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> My mood swung on the outcome of each contest, which is heavily subject to chance, what with the letters emerging randomly from the bag I saw a fun documentar

> My mood swung on the outcome of each contest, which is heavily subject to chance, what with the letters emerging randomly from the bag I saw a fun documentary on competitive Scrabble tournaments and I've always wondered if tournaments have considered using computers to randomize the tile draw but constrained to equalize the "luck" between players in a game. I know that competitive Rubik's cube tournaments use a computer to generate a starting cube pattern that's not purely random in that it eliminates easy solves. I guess the simplest form would be ensuring each player in a game draws an equal distribution of letter-points in a game but I'm sure there are more complex ways to be random but weighted to ensure equal opportunity in a match. What I don't know is if reducing the variability of draws would even be considered an improvement at competitive levels.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
There's an infinite number of methods to balance luck and they touch on our conception of fairnes and competition itself. For instance, which is more fair, letters balanced by pointsbanf partitioned before the game starts, or weighted letter draws based on the current board state and the potential number of scorable points per player? And perhaps more importantly, why?
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  Try them all and see what they do. I got into simulating games as a kid based on arguments over what the effect of various table-rules were on games. (Spoiler: The effect of every optional rule in Monopoly is to make the game take 5x as long.) Maybe you could spend points to pick two letter and keep the best... Why? Because then 1) you'd know what that rule would do, and 2) maybe it'd be neat! Like, maybe you'd find an easy way to provide more balance between newbs and experts, or minimize the variation in score against a given opponent, or whatever.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

There's an infinite number of methods to balance luck and they touch on our conception of fairnes and competition itself. For instance, which is more fair, letters balanced by pointsbanf partitioned before the game starts, or weighted letter draws based on the current board state and the potential number of scorable points per player? And perhaps more importantly, why?

LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
Try them all and see what they do. I got into simulating games as a kid based on arguments over what the effect of various table-rules were on games. (Spoiler: The effect of every optional rule in Monopoly is to make the game take 5x as long.) Maybe you could spend points to pick two letter and keep the best... Why? Because then 1) you'd know what that rule would do, and 2) maybe it'd be neat! Like, maybe you'd find an easy way to provide more balance between newbs and experts, or minimize the variation in score against a given opponent, or whatever.