text:
Patience/solitaire-style competitive game for two players
I have learnt a (Dutch?) competitive two-player card game similar to Solitaire from my grandparents, who call it 'Stapello'. I am a bit unsure about the spelling because this name returns no results! I am aware that rules and names can get lost in translation a bit over the years, but I was wondering if there's some more information on this game (or a similar one). The game is played with two decks, and the goal is to get rid of all your cards by placing them in the playing area.

In preparation of the game the two decks are shuffled and dealt in their entirety to the two players. Both players form a pile of thirteen cards, and put the other (39) cards in their draw piles. The top cards of the two 'thirteen' piles are turned face-up. Then, each player places four cards from their draw pile in the free spaces: place 1-4 for player 1 and place 5-8 for player 2. The first cards (place 1 and 5 respectively) are compared by value (low -> A1-10JQK -> high) to determine who starts; ties are resolved by the next cards (place 2 and 6), etc.
At the start of a turn, the player turns around the top card of their draw pile. Then, if possible they carry out any number of the following actions:

They can place a card from their draw, thirteen, or discard piles on one of the 8 ascending stacks in the center. These stacks are formed by placing an ace and stacking consecutive ascending numbers of the same suit (so an 8 of spades could be placed on top of a 7 of spades). These stack have to start with an ace. The relative position of suits in the playing area is not relevant to the game.
They can place a card from their draw, thirteen or discard piles on one of the 8 reverse open stacks/free spaces. Cards need to be consecutive and descending, and the opposite color (red on black, black on red). There are no restrictions on which cards can be placed if the stack/space is empty.
They can place a card from their draw, thirteen or discard piles on the discard pile or thirteen pile of their opponent. The suit needs to match and the number should be adjacent but not equal (6 or 8 on 7). Players can end up with a large amount of cards on their thirteen pile, and whereas the discard pile ends up getting turned around when their draw pile runs out (see action 5), the cards on the thirteen pile have to be played in the reverse order that they were put down.
They can move the outermost card of the reverse open stacks to an ascending stack, to a different reverse open stack, or to the discard pile or thirteen pile of their opponent, all following the same rules as in action 1-3 respectively. This can be used to combine stacks; only one card can be moved at a time but if there is one extra free space two cards could be moved, etc.
If they have played a card from their draw pile they can turn the next one around. If the pile is empty, the discard pile is turned around (without shuffling) to replace the draw pile. The thirteen pile is never replaced.
If no actions can be performed (or if the player decides to), they can end their turn by placing the topmost card of their draw pile on their discard pile.

The other player, at the same time, has to pay attention: if the active player could put any card from their piles or from the playing area on one of the ascending stacks, either directly or by moving cards in the playing area (i.e. action 4), and instead plays a card from their piles in another place, the inactive player should say "Stapello!", at which point the active player has to take back their card and put it on their discard pile, at which point their turn ends.
If either player plays their last card (in an action that is not Stapello), the game ends and they win.

Is this game known under another name? Is there a more authoritative set of rules?

What is the question here?  Name verification?  I've played a varient of this which has only 4 "shared" spots (not 8) and both players need to finish.  Not sure what you're asking enough to know if that's an answer or not.

@joedragons I had tagged it as [tag:identify-this-game] but forgot to add the question in the question body, I have edited it now. This game is competitive, which may have been a bit ambiguous in the rules I wrote down. I am assuming since both players need to finish your variant may not be?

you're correct in your assumption.  Thanks for the clarify.

This seems to be the game known as Russian Bank or Crapette. Other more regional names include crapot (Brazil, Portugal), Zank-Patience, Streitpatience, or Schikanös–Patience (Germany), Stop or Touch (North America), or Tonj/Tunj/Tonge/Tunge (طنج, Middle East) according to Wikipedia and PAGAT.com.
The rules listed on Wikipedia are virtually the same, with a minor difference: the 'thirteen' pile (reserve pile), the draw pile (talon), and the discard pile (waste pile) are in various different places in the different examples in the linked sources.

My Dutch gandmother loved this game and referred to it in english as Double Patience (not sure what it's called in Dutch).


text:
Is there a complete study on the statistics to bid?
Is there any definitive publication or study on statistics in bidding? Based on the rules Spades offers about bidding, in the image below, a player may bid 2 or 3.

Ace Spades, Ace Heart, and King Heart (3).
King Heart is the trick a player may evaluate as less probable; he would bid just two.
That is one of many possible examples that can start a more deep statistical evaluation.
I wonder if that evaluation has been made.

Most of the study was made on Spade's "bigger brother" Bridge, however some work has been done on Spades as well.

At 2020, during my ph.d I wrote a paper called Bidding in Spades.
If you are looking for a nice strategy guide, I like Tyler Wong's
guide

In section 4.1.1 Side Suit High Cards I evaluate the value of side-suit A,K,Q according the probability that no opponent will be able to cut the first / second / third trick.

In your example, you hold 4 hearts, therefore there is a chance of 3% that one of the opponents will be able to cut your Ace, 22.1% that one of the opponents will be able to cut your King, and 65% that one of the opponents will be able to cut your Queen.
So your intuition was right, a bidding of 2 is very safe (97%), a bidding of 3 is safe in 77.9% of the deals.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
in Canasta, is it allowed to pick up from a frozen pile?
In classic Canasta, if I have a dirty canasta in 10s and someone discards a 10, can I pick it up from a frozen pile?

https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/40083/canasta-rules-to-pick-up-discard-pile-when-frozen-or-not-frozen?rq=1

If the pile is frozen, you must have two more tens in your hand in order to pick up the discard pile. If the discard pile were not frozen, you could pick up the discard pile as long as you can meld the top card at all. This is the only difference between a frozen and non-frozen discard pile.

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


text:
How can I make a real-time mechanic in a tabletop game?
I'm coming up with a prototype for a card game with real-time mechanics.  Players would act simultaneously, each performing actions that take a set amount of time to complete.  These actions can be interrupted by external events.  I was thinking of using hourglasses to time the actions, but if an action gets interrupted, you can't instantly reset an hourglass.  Is there some alternative to using an hourglass, or maybe a way to make an hourglass work?

Is there a reason you don't want to use a phone?

@Acccumulation There are a few reasons.
(1) I know that when I play board games, it's usually to get away from technology as a way to have fun with people.
(2) Whatever app is used would have to be kept up-to-date and made available across OS's.
(3) If there is something simpler that could be used instead of a phone, I'd rather use that.

Another approach of having each player time down it's own actions via hourglas is to rework the action into one common action and that one gets an hourglas.
For example if a player before was planting crops and placed an hourglas until the harvest and another one for the duration of the harvest, there is a board phase that has a timer to plant your seed. Until the timer runs out, you have time to do that action. And all plants grow at the same time on the next timer phase. And all players harvest at the next timer phase.
This still gives you real time actions but it is less confusing when you have more players since the amount of timers does not go up. If you would need to track multiple timers for different people, it gets confusing really fast.
An example game with similar mechanics is Pendulum
If you want to reward players by who did an action earlier, the easiest way to do that would be having an order indicator on the action field itself.
There are a few reasons why having individual hourglasses are not the best idea:

They tend to get stuck. If you have only one hourglas per action, everyone has to live with it. Having to solve for what to do when one stops in the middle makes game play slow or ensures arguing.
Having a lot on the board at once will be hard to keep track in which order they ran out of time
The more time keeps you have, the harder a break is going to be. Either resetting or stopping them all for a even a short break will be difficulty

That's actually a really good idea, I hadn't thought of that before.  One hourglass per action area could work, although I might want to reward whoever did the action earlier rather than giving all players equal rewards.

This could be solved by order on the action field itself. First player on the field gets higher yield/ less cost.

A key piece of game design is marrying the design to to the materials available.  If you want to do real-time, you have four main options:

Hourglasses.  These have good tactile feel, are easier to have multiple of, and can be paused (put it sideways).  But they only work for a fixed interval of time and are hard to reset (if you put it with whatever side has less sand, it can still take up to half the time of the hourglass to reset).  These drawbacks have really seen the reduction in the use of hourglasses in games.  The only games I can think of that ship with one are classic games like Boggle, Taboo, or Pictionary.  But you can think bigger than these games.  Hourglasses are a cool component; explore them.
Timers.  These are good if you want to be able to reset quickly or set arbitrary time, and are easier to pause and resume, but it can be challenging to have many timers going at once.  These have shown up as a replacement for a single hourglass as a way of tracking time on timed games, but that's about it.  Many newer games in the Taboo genre ship with an actual timer.  The fanciest timer hardware I can think of is a Chess Clock, which is a linked pair of timers.
Apps/Recordings.  An app (or at least a set of recordings) can have a whole bunch of time-based information encoded in it, and so have been used by real-time games that want to have events that happen against a central clock.  See Space Alert for a example; you play timed missions, with recordings to tell you when various events trigger during the missions.
Speed.  Here, you dispense with the timers all together and have the limit be about how fast players can do something.  Examples include Galaxy Trucker (the building ship phase), the card game Speed, and Set.  Note that if people are managing different actions each of which has an hourglass, then the speed with which someone can set up one of them in a valid way will likely be a part of your game as well.

