Strategy
Over the course of the game, it becomes known where certain cards are located, and so upon turning up one card players with good memory will be able to remember where they have already seen its pair.
It is common for many players to think they know where pairs are and to turn over the one they are sure of first, then be stumped finding its mate. A better strategy is to turn over a less certain card first, so that if wrong, one knows not to bother turning a more certain card over.
An ideal strategy can be developed if we assume that players have perfect memory. For the One Flip variation below, this strategy is fairly simple. Before any turn in the game, there are t cards still in play, and n cards still in play but of known value. The current player should flip over an unknown card. If this card matches one of the known cards, the match is next chosen. Less obviously, if the card does not match any known card, one of the n known cards should still be chosen to minimize the information provided to other players. The mathematics follow:
If a remaining unknown card is chosen randomly, there is a 1/(t-1-n) chance of getting a match, but also a n/(t-1-n) chance of providing opponents with the information needed to make a match.
There are some exceptions to this rule that apply on the fringe cases, where n = 0 or 1 or towards the end of the game.
Read more about this topic: Concentration (game)
Famous quotes containing the word strategy:
“To a first approximation, the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states exhibiting what Brentano and others call intentionality.”
—Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)
“That is the way of youth and life in general: that we do not understand the strategy until after the campaign is over.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war?”
—Bible: Hebrew, 2 Kings 18:20.