Hide & Seek rules should be changed
I'm sure Hide & Seek was played differently by different folks. But here was we played it back then:
- One unfortunate person is chosen as the denner/seeker.
- They close their eyes and count to 30 or something (depends on the size of the place).
- The remaining players need to hide within that time.
- The denner has to find the hidden people.
- The people in hiding can risk sneaking up on the denner and try to tag him from behind (called "dhappi").
- The game has to restart if an unseen person successfully "dhappis" the denner.
- If the denner can spot everyone without any "dhappi", the first person to get spotted becomes the new denner.
The thing is that these sets of rules that I've played by for years are really unfair to the first person who gets caught. Once the players realize that a person is already caught, they'll play a risky game and try to "dhappi" the denner since they don't have anything to lose at all. If they get caught trying to "dhappi", the first person would become the denner. I remember always hiding until one person was caught and only then coming out and playing more freely (who would want to become a denner?).
The new denner shouldn't be the first person. Instead, the new denner should be randomly picked from all of the players. This ensures something at stake for every player and keeps the game interesting till the end. One doesn't always need a computer for random sampling. It could be easily done using a bunch of stones. Or it could be done by assigning the players numbers and asking one player who is unaware of this assignment to choose a random number.
I'm sure that there is some concept in game theory justifying my claim.