It depends on what the player needs to fall. If I don't have the 11 or 10, I'm not looking at 1s...unless my off is an x2 or better and then it's such a slim chance that there isn't a higher x to set. Basically I was thinking; find a few, maybe 3, dominoes the player is scared of and only watch those. For the difficulty setting the hardest would have an idetic memory, the easiest would have no memory.

The real trick is looking ahead and seeing favorable combinations that open up. Chess engines do it, so it isn't impossible.

i just found this thread, and immediately downloaded the app...

now i'm off to tweet about it & put it all over fb!!!

great job Fry!!!!!!!

[This message has been edited by 247bassist (edited 7/10/2012 2:16p).]

if I win the bid, sometimes I like to lead a non-trump domino to get rid of my off. i know this is a rule...is it avail for this game? sorry if already discussed (although i skimmed every page of this thread & did not see it).

for instance: trumps are 6's. i lead the 1|5 and it's a 1 not a 5.

does anyone else do this?

The way I've played the lead domino suit is determined by the high end always. So, unless 1s are trump that would never be a 1 as the lead.

I've heard of that rule. You can basically set whichever side of the domino as lead, right?

For now, it just goes by the standard "highest side is lead" rule.

ok thanks! no worries...every time i bust out that rule when i'm playing with a group who is not my family, they're all skeptical anyway. they accuse me of making it up or using our "family" rules, etc.

but it's an actual, very old (if rarely used) official rule.

can't say enough about this app. great, great job. i'm pimping it to my family & friends!!

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The way I've played the lead domino suit is determined by the high end always. So, unless 1s are trump that would never be a 1 as the lead

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yeah that's obviously the way almost everyone plays...but there is a rule that you can call which side is the lead *if* you won the bid and if you are playing your very 1st domino. it's a way to make a good hand into a great hand (and therefore bid more aggressively) by getting rid of 1 off

So you can't do it on every trick? How does that work? You can do it once and only once or can you do it throughout the game?

only 1 time per mark/hand (but in theory, plenty of times per GAME if desired)
only if you are the winning bidder
only on your very 1st lead

it's still a risk b/c you have to call trumps and lead something that is not a trump (obviously). so it's not as much of a slam dunk as you'd initially think, b/c you're hoping everyone has one of those dominos (a 1 in the example above) or at least cant trump in.

[This message has been edited by 247bassist (edited 7/10/2012 3:56p).]

Interesting. Do you happen to know the name of that rule,

One thing I would really like to do down the line is to include more of the obscure rules.

it's hard to google (i tried) b/c i'm not sure if it has a name.

haha anyone else wanna jump in & help me here?

i'll look more later as well. i think i 1st learned of it on the back of the inside of a box of dominos tho haha

found it!

"small-end opening"

http://www.pagat.com/pointtrk/42.html
(about 3/4 of the way down that page)

Opening lead

Some people allow small end opening. In this case, in the first trick only, the bidder can lead a non-trump domino and specify that it belongs to the suit of the small end. For example holding the 1-1 and the 6-1 you could name fives as trump and lead the 6-1 as a one, which cannot be beaten unless someone can trump it.

Holy crap, you must have a lot of friends. Back in the top 25!

haha good!

last summer (I think?) i started a thread in "entertainment" about a 42 app, and even tossed around the idea of coding it myself. but i did a little research and figured out it was probably out of my league. so i gave up. glad you did it!

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Since he bid 31, I assume he wasn't the 4th person to bid!? I had one report that he bid 34 on a forced bid, but I was skeptical since the forced bidding code is pretty simple.

How good was the rest of his hand, btw? I can say that the intent of the code is to give a bigger point bonus if he holds the 46 than the 44...but he should not bid that high if he only has 2 trumps total. I'm guessing he also had the 41? Did he have any dangerous offs?

Rebel, that's the line of thinking I was going down. Obviously no one is going to forget that the 55 was played, but I need to figure out how often the AI will forget tiles like the 45. I'm leaning towards making it random and using weighting factors based on the user settings.

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To be honest I'm not sure, unfortunately I usually play a hand or two in bed before crashing so I may not be the most alert I know he was one of the later hands but I'm not positive if he was a forced bid or not.

