Was it luck or skill?

Analysis of how I went 10-0 to win the Catan U.S. National Championship

Guy Raz always asks the same question to guests in his podcast, How I Built This.

“How much of your success do you attribute due to luck or skill?”

I firmly believe that Catan is 80% skill and 20% luck. In this post, I’ll teach you how to overcome luck with skill.

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Welcome to The Art of Catan: How to win games and influence people. Through this newsletter, I hope to share my secrets to help you improve your win rate and beat your friends.

Background

Catan is a multiplayer board game that involves a pedigree of luck, dependent on rolling dice and drawing development cards. On a spectrum of games ranging from pure luck (roulette) to pure skill (chess), Catan is most comparable to poker. The more hands or games you play, the more prevalent the skill factor becomes in determining success. For example, I went 10-0 to win the U.S. National Championship despite the expected win rate being only 25%. However, there will always be games where luck can’t be overcome in Catan and poker.

Catan philosophy

The most practical life advice I’ve received came from a post on LinkedIn.

This philosophy shaped my views on the world and made me a much better Catan player. I applied these learnings directly to my championship run and stopped worrying about things outside my control.

Understand what’s in your control vs. not

Following Brian’s framework, we can analyze each game mechanism and understand what’s in our control vs. not.

I’ve listed the key game mechanisms in order of importance, along with their impact weighting.

1. Initial settlement placements (30%)

2. Decision-making & game awareness (25%)

3. Table talk & trading (20%)

4. Dice rolls (15%)

5. Development cards (5%)

6. Hand size management (5%)

Of these six categories, dice rolls (15%) and development cards (5%) are luck-dependent, while the remaining 80% are primarily skill-driven. Now, let’s deep dive into each one with real examples from the championship game.

1) Initial settlement placements (30%)

Initial settlement placements are undisputedly the most essential phase of the game. You can often predict the outcome of a game before even rolling the dice, as some positions are overpowered or tragically weak.

Initial placements are never perfectly balanced; some players will start with an advantage, while others will have to play from behind. That’s why it is critical to pick the right combination of settlements. You want to start in a position of strength. You don’t want to be the player who has to roll a boulder uphill eternally. With enough practice and observations, you can mitigate the luck-based component of placements.

In the championship game, white had the best-starting settlements, as they had a great balance of resources with 20 pips of production and a strong 3:1 port on the 4/11. My position was not great, but not bad. I started without wood and brick and not enough wheat. However, since it was a high wheat board, I was confident in getting trades for wheat. Red was missing ore and sheep, but they have a play on the longest road along with the brick port. Orange had the worst position since they had three wheat tiles without a port. If red built two roads towards the 6/2, then orange has no good places to expand.

Based on starting placements only, I thought the estimated probability of winning was: white at 33%, blue at 28%, red at 23%, and orange at 16%. As it occurred in the game, white was in the dominating position for the entirety of the game. Even if the dice rolled in favor of orange, they would still have too much wheat and could not port it efficiently. I recommend watching two excellent YouTube videos by DyLighted and Hakuna Matata that further dive into this topic.

2) Decision-making & game awareness (25%)

The next most important components are decision-making and game awareness, which are both entirely skill-based.

Within decision-making in Catan, strategy is the action plan to get to 10 points, while tactics are the series of individual steps and actions that will get you there.

Key strategic decisions:

• What is the most efficient or practical path to 10 points?

• Should I choose to go for the largest army, the longest road, or a different strategy?

At the beginning of the game, I decided that the best strategy was to city up, buy many development cards, build on the 3:1 port, and hopefully get a few victory points.

Key tactical decisions:

• Where should I point my road? Towards the three-hex settlement spot or the port?

• Which settlement should I city first?

• What settlement spot should I go for first?

• Should I buy two development cards or build a city?

• Should I build a road this turn?

• What spot should I block with the robber?

• Who should I steal from?

• Should I contest this settlement spot?

• Should I attempt to simultaneously sneak a victory with the largest army and longest road?

• What are the probabilities of different events occurring? What is the mathematical model implying I should do in this scenario?

