

"What's New?... in the Henhouse!" is the latest game from Julien le Magicien. The aim is to make 9 by combining several cards.



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Some problems involving chance are easier to solve by simulation... but a proof is always more convincing! Although simulation produces a result more quickly in practice, the value of a theoretical study lies in its generality.

What's presented here isn't a game of five families, but a family of five games (siblings and cousins!) — blocking games, in which a player leaves the game once they can no longer play. All of them concern geometry. In particular, the pieces in these games take many forms, made up of squares, triangles, line segments and cubes.

Mathematicians have been studying blackjack since the postwar years. They discovered ways to improve players’ performance by applying probabilities both statically (basic strategy) and dynamically (card counting). But casinos changed the rules to protect themselves.

What role does chance play in a board game? It can vary widely, ranging from total dominance, where players have no say at all, to complete absence. Between the two extremes, the strategies of many games rely on optimizing probabilistic principles.
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