Theory in VTES - Risk in VTES

Jeff wrote:

Suoli wrote:

I think what you're trying to say with risk can be easier said with expected value. Analyze choices and individual cards by identifying their costs, probabilities and potential gains. Seek interactions with positive expected value, avoid interactions with negative.

Expected value with respect to pool/blood. Fundamentals are everything.

Well, I don't completely agree here. This isn't strictly poker, maximizing counters is not the goal. You don't get to carry your counters to the next game so there's no reason to put pool on a pedestal. It serves exactly the same purpose as hand quality, board presence, etc. The first purpose is to take the game win, the secondary purpose is to maximize vp's. Everything else is a tool, not a purpose. With these goals in mind, pool is only relevant in the context of a) staying alive and b) investing it into useful tools. When there's no threat to your pool and you can't reasonably invest it, the difference between having 1 or 30 pool becomes negligible.

tl;dr: Don't use pool as a measuring stick because the value of a pool counter changes depending on the situation.

Suoli wrote:

Well, I don't completely agree here. This isn't strictly poker, maximizing counters is not the goal.

But minimizing your prey's pool counters *is* the goal. Pool counter efficiency/expected value cuts both ways when evaluating specific cards.

Risk is more about how often you expect a given card to be useful, tactically or strategically. As such, it is much harder to quantify considering the vagaries of each game and metagame.

Jeff wrote:

But minimizing your prey's pool counters *is* the goal. Pool counter efficiency/expected value cuts both ways when evaluating specific cards.

No, it really isn't. It could be said that minimizing your prey's pool is usually the best way to remove his last pool counter, which in turn is usually the best way to get the game win. That's not the same as being a goal in itself. Consider the following situation:

It's your prey's turn. He has, say, Arika and Queen Anne. You have an untapped Ira Rivers on the board and 7 blank cards in your hand. You also have a superior Revelations on the board, so you know for a fact that your prey has 1 KRC, 1 Consanguineous Boon and 5 blank cards. Your prey will attempt to call both votes, you can block once. So, which vote do you block when:

1) KRC would give your prey a third victory point, while Con Boon would give him 7 pool.
2) KRC would reduce your grand prey's pool from 30 to 27, while Con Boon would give your prey 7 pool.

The specifics are exaggerated to make them more obvious but comparable situations occur in real games all the time.

If minimizing your prey's pool is the goal, the correct choice is to always block the Con Boon, even when you lose the game win because of doing so. In reality, you get 0 vps for removing any pool counter that isn't the last one.

I have to add to simplistic-versus-risk analysis the fact, that there are fear factors, which cannot be simply defined in a simplistic way. Examples:

- Influencing Arika with or without crypt acceleration has different fear factor for its prey. It is safe to asume that accelerated Arika would focus on speed, meaning prey would need to be more cautious.

- Influencing 2-cap obf weenie has high fear factor for prey and next-to-nothing for the predator (in most cases).

- Discarding Coma/Entombment does not influence table balance in no way, but adds significant fear factor for potential blockers (waiting for IG/Dodge before blocking/rushing)

and so on... These are risks as well, but not the same as metagame risks. First ones have to countered tactically, whereas the latter need to be countered strategically.

More adequatly, they aren't risk at all. They are information given to the table, which may or may not be true.

(for example, discarding your only coma send the false information that you have a lot of way to deal with combat in hand)

Aw, come on, don't play with words. Information and risk are not mutually exclusive.