A crucial tactical decision in the game was when I had seven cards: 3 ore, one wheat, and three sheep. I’m one card short of a city. Do I buy a development card or end my turn and hold with seven cards? I decided to hold because I just needed a 5 or 10 to roll to get a city, and I also could trade my sheep away for wheat on another player’s turn. On the other hand, while I had to weigh the risk of sevening out, I thought buying an early development card would further set me back and hamper my income production.

After deep thought and desperate trade attempts, I passed the dice and ended my turn with seven cards.

Game awareness is a constant state of reflection and evaluation. To me, Catan is not an individual game — I am actually playing four simultaneous games. Therefore, thinking about the game state from each player’s perspective and understanding their intent and goals is crucial.

Examples of game awareness

• How many points does each player have?

• Who is closest to 10 points?

• What is each player’s primary short-term objective?

• What cards does each player have in their hand currently? (Card tracking is a valuable skill)

• What hidden development card do I think each player has?

• What risk exists if I build a road somewhere?

• How many cards does each player have? If they have eight cards, I may decide not to steal from them, so rolling a 7 can hurt them more.

• Who do I think is the most skilled player? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Who has the best Catan track record?

3) Table talk & trading (20%)

Catan is a social game; you can control the “what,” “why,” “who,” “when,” “where,” and “how” of every message you want to convey. There are many different styles of table talk, such as: 1) aggressive, 2) overly polite, 3) quiet, 4) logical, 5) honest, etc. I tend to be more talkative, but I always present logical and factual points to achieve credibility. The key goals from table talk are 1) a decrease in blocks and steals and 2) an increase in favorable trades.

Here is a framework I typically follow for table talk with common examples:

What:

• What is the state of the game? Early / mid / end?

• What is each player’s win condition?

• What is the most important tile to block?

Why:

• Why should this player get blocked

• Why I shouldn’t get blocked

• Why is this player offering this trade?

• Why you shouldn’t take the other player’s trade

• Why you should take my trade instead

• Why am I getting robbed when this other player is 2 points ahead of me?

Who:

• Who is leading? Who is behind?

• Who is the best skilled player?

• Who has the highest production?

• Who am I competing with for my win condition: largest army or longest road?

• Who am I competing with for an expansion spot?

When:

• When X player gets this spot, they will be a huge threat

• When this player gets road, they will be at 9 points

• When this player gets army, it will be GG

• When this 9 rolls, it will be GG for this player

• When I get army, I will still only be at 6 points

Where:

• Where should I place the robber?

• Where is this other player heading with their roads?

• Where are the settlement spots players are racing for?

How:

• How will this player win by doing XYZ

• How can this player win in the next turn

• How I am stuck in my game

• How far away am I from winning

Achieving the right balance of table talk is truly an art. Some players are effective when they talk a lot, while others are most effective when not speaking a word. One practicable tip is when you are far in the lead, it is more respectful to go mute rather than try to manipulate others that you are “losing.”

The art of trading deserves its own series. In this post, I’ll break down a critical trading sequence at 28:44.

Context: In my hand, I had three ore, one wheat, and four sheep, and it was red’s turn.

Me: “Do you need sheep?”

Red: “I need wood. Brick for wood?”

Me: “😐”

White: “I do not have any to spare today.”

Red: “Brick and a wheat for a wood?”

Me: “Here. Done.” (As I place four sheep in front of red)

Red: “🤯” (Internally thinks: “Oh, I guess four sheep is a wood, I’ll accept the trade”)

Trade complete, red builds a settlement, and I secured a city.

This trade requires quick thinking and creativity, as red was looking for wood I didn’t have, so I offered four sheep instead. This created three advantages for me.

1. I reduced my hand count from 8 to 6, which makes it impossible for me to seven out. This also guaranteed a city for me.

2. I received a brick that I don’t produce.

3. The leading player, white, doesn’t get the brick they need.

Two noteworthy tactics I executed are: 1) throwing the cards right in front of red. It’s so close that it’s practically in their hands 2) I offered and executed the trade quickly, so there was no time to change their mind or for another player to intercept the trade.

4) Dice rolls (15%)

Dice rolls are completely random, independent events. The typical Catan game will last an average of 60-70 rolls. In most games, the dice distribution will follow a bell curve, favoring the players with the strongest starting positions.

