I thought of two ways that may solve or reduce this problem:
1. give a bonus for every guess, instead of punishing a wrong guess. Currently it is a disadvantage to guess even if there are only two squares where a frog may be: the player who guesses first can earn 5 or loose 8 points, with probability 1/2 each, so the expected win is negative. It should be positive instead.
2. Don't allow to shoot at a square X if all squares adjacent to X are shot or guessed or adjacent to a shot square that shows a number equal to the guessed or killed frogs around it. This means that there cannot be further unknown frogs around, and shooting X gives no information (except if there is a frog on X that will be killed).
BTW I can't see a reason not to display the wrongly guessed squares on the board (e.g. by a '-' sign), they are in the move list anyway.
It might also be good to increase the number of frogs. 9 I find a bit few...
(hide) If you want to find an opponent with similar playing skills to your own look in the Ratings page of the type of game you want and find a player with a similar BKR. (pauloaguia) (show all tips)