Jill and Turntable and I were at the Olympics with Dr. Z two weekends ago.
We played two counting games while we were there. First, Jill and Turntable and I wanted to see who would run into the most people they knew. I figured I had edge having lived there for three years, but the final tally — not counting significant others — was Turntable: 3, Jill: 1, Jack: 0. Government workers had the volunteerism edge.
The second game, which I liked more because I won, involved counting hockey jerseys.
On the second day of our trip, on the way into town, Turntable and Dr. Z and I divided Team Canada hockey jerseys into three rough piles which we thought were about equal:
- Luongo — 1,
- Crosby — 87, and
- Everyone else (that included a name and number).
We odd-manned-out and Dr. Z took “everyone else”. Then we RPS‘d and for the first time in my life I didn’t pick Rock, so I lost that. Turntable got Luongo and I was left with Crosby.
I wanted to play with the design a bit so I suggested that signed jerseys should be worth more — double points. We didn’t see any over the weekend (plus, they are hard to see), so Jill’s patch was that in future they should be worth 10x as much.
I liked this game, but Turntable got off to a bastard of an early lead in the line at Deutsche Haus. Plus, I wanted to make more of a game of it, and games are made of interesting choices, but this was essentially passive. I suggested one more rule, which proved somewhat exciting:
You can zero another player’s score at any time by buying them a drink.
This game lasted until the puck dropped at the gold metal game (wooo!), and I was well behind the whole weekend up to then. We were all scoring for each other, and called Turntable to report a couple of penultimate Luongos when I overheard Z:
Z: So you got a couple and… What do you mean [Jack] won? 40!?
It was about a dozen Luongos versus about a dozen “everyones” versus about five Crosbys at the start of the day — without me having been zeroed. The good doctor was preparing to strategically zero his competition right before the game when Turntable walked by a troupe of Crosby fans that shot me far and away into the lead with minutes left to go and no liquor vendor in sight.
The day, as they say, was mine.
We worked out some final stats. I had zeroed G-Turns’ score of three in the Deutsche Haus at the cost of a $9 half-pint for a spot rate of $3 per Luongo. Later on Saturday Z was getting a better price at something like $1.25 each.
The dominant strategy, which was arrived at pretty quickly, and which the math above indicates, is that you should wait as long as possible before zeroing someone. Not only is it more cost effective, it’s better strategy barring SNAFUs like my late-hour rocket-win.
Maybe some other mechanic could be introduced to make it more rough-and-tumble. Or maybe it’s the kind of game you don’t bother to play optimally?
