I play a lot of Clubhouse Games on my DS. Mostly just one game in particular online, Sevens (Parliament / Fan Tan). I’m ranked number 1 worldwide in that game.
The problem with being #1 though is that if people know they’re playing you, they usually sign off pretty quickly in hopes of getting another opponent. So I’m constantly changing my username and when I’m done for the day, I change my username and avatar to “?” and the strawberry.
I usually hate playing against more than one player since people are such asshats. When one person passes, it just becomes this big pass-fest where people just keep on passing to force a person to play what they have or just to make someone else be the first to get last place. When people go out and you’re left to 2 or 3 people, it makes it a whole lot easier to know what cards your opponent has, so then it’s just a matter of luck who has the advantage. That’s a pretty lame way to play.
If it were up to me, I’d make it so the game doesn’t let you have any passes at all. Just do away with them and it’ll make the game more about strategy than saving up your passes to bully people that don’t have any passes left.
I’ve mostly tried to play the game without passing at all. And, usually, if I know I’m gonna win, I give other people a chance to at least come in 2nd by putting down the cards that I know they’ll need.
When people pay good enough attention to who plays what card, it’s pretty easy to tell what other cards are in the other person’s hand and what they would need to win (or what cards not to play to prevent other people from winning).
Tonight, I went for a different strategy altogether. Even when I had a pretty good hand with cards that aren’t too far apart from each other numerically, I just tried using up all of my passes just to see how my opponent reacted. Of course, when I would pass, they would pass and we’d both use up all of our passes. So then it evened up the playing field a little. Because then when I’d put down a card, that person would think that I was just trying to block them and possibly play a card that I actually needed. It backfired on me every once in a while, but mostly worked out great.
I might have to hone that strategy a little more, but at least it seems like people wouldn’t be able to predict what cards you have since you’re not playing the way a person normally would.
So that’s my short look into Sevens. Who knows, maybe I’ll be playing against you one day!