The SaltCon Math Trade has just finished and I’m super excited because it means the big, local board game convention is only 2 weeks away!

What is SaltCon? And what is the SaltCon Math Trade?

Well, I’m more than happy to tell you.

 

SaltCon Spring Board Game Convention

First of all, SaltCon is a board game convention in Utah that brings close to 2,000 people together every year to play a gazillion board games over 4 days the first week of March.

While I may be exaggerating about the “gazillion” games played, I’m not exaggerating about the 2,000 people gathering near Salt Lake City every year to play games to their hearts content.

And I should clarify that there are now multiple board game conventions that SaltCon oversees. The biggest is the one that happens the first weekend of March – which is now specified as SaltCon Spring. There’s also SaltCon Summer (in June), SaltCon End of Summer (in September) and SaltCon Bryce (near Bryce Canyon in January).

Either way you slice it, it means friends, fun, and games.

If you’ve followed our reviews for years you’ll know that every March I do a recap of all the new games I play at SaltCon. And this year I’m looking forward to trying a bunch more new games. There’s always so, so many to choose from.

 

SaltCon Math Trade

In addition to looking forward to playing so many games, in the month leading up to SaltCon, people coming to the convention connect to line up game trades.

Essentially, they’re looking to trade out some of their games they aren’t playing for games they’d like to have.

And the SaltCon Math Trade lets all these people find others who want to trade games as well.

For those unfamiliar with a “Math Trade” it’s where people wishing to trade games let technology decide who gets which games.

So a few weeks ago, I went through our game closet to find games we aren’t playing much any more and that I’d like to trade out for new games. Then I listed those on the SaltCon Math Trade list on BoardGameGeek. After everyone who wants to participate has listed their games the trade is “closed”. After that happens, we all go through the listed available games and indicate which games we’d like to get in return.

Then technology takes over and calculates all the matches. Most aren’t 1 for 1 trades, but instead are a series of matches to line up wishers with givers.

Let’s say Person 1 want game J. So he trades game A to Person 2 (who wants game A), who in turn trades game B to Person 3, who in turn trades his game C to Person 4, …. all the way through to Person 10 trading game J to Person 1. So in the end everyone gets games they want.

In total, 2,165 games were listed in the trade this year from 112 people participating.

I listed 41 games that I’d be willing to trade.

Then I reviewed the list and zeroed in on about 30 games I was interested in having and added them to my math trade wish list. Then it was a matter of indicating which game of mine I’d trade for each game I wanted. For example, for Nidavellir there were about 30 of my games that I was willing to trade for it. So I’d mark each of those 30 as a potential trade for Nidavellir.

And in the end, I made 13 trades – a 31% success rate.

And I did get Nidavellir as one of those!

To continue that example, I traded away Cubitos to someone who in turn traded one of their games to someone else and on and on until the person who had Nidavellir traded their game to me. So in the math trade it shows I gave up Cubitos for Nidavellir.

And the same thing happened for 851 games now switching owners.

Next everyone brings their games being traded to SaltCon (labeled with who they’re going to) and puts them in a dedicated place for attendees to pick up their new-to-them games.

I’ll drop off my 13 games and pick up 13 new-to-me games to take home and play. (Or play right there at SaltCon.)

It feels like a second Christmas to me every time!

 

If you’re going to SaltCon, reach out and let’s meet up to play some games!