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Some people allow small end opening. In this case, in the first trick only, the bidder can lead a non-trump domino and specify that it belongs to the suit of the small end. For example holding the 1-1 and the 6-1 you could name fives as trump and lead the 6-1 as a one, which cannot be beaten unless someone can trump it.

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Crazy. I've never played that before or even heard of it. I'd be open to it as an optional rule you can turn off and on (along with others like sevens and splash/plunge), but not sure I'd like to play that way standard.

yeah i understand. but like i said, it's not some new rule. it's been around a long time.

edit: and i can't STAND sevens. i refuse to play that BS game unless the people i'm with are all 3 gung ho for it. even then i plead with them to agree to not play it haha. so yeah there's lots of variations & nuances, etc to the game.

but i agree it'd be cool if it was a toggle-able feature. i wouldn't want to make everyone play that way

[This message has been edited by 247bassist (edited 7/10/2012 6:11p).]

All of those will be OPTIONAL with standard as the default.

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To be honest I'm not sure, unfortunately I usually play a hand or two in bed before crashing so I may not be the most alert I know he was one of the later hands but I'm not positive if he was a forced bid or not.

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In some future release yet to be determined, I'm going to include a button that lets the user submit their game to me so I can recreate it on my computer here. Really should have done that already.

[This message has been edited by Philip j fry (edited 7/10/2012 6:42p).]

small end opening...

also known as the bassist family rule

HAY IT'S A REAL RULE!!!

That's what people say about the DH.

Make sure you keep that link on your phone next time you play. It's hilarious that such an odd rule is an actual play style and not something made up.

I've played probably north of 70 games on the app now and saw a bad AI move for the first time tonight.

My opponent won the bid at 31. He sets 5s as trumps and leads the big ones the first two tricks. Six trumps come out, leaving one assumedly in the leader's hand. Third trick, leader throws the double blank and my dumbass partner tosses away his double 6. WTH? Fourth trick they get to walk the 6/4. That SOB just cost us 11 pts and the hand.

What was he thinking? Was he trying too hard to protect count in his hand?

No, that would be a case where the AI just failed completely....well, more like my coding skills. That's what I like to call a WTF play. You know it when you see it and that would definitely be one of those cases.

Now that I think about it, It could very well be that he was trying to hold on to count and for whatever reason, failed to decide on the trump. If it was early on in the game and there were plenty of tiles left in his hand, then I would feel different.

I'm actually working on code as I type this for this specific situation. The code simply isn't smart enough yet to know that it's better to lose a five count in order to have a chance at winning a 10 count. I'm hoping to have at least part of this in the 1.0.2 package. If not, then it will be 1.0.3.

Since they were able to walk with the 4:6, I assume that your partner had another 6 on hand and couldn't trump in?

[This message has been edited by Philip J Fry (edited 7/10/2012 11:09p).]

I've seen a situation like that once or twice where my partner seems to throw away a double rather early.

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In some future release yet to be determined, I'm going to include a button that lets the user submit their game to me so I can recreate it on my computer here. Really should have done that already.

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I'd think that would be really useful for debugging purposes.

Something else, it'd be nice to be able to somehow pause at the end of a hand. There's been times where I didn't quite catch what happened at the end of a bid and before I could see exactly what had been played it was already dealing the next hand.

Yeah, I think #13 on my list should take care of that part. I'll edit the first page to make it more clear.

this may have been addressed, but I didn't see it yet:

do we not stack the tricks on 1 & 2 mark hands? not that it really matters haha

like the small-end opening thing, this may just be a regional/family variance

i played a lot last night. i had a few cases where the AI didn't do exactly what I would have done, but I have not yet experienced a "WTF" play

again this is LIGHT YEARS above any other 42 app

I think we talked about that a few pages before. Yes, once I get around to getting the AI to occasionally forget some tiles, I'll start stacking them.

sorry, i did read the 1st 6 pages and came in late...i musta just missed that one. apologies. i dont wanna beat you up over an AWESOME app

Trust me, compared to the abuse I get in my emails, this is nothing :-p

I absolutely want ideas thrown at me. Above all, I want folks to know that I really am focused on getting this app right.

Is there an Android version?

Sure. If you trade in your android and get an iPhone.

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Is there an Android version?

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I swear, the next time some asks if there is an android version, I'll vow to never make one.


j/k. Look for the android version in 2013.

2013!