I'm a Loser

A new NBER paper by Steven Levitt and Thomas Miles concludes that there is an important skill component in poker. The two economists look at year-to-year results in the World Series of Poker -- an annual tournament that's open to anyone willing to pay the entry fee. They find persistence in players' performance, which indicates that skill is important. If poker was purely luck-driven, players who finished near the top one year should be randomly spread out the following year; but they're not. This result doesn't surprise me; many of the games I play have a luck component (such as dice and cards), but that doesn't mean that skill plays no role. (As an interesting aside, Leveitt and Miles point out that several studies find that there is virtually no persistence in the management of mutual funds.)

Seeing this study was somewhat timely, as I've been thinking a lot this week about my (lack of) skills as a gamer. A few weeks ago I was describing the Avalon Hill game Diplomacy to a colleague at work. He was surprised when I told him that not only was I not a strong player, but that I had never won a game. It reminded me of a discussion we had about a year ago, when he asked me what games I was "good" at. And I had a hard time naming one.

I'm twelve years younger than my brother, Dennis, and, growing up, he never took it easy on me when we played games. I was OK with that. In fact, (aside from helping a new player with the rules and basic strategy) I don't understand people who are afraid to play to win. (Being rude, of course, is a different matter altogether.) I learned early on, as a child, that I had to be able to enjoy playing a game -- win or lose.

Perhaps that "just enjoy the game" attitude handicaps me in some way; maybe it robbed me of a "winning attitude." But I really don't win all that often. So, when my friend asked me what games I'm good at, I was stumped. For the sake of discussion, the definition of good might be that you win more than your "fair share." So, you'd expect an average player to win a two-player game 50% of the time or a four-player game 25% of the time. Since I'm usually the rules guy in my group, I can think of a few games (such as Kingmaker) that I "know" better than most people, in the sense that I know the rules, the cards, and the odds. But (at least for me) that doesn't seem to translate into victory.

Pressed for an answer, I told my colleague that I was "good" at Avalon Hill's History of the World. My recollection was that I had won that game more than my "fair share" of times. Then I started playing History of the World at GamesByEmail with a mixture of long-time friends (such as Al, Steve, Jeff, Andrew, Tom and Mike) and some strangers that I met at BoardGameGeek. From November 2010 through mid-May 2011, I managed to lose 15 straight games. A couple of them were close-run things that could have gone in my direction, but most weren't. Zero for freakin' 15 in the game that I thought I was "good" at.

Which is a long was of saying that I finially won game number 16 by sneeking out a one-point last-turn victory over Tom, who is good at the game despite that fact that he's over 30 years younger than I am and just learned the game last fall. Maybe it's because he doesn't have an older brother.

Premier League Soccer Game

I've been an amatuer game designer nearly as long as I can remember. I started 40 years ago -- making up my own games using a deck of cards when I was bored on Sunday afternoons at Grandma's house. I can recall playing Kingmaker for the first time in 1976 and then making up a simplified version the next day at school. A group of friends and I spent much of 7th grade English class playing my version of the game. Al and I developed a space exploration game (what today would be refered to as a 4x game) in 1983 that went under several names, including The Carl Sagan Game and Mercantilism. For much of the 1980s and early 1990s, Mercantilism was our group's most-played game. We probably would still play it, but Twilight Imperium has much the same feel (plus cool plastic pieces).

During the 1970s I created a number of sports games, including baseball, football and hockey. The baseball game was eventually replaced in 1981 by APBA, and the football game was eventually replaced in 1982 by Strat-o-Matic. The hockey alternatives, however, were always weak. I played dozens of games of Strat-o-Matic Hockey and APBA Hockey over the years, but wasn't impressed with either of them. So, my hockey game never really disappeared during this time. In fact, Rick, Fred, Al, Doug, Mike and I had a hockey league for three years using my game.

As I've mentioned before, both boys are really into soccer, especially the English Premier League. I've been trying to learn the players, and last week I came up with the idea of redoing my hockey game as a soccer game. So far, the game is a success; Patrick and I played three games last weekend pitting my Chelsea against his favorite Manchester City. Man City won the first game, 2-1, with a pair of goals from Carlos Tevez. (Frank Lampard notched the sole Chelsea tally.) The second game was all Chelsea; Didier Drogba's two goals combined with one each by Lampard and Nicolas Anelka for a 4-0 score. In the third game, Lampard and Tevez traded goals at the beginning of the second half, but Drogba's 60th-minute goal proved the difference-maker in a 2-1 Chelsea win.

So far the game is getting the stats right. Obviously the correct people are scoring, and given the final table from last season, it's not surprising that Chelsea would dominate (although interestingly enough, Man City did win both matches in the real season last year, with Tevez scoring two of their three goals). There are parts of the game that seem awfully repetitive to me, but to the extent that Patrick represents the target audience, the market research is coming back positive. Right now I'm working on adding yellow and red cards. The next step will be to sort out how formations will factor into the game.

