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In my opinion, all of the best games have some portion of luck in them, but a larger portion of skill. Catan is boring to me because dice rolls determine too m
by labster 8y ago
In my opinion, all of the best games have some portion of luck in them, but a larger portion of skill. Catan is boring to me because dice rolls determine too much of the game; chess is boring to me because I know I'm always going to lose unless I feel like investing hundreds of hours into learning the game. Scrabble is one of the few pre-Euros that manages to get the luck to skill balance right.
The skill of having a larger vocabulary is actually useful IRL, so that helps a bit. There's another part of it that's the game itself, like knowing all of the two-letter words, which isn't quite as useful.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoIn case anyone else didn't understand "pre-Euros" in this context: it refers to the abstract, strategy-oriented styles of table game that first became popular in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurogame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurogame
- scythe 8y agoThis is why my backgammon and cribbage are my favorites of the classic parlor games. Scrabble is fun until you get to a high level, at which point it gets degenerate wrt memorizing words.
- travisjungroth 8y agoThere’s also an interesting relationship between luck and time. If games are short, you can play more of them and luck will matter less over time. Anyone can win one poker hand, but it takes some skill to win a tournament.
- thomasahle 8y ago> chess is boring to me because I know I'm always going to lose unless I feel like investing hundreds of hours into learning the game. If you play against well calibrated opponents, like you'd do in any club or in online chess, you're going to win/lose 50/50 (not counting draws). That's independent of how many hours you put into the game. All that's going to change with more practice is a richer understanding of what's going on on the board.