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The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced 🗄️ ! Did the ceremony get snappier again? No lengthy flashbacks to previous winners (only an epitaph for Reinhold Wittig 🗄️ ), no detailed lectures on the jury’s work, no dragging out the announcements. The show definitely had its entertaining moments, like when Donald X. Vaccarino subverted the jury’s narrative about…
The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 12, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2026 . As always, there are six games hoping to win one of the two most important awards in gaming – and one hopeless geek trying to predict which will be the lucky ones. 🤓 I’ve been doing this for six years now 🤓 and I’ve called nine out of…
The group stage is over, the Round of 32 is set — and the model has changed its mind. ⚽️ When I ran the numbers before kickoff the model had a bold, market-contrarian opinion: 🇪🇸 Spain to win it at 35.3%, 🇦🇷 Argentina second at 23.0% and both dramatically underpriced by the bookies — Spain’s +19.3pp edge over Polymarket was the strongest disagreement between maths and money I’d…
FIFA is a mafia. Now let’s watch football. Let’s not beat about the bush: FIFA is a mafia, their Peace Prize a disgrace and a host country so hostile towards the expected guests from all over the world not worthy of that honour. But as soon as the whistle sounds later today and the first ball is kicked, none of this matters anymore and football (or soccer in freedom units) rules…
Nominations are out 🗄️ ! The jury selected a total of sixteen games for their longlists, nine for Spiel des Jahres and seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres . Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 12. Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or…
Spiel des Jahres 2026 is around the corner! As with the previous six years , I’ll try to predict what games have the best shot at ending up on the longlist (aka recommendations ) and the shortlist (aka nominations ) when the jury announces their picks on May 19th. As every year, I’ll let the algorithms speak, and I’m once again using the methodology established last year : 50% of…
A year in the making The 2026 World Snooker Championship is under way at the Crucible in Sheffield — a natural point to rerun the forecast from last April , when we put Elo on five decades of results and ran ten million tournament simulations. John Higgins led our list at 13.14%; Zhao Xintong was fourth at 10.58% but took the 2025 title and has stayed at or near the top of the ratings since. The…
W. Eric Martin (WEM) ran the BoardGameGeek (BGG) news section for 15 years. Earlier this year, he launched his own outlet 1 called Board Game Beat . In between his signature game release updates, he writes entertaining and insightful analyses of the broader hobby. In one of his recent articles 🗄️ , he proposed the Rules Ratio . The title invites us to geek out about it, so geek out we shall! 🤓…
At some point this year, I let my laptop run flat-out for almost two weeks just to answer one question: how much of a four-player board game is “skill” and how much is “luck”? That sounds excessive, but there was a catch: before I could even start those simulations, I had to fix a basic problem. Elo – the rating system we’ve been happily using so far – only really…
Whether a game counts as “skill” or “chance” isn’t just a pub argument — in many countries it’s a legal distinction. Roulette and blackjack live on the “chance” side; tennis and chess are filed under “skill”. Different rules, different taxes, different ways for people to lose money. The trouble is that this line is usually drawn by…
The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced 🗄️ ! After two year of complaining how the ceremonies went on for too long, it appears the jury finally listened to me and made it snappier, while still retaining the sections highlighting all the various facets of the hobby. Kudos! I don’t know if the presenters gained more experience in hosting the show, or if their…
The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 13, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2025 . As always, there’s six games hoping to win one of the two most important awards in gaming – and one hopeless geek trying to predict which will be the lucky ones. 🤓 I’ve been doing this for five years now and I’ve called eight out…
Nominations are out 🗄️ ! The jury selected a total of sixteen games for their longlist, nine for Spiel des Jahres and seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres . Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 13. Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad)…
Spiel des Jahres 2025 is around the corner! As with the previous five years , I’ll try to predict what games have the best shot at ending up on the longlist (aka recommendations ) and the shortlist (aka nominations ) when the jury announces their picks on May 20th. As every year, I’ll let the algorithms speak, and I’ve doubled down on the path I’ve started last year when I…
Welcome to the Crucible This blog is usually all about board games, but let’s stretch the definition just a little: snooker is, after all, one of the most widely followed tabletop games in the world. And with the World Championship kicking off at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, I couldn’t resist the excuse to dive into something a bit different. In the last article , we looked at…
Chance in games is like seasoning in food — it’s all about the right amount. Just imagine a life without chance, where everything could be planned out strategically. That would get boring over time. In a game, I want to have experiences — I want adventure. A good game is like a miniature life, one where I can make mistakes, enjoy a streak of bad or good luck, and still recover. But you…
This subject has nothing to do with games nor data science, but chances are that amongst the readers of this blogs are many who appreciate mathematics – and its beauty. Long before Recommend.Games, I’ve had a blog on the Riemann Hypothesis – the famous conjecture which is usually formulated in terms of the zeros of the complex Riemann \(\zeta\)-function, but is really about the distribution…