If you want to go with hourglasses to have separate timers on separate actions, great!  That sounds really cool.  But you have to build around the limitations of the component.  Here are some general suggestions:

Each player has a limited number of hourglasses.  This is an important restriction given hourglasses will have to ship in the box and you have only so much box space.  An hourglass should represent one concurrent action that a player can be doing.  Players can start with some number (say 2) and be able to gain additional hourglasses (up to say 5) through expensive upgrades.  This way, players feel like they are getting more powerful as they progress and also the game accelerates as it goes.  This is a really interesting counterpoint to traditional action increases in turn-based games (like Agricola), where adding more actions per player slows down the game.
An hourglass must be reset to be available to use.  Hourglasses take time to reset, so bake that into the rules.  If you want to cancel an action and use that hourglass on another card, you need to put it in a waiting area and wait until it is empty.  This makes canceling actions expensive (unless you have just started them, in which case the hourglass can be emptied quickly).  The same rule would apply to actions that get interrupted by abilities or game events.  As a result, interrupting an action is very punitive, and should be commensurately rare in terms of events/abilities.  Maybe cut this aspect entirely as it likely will feel very bad to the recipient.
Some actions can take multiple hourglasses to complete.  Hourglasses have a fixed duration that they run for, so bake that into the rules.  An hourglass is one unit of time.  If you have something that should take longer, require it to go through two or more hourglasses (every time an hourglass on it completes, it gets a token, and it needs N such tokens to be done).  You could even have variations of this where some of the longer actions allow multiple hourglasses to happen in parallel (ex. building a complex building) where some require hourglasses to be used in serial (ex. sending units to a far away location).

Just use a timer of some sort that has some basic functions.

Start
Stop
Set timer
Reset (for when you don't need the full time.)

I like the idea, but there may be a few problems with timers.
(1) They can be a bit bulky, taking up a lot of box space.
(2) Not as tactile as an hourglass.
(3) Could be noisy, although it depends.
I do like the idea, though.  My game would need a lot of timers (around 12), but it could work.

Timers would only be noisy if they are mechanical ones and I was thinking of a digital one and you can make those smaller.

Since about everybody has a mobile phone these days, I would direct users to a (free) mobile app. Apps like that don't need Internet access, so giving proper preparation, that is not an issue either. The timers of the operating system usually only have one; searching for "mobile app multiple hourglasses" returns several results, none of which I've tried, but I guess there must be some that match what you're looking for.

That would be pretty convenient for players and would reduce box space.  However, I should have specified that the location of each timer shows what it's being used for (gathering resources, building tiles, of the like).  Using timers on a phone would make it difficult to keep track of which timer is being used for what since each player would have multiple timers going at once.

In your situation, I might consider writing a custom app, but that's only because I'm used to developing mobile apps ...

A possibility to make hourglasses work would be to have multiple per player.
If a timer is interrupted and needs to be reset, simply exchange it for a new hourglass from the stockpile. If you need to pause, just lay it on its side.
Depending on your game, this would also allow for simultaneous actions, or actions of different durations.

I like the idea.  However, each player in the game would be waiting on multiple actions at once, meaning they'd already have multiple hourglasses per person.  Also, if multiple interruptions occur in a short period of time, players may run out of hourglasses.  It could work for a game where each player does one action at a time.
I do like the idea about pausing hourglasses by laying them sideways, I hadn't thought of that before.


text:
Board games with random maps not revealed at the beginning of the game and exploration
I am trying to develop a physical board game with the following features (among others):

The map is randomly/procedurally generated (square/hex tiles, does not matter)
The map is not revealed at the beginning of the game. It needs to be explored (generated).
The players are physically located within the map (units or buildings or whatever) and need to get towards some objectives

These 3 conditions combined pose a problem that games having only two of them don't present. For example:

Catan has 1 and 3, where the map is random and the player placement is important, but it is fair in the sense that the whole map is revealed at the beginning of the game, so the players know what the best spots are.
Saboteur has 1 and 2, in the sense that even when the map is procedurally generated and not revealed at first, the WHOLE map affects all the players (there is no player placement within the map), so it is also fair.

But if you have 1,2,3, I feel it is too random. Since the players need to explore the map and find some objects, but they don't know what they are going to find or the difficulties/enemies, I feel it reduces the strategic value and it is leaning too much on luck (the feeling of "you are not playing the game, the game is playing you"). I tried mitigating this by revealing adjacent map tiles when entering a specific tile.
My question would be, are there other board games that contain the 3 conditions mentioned above, and how do they mitigate this problem and shift the balance more towards strategy and less towards luck? Home-brewed suggestions not taken from existing games are also welcome.

Catan Seafarers adds the “reveal as you play” element. Eclipse is similar; though players have some say over how the map is generated, it’s still largely random.

The betrayal at house on the hill has what you are looking for as the map is random and expands based on players exploration.

if you look at 504, in particular the 'exploration module' I believe that does what you ask.

I think Zomibicide also does the same thing, and it is definitely criticised by some as being too random. I don't know if any of its many expansions or spin-offs does anything to curtail the randomness.

I believe Mage Knight Board Game does what you are asking, if I can understand the question.
The game uses tiles with 7 hexes on them. You can explore to reveal additional tiles and place them next to where you are. The hexes on those tiles may have certain points of interest (towns, battles, objectives etc.) but because the tiles are the random element, you won't have all of your towns clustered in one area, for example. It also makes sure that terrain types are more spread out.
The initial configuration of the tiles is determined by the scenario being played. It may act to make sure that cities are a certain number of tiles apart, or that end game objectives are shuffled in the bottom 3 tiles. In general, "better" stuff is further out. But in theory a scenario could do the opposite.
The game can feel very "lucky" in that not only are these tiles random, but the actions you can take are defined by a random draw from your deck. The game mitigates luck by providing players with a ton of options. Dealing with what you've been given is the whole game, and better, more experienced players will find the right path more often. (The game is also often played solo where you can spend hours just figuring out a single turn if you'd like.) A lot of this comes from having multiple points of interest on a given tile. You don't just flip a tile, see that it wasn't what you wanted, and give up. Instead, now you have 4 more choices of what to do with your turn and surely one of them advances your win condition.

You can reduce the random factor by not having one tile but a cluster of them that are physical connected. This solves the balancing problem of adding too much random in a single tile. Depending of the size of the game, you can have 3x3 single tiles as one big tile (players need to visit them one by one), but you as a designer have it easier to get the important elements spaced out.
To add more to the variance and randomness, the big tiles are in group pools. (Let's use the numbers 1, 2 and 3). Number 1 would be around the start area, around those the 2 and around those number 3. This ensures that the game progress is paced out and balanced (no high level Monster or events in the start zone). Of course it does not need to be simple 1, 2, 3 ring, the tiles themself can have a linked number which pile should be next. If you have more piles than you have to place, each game would result in an unique layout and players don't know what is added or missing. The piles are only flipped around once you visit them.

I thought about the tier group pools, for instance the last group would have more dead end tiles and objective tiles, and the first group would have none. But that combined with the tile clusters, amazing idea.

Forbidden Desert uses all 3 of these mechanics. Players start on a grid of randomly dealt tiles which are placed face down, and players need to move to unexplored tiles and reveal them. Among the 24 tiles, there are 8 particular "clue" tiles which must be uncovered before the game can be won.
There is randomness involved in how quickly the players uncover the necessary tiles, but it is mitigated somewhat by the unnecessary tiles still yielding bonuses - even if you don't uncover a tile that you actually needed, you'll get an equipment card that can come in handy later. Other unnecessary tiles give a bonus for ending your turn there, so you'll always find something that's useful in some way, even if it's not what you were looking for.
Additionally, the fact that there are 8 of 24 tiles that are necessary means that in practice, you usually wind up uncovering most of the tiles. If hidden items are more sparse, the game can be a lot more "swingy" in how fast they get found. If you needed only 1 tile, for example, the game could end after uncovering a single tile, or not until all have been uncovered. But since you need 8, you must uncover at least a third of the board, and very likely considerably more than that.
The game is also played cooperatively, so luck swings for the entire table as a whole rather than individual players - it may be easier to stomach if everyone gets unlucky and suffers an ignominious failure together, rather than being the only player to get unlucky.
The mechanics of this game also make it so that the board tiles shift over time, so the board isn't in a static configuration. The game is in a way about exploring as many tiles as you can as efficiently as you can to maximize your odds, rather than heading toward a specific objective with perfect knowledge of how it can be achieved.

Clank! Catacombs is an exploration deckbuilder where players explore the catacombs, searching for artifacts (and other goodies).  Players must explore deep into the catacombs, but also must race back to the entryway at the end of the game.
The game meets all 3 criteria.  Players start in a central tile, with pathways leading off the edge of the tile.  As they move, other tiles are revealed.
The first several tiles from the random deck will always be "easier" tiles with less useful destinations on them.  This forces players to "move out" and explore.
Randomness is a factor, as the tile selection is from a shuffled deck.
But, the element of strategic decision making is still important.  Much of that comes from the fact that most tiles have several locations ("rooms") on them.  By orienting the tile in different orientations, the player's entry onto the tile can be chosen from the available rooms.

Magic Maze meets all three of your requirements, and manages to do so on a time limit. Some of the things it does to mitigate the randomness of generating the map are:

It's a co-operative game, so players are incentivised to take actions that are to the benefit of the whole group.

Opening up a map tile is an action that only one player can perform, so there is an element of control.

When the player uses the "Explore" action to place a new map tile, they draw the tile and then can place it on any open arrow which has a pawn of matching colour standing on it. This means that there can be up to four choices of where to place the tile, providing additional control.

The tiles themselves are not single spaces but a small section of map with multiple features.

There are multiple objectives the players must achieve in order to win - they have to get the four pawns to the matching shops, then navigate those pawns to their corresponding exits. This means that players will need to place most of the tiles down over the course of the game, and in fact it's likely that the entire stack of tiles will need to be placed (maybe minus one or two) before all of the necessary objectives are available.

Now Magic Maze is also a game that embraces its chaos so it's not a perfect example of how to minimise randomness, but it clearly gives players a certain amount of agency with which to manage that chaos as well.

Living planet meets all 3 criteria. It is an economic, exploration game. While there is luck involved, I believe that the randomness of the tiles increases replayability and does not cause any balance issues. The skill lies in adapting your strategy to the tiles that come up.


text:
Friendly Blackjack, with players edge over the house?
I am hosting a casino-night party.  These are not money games, but there are prizes at the end of the night for whoever wins the most chips overall.  I will be dealing blackjack.   I want my players to have fun, and winning is fun, so I would like to adjust the rules a bit to improve player edge.  None of the players are gamblers, and some will be playing for the first time, so their play will be far from optimal.
What would be some good rule changes to increase the players winning?
Increasing blackjack payouts to 2:1 seems like an obvious choice.  Anything else I should consider?
Note: I WILL make it clear to my players that the game they are playing is rigged in their favor and is NOT the same as they would find in a real casino.

