SpielByWeb

[sedge]

I now have a larger sample size, so from 117 games, here's the update on average scores for Tikal, 4 player, random-tile draw:

(note, original thread can be found at http://www.spielbyweb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1523)

% Games won:

Player going 1st: 22% (26/117)
Player going 2nd: 38% (44/117)
Player going 3rd: 26% (30/117)
Player going 4th: 19% (22/117)

(percentages add up to over 100% due to tied games)

Average scores:

Player going 1st: 93.7
Player going 2nd: 94.9
Player going 3rd: 91.4
Player going 4th: 90.1

Average winning score: 108.3
Average losing score: 75.5

Hi's and Low's:

Highest winning score: 134
Lowest winning score: 88

Highest losing score: 94
Lowest losing score: 42


Surprisingly (to me) the % games won are nearly exactly the same as when I ran the results after 50 games. I thought that % win for the player going first was slightly anomalous..... but they're still only winning 22% games. Go figure.

Food for thought.....

[Bogey]

I think that the 1st player's percentage is lower due to treasures, well not getting them anyway.

[almondralf]

Why would the first player get less treasures????????????

[Rebelslayer]

It will be interesting to see other peoples sets of data.

[smlait]

For comparison, here are my stats. I also learned that I should stick to 2- and 3-player Tikal because I evidently suck at 4-player. (Took a peek at my win percentage for each type.)


4-Player (57 games)
Player going 1st: 27% (sedge had 22%)
Player going 2nd: 23% (sedge had 38%)
Player going 3rd: 27% (sedge had 26%)
Player going 4th: 23% (sedge had 19%)

I suspect we're seeing the effects of small sample size. Have to admit, I'm surprise that playing fourth does not appear to be detrimental; I'd always felt it was.


3-Player (18 games)
Player going 1st: 31%
Player going 2nd: 50%
Player going 3rd: 19%


2-Player (33 games)
Player going 1st: 45%
Player going 2nd: 55%

[Kanga]

I'm not a Tikal expert, however from a statistical point of view in this circumstance a sample size of 50-100 is not particularly small. The difference between 38% and 23% win ratios for 2nd place would seem to be more than chance, although I dont know why that would be!

I'm struggling to remember the correct statistic to use to test this. At a guess, with a sample size of 100, I'd expect a standard error in this case of about 4%. In relatively plain English that would translate to a 95% confidence interval for the win% falling between 17% and 33% (given that 25% is the mean, 2 se's either side).

A sample size of 57 would have a standard error of 6%, so between 13% and 37%.

Are the games overlapping at all? (ie smlaits games different to sedges?)

[smlait]

At a glance, sedge and I appear to have played three times (two player-1 wins and a player-2 win), so not a significant portion of the games.

[RyanMC]

I think these stats can be very different depending on the group think of the players involved. I have seen Tikal played very differently in different groups. Some groups focus on treasures more than temples, and vice versa. I think that would readily effect the position values.
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-=RyanMC=-
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[gische]

I think you need to add at least one more factor to your analysis:
- what position did YOU play?

I took a quick look at my games, and here's what I saw:

4-Player (27 games)
Player going 1st: 10/27. Me going 1st: 3/8
Player going 2nd: 11/27. Me going 2nd: 4/5
Player going 3rd: 5/27. Me going 3rd: 1/7
Player going 4th: 3/27. Me going 4th: 3/7

This is too small a sample size to mean anything, but it might not be for some other folks. Not exactly sure what that means, anyway, other than that I should avoid going 3rd in 4-player Tikal.

[sedge]

Re Ryan's - there's a lot to be said for groupthink and play styles - and this is a large reason why I haven't actually really tried to analyse these results too hard. I was hoping however that after 100+ games with different crowds things would fairly much even out and there may be some sort of representative results.

Re Gische's - I'm not sure how much influence it'll have - but for interest's sake with analysis, here are my personal results:

Me going 1st: 17/25 68% (average score 104.1)
Me going 2nd: 26/33 79% (average score 106.3)
Me going 3rd: 20/31 65% (average score 105.5)
Me going 4th: 13/28 46% (average score 100.6)

I guess arguably as I've played more than my 'fair share' of games in 2nd spot this could be artificially inflating the general results for the player going 2nd - and have played less than my fair share of games in 1st spot this could be dragging the general results for the player going 1st down a wee bit - but by and large I've played each position fairly evenly so it probably shouldn't affect it _too_ much.

I've got a feeling that perhaps the player in 1st position tends to have a target on his/her back simply due to the fact that they're going first and when in doubt, the default is generally to pick on the person in the 'best' position. Groupthink on a massive scale perhaps? "Bummer of a birthmark Hal........"

Perhaps now there'll be a revolution and now the poor schmoe in 2nd spot will get jumped on by everybody

[smlait]

[Olrik]

where do you get these stats?

[stargate]

[smlait]

And LOTS of help from a spreadsheet to avoid manually counting stuff.

Stargate's stats:

4-Player (184 games)
Player going 1st: 26% (sedge had 22%; I had 27%)
Player going 2nd: 32% (sedge had 38%; I had 23%)
Player going 3rd: 27% (sedge had 26%; I had 27%)
Player going 4th: 21% (sedge had 19%; I had 23%)


3-Player (139 games)
Player going 1st: 42% (I had 31%)
Player going 2nd: 32% (I had 50%)
Player going 3rd: 27% (I had 19%)


2-Player (245 games)
Player going 1st: 54% (I had 45%)
Player going 2nd: 46% (I had 55%)


Stargate's 4-Player Games
Stargate going 1st: 5/49 10%
Stargate going 2nd: 8/45 18%
Stargate going 3rd: 8/46 17%
Stargate going 4th: 2/44 5%

[stargate]

WOW my offer of Geek Gold was hollow -- I have none
I was waiting to get bashed when people checked

on the payback side I gave away all my Geek Gold (12 )
months ago to smlait so she could buy her BGG avatar
she had 18 I had 12 = Avatar

Susan --- THANK YOU for the stat work

Bob