Is "Experience" at Least Somewhat Authoritative on This Site?

Question

I made an assertion in a post What Makes Buildings Valuable In Puerto Rico? that "many" players win with such and such a strategy, in a particular game which seemed at least plausible to me (a beginner). Whereby a better, more experienced player challenged me by saying "what is your source?"

"My source," I answered, was your post on how you were beaten by this strategy. That's what inspired me to explore its merits.

Board and card games are (mostly) "chance" phenomena, unlike mathematical phenomena, which is to say that you won't come up with the same result every time, even if you play the same way every time (ok, you would in "deterministic" games like chess.)

Given this fact, is it true that "expertise" is worth less in games than in some other endeavors? And can one instead rely more on "experience" in making game judgments?

Answer 1

Generally the strategy here is to provide either

• a link with data behind it that acts as a citation, e.g. "based on this link which shows an analysis of 500 Puerto Rico games.."

• specifics of experience that go into some detail, e.g. "in our Puerto Rico gaming group, which has been playing regular games every Thursday since 2003, we see that..."

In other words, "back it up"... with something concrete that is reasonably convincing, other than 'cause I said so. :)