The Finesse

• Normally, players play cards that have been clued by someone else on the team.
• However, it is also possible to tell a player to blind-play a card without any clues on it at all.
• In the example below:
  • Bob has no clued cards in his hand.
  • Alice clues red to Cathy, touching a red 4. This must be a Play Clue on the red 4.
  • Bob sees that the red 4 is currently unplayable. Assuming Alice is not making a mistake, this clue implies that someone has the red 3.
  • Bob does not see a red 3 clued in anyone else's hand. So, Alice must be promising him that he has a red 3.
  • Normally, this would indicate a Prompt. But Bob does not have any red cards and Bob does not have any 3's. So where is the red 3?
  • Bob knows that this must be a Finesse - he is promised that his leftmost unclued card is the red 3.
  • Bob blind-plays his slot 1 card, and it is the red 3.
  • Cathy sees the blind-play happen immediately after this red clue, so she knows that she must have the connecting red card, the red 4.
  • Cathy plays the red 4.

Prompts > Finesses

• Prompts always take precedence over Finesses.
• This means that if Alice has to decide between:
  1. playing a card in her hand with a red clue on it, and
  2. blind-playing a potential red card from her Finesse Position
• Then Alice should always do #1.

Finesse Urgency

• When a Finesse occurs, it causes temporary information desynchronization.
• For example, in the previous scenario, if Bob discarded instead of blind-played, Cathy would go on to think that she had the red 3. But she really doesn't have the red 3, which means that information is not synchronized throughout the team.
• For this reason, blind-playing a card into a Finesse is very important - by doing so, it resynchronizes all of the information. So, if a player is Finessed, they should usually blind-play the card immediately, even if they have other important cards to play or some good clue to give.

Finesse Position

• We define the Finesse Position as the slot that a player's leftmost unclued card is in.
• A player's Finesse Position can move around, and if it does, it is still possible to Finesse them.
• In the example below:
  • Alice clues Cathy red, which touches two red cards on slot 1 and slot 2.
  • Cathy assumes that the slot 1 card is a red 1.
  • Next, Bob clues Donald blue, which touches a blue 2.
  • Now, it is Cathy's turn. Cathy knows that she must have the blue 1 and that Bob is trying to perform a Finesse.
  • Blind-playing the blue 1 is more important than playing the red 1.
  • Normally, Cathy's Finesse Position would be her leftmost card. However, since Cathy's slot 1 and slot 2 card are already clued, her Finesse Position card has shifted down to her slot 3. Thus, Cathy must blind-play the blue 1 from slot 3.