Board Game Geek's Most Underutilized Feature 

I think the biggest miss on BGG is the ability to submit a time range. This typically varies with player count but more often than not, the time on the box is wildly inaccurate.

***IMPORTANT*** You don't have to vote for all player counts, just the ones you've tried. Go vote!!!!

Chris's intros are the best. He has the best sense of humor. That being said, your demands have been met. The Latvian roubles were wired to your Cayman Islands' account and your other demands of "a few batteries" and "a bag of rubber bands" have been shipped to the Dice Tower HQ.

Literally my *most* used feature on BGG.

I use this feature literally every game night. It's particular useful if you've got way too many games and you're struggling to pick just one to play. You can look at your top two contenders and pick the one that plays best at your player count that night.

This is actually what I use bgg for the most! Also to see if there's an errata or FAQ uploaded

what we really miss on BGG is the SOLO RANK category next to "overall", strategy, thematic, or family" above every game.

Specifically for Sushi Go, I think those votes are getting confused by Sushi Go Party, which has a higher max player count. Some people probably voted for Sushi Go when they’ve actually only played Party

I always appreciate Chris' humor. Love the way this video was cut. Nice job. AND YES, I love looking at those stats.

The casual minimization of the moon tab while being all “oh hi there” really got me 😂 Really great video in general! I know personally, I need to get better about logging my preferred player counts.

Great callout -- I couldn't imagine not using it at this point. A 9/10 game can easily be a 6/10 or worse with the wrong but still "official" player count and there really is no way to even have a sense (you can assume the outer bounds are "bad" on a 2-6 or something game, but that's really not reliable).

Chris makes great videos. I mean, I love the dice tower because it cover sooo many games, but the reviews etc. suffer a little in the entertainment area because of quantity. Chris goes the extra mile, making this video almost feel a little shut up and sit down-ish. Thank you for your great work!

Ashton does a fantastic job on exposing BBG's ratings and rankings as a joke.

Another underutilized feature might be adding GeekBuddies, which allows you to then see what a group of people you've selected think of a game (hat tip - Mark Bigney of So Very Wrong About Games).

I wish there was a community vote for playing time also. That, I believe, would be useful.

Chris, great video but the part where you were reading the URL out loud got cut short. Obviously this is an editing mistake, if you could get that fixed ASAP I'd appreciate it cause I was unable to follow along.

I love you found little St. Olaf college in my home state of MN. It’s right next to the very unknown college St. Kristoff. We need to really step into the unknown more often. I never have clicked on that player count link. And definitely never voted on my thoughts. Now I have a new project to do on games I know well.

The moon's been getting a free ride for too long imo

I literally organize my game collection around best player count. So I appreciate this BGG feature. I wonder why they don’t have community assessments of play time, setup, teach time, and tear down time. That would be helpful too, if accurate. I guess the only way to find out how many people BGG should poll to be statistically relevant is magical thinking and making wishes. This is your fault science/math for not having any way to determine the size of samples, as expressed in a ratio. Until that time, I’ll rely entirely on my energy crystals a spoken aloud mantras for all my statistical gaming analysis.

I use that feature frequently. One weakness related to the # of voters is that when you export your collection (which I also do frequently), it has a column for community recommended and best at player counts, but it doesn't export the # of votes. The best I can do is use the column for number owned to get a VERY general sense of how many people *might* have voted for any of the community votes (rating, weight, rec players, rec age).

I know this would complicate the chart but in some cases I would like to know why a certain player count is better. eg. Is 4 players preferred over 5 because 5 players changes how the game plays or is it just because the game becomes longer than you would like?

The moon just exploded

This is one of my favorite features of BGG. Unless I am experienced with a game before I buy it, I usually check out BGG's player count recommended/best ratings to help make the decision if it is a good fit for one of my gaming groups. Thank you for covering statistical relevance of this data. Giving a target of 1k results and explaining why that is a good general target likely made that info much easier to use for those that don't live statistics at work or in hobbies.

