Is risk management a skill?

It is a skill. Why else is there a number on each card in Bonhanza to show how many of that type of card are in the deck?

Yes, it is a skill, but only in games where you are given enough information to actually figure out the potential risk.

"Bad" risk to me is like the game Incan Gold. You're in the first room--bad tile. That's okay, right? Second tile--another disaster.

That's just guessing mixed with luck. Unfortunately a lot of so-called "push your luck" or "risk" games boil down to that.

Ra I think does it right. You know the tile mix and you have sevearl "bad" events that pile up (the Ra tokens) to give you an idea that you're nearing the end of an epoch and should actually start buying some stuff.

Most Risk-based games do it right also. You know the probabilities of dice, and if you start looking for outlying results to save you, you have chosen to play the odds, to take large amounts of risk. And then anger gets the better of your risk management skill, and you just start throwing armies away.


Who hasn't done that? Who hasn't had a fat ten-stack of dudes get devoured in Risk because you DIDN'T. KNOW. WHEN. TO. QUIT.

Ken B. wrote:

Yes, it is a skill, but only in games where you are given enough information to actually figure out the potential risk.

That's why you play multiple times.

A game like Incan Gold is by nature a high-risk affair since all turns of the card are all-or-nothing.

I'm frustrated talking to people about Warriors of God who see leader death as a huge flaw in the design, generally based upon one play or not even that. The first time I played I lost three leaders in one round and admittedly it was a sobering event. But once I had several plays under my belt I came to understand the nature of the risk and how to work with it. That's the part of risk management that is lost to the current mindset of throw-away games. If you're only going to play something twice and each game is fifteen minutes long you simply don't have time to learn deeper lessons from the ruleset.

Sag.

Yeah, there is a whole industry where people that are good (or bad) at this work, it is called insurance.

once you break games down into shit like "risk management" they become a whole lot less interesting and more in the ballpark that the euro dweebs want them to exist in - where everything can be niched, explained and understood in little boxes...

there are plenty of gambles in games but am i "managing risk"? fuck no, i am trying to kick your arse or stop you from kicking mine.

moss_icon wrote:

there are plenty of gambles in games but am i "managing risk"? fuck no, i am trying to kick your arse or stop you from kicking mine.

You can call it whatever you want -- some people are better at kicking arse than others. It's a skill. From what I can tell it's a skill that scares the shit out of those euro-dweebs you invoked because they seek to avoid it at all costs.

I guess that's a form of risk management in itself -- avoid playing games where you have to be good at it.

Sag.

vialiy wrote:

Also take note that players around the table will have different approaches to risk. Some will be more risk-prone, others more risk-averse. So there is also skill in making that work for you.

This is one thing that makes games with risk-management so much more interesting than games without it. Whether you play cautiously, aggressivley, or middle-of-the-road in relation to how much you put on the line at once, each person's play style will be unique and not necessarily better or worse than other people's; just different. Another skill is being able to analyse your opponents' play style and take advantage of that analysis.

Risk management doesn't exist. All those professional dudes with the title Risk Management Expert are actually shaking magic 8-balls and laughing all the way to the bank.