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Games I'm Best at... maybe? · Pick Up and Deliver

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  Welcome to pick Up and Deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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  as I head out on a walk and deliver an episode to you while I
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  stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners. It's
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  a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. I am taking a walk before I
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  get started with my day. Or rather, I mean, I did a
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  bit of work this morning. I had breakfast, so I'm taking a walk,
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  and I have some Zoom meetings this afternoon, so that's gonna be a
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  thrill, and I'm looking forward to talking a few about games, so I
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  think that's what I should do. I had my Board Game Society meet up
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  last night and we had a good time talking about games and playing games I
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  got to play. We played. We started out playing Telestration or we played
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  Telestrations, Seven Wonders, and Taboo and one more in there, just one,
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  so good time. It was a fun game night. And the people
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  I played Seven Wonders with I had played this game many times and most of
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  them had played it once or never, so me winning wasn't that big a
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  deal. But one of the masks something about me winning, and it got
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  me thinking a little bit, and I looked at my board game stats today
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  and I realized I had log six eight hundred and forty eight plays in board
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  game Stats, and that's a lot of data. So I thought I would
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  talk about it a little bit. In particular today this is going to be
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  perception versus reality. I wanted to talk about what games I'm best at.
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  A couple of weeks ago, I did an episode called Games I Stink At,
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  where I talked about games that I don't do well at. And I
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  noticed that board game Stats does not have a way to search by win percentage.
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  And I noticed that after I'd started this project. Unfortunately, so I
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  did spend a little bit more time than I intended to doing research for this
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  podcast. I know you're appalled that I would plan ahead. I apologize for
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  that really undermining the cause there. But anyway, so what I did is
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  I first got out of a piece of paper and I thought to myself,
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  what are the five games for which I that I think I'm the best at?
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  And then how would I determine that one? I said, the cooperative
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  games are out. That doesn't count, because I don't know how you measure
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  when you're best at something. If you're working with other people and you're working
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  together, so cooperative games out so of competitive games. What are the five
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  games I'm best at? So I thought about it in my head, and
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  I'm a list. And as I was making the list, I realized that
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  then those numbers are really skewed because how you measure how good you are at
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  a game is really difficult to do. For one, your opponents make a
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  big difference. My win percentage in through the ages is bad, but probably
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  a part of a big part of the reason it's bad is because I play
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  with very good people. I think if I tended to play with people who
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  were not good at it or then my score would be worse. Right,
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  And this is true for all games really, but there's also just a matter
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  of fair share. So all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna come back to
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  that, but just hold that in your head, think about, like,
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  how where do these numbers come from? And I'm gonna talk to you about
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  what I thought it would be, what the answers were, and then and
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  then what I what I think about those numbers. So start with the five
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  games that I came up with that I think that I think I'm the best
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  at, or that I think I'm very good at, and I hope that
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  the my win percentage record will reflect that. Are Cartographers, Baron park Anacrony,
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  Wingspan, and Lost Ruins of Arnak. I put those are the five
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  games I think I'm best at, and I then I went into board,
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  into my board game stats, and I tried to sort by win percentage for
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  me, and I could not figure out how to do that. So then
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  I looked at the games and I figured out relatively easily, how I could,
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  you know, get the screen set up in a way and click once
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  on a game and be I will see my win percentage and then hop out
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  switch the next game. So I did that for a bunch of games,
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  maybe the top ten or fifteen games i've in terms of played number of plays.
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  And then I looked through and found a few more that I thought I
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  might be have a high number at. And then I looked at the numbers
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  for the games I just predicted, which again are Cartographers, Baron park An,
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  Acrony, Wingspan, and Lost Ruins Varnak. So when I looked at
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  the games, I found wildly varying scores. But I found that other games
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  that could have reasonably been on that list, I think, all right.
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  So I found that many of my games, my win percentage is somewhere between
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  twenty and forty, but that varies wildly by what type of game it is
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  I have. I found one, two that one. I found a couple
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  of games that I did not put on the list that I have recent re
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  decently high win percentage is at. And then I found the percentages for the
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  games I have. So of the games I picked the best, the game
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  that I'm best at is Barren Park with a seventy three percent win ratio.
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  Basically, I win three out of four games of Baron Park that I play.
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  The only game at which I have a higher score that I could find
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  was between two cities. Between two cities, I have a seventy five percent
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  win ratio, which is shocking to me. Shocking Isle of Cats, I
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  have a seventy two percent win ratio, which was higher than I expected.
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  The next highest game is one of the ones I picked that I thought I
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  was good at, and that's an acrony and that's sixty two percent win ratio.
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  And I think that was the last game that I have that's above sixty.
