This Monday our session began with two games of Go against Juho. Juho had been playing elsewhere, where he was approximated as 18 kyu player. That would make me 17 or 16 kyu. That sounds pretty good. This time I gave him just one stone handicap and won two games. First was an fairly early resign, after I tricked Juho and got a large group from him. Other game was finished properly — I won with about 30 points.
After that I made Juho and Ari test my design again. I’m still not satisfied.
We finished the afternoon with Gang of Four. We played just one round with the three of us, before Nestori joined us. We played nine rounds and I emerged as a winner. I had two weaker rounds (eight and ten cards left), but generally did pretty well. Ari came second, with three bad rounds. Juho had only one really bad round, but still came third. Nestori lost, as he once had an 80-point round… Gang of Four is less about winning than losing, it seems. Winning is less essential than losing little. If you lose only little, just small hands, it doesn’t really matter how many hands you win.
The progressive scoring raised some whining, but I think it works fairly well. Of course, there’s the alternative of gambling scoring (losers pay their penalty points to the winner). Had we used that, I would’ve still won, even though I won only two hands (I won the round when Nestori scored the 80 points). Juho, close number three, would’ve been the loser, because he won just one round and got only four points. Despite winning only two hands, Ari would’ve been second, because he would’ve scored 91 points on the first hand.
Our scores now: Me 48, Ari 66, Juho 71, Nestori 124.
Won rounds: Nestori 4, Me 2, Ari 2, Juho 1
“Gambling” scores: Me 119, Ari 101, Nestori 85, Juho 4
Interesting. It certainly shows that if you manage to get your hand below eight cards every time, you’ll do well.