In blackjack, the house edge over an inexperienced players is around 2% [source].  Thus any small rule-adjustment will do the work.
My suggestion is not to change the rules but to simply remove half of the 2-6 from the deck. Card-counting players are waiting for exactly this situations, known as hot-deck, then they know that they have the edge over the house thus they shift from 1$ bets into 10K$ bets.

To put it simply, if cards of smaller ranks (2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) are
dealt and removed from the deck, their removal will have a positive
effect on your expectations. In other words, their removal increases
your advantage. As for the cards of higher ranks (10, J, Q, K and A),
their removal has a negative effect on your expectations. It simply
means that odds of creating a blackjack hand when these cards are
removed from the deck for the player are lower. Finally, the removal
of 7, 8 and 9 has almost no effect on your expectations.

EDIT: removing all of the 2-6 is too big of an advantage, I think it is better to remove just half of the 2-6. This is because removing all of the 2-6 will create wired situations where players almost know that the dealer will go bust.

Other rules-adjustments that can move the edge to the players:

Players win ties.
Dealer stand on 18 instead of 17

Suggestions from a variant called Player's Edge 21:

blackjack payouts to 2:1
Two suited and ranked player face cards are an automatic winner. This includes beating a dealer blackjack.
Late surrender is allowed.
The player may double at any time. This includes on any number of cards, after splitting, and after doubling. The maximum number of double per hand is three.
Re-splitting aces allowed.
A player 21 always wins.
Player blackjack beats dealer blackjack.
Player may hit and double down after splitting aces.
Player may surrender after doubling, known as "double down rescue." The player forfeits an amount equal to his original bet.
A five-card 21 pays 3 to 2, a six-card 21 pays 2 to 1, and a seven or more card 21 pays 3 to 1.
A 6-7-8 or 7-7-7 of mixed suits pays 3 to 2, of the same suit pays 2 to 1, and of spades pays 3 to 1. These bonuses pay after splitting but not after doubling.
Suited 7-7-7 when the dealer has a seven face up pays $1000 for bets of $5-$24 and $5000 for bets of $25 or over.

Upvoted specifically for the first suggestion. The other suggestions might do the trick as well, but I appreciate that removing 2-6 will let players experience the game very much like it would normally be played, except with a lot more moments of achievement and success. In combination with what the questioner said about clearly educating players that this isn't what they should expect at a real table (and perhaps by player's choice eventually including those cards again), this sounds like a very good method of bringing fun to a table of non-casino-regulars.

I'd be careful with changing deck composition.  Removing some of the low cards from the deck without telling players cloud also lead to a very bad player experience, as it also punishes inexperienced players who like to make reckless moves (like hitting on a 17)

Thank you. This gives me lots of options to work with. Very helpful.

@Zags, of course, you must tell the players of any modification you do as a dealer.
I would start by saying: have you guys seen the movie 21? So what happened is that a crew of very smart people from MIT count +1 for every low card and -1 for every high card and they found out that this deck is HOT +20 and calls you high rollers to win big time!

In some casinos the house rules say the Dealer must:

draw on 16 or under
stand on 17 or over

You could raise that to:

draw on 17 or under
stand on 18 or over

to increase the chance of the Dealer going bust.
Or even higher.

Could you simply have the dealer play by all the same rules as each non-dealer player? Rather than have the player always act first, rotate the start player among different hands like you do in poker. And allow the dealer to decide whether to hit or stand rather than have a rule about when they have to. Essentially, "the dealer" becomes irrelevant; it's just multiple people playing against each other with all equal rules and odds, and one of those players happens to be the house.

If this is a bad idea, I'd love to hear feedback on why! I admin I don't know a lot about Black Jack, so I definitely may have overlooked something here.

I think it is an O.k idea that could work.  The thing is that it will change the dynamics of the game, because everybody are against the dealer there is some dynamics that all the players are together, you can see in casino people cheer each other and happy that other players beat the dealer.  This will be lost in a free-for-all variant.

@Cohensius See that's something I didn't know about black jack! I thought the best hand won; I didn't realize that anyone who beat the dealer won.


text:
What card game is this, my mom taught me
It’s a single player game, where you place a card face up and continue dealing the cards one by one. The goal is to get the entire deck in one stack. As you deal the cards you match by suit or number and you can only skip 3 places to add to a stack. Thank you in advance:)

Sounds like it could be the same as either this or this, but hard to tell from your description.

This sounds like Accordion to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accordion_(card_game)

Yes this is it!!!  thanks so much!


text:
In Spades, with the mercy rule, what happens if both teams get a score under -200?
In Spades, the mercy rule: if you go below -200 you lose.
What happens if both teams go below -200 at the same time?
For example, in the first hand, both partnerships bid 8 and NIL and neither partner makes the bid, the next hand both partners go nil on one team, and the other team goes 13 and again, neither team makes their bids.

If both partnerships got under -200, then the partnership that has lower score losses.  If both partnerships has exactly the same score then its a draw.
In your example, on the first hand both partnership got -180 and on the second hand the first partnership got -200 and the second partnership got -130. In this case the first partnership loses due to score of -380 which is lower than the -310 of the second partnership.


text:
Trick taking game for 2 players with 2 rows of 5 cards per player
I am looking for the real name of the card game I was playing with my father 30 years ago. He was calling it "Peseta", but I searched for this name and couldn't find even just one record of a card game with this name, so I am now unsure if I remember correctly.

Deal: the dealer deals 5 closed cards for each player. Then he puts 5 faceup cards, on top of the facedown cards.
Trump choice: the non-dealer pick the trump suit, based on his cards.

And after the trump chosen, dealer proceeds with putting 5 cards on top of his closed cards, and proceeds with doing the same by adding another 5-row of open-closed cards. Then each player gets a hand of 6 cards. As below:

Play: The non-dealer plays first, and the dealer either have to play a bigger card, or if he doesn't have it he can play a trump to take the turn. If he doesn't have a bigger card or a trump, he have to give a card of himself.

Strategy: The trick of the game is to bleed the opponent by consuming his trumps, putting him in disadvantageous positions as he will play stronger trumps for weak cards etc.

Is there anyone else familiar with this game?

Don't stuff the tags with things that don't apply. Stratego is a board game, not a card game so it's definitely not connected at all.

"closed" --> "face-down" and "open" --> "face-up"

@Andrew It was Chatgpt's idea, sorry if its not proper.

@Pecheneg we don't allow ai on answers, i dont think thr stance is as strict on questions but still, a big part of the reason is how often ai hallucinations happen, or its just plain wrong.

Rule #2478 of S.E: never mention GPT.

This reminds me a lot of Officers' Skat, but there are differences:
Officers' Skat is played with a 32 card deck, so each player only has 4 (x2 x2) cards before them and no additional hand cards.

Thanks for the answer, sadly this is definitely 52 card game.


text:
Identify a game like War where each player chooses their card
In this 2 players game, each player starts with a hand of entire single suit (13 cards from Ace to King). Both players choose a card each round for 13 rounds, and each round the higher card wins. Cards are discarded after you use them. The winner is the player who wins the most rounds by the end.

Where are the cards? In the players' hands? Or face up/down on the table? Aren't there 26 cards, if they choose one card each for 13 rounds? Or is it a full deck with half the cards dealt?

@WeatherVane, each player is holding a hand of 13 cards of a single suit, for example: p1 gets all the hearts while p2 gets all the spades.  The other suits are not used in the OP version.  In the official Goofspiel another suit is used to decide the value of each round.

Isn't this totally boring, because you just play your cards from highest to lowest and are guaranteed to maximize your gain? Am I missing something? I know this is just a description to identify the game, but I am curious.

@Antares, no.  If you play your cards from highest to lowest, and I play in the first turn my lowest, then go from highest to lowest, I will win 12 out of the 13 turns.

Goofspiel
This is a variant of Goofspiel with a single difference: in your version, prizes are equal (each win is worth 1 point), while in the official Goofspiel, each round is worth 1 to 13 points (at the start of each round, you reveal a card from another suit of 13 cards to determine the prize value of the round).
This game falls within the domain of the Colonel Blotto game, which is studied intensively by game theorists.


text:
In Hand & Foot, how many points is needed to make an open?
The first player on a team to initially play (open) must play a minimum number of points to open.  I know that in Canasta, in order to open the levels are:

50 points for scores up to 1495
90 points for score up to 2995
120 for scores 3000 and up.

Hand and Foot is related to Canasta, but has enough rules changes to be its own game!
Instead of playing to a point goal, you typically play four rounds.  The points needed for your initial meld increase as the rounds are played.

Round 1: 50 points to open.
Round 2: 90 points to open.
Round 3: 120 points to open.
Round 4: 150 points to open.


text:
Has advanced Quarto been solved?
Has the advanced rules of Quarto (where the 2x2 square condition is also included) been solved?
And in the advanced rules, where is the best position for the first piece?

The advanced rules of Quarto were solved at a similar time to the regular rules (1998), and much like the regular rules it has been shown that with perfect play the advanced rules will result in a draw (along with a number of other extended rulesets).
That said the following is the table of Quarto results for both the standard and advanced games:

Win condition
Distinct Draws

rows, cols
1329371360640

rows, cols, squares
35347120896

As you might be able to guess from the outcome space for both games perfect play is virtually impossible for a human to memorize, so while the game is solved it's not solved for human play.
In addition even though the game is solved there's no definitive "best" opening move in Quarto, as the game's strategy is deeply intertwined with anticipating your opponent's moves and reacting to the evolving board state.


text:
In Canasta, is it possible to pickup a black 3 if it allows to go out?
Can I pickup 3♣ / 3♠ from the discard pile if it has just that card and my hand has two black 3s?

