bits, note that it is complex and it will be addressed in detail later.  This is because complex mechanics are often things people will have questions on, and that can cause people to lose track of the context.  For Risk, this would mean explaining reinforcements, making attacks, drawing a risk card, and play passing to the left.  For Catan, this would mean explaining the die roll and production, trading, buying, and play passes to the left.
Complex mechanics.  Here is where you fill in the things you skipped in step 3.  For Risk, this would be the full detail of a battle.  For Catan, this would be the details of rolling a 7, the robber, ports, bank trading, and development cards.
Extras.  Here is where you throw in all of the extraneous details that don't fit in anywhere else.  Setup mechanics and end-game mechanics are common, as well as weird cases that might happen occasionally.  People aren't always going to pay attention to this step, which is why you save it for the end, but it's important to do it even just from a "liability" standpoint (so that your players have been told all the rules and don't have a leg to stand on if they complain otherwise).  For Risk, this would be the mechanics of setup and what happens when a player is eliminated.  For Catan, this would be setup, longest road, largest army, and the timing of development cards.

It's helpful to have the game as set up as you can before the explanation (noting that games like Risk and Catan have an extensive setup procedure post game-start).  I also try to demonstrate an example on the game board or with game pieces at every relevant opportunity.
It's essential to address questions throughout, but only clarifications.  People need to understand the point being covered, and if they don't, that's a problem.  My main two tactics for addressing confusion are explaining it a different way and showing an example using the board/pieces.  However, if people want more detail about an aspect that I'm not planning to cover until later, I'm very disciplined about telling them to wait.  That said, explaining a game is an iterative process, and I try to learn from people's confusion both during the explanation and during their first game and improve my future explanations to cover those issues.
For games with a lot of things that one player needs to run but don't involve decisions by the players (like the management of power plants and the resource market in Power Grid), I'll go pretty light on the up-front explanation with the caveat that I'm going to be the one managing that aspect of the game and am happy to explain what doing in more detail later if anyone is interested.
For particularly complex games (like Twilight Imperium), if there are mechanics that won't come into play until part way through the game, I'll mention that those things exist during the up-front explanation and come back to the explanation in-game closer to when they will be relevant.  I try to do it enough in advance that players can still be prepared, although some things truly don't need to be explained until they happen.
For games with high emergent complexity (like Diplomacy), I'll do some sample turns, but for most games I prefer to just give beginners a handicap.  The amount of the initial advantage should scale with how disadvantaged they will be in the game due to their lack of experience.
I tend not to teach strategies unless there are clear gotchas because I prefer to let players discover the game for themselves, and I don't want to overly bias players to known approaches to the game.  For example, in Dominion, new players often buy too many action cards.  I might call out that you don't want to buy too many terminal actions (action cards that don't give "+x actions") because you can only use one a turn, but I wouldn't teach the Big Money strategy (buy almost exclusively money with one or two key action cards).  The former is a fact about the mathematics of the game where the later is an actual strategy suggestion.  Much better in my opinion to give new players a leg up then tell them what to do.    Again, for Dominion, I'd swap out one or two coppers in the new player's starting deck for silvers.

The first thing you should say is what is needed to win the game, money, points, etc. Which marker, if any, in the board represents the winning score.
Obviously you should be familiar with the game. But if you have doubts, don't be afraid to ask to other people in the table and refresh your memory, that's better than a wrong rule.
About the explanation itself, that is hard, some people like it in history form, like "we are space marines fighting this ....", some people prefer straight out of theme explanations. If you are explaining to a group, better is to set the environment but don't go too deep on that and then get to the rules itself.
About questions, if it's a simple one, and is not going to disturb your rhythm, answer it, and then keep going, if its complicated, tell the to wait and when you get to that point, pay special attention to the person who made the question.
About complex rules and complex games, if a game is too different from the usual ones your group play, take the time to explain the basics, but keep the more complex ones to the in game, be alert and right before the situation happen, explain it. Some people may not like that, so that's a point to clarify with the group before playing. If somebody thinks that mechanic will give advantage to somebody, or is just unhappy with it, you will have to explain everything before, which in the end is not going to work and you will have questions during the game any way.
You have to adapt to the people you play with, but you also have to keep the things interesting, if you spend an hour setting and explaining the game, you will loose the interest of the people.

Good to hear that there are more people who have the trait of naturally ending up as the game explainer/teacher. I quite often find myself in a similar situation. Or I am the sort of living rulebook that can be queried any time during the game. When explaining a game to new players I tend to:

Explain the goal of the game first. "You need to acquire this or
that, and the possible ways to do so are x, y and z."
Then I explain
the elementary rules that are necessary to play a round of the game.
Without the knowledge of these rules you couldn't even begin your
turn. And I leave out any specific rules and subjective aspects,
like what is the wisest decision in which situation.
Then I suggest
playing a few rounds as a "Game of trail and error", I deliberately
make certain errors to explain why it is wrong, and I deliberately
make wise choices to show the new players what the strategic and
tactical choices could be. The other players play their turns and make errors which I then explain, and make good choice which I then comment on. During my turns I try to create a scenario for all of the
specific rules. I usually start the trial and error game saying that
we are going to play for example 5 rounds, and see who is closest to
the goal after that.
After that we start the real game and players
still continue ask me question during their turns. But since
they are fairly experienced now, they don't give their positions
away when asking questions, and I usually can answer them so that there is no advantage for anyone.


text:
Is it possible to combo Spy and Wishing Well?
From the entry for Wishing Well on Dominion Strategy, I quote:

Cards that you view with Spy get drawn by the Wishing Well instead of being wished for.

The cards in question are these:

But as I understand it, after you play Spy, you know what the top card is (if you don't discard it), but this is drawn immediately from Wishing Well, and then you don't know what to wish for.
Am I misunderstanding how these cards work, or is the article referring to something else?

The answer to this question is why Wishing Well tends to be such a weak card in virtually any set. I still don't know why they printed it...

Your understanding is correct. You are just misinterpreting the article.
You would need something like Scout to combo more effectively. Draw 4 cards, at least two non-victory, put them back, draw one using WW and wish for the second.

Aaaah! I should interpret it as "Instead of being able to wish for the card from Spy, you draw it." Thanks!

It is subtle, really. I interpreted "get drawn [..] instead of being wished for" as you don't need to wish, you can just draw it.

Belated note: Mystic, from the Dark Ages expansion, only has the "Wish for a card" (along with +$2), so you can use a Spy followed by a Mystic for a guaranteed draw if you want.

Remember - act out the card in order that it is written:
+1 Card, then +1 Action, then "Name a card...".
So any card that has you put (just) one card back on your deck (e.g. Spy, Bureaucrat, Lookout, Courtyard, Pearl Diver, etc.) will not be a good combo for Wishing well.
Scout, Navigator, and Apothecary are good for this.