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If you’ve been catching up with Piggericks updates lately, you know the game is about to be launched pretty soon and we are very excited about that! If you’re new here, go and read about what we’ve been up to here:
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Now, let’s talk business! Well, Piggericks business.
Toss or Bank?
When you’re playing Piggericks and competing with other players, you’re trying to hit the target score as quickly as possible.
By tossing, you continue to rack up points with the risk of losing the points of your current round. The latter is what we call a Pig Out. By banking, you collect your points in a way that you cannot lose them any more. But your round ends and your opponent has a new chance to win.
So, let’s see how to make that decision.
The Math behind a throw
For simplicity’s sake, lets ignore the target and how far you or your opponent is away from it and just look at the pure value of tossing vs banking.
In order to keep this article concise, we are going to assume you already know How to Play but just a quick refresher: Every pig has different attributes which affects the likelihood of certain outcomes such as a Pig Out. This neat table that explains how good or bad a pig can be:
Let’s look at an example:
Each bar describes the performance of our pig relative to the best and the worst pigs in the game. So, a full bar for the left belly, represents a 26% chance of landing on it, while a half bar would mean the chance increases to 29%. If you’re asking yourself, where these numbers are coming from, go check out the table above again.
Got it? Then tell us what an empty bar for the left belly stands for.
Hint: It’s thirty two percent.
Now, how often does the Pig Out happen?
A Pig Out means your pigs land on opposite sides of their bellies. There are two ways to make this happen (left-right and right-left) so to calculate the overall chance for a Pig Out you need to multiply the percentage of landing on the belly. For simplicity, let’s assume our piggy pair has the exact same attributes.
Chance for a Pig Out:
- Two Perfect Pigs: 13.52%
- Two Worst Pigs: 20.48%
Quite a difference! Right? What can we say, the quality of your pigs matter.
Now, the second thing you need to know is the number of expected points you get per throw.
Average Multiplier:
- Two Perfect Pigs: 7.75
- Two Worst Pigs: 5.66
Multiply that with the experience of the pig (displayed as “Exp.” points in your piggery) and now you know the points you gain on average, per throw. Make sense?
The next question is when are you expected to gain vs lose points by throwing? Since you are risking the points you have already in the current round there comes a breaking point where the risk is higher than what you expect to gain. The easiest way to calculate this: Average Points/Pig-Out %.
The break-even works out as:
- Two Perfect Pigs: 57.3
- Two Worst Pigs: 27.7
So technically, as long as the score of your round is below the break-even point, you should keep tossing. Vice versa, if you’re above the point, bank your score.
You can play with the numbers yourself! We have created a spreadsheet, which you can fork and type in the values of your pigs to get a better idea for your strategy:
But that’s not all! There is more to consider.
Let’s be honest, the game would be pretty boring, if it only came down to the pure value of a toss or bank. So, when deciding on your Piggericks strategy, these three factors should come into play:
1. The mathematical value of the throw
The explanation above should be the baseline for your decision.
Check out this table we have compiled. There are quite a few values where both banking or tossing is sorta close:
But now to the less clear-cut factors.
2. Where are you relative to your opponent?
Is your opponent closer to the target? Where are you in the game as compared to your opponent? The answers to these questions will help you decide whether you should keep tossing or bank.
If your opponent is about to reach the target, you must be more aggressive because they are most likely to finish anyways! If on the other hand you have a decisive lead over your opponent and he is unlikely to finish in the next round, you could be more conservative.
3. How close are you to the end?
The opposite is true if you're close to the target. If you only have a few points to go, you may finish the deal, even if you could lose a bunch of points, because there is always the chance your opponent wins in the next round. Is your opponent close to the end too? Well then it’s wise to keep tossing because even if you lose some points, you will finish the game.
The fun part of Piggericks is of course that there is no golden rule when it comes to Toss or Bank. You will have to adjust to the situation.
Or maybe we just don’t want to give away the secret? It seems you’ll have to find out for yourself...
Stay tuned
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