Bias is a bit of an ugly word, isn’t it? It certainly has become one of those battle phrases in the culture war, where both sides of the argument accuse the other of forcing their biases onto society. Board game reviews frequently need to justify themselves for their biases affecting their views. Dan Thurot 🗄️ recently wrote a very eloquent piece on the matter, diving deeper into different…
Corey Thompson (of Above Board TV and Dice Tower Dish fame) recently raised an interesting question on the Board Games Insider podcast : In what year do you think the best titles (highest rated titles) were released? He actually answered the question twice, first in episode #328 based on an analysis he ran a couple of years ago and then again in #330 with more up-to-date data. I’m not going…
The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced 🗄️ ! This year’s show was… even longer… 😅 After last year I’ve hoped for a snappier show – instead it was further extended. As much as I appreciate the jury’s work (which I’ve expressed at length ), the stage isn’t where they shine, so I don’t understand why we need two awkward hours of their…
The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 21, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024 . We’re blessed with another year of very strong games and I’m certainly very excited to learn what games will win the two awards. I’ve been doing this for four years now and I’ve called seven out of the eight winners correctly.…
Some of you might have notices that I’m a bit of a Spiel des Jahres fanboy. 🙃 Every year when the award season rolls around, the discussion about the purpose and the influence of Spiel des Jahres comes up again. So I thought it’s a good idea to collect my thoughts on the subject in one handy place I can easily reference in the future. 🤓 What’s the purpose of Spiel des Jahres ?…
Nominations are out 🗄️ ! The jury selected a total of sixteen games for their longlist, nine for Spiel des Jahres and seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres . Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 21. Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad)…
Spiel des Jahres 2024 is around the corner! As in the previous four years , I’ll try to predict what games have the best shot at ending up on the longlist (aka recommendations ) and the shortlist (aka nominations ) when the jury announces their picks on June 11th. As every year, I’ll let the algorithms speak, but I’ve added something new this year: I tried to track the jury…
Spiel des Jahres 2024 nominations are just around the corner (watch this space for our annual predictions ), but I wanted to take this opportunity for a look back over the history of the award. Specifically, I wanted to see which designers have been most successful at the Spiel , Kennerspiel and Kinderspiel des Jahres awards. The first red meeple was given out in 1979. Since 1989, the jury also…
What is a good recommendation? Collaborative filtering is the workhorse powering the recommendations by Recommend.Games. Over the years, I’ve been asked every now and then how it works. So, I thought it’s high time I outlined the basic ideas behind our recommendation engine. Let’s first take a step back and talk about recommendations in general. What is it we’re trying to…
BoardGameGeek (BGG) users can select their country of residence in their profile. The main purpose is to find other users in your region to play face to face or maybe trade games, but but over here at Recommend.Games we obviously cannot help ourselves but to use this information for some interesting statistics. 🤓 Let’s start with the usual disclaimer: We will have to rely on whatever…
The number of ratings per game Perhaps one of the most controversial choices of the Shut Up & Sit Down Effect article was using the number of ratings 1 on BoardGameGeek (BGG) as proxy for “attention” to a game. So let’s double down on that! 😈 If lots of ratings mean a lots of eyes on a game, we can ask questions like: What games get most of the attention? Do few games steal the…
Shut Up & Sit Down Shut Up & Sit Down (SU&SD) is arguably the largest (at over 400k subscribers) and most influential YouTube channel in board gaming. A video with a glowing recommendation by them can lead to a game sell out overnight. Or at least that’s how the anecdotes go. There’s been previous attempts at quantifying the effect, but over here at Recommend.Games is where board games…
High Society is a classic bidding game by classic designer Dr Reiner Knizia , most recently released by Osprey Games with a wonderfully classic look: The general concept is quite simple: the players are members of said “high society” and are trying to outdo each other in showing off their wealth. The game is played over a series of rounds, and in each round, a card is revealed from a…
Orchard is a beloved children’s game classic which is so old – it’s as old as myself. 👴 As one might expect from a children’s game, it’s really simple: roll a die, pick a fruit of the corresponding color, and put it in the basket. If you roll the raven, the raven moves one step closer to the orchard. If you manage to pick all the fruit before the raven reaches the orchard,…
The hiatus is over! Already since April 2023 the recommendation engine at Recommend.Games has been back online, albeit with reduced functionality. In order to cut down serving costs, I made the recommendation model much more lightweight (this deserves its own article) and removed rarely used features as well as a bunch of bloat from the database. Most of the database was filled with users’…
The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced 🗄️ ! This year’s show was… long… On the one hand, it’s nice to have all three awards (including the Kinderspiel ) back together in one announcement, but on the other hand, once you add special awards, the review of the 1983 awards, interviews etc, even die hard fans (and obviously I’m one of them) have a hard…