No, you can never pick up the discard pile if the top card is a black 3 (or a wild).
https://bicyclecards.com/how-to-play/canasta

The discard pile may never be taken when its top card is a wild card, a black three, or a red three.

The only exception in the rules that relates to black threes is that normally you cannot meld black threes, but you can meld them when you are going out. But this is only an exception to the "no melding black threes" rule, it does not relate to the rule about taking the pile with a black three on top.

A set of three or four black threes (without wild cards) may be melded only when a player goes out.

many thanks - in a similar vein I wondered what rules take precedence : a) 2 on top of discard pile can I make a meld with two 2s in my hand and take the discard pile - Presume the anwwer is No. b) Can I make a meld of 3 jokers or three 2s - presume answer is NO.

The pertinent rule being a meld must contain two natural cards and 2s and Jokers are not natural cards?


text:
Solitaire with the long middle column
This game was taught to me years ago, using a regular deck of cards.
Setup:

Columns 1,2,3: lay 1 card face up
Column 4: 6 cards down and the 7th up
Columns 5,6,7: 1 up.
The very next card goes up to the foundation and that is your starting number.

Play:

The foundation pile alternate between red and black going up,
the columns alternate between red and black going down
Column 4: can ONLY be played in the foundation.
Also you can only go through the deck once

At the opening deal, are there any face-down cards under the face-up cards in columns 1-3 and 5-7, or is each face-up card the only card in its column? Does the foundation roll back to A once you play K? Is there only one foundation pile, and if so, how do you switch from red-A, black-2 to black-A, red-2?

No face down cards in columns 1-3 & 5-7. There is 4 foundation piles and they round the clock so if the starting card is a 5 it will go 5,6,7,8,9,10,J,Q,K,A,2,3,4


text:
When i was a child, 50 years ago, i had a board game in which the players tried to gather the best photos of breaking news stories. can you help?
In the game, when you arrived at a news story, you would receive a "photo." The value of the photo, in points, was determined by how quickly you arrived at the scene. A valuable picture would be flames of a raging fire. A less valuable card would have a picture of a burned building and maybe some smoke.

There are two games that come to mind, https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2033/reporter and https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5819/star-reporter - both are over 50 years old. Do you remember a bit more about the game?


text:
Knock when opponent has 0 deadwood
What happens if player A knocks and player B has gin but hadn’t realized? Do they get the points plus the bonus gin points?

It's an undercut.
Player B wins the difference between the counts plus an undercut bonus.
From Pagat:

If the knocker did not go gin, and the counts are equal, or the
knocker's count is greater than that of the opponent, the knocker has
been undercut. In this case the knocker's opponent scores the
difference between the counts plus a 10 point bonus.

Note that in the situation described, player B does not have gin. He just has 0 deadwood.
In order to make a gin, a player must have 0 deadwood and to declare Gin during his turn.

Thank you, that’s super helpful. First time playing (it’s raining in Cyprus)

@Woodie - the best way to thank folks is to upvote (if you haven't) and accept the answer if you think it's helpful.


text:
Unlimited trades
Can a players trade with another player unlimited times in his same turn?
For example:
This is turn of player1 and he trades with player2 1:3 cards and than trade with player3 1:3 and than again trade with player2 in a loop. in this situation player 1 can start his turn with one card and finish his turn with 15+ cards.

You used the house rules tag, but you never elaborated why the default rules wouldn't suffice; needless to say, you can house-rule anything. What were you trying to do with that?

Could you give an actual situation where player2 and player3 would engage in this behaviour?

@PhilipKendall uff, purely hypothetically speaking: assume the extremely unlikely case that all three players monopolized one resource. So, nobody is winning, they refuse to trade with each other unless the trade guarantees the game is decided next turn with them not losing. The point where all have amassed a massive stockpile of their resources has come, and player 1 was lucky that he's got the highest-demand resource. Player 1 has 7 victory points, Player 2 has 8, due to having the longest road. Player 2 monopolizes brick, so that nobody else could build a road longer than his. However, the

other players are able to win, because they've traded in the past and have a hand full of development cards. In this situation, the information that each player has is incomplete, as they do not know which dev cards the others hold. They're taking bets. So, player 2 is willing to trade with player 1 exactly such that player 1 still lacks a sigle resource to finish a road longer than his. Player 3 sees that player 2 gets into possession of the resources needed to buy enough development cards to win, and needs to start doing counteroffers to make sure Player 2 doesn't win. Player 1 gets a lot of

resources, that way, but none that they need – essentially, an excess of 3 of each resource but brick. Not enough to do maritime trade to get brick to build a road or a settlement. That makes 5 resources times 3, 15 cards. This game seems more like a mixture of poker, blackjack and Russian Roullette, but, I mean, whatever floats your boat.

@MarcusMüller I am impressed at the amount of thought you put into that scenario :)

@PhilipKendall really, it's the most insanely unlikely scenario, though (and I came to it backwards: under which situation would player2 partner allow player1 to become rich? -> monopoly on some resources. under which circumstances would player3 also do such trades? -> each monopolizes one resource. When would these two opponents ever allow for an accumulation of 15:1? needing to stop the other non-player 1 player from winning

Yes, you may trade as many times as you want.
In the exhaustive rules on trading from the Almanac section of the current game rules, you can find the following rule:

You may trade as long as you have resource cards.

If that's not clear enough for some reason, the entire section doesn't mention any limits either, and if there were any restrictions on the amount of legal trades per turn, it would be mentioned there.


text:
Is "logic connect 4" the official name of this connect 4 variant?
Do you know the real name of this game called "logic connect 4"?
I've found this at makerworld which is a 3D print group, but it seems that it's not the real name of the game.

Its sounds like a variant to "connect 4", why do you think it's not the real name of the variant?

Probably because it seemed off. "logic" is not a fitting descriptor without the "orbital" part. No need to downvote on that basis (especially since it turns out the OP's instincts were correct).

"Official" would require a context of a publisher or governing body. But if you mean "original" (i.e., as named by its creator), then no. It was published 10 days earlier on the same site by what appears to be its creator as
轨道逻辑四子棋 Track Logic Connect Four Chess
The first part of which google translates to "Orbital Logic Tetra". That model, with rules that were described in the page as being "introduced" with the publication of the model, was created by 我的妹妹最可爱 (@YDlong).

It was released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike (unlike the "Logic Connect 4" derivation, which says "This work is licensed under a Standard Digital File License." and without, as far as I can tell, the attribution required by YDlong's publication).
Note that the English translation of the rules on that page is flawed. It says "four pieces on the board after move 3" (which is clearly nonsensical). The correct translation is "A player with four pieces in a row on the board after the third step wins."
Game play:

move an opponent's piece to an adjacent (empty) space.
place your own piece on any empty space.
push the center to cause the pieces to rotate.

If you've upvoted this answer, please consider upvoting the question as well.


text:
In Hearts, are there any pre-pass hands that would guarantee you shoot the moon?
I was wondering if any starting hands exist that allow a player to guarantee they can shoot the moon in a passing round. (This is obviously possible in a non-passing round, e.g. having all the clubs). In this scenario, we have to account for any any possible set of cards being passed to us.
For example, say my hand is: AKQ♠, AKQJT98♥, 432♣

I can pass my 432♣, but maybe I get passed 432♦, and someone might break hearts on diamonds and deny the moon, despite me having the cards otherwise

I feel the answer is "no". Mostly because I think without AKQ♠ and AKQJT98♥, my opponents might have the cards for me to lose the Q or a heart. This is 10 cards, so my remaining three cards are decided by the passing player, and so a situation like above can happen.
But maybe I am missing something, or maybe a clever solution that relies on passing in a particular direction.
So, does such a starting hand exist?

Interesting, so we think on a hand that takes 10 tricks + 3 worst cards.  The question is if we can force out all Hearts and QS in those 10 tricks that we sure win.

Yes, and we also now have the power to decide three of the cards of a particular player of your choice (probably the player to the right, if any)

Right, and we also know that on the first trick no hearts or the QS will be played, so we can either place the AC in our hand in order to take the lead or decide to have no clubs so it will allow us to discard one of the 3 "bad" cards

@Cohensius It's not a hand that guarantees taking 10 tricks though. Someone has to lead a suit you can start taking, at which point you pretty much take every trick, but it's conceivably possible that you will have gone through half the game before a suit you can take a trick on is lead when you have winning cards in only 2 suits, particularly with one of them being hearts.

@Andrew, you are absolutely right, this is the reason that in my answer I added the AC and passed the 2C, so I could take the first trick so I can lead and win the next 9 tricks.  The problem in that hand is that you can not force hearts break (QS do not break hearts).

No, there are no pre pass hands that will guarantee a shooting the moon. As you suggest it is possible to get a low card in a suit that will prevent you from taking that trick and either keep you from getting a point or preventing you from taking a trick again.
In your example,

your hand is AKQ♠, AKQJT98♥ and you are passing the 432♣,

So if you get the 765 of hearts in the pass but the first 4 tricks are clubs/diamonds with at least 1 point in them you will not be able to shoot the moon.

I think that Joe W is right, there are no pre-pass hands that can guarantee a shooting the moon.  However I think there are hands that guarantees shooting the moon unless the distribution of hearts is extreme AND a villain is passing cards in a very unlikely way.  However I still did not think of such a hand.
First try:
This hand guarantee to shooting the moon for:

The 7 other hearts are not held by a single villain
Uses the non-official house rule that QS also break Hearts.