I use the player count feature quite often, but I'll admit, I've been a tad remiss in not updating as many games as I could. Hopefully, this vid will spur others to do the same. Although, I think an even better feature on the game page is the "Average Rating" (the most prominent score hex on the game page). Clicking this score displays a summary of the ratings but ONLY those ratings that include a comment. I find these ratings are far more consistent because it means players have taken the time to add extra comments to their score. Although, I think the best, most under-rated feature is the "GeekBuddy Analysis". Over the years, I've curated a list of users whose gaming tastes and ratings are similar to mine (particularly those who add comments alongside their ratings), and I've added them as GeekBuddies in a custom group called "Similar Gamers". The function gives me an average and a summary of their scores, as well as all their comments in a useful table. Whenever I'm looking at a game, I check to see if how this group of GeekBuddies also rate the game. If it is high- it is very likely I'll also like the game.

This. Math, Stats. This is why I like games. This is what I want from a board game youtube channel.

Lol. I recognized that desk right away......because I'm currently sitting at one just like it.

Thanks Chris, really enjoyed this video- both informative and funny, a win-win

I take player count with a grain of salt. If couples only play games at 2 player, that's what they're gonna vote for. If you only play in groups of 4, how do you know its not good at 2? If your playing 2 handed solo, what are you voting? I tend to focus on what player count is not recommended by the community.

Literally the only thing I use BGG for. After a dice towet video if I'm interested in a game that's the first thing I look up about it.

Deep dive into statistics! Excellent... I try to rate player counts when I have played games at multiple played count and use the suggested count on BGG regularly. Thanks.

I didn’t know about this feature. I will try to use it more often now. Thanks, Chris!

Another fantastic, funny and informative video from Chris. Keep these coming!

they need to add a feature of player count 1-4 and add maybe in brackets if an expansion increases the player count like player count 1-4 (1-6)

Very interesting. I use this feature regularly. I also use the 'time' rating as well. I'm interested to know why you feel that is not very useful.

My question is, where did you get that corded phone from?! 😂

Can Chris replace my statistics professor?

Great video. Also very unhinged at times. More please!!

good work Chris. very entertaining.

Classic and fabulous Chris - funny and informative!

love this man´s humor

I Always use this. Unfortunately some of my friends do not and end up running games with way too many players that go way too long

always on point Chris - you're awesome

I appreciate the small stats aside Chris! It's nice to see an educational layer tossed into your video along with your humor! I teach statistics so I hope you don't take offensive if i add a clarification for any of your viewers who may be interested. "Representatives" isn't the term you meant to address in the video because representativeness is not based on sample size. It's based on how well your sample's characteristics match those of the population. If you had 1000 male board gamers it wouldn't be representative of a population of gamers who are both male and female. What sample size does effect is the accuracy of the estimates (known as statistical validity) . So in this case, the more ppl vote what the best player count is, the more accurate we'll know the actual true best player counts for our population (bgg board gamers)! 😊

I use this all the time! such a useful tool to figure out what game to play depending on how many people show up for game night.

Nice nerdiness, Chris. Notrf Dame must be proud. I love the Best At stats for the most part, but they really fall apart when it comes to solo. There's enough interest in solo gaming for BGG to include separate solo ratings. "79.9 recommend at 1 Player" is not the same as "This game has an 8.1 Average Rating. This game in solo mode has a 7.1 Average Rating." In case you can't tell, this is annoying me. For example, I love Bad Company. But the solo game forces you to pay a major amount of attention to an area that requires a minor amount of attention in the multiplayer game. It's a solid effort, but it's NOT the same game and it shouldn't be sharing the same rating as the far-better multiplayer version. Even a solo mode that shares mostly the same DNA as the multiplayer mode should have its own rating. Solo Cascadia is remarkably similar to the multiplayer mode, but it replaced the ability to hate draft with a more puzzly drafting mechanism. It's great, I might even rank it higher than the multiplayer, but they still aren't really the same game. Get on this, Chris. Thanks!

Thanks for covering “best with X players”! But I use the time range as much or more. 20 minutes? I dan squeeze it in with a friend at a diner, and just from that i know its complexity cant be super high as well.