The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 16, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023 . We’re blessed with another year of very strong games and I’m certainly very excited to learn what games will win the two awards. After two years of calling both winners correctly, I’ve missed the Spiel des Jahres 2022 winner…
Nominations are out 🗄️ ! The jury selected a total of fifteen games for their longlist, ten for Spiel des Jahres and five for Kennerspiel des Jahres . Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 16. Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad)…
Spiel des Jahres 2023 is around the corner! As in the previous years , I’ll try to predict what games have the best shot at ending up on the longlist (aka recommendations ) and the shortlist (aka nominations ) when the jury announces their picks on May 22nd. As every year, I’ll let the algorithms speak. The predictions for the longlist come directly from the recommendendations out of…
Update: The hiatus is over ! Recommend.Games is back, albeit with some reduced functionality. The very first commit to the project ludoj 1 , as I called it back then, was on December 5th, 2016. I registered the domain Recommend.Games on November 22nd, 2018. On May 15th, 2020, I published the first post on this blog. Over the years, this site attracted more than 50,000 users, which is a huge…
The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced 🗄️ ! As mentioned before, this year was the first time the ceremony was held on a Saturday evening and I had the immense pleasure of attending it in person. In case you missed my very profesional live coverage on Twitter, here’s a summary of the event. But without further ado, here are the winners of Spiel des Jahres and…
The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Saturday, July 16, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2022 . We’re blessed with another year of very strong games and I’m certainly very excited to learn what games will win the two awards. I’m proud to say that I’ve called both awards correctly for two years running, so there is a…
Nominations are out 🗄️ ! The jury selected a total of fifteen games for their longlist, nine for Spiel des Jahres and six for Kennerspiel des Jahres . Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 16. Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad)…
Spiel des Jahres 2022 is around the corner! (Has it really been a year already since we last spoke with each other? 😅) We’re blessed with another strong year full of wonderful games that all compete for the most prestigious awards in board gaming. As in the previous years , I’ll try to predict what games have the best shot at ending up on the longlist (aka recommendations ) and the…
We have some pretty exciting news! 🤩 Since 2022-02-22, we’ve been using a new and improved ranking as the default sorting for our front page at Recommend.Games . … What do you mean, you haven’t noticed there’s a R.G ranking? You know, that thing that’s referenced in the statistics ? … You haven’t ever opened that view?!? 😱 OK, let’s back up for a second.…
The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced 🗄️ ! This article is more than a week overdue, but I’ve been on my first trip 1 abroad since, you know… (In a sense that was the first time in a year and a half I wasn’t abroad. 🤷) So without further delays, here are the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2021 ! Spiel des Jahres 2021 MicroMacro:…
It’s time! On Monday, July 19, we will finally know which games won Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2021 . I really think this is an exciting year with six very strong nominees that all have a lot of arguments going for themselves (and a few against). Even after following the whole year releases very closely, I’m still torn as to who’d be the favourites to win.…
Nominations are out 🗄️ ! The jury selected a total of fifteen games for their longlist, eight for Spiel des Jahres and seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres . Out of these games, three games each are nominated for both awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 19. Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad)…
It’s our favourite time of the year again: time for Spiel des Jahres nominations! On Monday, May 17th, the jury will once again announce their longlist (aka recommendations) and shortlist (aka nominations) for Spiel des Jahres , Kennerspiel des Jahres and Kinderspiel des Jahres 2021 . Just like last year , I’ll try to produce a list of the most promising games to land on the longlist…
Spiel des Jahres 2021 nominations might still be a couple of months away, but I thought now is still a good time to return to one of the harder questions in my predictions post from last year : What exactly makes a game a Kennerspiel ? By that I don’t mean the qualities that earn a game the award, but the distinction between the more casual Spiel and the more complex Kennerspiel categories.…
This is the second part of a series explaining and analysing the BoardGameGeek rankings. Read the first part here . Last time I left you with the nice result that BoardGameGeek (BGG) calculates its ranking by taking users’ ratings for a particular game and then add around 1500-1600 dummy ratings of 5.5 . This so-called geek score is used to sort the games from best ( Gloomhaven ) to worst (…
TL;DR : BoardGameGeek calculates its ranking by adding around 1500-1600 dummy ratings of 5.5 to the regular users’ ratings. They called it their geek score, statisticians call it a Bayesian average. We use this knowledge to calculate some alternative rankings . I often describe BoardGameGeek (BGG) as “the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) for games”. Much like its cinematic…
After months of waiting, we finally know what games won 🗄️ this year’s Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres ! Without further ado, I’ll present the winners along with a comment on how the predictions went. Spiel des Jahres 2020 Pictures Reading through the comments on the interweb most players seem surprised about the winner of the red meeple. Not me! It was on my list from the…