I tend to use the polarity strategy, pretty systematically. I "randomly" select a square to start from, and then guess everything on a diagonal shared by that square. Then I guess everything on a diagonal that is "translated" four squares away from the first diagonal (under the rationale that some ships are four or five squares long). Naturally a hit interrupts that strategy with a "seek and destroy" tactic. Once I'm done with all the "4-translated diagonals," I start on the diagonals in between to find the smaller ships.
So against my "systematic diagonal polarity strategy," your friend's cheating strategy would be very effective, because he would be able to see my guesses coming a long way off.
As for set-up strategies, my only "rule" is that I never put ships adjacent to each other, to avoid the case where my opponent's "seek and destroy" efforts inadvertently hit an adjacent ship.
If it seems like I've given this a lot of thought, I spent many fifth-grade recess sessions playing Battleship against a like-minded friend. We got pretty cut-throat.
If your friend can discern a pattern to your shots, can't he then use that to his advantage by moving a ship? It's unlikely that someone's guesses are completely random, as you point out when people try to create random number sequences. So, to me, it would seem he has an advantage no matter the strategy.
We used to play that no two battleships can be adjacent, even diagonally, wich impacts the strategy. I am guessing you are not doing that?
I am also using as strategy a mix between Polarity and a very simple Heat Map. I think most (all?) people don't play truly random, they will intuitively target zones with many empty spaces, especially in the end game and when big ships are still not found. This is were the strategy of your friend will be useful.
We used to play that way too. So in that case you can clear the diagonals from every hit. The optimum strategy then, I think, is seek and NOT destroy, as you get much better information from a new hit than a continuation hit.
Interesting, I think we always destroyed first, it is just too tempting (and satisfying) to sink a ship. Also you kind of need to know how big the remaining ships are - when the size 5 ship is still there, you can try to find spots that eliminate most possible placements for this ship.
I have, in many games with a deck of cards that is never modified or looked through, shuffled the deck in the middle of the game, mainly to rile up my friends. I know it makes no difference, but they hate it! Am I wrong??
Interesting. I always play a combination of the polarity and heat map strategies (just a simple heuristic of trying to figure out likely places based on where I haven‘t taken a shot yet). But most of all, I try to figure out what kind of setup my opponent is likely to have. I easily beat my son after finding out that his mom helped him during setup, she is very predictable with the ships. Anyway, you covered all of that. The main question I had during reading is, if your friend is willing to cheat, why not move the ship after having been hit, claiming it was a miss and moving the ship then? Sounds like everything else is hardly worth the effort.
I tend to use the polarity strategy, pretty systematically. I "randomly" select a square to start from, and then guess everything on a diagonal shared by that square. Then I guess everything on a diagonal that is "translated" four squares away from the first diagonal (under the rationale that some ships are four or five squares long). Naturally a hit interrupts that strategy with a "seek and destroy" tactic. Once I'm done with all the "4-translated diagonals," I start on the diagonals in between to find the smaller ships.
So against my "systematic diagonal polarity strategy," your friend's cheating strategy would be very effective, because he would be able to see my guesses coming a long way off.
As for set-up strategies, my only "rule" is that I never put ships adjacent to each other, to avoid the case where my opponent's "seek and destroy" efforts inadvertently hit an adjacent ship.
If it seems like I've given this a lot of thought, I spent many fifth-grade recess sessions playing Battleship against a like-minded friend. We got pretty cut-throat.
So, how did it turn out?
If your friend can discern a pattern to your shots, can't he then use that to his advantage by moving a ship? It's unlikely that someone's guesses are completely random, as you point out when people try to create random number sequences. So, to me, it would seem he has an advantage no matter the strategy.
We used to play that no two battleships can be adjacent, even diagonally, wich impacts the strategy. I am guessing you are not doing that?
I am also using as strategy a mix between Polarity and a very simple Heat Map. I think most (all?) people don't play truly random, they will intuitively target zones with many empty spaces, especially in the end game and when big ships are still not found. This is were the strategy of your friend will be useful.
We used to play that way too. So in that case you can clear the diagonals from every hit. The optimum strategy then, I think, is seek and NOT destroy, as you get much better information from a new hit than a continuation hit.
Interesting, I think we always destroyed first, it is just too tempting (and satisfying) to sink a ship. Also you kind of need to know how big the remaining ships are - when the size 5 ship is still there, you can try to find spots that eliminate most possible placements for this ship.
I have, in many games with a deck of cards that is never modified or looked through, shuffled the deck in the middle of the game, mainly to rile up my friends. I know it makes no difference, but they hate it! Am I wrong??
Interesting. I always play a combination of the polarity and heat map strategies (just a simple heuristic of trying to figure out likely places based on where I haven‘t taken a shot yet). But most of all, I try to figure out what kind of setup my opponent is likely to have. I easily beat my son after finding out that his mom helped him during setup, she is very predictable with the ships. Anyway, you covered all of that. The main question I had during reading is, if your friend is willing to cheat, why not move the ship after having been hit, claiming it was a miss and moving the ship then? Sounds like everything else is hardly worth the effort.
That’s why I used to play on paper grids. Do they still sell these?
It's called graph paper. That's what my friend and I used to use in high school science class.