Just voted for my first 5 games on player count. Thnx Chris for making the world a more beautiful place! ❤😅

I have used the player count stat a lot. I tend to like "carebear"ish euros and coop games. There are a lot of games that I have avoided buying thanks to this feature, but I have found that I sometimes need to read between the lines. For example, Age of Innovation is listed as best at 4p and 23% rate 2p as "not recommended". When reading the comments, you see there are people saying that there isn't enough interaction at 2p. For my taste this is a plus, so I bought it and really enjoy the 2p experience. Another example is Arboretum. When I first entered the hobby I bought it because it was listed as best at 2, but found it to be a highly interactive cutthroat game that didn't suit us at all. I.e. bgg player count is is a very useful feature, but only when considering the gameplay style, your personal tastes and what will work with your gaming group. If you consider player count out of context it can be directly misleading.

My Psychologists Heart is Happy for this Video and the Crash course in statistics!

As a parent I appreciate the age recommendation. I know to take it with a grain of salt but it can be helpful and I wish more folks would fill it out! AND rate kids games AS kids games

I vote on all the voting options for games that I feel like I've played enough of to vote, but (best) player count is also the one feature I use the most on BGG.

It's a very useful feature and it's great to see it highlighted but even when the game has a sufficient sample size you still have to take the player count votes with a BIG grain of salt. In particular I feel that there is often a strong bias towards max player counts even for games that have a major downtime issue or are too chaotic at high player counts. Games where the "best" player count is well established in the community are an exception to this.(For example CoB or GAH being best at 2) Use the numbers but also use your brain. Besides the votes I always study the rules, check the forums for detailed reviews or player reports at specific player counts and try to find playthrough videos at the relevant player counts. It's more work but it often helps to paint a more complete picture.

I voted on my top 10 games to start. I found it strange how many heavy euros are voted best at 2-3, when the mechanics are obviously best at 4. Makes me wonder if people just have a strong aversion to the play time at 4, or if many have just never played with 3-4 due to lack of players.

My favorite BGG feature is the one that stops the moon from being blown up. It has a 100% success rate.

I use this feature regularly, it's often a very good indication.

Great video!

how do you vote in these polls on BGG??

underutilized feature? its pretty much the main reason why I use BGG nowadays 😅

I think it's great to highlight this and ask people to join the voting. The problem is I think maybe that it's not that easy to experience all player counts for one game. So I don't feel comfortable voting, me especially because I mainly play with 2 players. But I hope the people who do, vote!

Love this video!

360-400 representatives should be able to %95 represent most

Chicken Fried Chicken! 😂😂😂

Stupid question, how do you vote? I’m on the app and I only see the results…

I learned something.

Chris... you blink too much. Now I can't unsee it.

Mission excepted

I suspect that the percentage of BGGers that play the same game with enough different players counts enough times each to form an opinion on which player counts are best is pretty low.

Chris is great.

You really appealed to my ADHD in this video Chris. Thank you for making math less about numbers and more about fun 😅... Oh, and please don't blow up the moon.

How are people supposed to vote honestly for this? For a 1-6 player game, I would not know which one is the best unless I have played all 6 player counts, which is very unlikely. If I have played it with 3 and 4, I would not know if any of those are better than with 6 or with 1. I don't think I could vote on one single game, because there are no games I have played with all player counts.

Nice haircut my dude

Great video Chris. HOWEVER 😂What has not been recognised and is an important mathematical statistic is that if only 600 people voted on a game then satisfactory percentage should be based on the vote count, not how many people are in the industry or registered on BGG. That was not recognised strongly enough in the video and could mislead viewers.

Snowman representation 😂

Ah, if only we could search according to it...

I don't contribute votes to this typically because I don't vary how many people I play games with. I almost exclusively play 4-players so I can't properly vote how that experience compares to others.

It's Chri . . MATH TIME!

I never use the recommended player count because it never works for me. There are a lot of games which says "3-5 recommended" and then I go to the forums to see the experience people have with the game. In a lot of cases there are people who enjoy the 2 player experience for the reasons I would enjoy aswell. I think people's experience speaks to me way more thant those numbers.

Is it though? I use this feature all the time.

Still dont understand why that website is so bad.