Hand: A2♣, AKQ♠, AKQJT932♥, and you pass the 32♥,2♣ and get passed some XYZ
so post-pass the hand is: A♣, AKQ♠, AKQJT9♥, XYZ

Trick 1: some villain leads the 2♣ and you grab the lead with A♣.
Trick 2-4: lead A♠ then K♠, and Q♠ which break hearts.
Trick 5-10 lead AKQJT9♥ and hope that no one holds all the other 7 hearts.
Trick 11-13: X,Y,Z

This hand does not guarantee to shot the moon only if a single villain pre-passing held 87654♥, did not pass any heart and got your passed 32♥.
Two thoughts:

We are missing a single heart in order to guarantee the moon.
How likely a player holding 87654♥ to pass some of his hearts?

I would be very unlikely to pass any of those hearts as there are only 2 lower hearts which means I would be unlikely to actually take any heart tricks and I would be better off passing other cards.

Normally, Q♠ doesn't break hearts - also, thank you for the symbol edits :) looks much nicer

@SiddSingal, right, now i see that QS breaking hearts is a not the common variant.

@JoeW, you right, however I think we can use this line of thinking about what a reasonable player would do and build her hand to.  Say we pass across the table, so the one we pass to passes to us

I would argue that a reasonable player would keep all 5 of those hearts and work to short suit them selves in another suit as with those 5 hearts they are in a good position to not take any hearts at all.


text:
Is there a specific optimal first move for white or black?
There are a number of chess programs that will calculate win % based on any board arrangement.  Is there a specific opening (first move) for white or black that is best from a probabilistic standpoint?
I'm guessing there is for white, and the optimal black opening will depend on what move has been made prior.  I'm trying to make no presumption on the skill level of players from which these probabilities have been calculated.

I think you might get better answers at chess S.E: https://chess.stackexchange.com/

I'm pretty sure the answer here is "yes, but we don't know what it is. Chess is too complicated", although as this is a game theory question you will need to define much more precisely what you mean by "a probabilistic standpoint".

If there is an optimal move it is likely going to depend on the skill level of both players.

@JoeW If the optimality of a move depends on how your opponent responds to it, it is by definition not optimal. I agree that in general "how good" a move is can depend on the strength of your opponent (and how well you can handle the subsequent board state), but an optimal move cannot in some cases be sub-optimal. A move whose strength relies upon your opponent making a mistake isn't optimal, optimal moves must assume optimal responses.

@NuclearHoagie If chess was a solved game you might have a point but as it isn't and there are many different philosophy's in how you play and open that means what is an optimal move in one game isn't in another.

@JoeW I agree that what is a good move versus one opponent might not be versus another. But I disagree that you could call it "optimal", it makes no sense to me that you could play an "optimal" move, and later realize you should have done something different because your opponent responded differently than you expected. A sub-optimal move doesn't become optimal because your opponent is playing badly.

@PhilipKendall, that almost has to be the case, but since there is no central database of all chess games ever played it's not possible to calculate the true answer.  Also think JoeW is right that the optimal move depends on the skill level of the players.

This is surely one of the most-asked questions in gaming, will browse chess stackexchange.

There are optimal openings, we just don’t know them.
From a game-theory standpoint, Zermelo's theorem states that for each opening, one of the following must be true:

White can win for sure.
Black can win for sure.
Both players can force a draw.

This theorem applies to any finite, two-player game with perfect information, where players alternate moves and there is no element of chance.  Therefore, if Chess is ever weakly-solved, we will find the optimal first moves and they will depend on whether the solution is a White win, Black win, or a draw:

If it is found that White can win for sure, then the optimal opening consists of the first moves that lead to a win regardless of Black’s response.
If it is found that Black can win for sure, then there is no optimal opening move for White (since all of them lead to a loss, however there are optimal moves for Black)
If it is found that both players can force a draw, then any opening that does not allow the opponent to win for sure is optimal.

From a probabilistic standpoint, we can analyze the win/lose/draw statistics of games that started with each opening. However, the skill of the players is crucial. I am not a Chess expert, but I know that some openings are easier than others. What I mean is that the win/lose/draw statistics for a particular opening can vary significantly depending on whether the games are played by amateurs or masters.

I don't think this addresses the actual question. It explores some of the theory behind what could lead to an answer, and it looks like this is leaning towards a "no" opinion but doesn't actually come out and say it.

Actually Its more like a "yes".  After Chess will be solved there will be a list of moves that lead to a sure White win (this list might be empty).   More practically, we can look at games statistic of a certain Skill level, and find the first move that leads to highest win rate of White in that skill level.

Then in that case I think the answer needs a pretty major rewrite, because it didn't read that way to me. It also relies pretty heavily on the question of "If chess can be solved" with the assumption that it can

@Cohensius, I'd presume the best a computer can do is calculate a subgame-optimal strategy, and even this will depend on the skill level of the player and opponent.  Truly, was hoping for someone who has read so many chess manuscripts that this question has been addressed.

@Andrew, The "From probabilistic standpoint" part does not relies on solving chess, just data of games in a certain skill level.  I am not sure what you mean by a major rewrite, if you think you can improve the answer then please edit it.

The current consensus is that chess will not be solved, at least not any time soon. Because the game isn't be solved, that means there is no single optimal opening move for white, and even more so for black.
Chess is one of the games where you play your opponent as much as you play the game, different styles, strategies change how good each possible opening move is because of how players will go through the rest of the game. The Scholars Mate for example is a great opening move against very new players because it leads to the fastest possible win, but against someone who is experienced it's overextending valuable pieces without significant defenses.
White is making their opening move on a single possible board state, black on the other hand has 20 possible board states (8 white pawns can each move up one or two makes 16, 2 knights can either move left or right for the other four), and each of those board states would have moves that are better or are worse based on what white has access to and exposed with their first move.

All true, and remember this thread should you read something scientific!


text:
Take the Queen or let someone shoot the moon?
In the first hand of a four handed Hearts game, someone is trying to shoot the moon and the only way It can be stopped is me taking the Q♠.  Should I take the queen or let them shoot the moon?  In other words, is 0-26-26-26 worse for me than 0-0-13-13?
To make the question precise, lets assume:

All three opponents are strong bots with equal strength.
I want to maximize the chance to win the game.

That is really going to depend on the person

At the very least to provide a quantitative answer here, you'll need to provide a metric for how you rank coming first, second, third or fourth; my intuition is that the answer is different if the only thing you care about is coming first vs a metric where coming last is ranked lower than coming second.

Take the Queen
I did a Monte Carlo simulation of how often you would win a game of Hearts, assuming each point card had an equal and independent probability of being taken by each player after the first hand.
In the "Shoot the Moon" scenario, the viewpoint player won ~11% of the games.
In the "Take the Queen" scenario, the viewpoint player won ~14% of the games.
Intuitively, this makes sense - in either case, you need to deliver 26 points above the average to specific players, but in scenario 1 you need to deliver them all to one player, while in the other you need to deliver them to two players.  If we're assuming a random distribution, the second is more probable.  Also, you have slightly more hands in which to deliver the points, although I don't think that really affects my perfect random simulation much.
Of course, my random distribution is not a great simulation of actual Hearts gameplay.  But I think it provides a useful baseline.

One factor no-one has yet mentioned: if the score is 0-26-26-26, the three 26s will tend to gang up on the low score until things are brought back into equilibrium.  I wonder if the "ganging up" tendency is as strong or focused if the scores are 0-0-13-13.

The answer is "it depends."  In order to perform a game theoretical analysis of this scenario, you have to know the relative strengths of the players, which for most casual scenarios is going to massively influence the game.  Some questions you have to be able to answer for an analysis are:

Are you a better player than the person shooting the moon?
Are you a better player than anyone else at the table?
How much better or worse are you than the other players?
What are the politics of your play group?
If you are better than everyone else at the table, do they know it or not?

I know someone who won 80% of the hearts games we played as a group, because he'd always stay in second place, until the last hand, and set the person who was in the lead in some way to win the game.  He was that good.
Also, game theory in general doesn't handle political situations well at all, which is often what hearts ends up being near the end.
TLDR: Basically, it's what JoeW says.  There's too much context missing from your question to give a mathematical answer.

Thanks for your answers. But assume that the four players are of exactly equal strength, or better yet, each player is a computer that plays every hand perfectly according to the ongoing information it has access to.  Then which is better, 0-0-0-26 or 0-0-13-13?

This isn't a great answer as there is a long list of opinion based answers as to what to do that have nothing to do with the skill level of players or politics of the group as it could easily not be an established group.


text:
Identify a variant of Rummy where hands' size are random
This is a variant of Rummy for 2 or more players, where the size of each player starting hand is random.

Deck: regular deck with Jokers.

Deal:

The 1st card in the deck determine the number of cards the 1st player receives face down.
The next card in the deck determine the number of cards the dealer or player #2 receive.

opening:

2-9 are worth a 2-9 cards hand.
K,Q,J,T are worth a 10-cards hand.
Ace is worth a 21-cards hand.

Wilds: Jokers and duces are wild.  A wild card can be replaced with the proper card.

What is the name of this game? Any insight will be greatly appreciated.

All you've described is the deal.  How does play proceed?  That will significantly impact the game.  The lack of description of play is probably why you are getting closed votes.

@John I assume that OP expected "variant of Rummy" to be adequate information to describe the play. But it probably is not.


text:
What are the official draw rules in American Pool Checkers?
In the official rules of American Pool Checkers, what are the conditions for a draw to be declared?

The American Pool Checkers website "americanpoolcheckers.us" is essentially dead (deliberately not linked because of a bad HTTPS certificate), but was fortunately archived by the Wayback Machine, so we can get the rules from 2021. These include:

In certain end-game positions, when one of the sides appears stronger than the other, the stronger side is required to complete a win within thirty moves. If after thirty moves the pieces of both sides remain unchanged the game is declared a draw. [ ... ]

“13” COUNT RULE: The lone king must be caught before the player with the lone king counts thirteen, or the game is declared a draw.

If the lone king has the long line (4-29) and the stronger side refuses to accept the draw then the stronger side has to catch the lone king within five moves

Cool, thanks. Weird that it just says "certain end-game positions" without specifying what those positions are!