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  The next game that I found was Cartographers at fifty eight percent, Wingspan
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  at fifty four percent, and Lost Ruins of Arnak at fifty two percent.
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  I also have a fifty four percent win ratio at Century Galum. Addition,
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  I have a fifty two percent win ratio at Tara Mystica, and I have
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  a number of games that are at in the forties. I was surprised to
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  find karpe Dim at forty seven percent, so I was actually pretty close to
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  right. The five games I picked in order of highest to lowest win percentage
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  are Baron Park, Anacrony, Cartographers, Wingspan, and Lost Ruins of Varnak.
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  The only game I could find that would make it onto that list would
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  actually be Between Two Cities, which is the highest win percentage I have,
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  so the list really should go of the games I found. I did not
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  look through all the games that I've played, because there's a lot of them,
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  but the highest win percentage I have is Between Two Cities at seventy five
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  percent, and then Barren Park at seventy three and so on online. So
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  four of the five games I picked there would be on the list, and
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  Century Galum addition would be tied with Wingspan, at fifty four percent for the
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  fifth slot on the list of games where I have the highest win percentage.
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  However, as I was working on this and thinking about it, I realized
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  this using win percentage is hooey. I mean, on one hand, yeah,
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  sure, that's one way to gauge it is like if you look at
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  how often when I played the game I win it, that should be a
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  measure of how good I am at it, I think. But here's the
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  rub. Remember I said that Isle of Cats my win percentage was seventy two
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  percent. Oh, that would be the other one that would be on the
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  list, excuse me, So it would go between two cities, Barren Park,
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  Isle of Cats, Anacrony and Cartographers. Those would be my five if
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  I had had all these numbers before I compiled them. But here's the thing,
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  Isle of Cats. I am better at Isle of Cats than my wife
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  is. There are playing of games she's better than I am. Isle of
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  Cats as the one of the ones where I'm better than she is, and
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  I almost never play that game with with anybody else. It's usually just she
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  and I playing, which means that a seventy two percent win ratio at Isle
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  of Kats is a lot less significant to me than a seventy three percent win
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  ratio at Baron Park, because when I play Barren Park, I'm often playing
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  with lots of other people. I'm not just playing with my wife. So
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  there's a couple of ways in which win percentage is not a good measure of
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  how good I am at a game. One, it doesn't take into account
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  the skill of opponents. Right, that's I guess where eelo comes in or
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  whatever they call it on board game Geek or board game Arena. So that's
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  one limit to this way of measuring. The other limit, and the bigger
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  one for me is that win percentage ignores the odds of winning, not based
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  on skill of player, but just on like sort of your share of turns.
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  Right, let's play that every Let's say that every time I play seven
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  Wonders, I play with seventeen with seven people the full boat. That means
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  that in a field of even competitors, I should win about one out of
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  seven games. That's my fair share, which would mean that my percentage,
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  my fair percentage, is like thirteen percent win ratio, maybe a little more
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  than that, fifteen percent something like that. Whereas in Lost Cities which isn't
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  when I brought up here, my fair win percentage is fifty because it's a
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  two player game, which leads me to think that the win percentage it is
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  just not a useful stat. Now, it is useful in terms of like
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  if I just think about which games do I win the most? Sure,
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  this is a useful stat, but it's not a useful status I think about
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  trying to gauge which games I'm best at, because just even not even take
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  not taking into account the skill of my opponents, I should have a higher
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  win percentage in a game of one on one that I do a game of
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  one on four or one on three, three versus three, whatever, just
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  because you can't win as many games when there are more competitors. So one
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  I am going to do as an addendum for this and listen for it.
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  The audio probably be worse because I'll be using my MIC on my computer.
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  I'm going to use as an addendum the question of what my ISO rating or
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  whatever they call it on board game on board game Arena is. This is
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  the rating of how good you are at a game. So which game do
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  I have the highest ISO rating? Because that's rated like chess, where you
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  get a number based on how strong your opponent is or your opponents that would
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  be that would be interesting to see. And I don't know if Board Game
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  Arena keeps an ISO rating. I think it keeps it per game. I
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  don't think it gives you an overall one for your whole account. I might
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  be wrong about that, but I think more future Brendan here, I hopped
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  on Board Game Arena to look at my ISO ratings for games, and I
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  thought I would share with you the ISO ratings for every game that I've logged
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  more than twenty or more plays on Board Game Arena, starting with Through the
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  Ages. Through the Ages, I've logged two hundred and twenty five games on
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  Board Game Arena and my current el O is one zero six res Arkhana,
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  I've logged one hundred games and my current ELO two one two Innovation. I
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  have not logged enough games to have an ISO or they do not have that
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  feature Gaya Project. My current ELO is seventy nine and I've logged forty four
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  games. Of that Seven Wonders does not have an ELO rating, though I
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  have thirty five plays of seven Wonders Welcome to I have thirty five plays and
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  my elo is two four to four, So apparently I'm much better at seven
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  Wonders thany of the other games there. Eminent Domain has twenty eight plays but
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  no YELLO rating. That time you killed me. I have twenty eight games
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  logged and an YELLO rating of two hundred and forty four. Beyond the Sun,
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  I have twenty seven games played and one hundred and twenty nine yellow.
