9 Comments
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Brian M's avatar

I was able to get the 20-tile train easily enough. Guess I am better than I thought. I enjoyed the article and your thorough analysis.

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Caroline Newheiser's avatar

I enjoyed this article, although now I'm a little intimidated to play against you at our next family gathering. Good thing I play for enjoyment and not to win. :-)

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CharlesK's avatar

I got the max length fairly easily as well (though not sure how to measure "easy"). Having no 12s, one 11, and 2 0s, one of which was attached to the 11, narrowed the search space a lot.

From my play, I feel that tile counting can pay dividends in the end game (if someone draws a tile with only a few dominos left, you know all those available numbers are unplayable for them) but I suspect the majority of the time it will turn a loss into a slightly smaller loss.

Also, it would help those of us who wanted to try if the dominos from the sample were ordered in some way :)

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PB's avatar

*train

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PB's avatar

Thank you. The way we have been taught is to start with our own train. I sometimes hold some of my train back so that I won’t get locked out of my own trunk by not having a match. Then I m stuck in the boneyard.

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Mark Newheiser's avatar

Gotcha! I think always starting your own train or building your own train first is a mistake, you should be preferentially offloading tiles that don't fit in the plan you have for your own train, and I think the data I have proves it

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PB's avatar

Do you mean the legnth of the original train we lay down first or the legnth of our train when we are finished? Thank you!

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Mark Newheiser's avatar

I'm not 100% sure what your question is in reference to, feel free to respond to clarify.

If what you mean is my point around trying to optimize around the longest path you can lay down, what I mean by that is that planning out a train with the greatest length is more useful than planning around score, from my tests

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PB's avatar

I understand. Thank you.

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