Low Cards, discards and picking up

[Christian W.]

So, it may be difficult to iterate on developing your strategy with Lost Cities because there's a lot of luck, so you can't exactly tell if individual decisions are +ev or -ev.

This won't be a math post, haven't exactly grasped Lost Cities math, also there's not a lot of posts on it.

So what do you think about discards? Some people do it often, to buy time and also gamble for investment cards. I think I rarely do discard and usually just play the low card. But maybe I'm not using discards to their full potential. Also one downside is that the opponent can discard investment cards.

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And how about picking up discards.

Obviously good to get an 8 card bonus but usually you won't get an 8 card bonus even if you pick up discards.

The most basic scenario is a 2 that was discarded and you have a doubler. Disregarding the 8 card bonus, is it worth it to pick up the 2? You get 4 points but the opponent gets to draw an extra card. The card the opponent gets can be worth more than 4 points. You also miss out on more doublers but you don't always want to risk having more. Benefit is that you also get some tempo to play the 2 (delay time). Tempo can be worth a lot, maybe the card draw for the opponent is worth less in the early game. I generally do this but not sure if it's +ev.

So, I'm not really that sure how bad picking up discards are, or how good.

[Alex B.]

I don’t know if this is the best strategy but usually I don’t pick up a 2 unless I already have two dollar signs down and I don’t pick up a 3 or 4 unless I already have one dollar sign down.  Similarly I will discard a 2,3 or 4 if I have nothing down unless I have all of them. And I never discard a dollar sign if it could possibly help my opponent.

[Lena H.]

I totally agree with the placement of $ cards. I will pick up low cards if I already have a good amount of them either in the game or in my cards. Actually I use this option quite often. Or also to gain some time at the end if I haven't placed everything down  .

[John S.]

This is interesting to read others' strategies!  I'm with LenaH, I also don't pick up low cards discards unless I already have a few of those colour.  I'll also sometimes pick up discards near the end of the game to keep the draw pile lasting longer if I have cards I still need to place.