I guess you didn’t read my last part, humans are deterministic by nature; they draw trends based on patterns. if you wanted to win with one ship just place that ship in a place that is completely counterintuitive to what they expect. Having one ship does have strategic implications, that it narrows the possibility of being hit. Combine that with counterintuitive placement of said ship and your opponent is as good a player as a fish.
so does probability play a role in battleship? yes, it removes the statistical likeliness of being hit (ignoring the premise of humans drawing generalizations by pattern recognition). It is drastically less likely to hit one ship than 5, all you need to do is place that one ship in a position that is counterintuitive to the trend to remove any biases of your opponent who has played several games already.





*jumps in dumpster
*looks inside
“oh shit there’s 1 week old chicken that clearly smells like ammonia! you’re a keeper.”