Balanced opening splits

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elliottjf

I've seen several games recently (often in my favor) where a mismatched 2/5 3/4 opening split setup an insurmountable advantage, and the game felt almost pointless to play out.

When playing with physical cards, I've found it feels much more fair to balance out opening split for the second and additional players to match the first player's shuffle.

I'd love to see a new table setup option along these lines.

santamonica811

It's something that has been suggested several times.  I certainly would not mind it as an option...but based on the two sites' inaction to date, I think you are not gonna get it.  (At the best; I would guess that it is way down on the list of things to implement.)

yed

Won't happen. Donald X. is against it.

Quote from: Donald X. on 27 January 2017, 05:53:10 AM
I am against this.

I believe, no really, that overall people would have less fun if this were implemented. You personally might have more fun, but well, I have to look at the big picture.

I don't mind whatever variants you play at home. I don't mind if you skip turns with your friend in order to get the same start. It would be a bad option though.

elliottjf

Fascinating. I have to admit that I don't follow the logic of why that option would be detrimental to the game, but who am I to judge? Thanks for the info!

vinay

The reason is that it makes the game more boring because it makes you more likely to have mirror matches. Randomness is an inherent part of the game, and sometimes you lose just because of bad luck, but over a sufficiently large number of games, the better players will win out eventually. If you want to balance the opening split, then you might as well also change the shuffling algorithm so that if one player ends up with cards purchased in the first 2 turns in the bottom of their 12-card deck, then the other player does, too (which is actually a huge determininant of the winner in my experience; if both your bought cards end up on the bottom after the first reshuffle, it's far, far harder to win.)