@TomekCzajka, I am guessing they call it "certain end-game positions" since the list of those position is not final yet and from time to time another position is being added.


text:
Can I pass in Splendor if I have 10 gems?
In the game of Splendor, if I have 10 gems, can I pass by getting some gems and putting the same gems back to the bank?

As you pointed out, you can take 3 gems and return the same 3 at the end of your turn.  You can't pass your turn, since a turn is one of the four following actions:

Take 3 gem tokens of different colors.
Take 2 gem tokens of the same color.
This action is only possible if there are at least 4 tokens of the
chosen color left when the player takes them.
Reserve 1 development card and take 1 gold token (joker).
Purchase 1 face-up development card from the table or a previously reserved one.

Taking 3 gems and returning the same 3 is bad strategy. Splendor is fast paced (a game is usually around 20 rounds) and giving 5% up without any progress is giving advantage away.  If you want to keep a monopoly of gems to block other players, reserving a card would be your move.


text:
Official draw rules in American checkers
I'm working on a checkers software program and I need to implement the official rules including all possible draws. Following this document, at 1.32.2 it states that the game may end up in a draw, if:

"Neither player has advanced an uncrowned man towards the king-row
during their own previous 40 moves."
"No pieces have been removed from the board during their own
previous 40 moves."

As I understand it, a game can be declared draw after exactly 80 moves or 80 plies of neither player advancing. In my program's code I always reason about the game in terms of plies.
My question is: Did I understand this rule correctly? I have some slight doubts, because I know about the fifty move rule in chess and 50 plies seems reasonably, but 80 feels like too much. And I find the wording in the rules to be a bit weird. So a draw in checkers is considered after 40 plies or 80 plies?

Just to clarify the situation in chess. The 50-move rule is that a player may claim a draw after 50 moves, that is 100 plies, including the ply in the turn where they claim a draw.

@rosie I did not know that! Thank you! So the rule means 50 moves for each player, or is one move considered a full turn (2 plies)? If the latter is true, then I find it very confusing.

50 moves for each player, thus 100 plies (50 White alternating with 50 Black). In chess we number the moves like this: White's 1st, Black's 1st, White's 2nd, Black's 2nd and so on. Not White's 1st, Black's 2nd, White's 3rd, Black's 4th.

Indeed the notation of moves, turns and plies is confusing in many situations.
Sometimes also tricks, rounds and even games can be confusing.

Yes, a Draw is considered after 80 plies (40 turns).
The rules says "their own previous 40 moves", which is equal to 40 plies of each player.
From Definition of a Draw 1.32.2:

Neither player has advanced an uncrowned man towards the king-row
during their own previous 40 moves.
No pieces have been removed from the board during their own previous 40 moves.


text:
Can you sell all of your Monopoly properties to one other player for $1?
If a player has a feeling they are not going to win, but they want to quit, and they ask another player if they want to buy all of their properties for $1, is that cheating or not allowed?

This is generally considered bad sportsmanship at least.

It is not cheating. Players are allowed to sell properties to other players. The usual rules (selling off all the improvements to the bank first) still apply.
Rules:

Unimproved properties, railroads and utilities (but not buildings) may be sold to any player as a private transaction for any amount the owner can get.

That said you’re likely to hurt feelings if your friends are competitive.

Playing Monopoly is likely to hurt feelings. :-)


text:
Wrongly picking up the discard pile in Canasta
What is the penalty for picking up The discard pile in error.
For example, a player has two of the same face value cards but have not completed their initial melds points wise for the rd and even with the top card they wont reach the point threshold.

There is no penalty, the play is just undone and they would draw from the deck as they are supposed to. This is likely just a case of miscounting the points from the play.
This is how it is handled in various electronic versions I have played that let you attempt that even if you can't get enough points.

I have heard 200 point penalty and an auto re-deal of the whole round as it lets players know whats in their hands. Electronic games dont allow you to mistake pick up the discard pile. I tried and tested

And I have played versions that let you make that mistake. Also letting others know what is in your hand is a penalty.


text:
Identify a Solitaire game from the 70's
I'm looking to find the name of the game my grandfather taught me back in the 70s.

Deal: It was played with two decks.  There are two rows of cards dealt.  Top row is dealt face down and counted out A-7 as you go.  Bottom row beneath that is dealt mostly face down-- 8,9,10 and then a FACE UP draw pile, then three more piles, J Q K.  Total of 14 piles with one face up draw pile.

Win: object is to create 8 foundation piles, four A-K per suit and the other four K-A per suit.

Play: Pick a card from the draw pile.  If the card is, say, a 4, you pick up pile #4 and hold it like a hand.  You can arrange the cards in that pile in any way you think you may need them for the foundation piles.  One to the next card in the draw pile, until you're finished.

The idea is to be able to arrange the cards in a helpful way and hopefully get all cards to the foundation piles.  HARD to win, as a kid I was addicted.  My grandfather played a LOT of solitaire and never told me the name of this, or maybe he didn't know.  Or maybe it's a bogus variation of something.  He was super smart, an engineer, born in 1918, so the game may be older.
Thanks for any input!  :D

I use the World of Solitaire site to play. There's over 100 variations there. Yours doesn't sound familiar - but I only tend to play the same 4 or 5 games. Might be worth checking out. https://worldofsolitaire.com/

The use of two decks and the objective to create foundation piles from Ace to King and King to Ace is reminiscent of Klondike, but the specific setup of piles suggests additional elements.


text:
Optimal strategy for 4-in-a-row on 5-by-5 board with random setup and a transfer
Is the optimal strategy known for the following variant of 4-in-a-row where the first 2 moves are random and the 2nd player can once move a mark to any location.

Win condition: 4-in-a-row.

Board: 5x5.

Setup:

Player1 randomly place a mark on the board.
Player2 randomly place a mark on the board, which can not be in the center.

Play:

After the first move by player 1, player 2 can move their piece.
Next, the turns alternating like in a regular tic-tac-toe.

Two questions:

Is this game solved/solvable?
Does player 2 have a strategy that can guarantee a win for every random first move? If so, what is that strategy?

Since you can force 3x3 to a draw, 4 for a winning condition should be even easier to force to a draw, random or not

@Zibelas, you are wrong, it is easier to make a k-in-a-row because the board is bigger.  For example, a 3-in-a-row on a 5-by-5 board is very easy win by the first player.

@Zibelas, what I mean is that there are several forces that push in different directions: the 4-in-a-row instead of 3-in-a-row push the game to a draw but the bigger board push the game to a first player win.  The random moves setup pushes the game to some games won by each of the players.

This game is Solvable due to Zermelo's theorem.  I don't know if someone solved it.  This game is actually a mix of 25 * 24 games (setups). Solving the game means to solve each setup (which is a game with no affect of chance) and find if it is a p1 win, p1 lose or a draw.
The notation of a m,n,k-game talks about m-by-n board and win by making k-in-a-row.  If we put a side the random setup and the transfer, a (5,5,4) is a draw. However increasing the board by a single row to (6,5,4) makes it a first player win.
This variant is a (5,5,4) with random setup and a transfer action of p2. Because the vanilla (5,5,4) is very close to p1 win, I think most setups are either p1 win or p2 win (but not a draw).


text:
What the difference between +x/+x on some Cards, and how does it effect the ability "Undying"
What is the difference between cards that say

Card A: "Put a +1/+1 "Counter" on each Creature you control."
Card B: that say "Each creature you control gets +1/+1 and gains Flying"

Does card B also has a counter? Card A states that it has a "+1/+1 Counter" Does the +1/+1 in Card B still count as a counter or not?
If the cards are different between +1/+1 Counters and +1/+1 abilities are different.
Will the +1/+1 ability cause Undying not to trigger, or will it still trigger.

This one was suppose to be about the Ability Undying with it not just about the counters.  I seriously need to add  these things before thing resolve lol

@Gendolkari is that any better.

A static +1/+1 (card B) is not a +1/+1 counter, it will not have any effect on Undying (if the creature has no counter, it will return with the counter)

okay i guess i am deleting this question cause that question does involve undying so yeah

Come on this is going to effect my reputation

The difference is one of bookkeeping: what exactly is keeping track of whether a creature has a +1/+1 effect or not.
For card A (it's most common to see that written on an instant or sorery, or as a "when this card enters the battlefield"-effect for permanents, or similar "happens once and is then done"-effects), each separate creature gets a counter which makes that creature stronger (intuitively, each creature is thinking "Oh boy, I have a +1/+1 counter! That means I'm stronger."). It will stay with that creature for as long as that creature is on the battlefield, unless some effect specifically removes that counter. New creatures coming into play will not have the counter, and no matter what happens to card A, the creatures who have been given counters will keep them.
For B, it is card B itself which keeps track of and boosts all creatures. New creatures entering the battlefield will also benefit from the effect. However, if card B leaves the battlefield, then all creatures will lose their +1/+1 bonus. (Intuitively, it is card B who is thinking "My presence makes all these creatures larger". The relevant rules keyword here is "static ability")
As a rule of thumb, cards in Magic: the Gathering (except the really old ones) are quite precise in their language. If an effect doesn't mention counters, then counters aren't involved. Similarily, if a continuous effect (like change of control of a permanent, or giving a creature +1/+1) doesn't say "until end of turn", it won't end.

so basically what you are saying is that, Card since it doesnt mention the word "counter" after the +1/+1 that +1/+1 that is put on the creature isn't counted as a counter on the creature.  meaning the ability of undying will trigger even with that +1/+1 [mtg: Pyreheart Wolf]

@DylanParris Yes, that is right. Glorious Anthem will not ruin undying.

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


text:
Diplomacy 'Trojan Blind' hints
I am starting a diplomacy game with the "TROJAN" rule.  Does anyone have any hints on how to adapt strategy from a game with more typical rules?

