[Daanz-dip] Fw: Recruiting at FtF events.

[Dugal Ure]

David,

>>No.  I don't care how good you are at PBM Diplomacy or Computer
>>Diplomacy or Chess or Settlers or any other related game - if you have
>>not played FTF Tournament Diplomacy before then you are not good at
>>FTF Tournament Diplomacy.
>
> What about the people who've played a lot of FtF Diplomacy outside
> tournaments before?

There's still always something else to learn and you are at a
disadvantage until you learn it.  Even if you've played lots of FTF
Tournament Diplomacy before but with an entirely different group.
Knowing the people is part of the game.  Being known is part of the
game.  Playing tournaments teaches you how being in a tournament can
affect how people play.  Playing individual people teaches you how
individuals play.  You can be a good player based on generalities you
can pick up anywhere.  But sustained success requires deeper
knowledge.

Once upon a time we had snail mail magazines in the Oz hobby and once
a year one of those would actually print a Who's Who.  Something like
that would have been extremely useful to someone who could play but
didn't know the people - at least, were it not entirely self-serving
to the authors :)

>>Because every game at least 3 or 4 people get eliminated
>
> I'll come back to this shortly...

Fair enough, they don't always get Eliminated.  Replace it with "beat
up", or "removed from contention for topping the board", my point
still stands.  That has to happen to some people unless you call a
5-5-5-5-5-5-4 draw, and all other things being equal, it will more
often be the people without the inside information than with.

> But the big change it makes, is when in the Northern corner you ally with
> someone, and get to 6 in a 6-7-3, the 7 is a threat to you topping the
> board, the 3 is not. Therefore it makes a lot more sense to work with the 3
> to bring the 7 down, than it does to kill the 3 to get to 8-8 or 7-9 and
> then try to take out the other half of the board. Hence even if the new
> player does get a poor start, and even if they don't care about the scoring
> system, they will still tend to get brought back into the game, rather than
> being killed for the points by the unbreakable alliance they face.

Either way the guy with 3 is being used and has no control over his
game destiny.  Strategically, executing a fast 13 on 3 to be first to
the line ahead of the other corner is superior to a drawn out 9
against 7 while the other corner does its 13-3 and comes at you before
you are done.  This is inherent in the game.  If the other corner is
in disarray then maybe you have time to set yourself up for a better
endgame, but most of the time you don't get that luxury.

The moral of the story is, don't be the guy on 3.  Ideally, don't even
be the guy on 6.  And if you are, learn what the guy on 7 did so you
can be that guy next time.

Cheers,
Dugal