New Variant

[JackHurst]

I've got a suggestion for a new variant, but the rules need a thorough going over before its going to come anywhere near to fruition. It has no name, so plz suggest any if you can, for the sake of somplicity I'll refer to the variant as IDEA throughout this ost.

See this post for the orignal proposal.

The aim of IDEA is to give bonus points to players for getting all of the maxes available in a letters round, with a bit of gambling thrown in.

The game works the same as standard rounds, with 9 letters, the same restriction on vowels and consonants etc.

The difference between IDEA and standard, is that IDEA has an additional scoring system, as well as having the standard scoring system. The additional scoring system enables you to get bonus points in each letters and numbers round.

Earning bonus points in letters rounds:
You may bet 0, 1, 2, or 3 points on yourself having got all the maxes in the round. If you bet successfully, then you win the amount of points that you bet, however if you bet unsuccessfully, the amount of points you bet are subtracted from your score. This clearly brings another tactical layer to the game, in terms or declaring, but also in picking (It would combine nicely with goatdown).

Earning bonus in numbers rounds:
You get an extra two (maybe 3) points if you get the optimal solution in a numbers game. The optimal solution being the solution which gets closest to the target whilst using the least amount of numbers from the selection possible, i.e the one that Carol/Rachel explains at the end of a numbers game on apterous.

Earning bonus points on the conundrum:
Im still not sure about how this could work yet without overcomplicating the conundrum buzzing system.


See the original suggestion that I linked to for an example game.

Im keen to get a comprehensive set of rules set up, so if you find any loop holes, please point them out. Also suggest improvements and names
(I know there are lots of loop holes at the moment, so please wait until ive made a couple more posts to start pointing loads out.)

[Charlie Reams]

Throwdown seems to works in a gambling reference while maintaining the -down theme.

[Charlie Reams]

The thing I really like about this idea is that it makes flat rounds interesting. The only uninteresting rounds would be easy nines and stuff like RELATIONQ, which are obviously fairly infrequent. Really nice idea. I think the value 3 might need some consideration (which is not to say it's the wrong choice), just because the amount you can bet makes a massive difference to the balance of the game.

[Andrew Feist]

Not necessarily good or bad, but questions:

• I assume you can go negative in a round, if not only do you not have all the maxes, but you get beat.
• If I have two eights and a dodgy nine in my word list, would I be able to score 8 points + a chicken + 3 points for the bet?

ETA: One thing I've been trying to work out are odds (either separate bets at different odds or payouts on the main bet). At first I was looking at paying out n:1, where n is the number of max words, but darrens being the lowest payoff seems wrong, somehow. But some alternatives to consider:

• Having two different levels of bet: "I have a max" and "I have all the maxes", where the second bet pays off 2:1. (But you can't bet "all the maxes" unless you also bet "a max".) You can also change the first one to "My declared word is a max", which makes the second point above more interesting.
• Higher payoffs for "skill shots": darrens, pencils, darrenic pencils, 10+ max words, ....
• If you want some real gamesmanship, you can also add "My opponent will have a max"/"My opponent will have all the maxes".

I would think that you would have a separate block of time after the 30s is up to place all the bets.

[JackHurst]

• I assume you can go negative in a round, if not only do you not have all the maxes, but you get beat.

Nope, because if you know you haven't got a max, you can bet zero, so you would remain on the same score, as you would in a normal game if you got beat in a round.

• If I have two eights and a dodgy nine in my word list, would I be able to score 8 points + a chicken + 3 points for the bet?

At the end of a round you would pick out from your list the words you want to declare. During the round you would type into a box the number of words you intend to declare. Any invalid words declared automatically lose the bet. You would chose a primary word as the word to score your standard points. So if your primary word was a valid word, and you had gambled 2 pts, but one of your other attempted maxes was invalid you would score for the primary word if it was as long or longer than your opponents primary word, but you would lose the bet, so lose 2 pts.

So to answer your questions, no, because if you got the chicken then you didn't declare a max, so you'd lose 3 points.