Anyone willing to playtest should let me know.

Wall Street Journal Validation

A July 2nd article in the Wall Street Journal by Weekly Standard writer Jonathan Last discusses war-strategy games. Mr. Last summarizes the history of board and computer war-strategy games (such as Sid Meier's Civilization series) and a number of Avalon Hill classics (such as Diplomacy).

The article is interesting enough, and provides a nice history of these games for the casual observor. But what I find interesting is my reaction: I immediately forwarded the article to the gaming group (including Al, Steve and Steven). Given that there isn't a thing in the article that these folks didn't know already, I asked myself "why?" And the answer I came up with is sort of interesting.

But first, let me note that this reaction isn't that unusual. Within hours, a BoardGameGeek user posted a forum message alerting other gamers to the article. Similar articles in the past have also generated a quick posting at the Geek.

I think that these types of articles provide a kind of validation to embarrassed gamers. Let's face it: non-mass-market board gamers are a relatively small group. While the Internet and places like BoardGameGeek make us feel more "plugged in" and less like social outcasts than 20 years ago, we're still a little out of the mainstream. How many people at work play golf? How many watch football? How many belong to a book group? How many play poker? Now, how many play boardgames that aren't available at Target or Wal-Mart? Most of us don't even know how to describe our hobby. "My friends and I played games on Saturday.... No not really like Monopoly or Life ... more 'adult.' .... No, not *that* kind of 'adult.' ... Oh never mind."

Now, reduce the number of people in your hobby even further by being a wargamer. Most coworkers can understand a colleague who plays a game like Settlers or Puerto Rico as being an eccentric gamer -- similar to people who play competitive Bridge or Scrabble. But I rarely discuss my wargaming hobby with my workplace friends. (The one exception would be describing Kingmaker to a coworker who asked where I learned how to navigate office politics.)

Articles like Mr. Last's confirm that we're not completely relegated to gaming in our basements and weird geek-conventions. We're right there in the mainstream (or at least on page W9 of the Friday Journal). He even used the term "grognard" in the article.

I wasn't forwarding the article to Al to let him know that Henry Kissinger played Diplomacy -- Al already knew that. I was sharing some validation of our hobby -- and us.

What is That Game Worth?

I found a cool web site today. The creator (known as Spielboy) wrote an Adobe Flash program that searches the BoardGameGeek sales database and presents a time series plot of prices for any game.

The image to the right, for example, shows the results from a search for Avalon Hill's Kingmaker. Each dot represents a Kingmaker sale at the BoardGameGeek martketplace, with the dot's color indicating the game's condition. Based upon this plot, for example, most of the sales during 2009 were of copies that were in "very good" condition, and they sold for between $20 and $50. One new copy apparently sold last year for $80.

Regarding the trade I'm finishing, acceptable copies of LeMans sell for between $25 and $35, while new copies of the Here I Stand 2-Player Diplomacy Deck sell for about $20. So, I guess, in theory, I'm getting the short end. But I'm still happy with the trade.

January 29, 2010

No gaming for the last few days -- only work. I have been listening to a (new-to-me) wargaming podcast -- The Noise Before Defeat. Since Point-2-Point has been on an indefinite haitus, I've been looking for another podcast devoted to wargames. Unfortunately, I appear to have the same effect on wargame podcasts that I have on fantasy football players (whereby adding them to my roster causes an injury within one week), since the host of The Noise Before Defeat has now posted that his podcast will be going on haitus.

I did enjoy Episode 8 of The Noise Before Defeat, especially the discussion of Avalon Hill's Republic of Rome. I bought Republic of Rome in the early 1990s, as it was recommended to fans of Avalon Hill's Kingmaker -- sharing its negotiations and political intrigue. It was also groundbreaking in that it was the first title I was aware of where "the game" could defeat the players.

My group only played Republic of Rome once. A gamer (who I believed was named Will) taught Al, Steven and me the game at the first Avaloncon (now World Boardgaming Championships) that we attended (in I believe 1993). In particular, I remember playing the game while Steve was playing in (and almost winning) the Kingmaker finals. I could see Republic of Rome's potential, but it was a little overwhelming in terms of the many options that players have each turn. I also was disappointed in the components. While the map/board was attractive (by wargaming standards of the time) and the cards were functional, the various totals and ratings were marked using cardboard chits with numbers on them (like a cardboard version of a baseball scoreboard from the 1930s).

In recent years the game has sold on Ebay for close to $100, so I often considered selling or trading away my copy. However, I could never pull the trigger on a deal, as I could always imagine playing it again and really enjoying it. As it turns out, Valley Games has published a reprint this month with updated components (that seem very attractive). When I first read about the Valley Games version, I considered selling my old (classic?) version and putting the money towards the more attractive version. But, frankly, that just seemed like a lot of work for a game that I've only played once in almost 20 years.