
Gamer Janken, or How to Pick a First Player - polm23
https://www.dampfkraft.com/games/gamer-janken.html
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antoinne85
Between my friends and I, we take a very different approach to this. It's
still centered on Rock, Paper, Scissors. To us, however, it's a game in its
own right.

Instead of trying to optimize the speed with which you figure out who goes
first, it's a pre-game with its own rules.

You get knocked out if you lost to both of the individuals on your left and
right. If you beat one and one beats you, you stay in for the next round.

For instance, if I throw ROCK and the two people to my side throw PAPER I'm
out. The remaining players play another round (until you get down to two
people, obviously).

If I throw ROCK and one to my left throws PAPER but the one to the right
throws SCISSORS, I'm still in it for the next round.

Even with 6 or 8 people it still takes less than a minute, and the fact that
you can so several rounds without getting knocked out builds up a kind of
tension, along with the moment after a round where everyone around the table
is looking around to evaluate _who_ got knocked out.

I highly recommend you try it. Its pretty fun and really sets a light mood
going into whatever game you're _actually_ going to play.

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Fwirt
I really like the fact that this technique is very fast and doesn't use any
external technology (dice) or information.

However, I also have to plug this Android app our gaming group has been using
for the last few years. It has one simple job, and does it very well.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tendadigit...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tendadigital.chwaziApp&hl=en_US)

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NoodleIncident
I finally downloaded this app at the last session of the board game club
before lockdowns started happening. At this rate, I don't know if anyone will
want to touch someone else's phone even after things go back to normal...

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ArekDymalski
I guess that anyone who's afraid of the phone, will have the same feelings
towards meeples, cards, dice and table not to mention spending hour(s) in
close proximity to other players. So, probably won't even attend.

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twic
In the original rules for Pandemic, the player who was ill most recently went
first.

In Ticket to Ride, i remember it as being the person who was most recently on
a train, but on looking it up, it seems it was the player who had travelled
the furthest to get to the game (either way, always me, as i used to play with
friends who lived across town, at their place!).

So i tend to pick something relevant to the theme of the game, and pick the
player who did that most recently. If nobody has done that thing, fall back to
weaker versions of it.

Gardens of Alhambra? The player who most recently did some gardening. Fall
back to watering a pot plant.

Hanabi? The player who most recently saw some fireworks. Fall back to anything
that was on fire.

King of Tokyo? The player who most recently destroyed a skyscraper. Fall back
to doing some DIY which involved knocking a wall down, then to breaking a
cupboard door.

Settlers of Catan? The player who most recently really annoyed one of their
friends.

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colanderman
I suspect that these rules are often rough proxies for player age, which is in
turn a rough proxy for player experience. The polarity of the test is aligned
with whether first player has advantage or disadvantage in that particular
game, to give the less-experienced player the advantage. (Just a theory! No
hard evidence beside observed correlation with player order rules for
subsequent rounds in some games.)

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DavidVoid
If there's a person who won't be playing (let's call them _moderator_ ) then
you can instead have everyone play rock-paper-scissors against them at the
same time. It works pretty well for large crowds. Everyone draws at the same
time and if you don't beat the moderator's hand then you sit down. And then
you just keep going until there's only one non-moderator left standing.

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jldugger
Normally we just roll dice, highest wins. Even with 2x the possible options
per player compared to janken, there's still some rolloffs.

I'm wondering though if you can do better with an even-odd variant; each
person is assigned a number 1-n, and players secretly pick and simultaneously
reveal a number 1-n. The winner is the person whos number is sum(player picks)
mod n.

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colanderman
Another method which is applicable to certain 2-player games, which I find
interesting, is "I-cut-you-choose" [1]. An arbitrary player (or the more
experienced) sets up the initial board positions or takes the first move
("cut"). The other player then chooses whether to go first or second
("choose"). This encourages the "cutter" to set up a fair initial position.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_choose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_choose)

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renewiltord
This is a game of its own, right? I remember playing it as a child as "out/in"
or hands face up / face down. Like as a very little child.

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gman2093
I like horsengoggle. On the count of 3 everyone holds out a number of fingers.
A pre-decided caller counts that many around the circle of players.

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aidenn0
Right, and that's 100% fair as long as you have 10 or fewer players. It
becomes biased in groups of more than 10.

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a1369209993
Actually, assuming "a number of fingers" is in the range 1..10, thats only
fair for 2, 5, or 10 players (or maybe some >10) (if it's 0..10, I think it
only works for exactly 11 players).

In the case of 3 players you get random numbers (reduced modulo 3): 1,4,7,10
=> 1 40% of the time; 2,5,8 => 2 30%; 3,6,9 => 3 30%

Two random numbers produce: 1 @ 33%; 2 @ 30%; 3 @ 37%

And after adding the third number you get: 1 @ 30.9%; 2 @ 34.9%; 3 @ 34.2%

(These percentages are all exact BTW.)

So this is biased against player 1 (which is not actually the way I was
expecting it to go). And if you want to cheat, you should assume the other
players will add up to 3, and pick a number accordingly.

I assume 4,6,7,8,9 out of ten and anything out of 11 work similarly, but I
haven't checked the numbers.

If "a number of fingers" is 1..N (or 0..^N) then it's unbiased, but just
doesn't work at all for >10 (or >11 respectively).

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User23
I'd never considered it in this light, but drawing straws really does have
some pleasant properties.

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ggggtez
Except it's not actually fair, which some people may not like.