TROJAN (BLIND modifier)
  A TROJAN game is a BLIND mixture in which units only "see" units of the opposite type (army or fleet) and supply centers do not report information.

This thread at Play Diplomacy points to the main problems:

You're going to need redundancy

You're likely to need to leave units behind your desired front lines to serve as tripwires.
The early game is just going to be a crapshoot as aggressive players either shoot ahead through lucky coups or get clobbered by walking into traps. You can either try to be one of the lucky agros or play defensively and hope you don't end up too far behind and look like a trustworthy partner for the survivors.

You're going to lean heavily on your friends

Assuming you're working with someone to maintain short and mostly offensive lines, you're going to need to depend on them not coming around behind.

Really heavily

It'll also be possible to pull your allies off balance by claiming attacks that don't really exist, exposing their position to yourself or your 'real' ally.

It's also rather unrealistic

As fun as it is to strengthen the importance of diplomacy, it is rather silly that you wouldn't be able to get any reports from anyone of actions within your own territory, units or not.

It's only really possible online

It would be difficult to partition the board to do that last bit; it'd be impossible to play your 'trojan' game on an actual board.
Given the importance of lies and backstabbing in this version of the game, you'd probably only want to play with people online, lest it negatively affect your real-life relationships.

Honestly, if actions in a game of Diplomacy (or any game) can negatively impact your relationship with someone I would question playing games with them in the first place.

@JoeW, some games are even worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_Murder_case

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


text:
Are there additional (custom ?) tracks for Formula One?
Recently, I fell in love with the Formula One board game (not Formule D or Dé but this game). It is very well balanced and doesn't really leave room for luck but rather relies on planning and resources/risk management.
Unfortunately, the version of the game I have only has one track which can get repetitive after a while. I have not been able to find other tracks even different versions of the game.
I would like to know if there is any known additional content (both official and custom).
I have already created some cars to replace the stock ones and I'm currently  trying to add known tracks such as Magny-Cours (currently 100x70cm board size). A second track would be helpful to have two references regarding the balancing of the new board.

Side note 1 : I have tried to use Formule D tracks but they don't fit because the compartments are too big and need to be aligned. Also, the curves require speed limits.

Side note 2 : Sorry for the potential English mistakes. If the questions requires editing (question clarification or grammar-wise correction), feel free to point it out.

You might be able to adapt the Championship Formula Racing games's courses (which do have speed limits for the corners).

If you go to BGG they have some print and play files.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1535/formula-1/files
Also, Nice pick up!

Thanks for the information, I didn't know about this website.
Sadly, there are only a few tracks for this game (it was to be expected). Hopefully, it'll help the creation of my new tracks.

I’m a huge french fan of this extraordinary game.
You can find several interesting tracks on the Lucidphoenix site:
http://lucidphoenix.com/sc/tracks/
The owner of the site is Douglas Schultz, who remastered "Speed Circuit" in "CFR".

Douglas Shultz also explain how he build the tracks, very interesting :)

Oho, un français !
Thanks for the advice. I have now finished my track so I can also give some advice regarding track building as I think mine is pretty balanced.


text:
What happens when opponent draws Exodia and Deck Out in the same turn?
I've dueled with an opponent that had an Exodia deck draw-based. It happens that he managed to draw Exodia, but in the same time that he decked out. Which win condition has priority? Exodia "effect" or deck out?

The deck out is irrelevant. The player drawing Exodia (and presumably completing the set in hand) has already won the duel.
Even if the player has not completed Exodia in hand, they do not lose until they are required to draw and are unable to draw. They may sit with an empty deck until next draw phase if there is nothing else to cause the duel to end.

This answer would be improved if it included a link to the rules, say: http://www.yugioh-card.com/uk/rulebook/Rulebook_v9_en.pdf with page number of the rule (page 28).

The rule book doesn't explain the priority of endgame conditions, nor is it unambiguous (it says "unable to draw a card" which is a much looser condition than "unable to draw and required to draw, at the same time" there are situations where the loose condition ends the game but the tighter one would not). I think it causes greater confusion by adding the rulebook than leaving it out. @Mosquite

My thought was that having a source for your answer would be better than just saying "this is the way it is".

I understand the thought and appreciate the suggestion. Unfortunately as an authoritative source, it doesn't support the answer in a meaningful or useful way, as mentioned. @Mosquite

Correct. Worth noticing that the draw is any kind, not just during draw phase. At any moment you cant draw you lose

So what happens when you're required to draw 2 cards, only have one left and that one completes your Exodia? That would make you lose, right?

@DonFusili In that case, such effect that says "draw 2 cards" cannot be activated, because it does not meet the requirement of having at least 2 cards to draw. If you only have one card left, it can only be drawn if an effects says "draw 1 card"

@DonFusili also say for example you had a hand destruction in hand (both players discard 2 then draw 2) and your opponent only had 1 card in deck, hand destruction would not be able to be activated

@Nij official rulings are that whatever card effect triggered the draw must resolve fully (e.g. for Graceful Charity, the player that just drew the last piece of Exodia must first discard 2 cards). In the case of a draw effect that would cause Deck-Out (e.g. Pot of Greed with Exodia being the only card left in the deck), the Deck-Out occurs during the resolution of that effect and Exodia's win condition never gets checked for.

POG can resolve and attempt to draw from a deck that only has 1 card left in it. Same for Appropriate (draw 2 cards when your opponent draws a card outside their draw phase). There are explicit rulings covering what happens if that single card is Exodia, and they specifically state that Exodia doesn't activate because the game already ended by Deck-Out before Exodia's win condition would be checked for.


text:
Can the last two player heal with beer when Ghost Town is in play?
There are only two players left in the game, say an Outlaw and the Sheriff. The Sheriff reveals Ghost Town at the beginning of his turn. Can he heal himself with a Beer card?
I don't think he can, but we had a very adamant player among ourselves who said this was possible, so I would like to ask your opinions.
Edit: Ghost Town is a card from the High Noon expansion with the following ability: During their turns, eliminated players return to the game as ghost. They draw 3 cards instead of 2, and cannot die. At the end of their turn, they are eliminated again.
Edit-2: I'm adding some possible interpretations to the rules:

Cannot heal: Since ghosts are not alive during the Sheriff's turn, the Beer card has no effect due to there being only 2 players in the game.
Can heal: Other players do come back during the Ghost Town effect (with zero life?) so the Sheriff is allowed to heal himself with the Beer card. This would also help the remaining 2 players survive the incoming bullets from the revived ghosts.
Can heal, but only to save himself during a ghost's turn: During a ghost's turn there are 3 players in the game so if the Sheriff gets killed, he can still save himself with a beer card.

Sorry, I forgot to add, that this is from the High Noon expansion. Ghost town - During their turns, eliminated players return to the game as ghost. They draw 3 cards instead of 2, and cannot die. At the end of their turn, they are eliminated again.

I added some possible interpretations. I think in this particular scenario ghosts can heal themselves with Beer since there are 3 players in the game (Sheriff, Outlaw and the ghost). However the Sheriff (and also the Outlaw) cannot heal himself with the Beer card in his own turn because there are only 2 players in the game (Sheriff and Outlaw).

The question revolved around the following limitation:

Beer has no effect if there are only 2 players left in the game; in other words, if you play a Beer you do not gain any life point.

(Emphasis in original.)
As such, it comes down to the number of players left in the game. According to Ghost Town, and reinforced by this FAQ, each ghost is in play until the end of their turn, to the point that they can even be considered winners and can cause the Renegade to lose.
As such,

On the Sheriff's turn, there are two players left in the game. The Sheriff can't use a Beer.
On the "live" Outlaw's turn, there are two players left in the game. The Sheriff can't use a Beer.
On a ghost's turn, there are three players left in the game. The Sheriff can use a Beer on the ghost's turn (in reaction to a lethal hit).


text:
What are the differences between the Battletech Master Rules and their Revised Edition?
What are the specific differences between the Battletech Master Rules and their Revised Edition?
I've just had a look at sarna.net, but couldn't find any answer (except for the differences in the contents section).


text:
Can I omit Advanced Missions in Star Fleet Battles?
Do I still need the Advanced Missions box, if I have got the Advanced Missions countersheet, the accompanying SSD book, the Master Rulebook and Module G3?
Is there anything else in there I wouldn't get that way?

I've just found out that I won't miss anything ruleswise, but I will have neither the (sometimes necessary) ship descriptions (but those can also be found in the Master Starship books for the specific races/factions) nor the scenarios.


text:
Backgammon best strategy for clearing my home
All my checkers are in my home, all my oponent's checkers are not in my home.
I roll the dice.
Assuming I can't take out checkers, what's my best strategy of advancing them? e.g. when this is my home and I roll a 2, should I move the 6 or the 3?
#| | | | | | |#
#|X| | |X| | |#

Since I'm not dependent on my opponent, I assume there's an optimal strategy I can use here. Is it "always move the highest numbers"?, "always move the lowest"?, something more complicated?

example
In the simple case I described above I know it's best to move the 6, since my chances of clearing out in the next round are higher:
option 1: move the 3
result:
#|X| | | | |X|#

chance of winning:
I have to get a 6 at least in one dice, so it's
# get a 6 in the first dice
1/6 +
# get 2-5 in the first dice, 6 in the second or double
4/6 * (1/6 + 1/6) +
# get 1 in the first dice, 6 in the second
1/6 * 1/6 =
# result:
0.416

option 2: move the 6
result:
#| | |X|X| | |#

chance of winning:
I have to get at least a 3,4:
# both dice get 3-6:
4/6 * 4/6 +
# double 2:
1/6 * 1/6
# result:
0.472

So close call, but it's better to move the 6.
But this is a simplified case, assuming I will either finish in the next round or the one after. What about when I have more than 2 checkers?

