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BGonline.org Forums
It depends on your goals
Posted By: phil simborg In Response To: Chouette rule prevalence: no consulting until the cube is turned (leobueno)
Date: Thursday, 14 August 2014, at 11:57 a.m.
If you goal in a chouette is to have a fun, engaging, social event, full consulting at all times is fine.
If the chouette is a true competition, either for significant stakes or in a major chouette-style competition, there should be no consulting whatsoever.
Most chouettes are a combination of the two. People are playing to gamble...they want to try to win money and want to test their skills against other players. At the same time, a chouette can be an interesting and fun learning experience and an excellent way to share ideas and concepts.
And that is why most chouettes try to find the right mix of consultation and still have a reasonable speed of play and still have a competition where each player has an opportunity to test his own, personal skills and style of play against the rest.
With full consulting at all times, the better players completely dominate the play. Play is much slower, and often, particularly before the cube is turned, a great deal of time can be spent arguing over plays that are either trivial in their difference or will not have a great affect on the money that changes hands...after all, there is no cube and in most chouettes, no possibility of a gammon because of the Jacoby Rule.
A lot depends on the makeup of the group in the chouette.
I have played in chouettes now for close to 45 years, and I have played in just about every major city in the U.S. and seen just about every possible kind of group. There are some groups that consulting completely destroys the game because there are some individuals in the group that are so adamant about their plays being accepted every time that it is impossible for anyone else in the group to get any enjoyment out of the game. For a while, in the Chicago chou, we had to go to full non-consulting because a couple of people were making the game unbearable for the rest. We were not able to continue because a several people simply could not stand to sit by quietly and watch their money being thrown away on a stupid mistake (even though they are likely to make even more money when those same errors are made against them when they are on the other side).
Malcolm Davis and I completely agree on this: if it's a real money game, the only way to play is non-consulting. Everyone should win or lose because of his own skill, and not that of others.
If the game is for small stakes, and/or if all the players are about equal, then I see a real plus for consulting.
The real question is: are you there to gamble and test your skill, or are you there for a social and learning experience?
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