Kokusho's Gambit

Kokusho's Gambit involves an informative role claiming a different informative role's result on someone in the hopes of drawing out more information and countering potential fakeclaims along the lines of Sketchwick's Gambit.

When to Use

The player is a Power Role with information strongly suggesting another player is scum, such as:

• A Cop with a guilty result.
• A Tracker who tracked their target to the nightkill.
• A Gunsmith with a "has a gun" result.
• A Roleblocker who blocked someone while no one died the previous night.

Execution

As an example, a Cop with a guilty might claim a Tracker guilty result on someone. While the cop has no idea whether the person in question targeted anyone, it is typically tantamount to suicide for scum to claim that the gambitter is lying and that they targeted nobody. Oftentimes, the target will attempt Sketchwick's Gambit, and claim something in line with the claimed result, such as that they did in fact target the person who died. The Cop would then claim their original result, proving the target was lying.

This can be unusually effective even if the gambitter is known for using this gambit. After all, "Maybe he really is a tracker this time," while being a WIFOM, is a possibility too strong to ignore.

Examples

• A Cop claims a Gunsmith guilty to draw a Vigilante fakeclaim.
• A Tracker claims a Cop guilty to draw a "targeted no one last night" fakeclaim.

Risk

One risk with this gambit is the risk inherent in any lying as town, in that changing one's story may cause town to lose faith in the credibility of the guilty at all.

There's also an additional risk: if the target knows your claim is incorrect (e.g. you claim a Track to a kill, but the player in question did not kill last night), their reactions will be identical to those that they would make as town. Additionally, they can often figure out which role you have and fakeclaim accordingly. For example, in a Theme game, a Cop might say "I'm a Tracker and tracked you to a kill last night", and their target (who is actually a Mafia Goon but who did not perform the kill) might reply "I didn't target anyone last night, but I'm a Miller. I thought this only applied to Cop investigations, but perhaps in this game it applies to Tracker investigations too." Now you're worse off than you are before you made the initial claim, as saying "well I'm actually a Cop" still won't get the player eliminated.

Alternatives

The most obvious alternative to using this gambit is, of course, simply to claim your role and your result. The main drawback of this is that the incriminated player has all the information they need to craft the best possible alibi.

A common middle ground is to claim you have incriminating information on a player, but not to state the nature. This is typically accompanied by a request for the player in question to fullclaim. The target, if they genuinely are scum, will have to guess what sort of result you're most likely to have and lie accordingly. However, this can be less effective than the gambit version because the target can often deduce what sort of role you must have due to knowing what their own actions are. (Incidentally, an unexplained request for a specific player to fullclaim is nowadays normally taken as a softclaim of an incriminating result, because this is the main situation where it's useful.)

A variation on the gambit is to claim a less incriminating sort of result than one you actually have; for example, claiming to be a Neapolitan with a "not Vanilla Townie" result when you're actually a Gunsmith with a "has gun" result. The idea is to force your target to commit to a claim, and thus determine whether or not your result was a false positive.

History

This gambit was popularized by Kokusho of MTGS, in the IRC Channel #mafia.