and if the mentioned friendliness noticed by small moves or not-moves is remembered from one game to another, it is against the rules, isn't it? And don't tell me you don't remember.

john milton

he was talking about small friendlyness ingame.

the problem you face is this;

you need to figure out who you can play with (in that game)

so, what you need to do is to test the waters with small moves first (a big move is too stabbable). this is the way i usually does it with new players. I do a small move, and look for a confirmation moove. if i get it, i do a bigger move, and look for confirmation, I repeat it to see for a double confirmation.

noobs will much more often stab such a move, but when I play with a player I have played with before, I know that he/she will recognize a big move at once. thus i can take the better bigger move at once.

problem is that the big move is usually better than the small move, but to make the big move i need to know that it will be recognized. thus I am more inclined to make those kindnesses to a player i know will reconize it.

next game is ofcourse a totally different story.

but to be honest, when playing back to back games, it is easy to attempt the same thing that worked last game again, that is just human nature. so there will be a bias towards the player that you "played with" last game.

and BTW.

what jlim2 was talking about can be summed up to this;

the real skill on 2K is to set up the truces in the game you are playing. making sure the truces benefits you, and making sure YOU get more than your truceP out of the truce

There is skill, but it isn't needed most times.

Chat + Luck can replace and trump skill depending on the structure of a table.

Baiting a player into overextending knowing where to roll etc...

Bad luck > skill in the end so eh.

Thanks Kreuzfeld for writing a lengthy post (2 actually) to confirm that for a non-frequent-2k-player it is almost impossible or will take at least a long phase of frustration to get into the permanent residents phalanx. Whether you would like to call it old trusted friendship, pga (a little too hard imho) or whatever is not important. It perfectly explains why skill is one of the less important things for getting into top places. Even luck that might help a game or two won't do, because you'll be gotten afterwords unless you have proofed worthy You need patience, manors, chat and bribing those that are there as well for a long time by small favors and accepting not perfect outcomes...

It must be coincidence that this reminds of the good practice of the cabal back then - they used to abuse runnerups like that, didn't they? ;-)

skill died with johnson213

it was cool when there was a small group of ppl that vflagged...but now it's everyone.
there is little heart...no umph, no fight, no backstabbing...ok i shouldn't say there is none... bc there are some ppl who still have it. Newayz,
i think that there are more n00bs now than skilled players, by far!!!!!!!!! eberyone wins a month and quits
WE NEED MURTI

everyone tries to be polite and make friends,...and some dude told me the other day that it was illegal for me to pge, he also said that i would get banned for revolting. i was like dude are you serious... and after i killed him...i felt bad...but then he called me a n00b so i didnt care... it was a nice tourney win, w00t.

there is something epic in johnsons randomness, just not sure what it is.

I believe my best game I played was in a tourney. I had 2 dice and 1 territory left in the mid-2nd round and I was surrounded by 4's and 5's.

I ended up talking everyone into moving away from me and I ended up in 4th place. I think diplomacy is the supreme strategic skill in kdice. aligning your needs with the people around you and casting a vision how you could both do succeed by working cooperatively.

in game skill = board recognition x (chat persuasion + courage to move stacks) - greed

2k skill = in game skill + silent communication + medium term networking

top 25 skill = 2k skill + free time - girlfriend