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  Obsession I have twenty seven games played and an yellow of ninety four. Ark
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  Nova, my elo is one hundred exactly and I have twenty four games.
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  Great Western Trail. I have twenty two games of Great Western Trail and my
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  yell o is nine ouch. I have zero wins above that game. By
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  the way, Terry Mistica, I have twenty one games played and my yellow
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  is one three three. I'll remind you that my terror will go win percentage
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  and a seventy percentage seven Wonders Dual I have twenty one games logged and my
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  yell o is one hundred even a feast for Odin, I have twenty one
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  games logged and my yello is ten. You'll remember I lose that one a
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  lot and race for the galaxy. I have twenty games logged, but they
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  do not track yellow or that game. So if you're interested in knowing how
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  good I am at those other games, now you know. But it seems
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  to me I would really like board game board game stats to come up with
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  an adjusted, like a win percentage stat that is based around the difference between
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  your fair win percentage or your share of wins and your achieved wins. What
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  if each game is worth one point your percentage your win percentag score for that
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  game is one point multiplied by your percentage of winning. So the achievement of
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  winning a game a two player game, of winning in a two player game
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  gets you half a point or whatever because your odds of winning or your share
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  of winning was half of a game. But I don't know. I don't
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  know how this would balance out because but I don't I don't want it to
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  be worth more. I want it to affect the stats differently. I guess
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  I don't know enough about math to figure out how you'd rank, because what
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  I'd want is a win in seven Wonders against seven other players. When you're
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  looking at your win percentage in seven Wonders, if you're winning more than okay,
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  that's what I want the stats to do. Okay, So let's say
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  you're playing seven Wonders and one game you're playing against four people, or in
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  your games against four people, if your win percentage is above twenty five percent,
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  your overall win percentage for seven Wonders should go up, because anything about
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  twenty five percent says that you're doing more than your fair share. So what
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  I would want is for board game stats to take that number and somehow meld
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  it with the number from my win percentage in seven player games. If my
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  win percent engine seven player games is higher than that thirteen percent or whatever I
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  said it should be for a seven player game, then that should figure into
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  my stats as well, so that my overall win percentage for seven Wonders.
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  They can call it adjusted win percentage or something reflects how often do I beat
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  the do I overcome my fair share of wins? It would make that number
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  more meaningful when I'm trying to compare Wingspan, which most of the games of
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  Wingspan I've played are two player games with my wife seven Wonders, where most
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  of the players of seven Wonders I played have had four or more players.
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  So if my win percentage in Seven Wonders. Is thirty percent that's higher than
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  the twenty five percent I should have earned. Is that better than the fifty
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  four percent in Wingspan, which is higher than the fifty percent I should earn,
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  but lower perhaps than the quality of the Seven Wonders win. I feel
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  like I've hit a level of an abstraction that might be difficult or impossible to
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  understand, and so I think I'm gonna stop with my discussion of it now.
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  But I'd love to hear your thoughts, and particularly if you know of
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  a feature in board game stats that does this. I may go on the
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  board game stats forum in board game Geek and see whether this is a number
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  people have already figured out how to calculate, or maybe board game Geek does
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  it. I don't know. I'd be interested to know, but it would
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  be a fun statistic to be able to look at. Is my adjusted win
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  percentage? That gives me a number that I can compare with other people who
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  also keep these stats to see who who has a better win percentage when you
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  take when you factor in number of players in the game. So that that's
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  my stats talk for the day. I don't know if that was interesting or
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  not. I'd love to hear what games are you best at? Head over
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  to board game gee killed, three, two, six, nine and share
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  your thoughts there. Which games do you think your best that and if you
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  have a way of checking, which games does it turn out you are actually
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  best at? Share those games over there and pick out the game your best
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  at and the beginning game I'm best at? Which currently on board game arena
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  is Barren Parks. I've head over there and tells you to a game.
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  Maybe you'll throw off my stats. I'm just about a time for the day,
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  but thanks for joining me on my walk, and I hope that your
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  next walk is pleasant as minds boyebye. Brought to you by rattle bo