I was playing a few games recently, and I noticed someone who is each of our games would make a guess the very first move, then after losing 3 points for bad guess - would take their first shot there.

At first I thought maybe they did not know what they were doing - then after thinking about it (and noticing they have a higher rating then me so they must be doing something right), I started to think if this was a good strategy.

Of course if you have very first shot and shot a frog, all of a sudden you are 10 points behind (since you lose 5, and your opponent gains 5) - this way, they are only down 3 points to start.

Taking a look at about 25 of my past games, the closest score I could find was 5 points - with a few at 8 points, and most more then 10 points separate the 2 sides.

So obviously 3 points lose at the start would not do much damage - but I was wondering what others thought? The risk of hitting a frog on the first shot is slim: 5/139th chance. So what do others think of this strategy?