Game Review: Borel

Gambling in its essence is guessing on outcomes, on whether this will happen or not and whether you're willing to put up the money for what you believe. Gambles always have odds and odds dictate a big difference between safety and risk, and even that isn't sure.

Is it then possible to make a game that's more focused on how one gauges such odds? There's an attempt at that, Borel is a game interested in probabilities as much as it's interested in gamblers' intuitions.

I bought an already-opened set with a missing instruction manual, but the website sets the gist of the rules enough for me to construct the basics. The equipment includes an hourglass, dice, a coin, wooden balls, felt bags and tons and tons of cards. With so much dedicated equipment they didn't bother adding watermarked pencils or paper, which you will also need.

As the game is more focused with probabilities, the inclusion of a money element felt more of an afterthought(100, 300, 800 bets and chips for 100, 500, and 2500 make total sense). The game plays as follows, an experiment card is placed, and after some preparation, you will have to wager an amount and a guess if a proposed outcome will happen on that attempt. The experiment is then executed and bets are settled after a conclusion is made.

Pretty straighforward, but there are some extras, a one-time free bet where it's a $1,500 gain or no loss; and two repeats per player where an experiment will be repeated and another round of bets made. The game can go on with a pre-determined amount of rounds and whoever has the most money wins.

In essence Borel is a gambling game without the hangups of having to deal with too much probabilities; it's an either-or. Theoretically, you can take every experiment and calculate how likely the result is, but thinking time is limited for that reason. Like an actual gamble, you don't have all day to decide what to bet on, not that it makes your odds any better.

A disappointing thing with the experiments is that they fall into categories based on the needed equipment, and the equipment needed never overlap. I am fully aware that suggesting that much will make the probabilities in play a mess, but the game is so expandable by virtue of its lacking.

Not to say guessing the experiments are a breeze; they rarely are. The intuitions kick in once you have to take the elements of the gamble into account and infer stuff. Just like in a casino the game is designed to have as much elements available as possible while keeping the probabilities rather murky.

Really, the money aspect is arbitrary at best, you can easily make variations out of this aspect like actually making the game a gambling game, whether this is a game worth pooling out your pockets for is a matter of subectivity, better assign a croupier.

I do have to commend the minimal design, really going for an abstract look as to keep focus on the probability, though you don't really need an ornate felt to make gamblers flock your table (slot machines are something else altogether).

But the purpose of the game is not merely gambling, but also as a tool for probability. In fact, it has enough material to teach a lot about how probability works. If you're a teacher, you might find this game useful, otherwise you'll have to take your chances.