"Since I'm not dependent on my opponent" Not quite true. What is relevant is neither, as answers have suggested, probability of winning on next turn nor expected number of turns to win, but probability of bearing off before your opponent does. How far your opponent is from bearing off could theoretically affect what optimal play is.

@Acccumulation good point. I was expecting a simple answer but it seems to only get more complex the more you look at it. For a complete answer I guess you would also need to know the opponent's strategy, and assume it remains constant..

The logic of finding the “general rule” in these situations is flawed and will lead to potential mistakes. There are positions where you have to move the highest or the lowest number and need to be able to quickly calculate the numner of dice combinations that are favourable or not for your next roll.
In your example, if you leave the checkers at 6,1 points: you need all sixes (11 combs) plus 55,44,33,22 (4 combs), total of 15.
If you however leave the checkers on 4,3 points, you need 65,64,63,54,53,43 (12 combs) plus 66,55,44,33,22 (5 combs) for a total of 17 rolls. The latter play is superior.
Just in case one wonders why not always move the highest point, consider the example of having two checkers on 5,3 with a need to play a deuce. if your move is 5-3, leaving checkers on 3,3 you will clearly lose more games than if you have moved 3-1, receiving the position of 5,1. I will let you calculate the combs and compare.

It's true, but I think the better measurement is the one suggested by @Nij - you should count the average number of turns left and not the chances of finishing in the next step (well, depends on the game)

With two checkers left, its the same principle. Counting favourable combinations is just easier over the board.

Mathematically speaking, you should minimise the average number of additional dice needed to bear off all checkers. This implies a minimisation of the number of dropped rolls - rolls that do not remove a checker from your home, but only advance it further.
Suppose you move the three to the one and leave the six there on the first turn. On the second turn, you now need to roll a 6 and a {1,2,3,4,5} or a double {2,3,4,5,6} to clear both checkers with probability 15/36. Anything less will bear off one checker with probability 19/36 or nothing with probability 2/36.
On your third turn, you bear off the last checker with probability depending on the previous roll, but an average of 96.6% of the time, you're now finished. The remaining 3.4% require a fourth turn. If you had both checkers left, you   bear off both 17/18 to finish and require a fourth turn for the remaining 1/18.
Overall, this is an average of 2.604 turns to bear off both.
A similar analysis finds that by moving the six to the four and leaving the three, you are 47% to finish on the second turn, and 50% to finish on the third turn. The average from this position is 2.553 turns to bear off both.
Note that in every subsequent turn, you are better positioned to finish on that exact turn by moving the six forward on first turn, not the three. The reason is simple: the single die roll has a uniform distribution and the pair dice roll has a triangular distribution. This means you are more likely to hit values in the middle of the range, either 3 or 4, and less likely to hit those at the ends, 1 or 6, while 2 and 5 fall in the middle. Since bearing off requires at least a particular number, and small rolls only bear off small numbers, it is more likely that a checker in the middle can bear off than a checker at the six. By moving checkers from the high end to the middle, you gain better chances of bearing off much quicker than by moving from middle to the low end.
You can test this yourself: set up a board with both colours in their own homes, white split between the one and six points, black between the three and four points. The vast majority of games will end with a black victory: white struggles to use middle rolls to move the high checkers forward, while black uses almost every turn to remove at least one checker. To really exemplify the point, use identical turns for both sides by rolling the dice once and playing them both with those numbers.
In terms of strategy, this means

Bear off the most checkers possible.
Move forward the highest remaining checkers that cannot be borne off.

Small correction: when you have 6,1, a double 2 is also good

Fixed and the ensuing correction also made. Only drops 3 hundredths of a turn to include that 22 roll! @Dotan

the single die roll has a uniform distribution and the pair dice roll has a triangular distribution I didn't follow you're reasoning on this. Two dice distribute uniformly over {1-6}x{1-6}.
also, see Skytten's example, if you have 5,3 and rolled a 2, it's better to move the 3 for average turns of 1.3 rather than 1.52 if you move the 5

True, it ends up being corner-cased with two checkers. When dealing with more though, is when it becomes apparent. You're getting the "most of the most" by being in the middle, rather than hoping for extreme rolls by being at the ends.

When you changed denominators in the second paragraph you generated a total possibility that is greater than 1 (37/36).  The 1/18 is correct (2 ways to get 0 checkers off, with the 2-3 or 3-2 rolls).  But the probability for removing only 1 checker is not 10/18 (20/36);  it is 19/36.    I am not sure how this affects the remainder of the answer.

For small numbers of chequers, the relative odds can be calculated exactly as described by other answers. For cases of too many chequers to perform calculations in your head, the following heuristic has long been recommended by championship players:
Divide the home board into three buckets as follows:

Bucket 1 is the 1 & 2 points;
Bucket 2 is the 3 & 4 & 5 points; and
Bucket 3 is the 6 point.

Minimize the number of moves that don't reduce a chequer's bucket number; or alternatively, maximize the number of moves that do reduce a chequer's bucket number.
This can be recalled more succinctly as:

Wherever possible: reach the 5(-point) or reach the 2(-point) with every chequer that cannot be borne off.


text:
Does mage power work with continuous trap monsters?
With the new ruling from March 2020 come into affect for continuous trap monsters not occupying both zones anymore.  If they're still treated as a trap by effect, can mage power be useful?  Cards like "Zoma, the Spirit", "Tiki Curse", "Tiki Soul", and/or "Statue of Anguish Pattern" comes to mind.
There are cards to cover both the trap and monster if they presumably get destroyed, but what about equip cards, if so, and more specifically, mage power?

Yes, Mage Power applies an ATK/DEF gain for each Spell/Trap you control.
When Problem-Solving Card Text uses the term "Spell/Trap" in this manner, it means "Spell or Trap Card."  Mage Power does not refer to "Spell & Trap Zones," or any other zones for that matter, and thus does not care which zones the Spell or Trap Cards are in.  Spell Cards in the Field Zone are incorporated into the ATK/DEF gain as well.
This only pertains to Trap Monsters with the "this card is also still a Trap" condition, like Zoma the Spirit.  Trap Monsters with the "this card is NOT treated as a Trap" condition, like The Prime Monarch after being Special Summoned, are excluded.


text:
Building supply depots - mission
From the beginning of the game there is a mandatory task which says: Build 3 new supply depots. I must say that it is very hard to complete for my team. My question: Do supply depots that we have from the begin of our game counts for this mission? Because we bought improvement and from start we have 2 supply depots.

That is definitely the main challenge. The other objectives tend to just happen in the course of trying to unlock more things in the game. But you'll need to put a lot of focus into exchanging cards efficiently to get the supply centers built.

The objective card says

Build 3 new supply centers

So we have been playing where the upgrades have not counted towards our objective

That's the rule.

I'll check the box later, but I recall the improvement text specifically mentioning that any permanent depots don't count towards objectives

That's sad :(  guess we have to try harder to save the world

The first half of the game is viciously difficult. Just keep at it. Use the failed attempts to make strategic upgrades.


text:
MTG: Abilities lost when exiled?
I used Glaring Spotlight ability and granted my creatures hexproof and unblockable until end of turn. Then I exiled them with Legion's Initiative after attacking with Aurelia, the Warleader. Do they lose hexproof and unblockable when exiled and come back to the battlefield without hexproof/unblockable? Or will they have that ability until end of turn as stated by glaring spotlight?

Always remember to go by the Oracle wording; not the wording printed on the cards. They changed "unblockable" to "can't be blocked" to help clarify that "unblockable" is not a keyword.

Your creatures will not have hexproof, but they will be unblockable
Glaring Spotlight's activated ability creates 2 continuous effects. One grants hexproof, so it changes the objects' "abilities" characteristic. The other  ("creatures you control can't be blocked") modifies the rules of the game. Because of that difference, the first is locked in to the set of objects and will not affect other objects (such as those objects that are created after the blink from Legion's Initiative), whereas the second affects all applicable objects as long as it's active.

109.3. An object’s characteristics are name, mana cost, color, color indicator, card type, subtype, supertype, rules text, abilities, power, toughness, loyalty, hand modifier, and life modifier.
400.7. An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous existence.
611.1. A continuous effect modifies characteristics of objects, modifies control of objects, or affects players or the rules of the game, for a fixed or indefinite period.
611.2. A continuous effect may be generated by the resolution of a spell or ability.
611.2c If a continuous effect generated by the resolution of a spell or ability modifies the characteristics or changes the controller of any objects, the set of objects it affects is determined when that continuous effect begins. After that point, the set won’t change. (Note that this works differently than a continuous effect from a static ability.) A continuous effect generated by the resolution of a spell or ability that doesn’t modify the characteristics or change the controller of any objects modifies the rules of the game, so it can affect objects that weren’t affected when that continuous effect began. If a single continuous effect has parts that modify the characteristics or changes the controller of any objects and other parts that don’t, the set of objects each part applies to is determined independently.

Can you clarify why the granting of these two attributes (hexproof and unblockable) are treated so completely differently?  I'm confused.

I think the unblockability here is actually a continuous effect, not a static ability, so your sentence and rules quote about static abilities aren't relevant.

@John "creatures you control gain hexproof" that gain is the important part, since it gives out the keyword to every creature you control at the time it resolves, the unblockable is actually worded (oracle) as "Creatures you control [...] can't be blocked this turn." which doesn't change the creatures by granting them something, it changes the rules of the game to prevent blocking. Since hexproof is on the creature, when they blink it loses the ability, but since unblockable is on the game itself, it still gets applied to the new creature object after the blink.

I would avoid using the word "unblockable". The current Oracle wording avoids that on purpose

I think technically, it creates one instant and one continuous effect. All creatures you control instantly gain hexproof. While the ability of hexproof is continuous, the gain of hexproof is instant, and only applies to creatures the player control at that moment.

@Accumulation no, a one - shot effect is something else. "610.1. A one-shot effect does something just once and doesn’t have a duration. Examples include dealing damage, destroying a permanent, creating a token, and moving an object from one zone to another."