ETA: One thing I've been trying to work out are odds (either separate bets at different odds or payouts on the main bet). At first I was looking at paying out n:1, where n is the number of max words, but darrens being the lowest payoff seems wrong, somehow. But some alternatives to consider:

• Having two different levels of bet: "I have a max" and "I have all the maxes", where the second bet pays off 2:1. (But you can't bet "all the maxes" unless you also bet "a max".) You can also change the first one to "My declared word is a max", which makes the second point above more interesting.
• Higher payoffs for "skill shots": darrens, pencils, darrenic pencils, 10+ max words, ....
• If you want some real gamesmanship, you can also add "My opponent will have a max"/"My opponent will have all the maxes".

I would think that you would have a separate block of time after the 30s is up to place all the bets.

My original scoring system was different. You clicked a button indication that you thought you wanted to gamble. If you had all the maxes, you'd get a point for every max, and if you didnt, you would get no pay off, and you would lose a point for every max you missed.
Another possibility could be to get a point for every max you had, and have a point taken off for max you didnt have, so if you got half the maxes you would break even. In this system, any invalid words declared would result in one point being taken off your score.

[Craig Beevers]

It would maybe make sense to bet the score of the declaration, using flat scoring. From there you're simply deciding on the bet (if any), with more difficult bets having higher potential returns. Could work with multiple players, through the duel or whatever.

Personally think it would be quite fun to have a variant where you declare whenever you like during the time (only once though), if both players declare the same the one who was first wins.

[Paul Howe]

I quite like this idea, or some variation on it.

Getting all the maxes in a round is pretty hard though, I'd wager that for most players the optimal strategy is to bet 0 each round (except perhaps for rounds with a highly darrenic looking 9 or 8 + unusable letter)

I also think Craig's suggestion:

Personally think it would be quite fun to have a variant where you declare whenever you like during the time (only once though), if both players declare the same the one who was first wins

is pretty nifty. Niftier than not having previous posts available for quoting when you use the edit function anyway.

[Kirk Bevins]

Personally think it would be quite fun to have a variant where you declare whenever you like during the time (only once though), if both players declare the same the one who was first wins.

This has already been discussed.

[Craig Beevers]

I never said it hadn't been discussed - I haven't got time to read through more than a fraction of what's on here. But it's fairly straight-forward (in the gameplay sense) compared to the outlandish stuff that *has* been implemented.

Anyway getting all of the maxes would vary wildly in difficulty. I think most flat rounds with 8s in would become not too difficult for top players, unless you have lots and lots of 8s. You would also have some influence when you're picking the selection. Obviously if it's a scoring variant then it might be that it works nicely with a junior letters attack or goatdown say.

[JackHurst]

Me and Josh just trialled a game on apterous, it had an interesting outcome, but the scoring system clearly needs changing.

Here's the games we played, I'll write down the bonus points and gambles in this post

C1: Josh Hurst
C2: Jack Hurst

Rd.1: Both players gamble 1 point on Bouncer, Both players lose a point.

C1 7-7 C2

Rd.2: Player 2 gambles 3 points on spookily and wins.

C1 7-18 C2

Rd.3 Player 1 gambles on RAIMENT, MINARET, FIREMAN, MINTIER. Player 2 gambles 1 point on INERTIA, FIREMAN, MINARET RAIMENT FAINTER. Both players missed maxes such as INTERIM, INTIMAE and AIRTIME, so both players lose 1 point.

C1 13-24 C2

Rd.4: Player one achieves optimal numbers solution

C1 13-36 C2

Rd.5: Neither player gambles, player 2 could have gambled with the Darrenny DIPOLAR

C1 13-43 C2

Rd.6: Neither player gambles.

C1 20-43 C2

Rd.7: Having realised that the scoring system is clearly shit and that they will lose points 90% of the time they gamble, both players don't risk anything.

C1 28-43 C2

Rd.8: Both player get the optimal solution, earning them 2 bonus points each.

C1 40-55 C2

Rd.9: Player 1 get the conundrum, narrowly missing out on a tie break by 5 points.

I thought this game was pretty interesting, because with my gambles paying off better than Josh', I managed to win, but in the standard rules, we had to do a tie break which Josh won.