A sound strategy is to pick high-probability numbers (5, 6, 8, 9) and have a diverse range of numbers.

If you are in the lead, you want the game to end as soon as possible. However, if you’re behind, you should take the initiative to extend the game so there are more rolls.

In the screenshot below, white is at 9 points, while I am at 4 visible points. While I can’t control what numbers roll, I can control extending the game length by explaining that the other players must compete for the longest road. As a result, white has to waste resources building roads and requires more dice rolls to win, which opened a window of opportunity for me.

In the first 30 rolls of the game, there was not a single 6, which was my crucial number for collecting ore. I was frustrated by the lack of 6’s and 4’s, but dice rolls are out of my control. So instead, the critical action here is to look for favorable trades and hold for a city so that when the numbers eventually roll, I’ll be in a better position.

Unfortunately, there are also those inevitable games where you double up on a 9 ore and 9 wheat, and the 9 rarely rolls. You cannot do much in those situations; you need to play well in the other categories and hope for some luck. Dice rolls will generally balance out in the long term, and skill will prevail.

5) Development cards (5%)

There are 25 development cards: 14 knights, 5 victory points, and 2 each of monopoly, road building, and year of plenty cards. Similar to dice rolls, you can’t control what development card you pick up. However, you can control many different aspects related to development cards:

1. How many development cards do I expect to purchase throughout this game?

2. Should I buy a development card or not? Should I hold for a city instead? Evaluate the upside and downside based on probabilities.

3. Should I stop buying development cards after some point? (For example, you have 6 knights already. It may be better to city or build a settlement rather than pull for a victory point)

4. Can I trick my opponents into thinking I have the largest army locked even though I don’t have enough knights?

5. What do I think the last 3 development cards are in the deck?

6. Should I play my knight card even though it’s not on me?

7. Can I trick my opponents into thinking I have a knight even though I don’t have one?

8. Can I trick my opponents into thinking I don’t have a knight even though I have one?

9. What is the pacing of my development cards? Am I buying them at the right time?

The list of possibilities goes on and on. However, I often observe three common mistakes: 1) the player who consistently buys too many development cards. 2) the player who buys development cards too early, and 3) the player who buys development cards too late.

Buying development cards is one of Catan's most fun and depressing parts. There have been games where I drew the perfect development cards, one after another. But, on the other hand, I’ve lost semi-final games where I’ve lost with 9 points and would have won if I had drawn a single victory point.

6) Hand size management (5%)

Hand size management is a heavily underrated component of the game. Sevening out is when you have to discard half your cards when a 7 is rolled, and you are above the discard limit. This is one of the most devastating actions of the game. , Players often complain, “Ughhh, why am I sevening out so many times?”. Of course, some situations are due to genuinely bad luck, but there are many ways to prevent this proactively.

Examples might include:

• Build a road when it is safe to do so, to reduce your hand from 6 cards to 4 cards. Now, it’s much less likely for you to seven out.

• When you’re at 6 or more cards, and it is efficient, port your cards via 3:1 port or 4:1 for a card you need.

• Give another play a 2-for-1 trade so that you reduce your hand count to under 8 cards.

• When you’re at 7 cards and debating whether to play a knight before you roll, you should usually roll first rather than play a knight first and get to 8 cards.

• Before you end your turn with 6 or more cards, evaluate the mathematical model of the probability of sevening out.

• When receiving two cards for one card from another player, check if it puts you over the discard limit.

• If you think the player after you has a knight and will steal from you, check if there’s a way to empty your hand by trading or building a road or development card

• If you think another player has a monopoly card, you may want to reduce the number of copies of the same resource.

A deeply analytical model can help inform when it is best to take a specific action and also help manage risk. This is comparable to math-driven decision-making in blackjack or understanding the odds in poker.

Summary

As you can probably tell by now, I am passionate about Catan. It has profoundly impacted my life, resulting in many friendships and opportunities. By sharing my experiences, I hope you will become a better Catan player and have a lot of fun while playing. Subscribe below to get updates on new posts, and please let me know what topics you’d like me to explore in the future.

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