I think I was inspired by chinese poker (I woke up thinking about the idea, so the beginning of my thought process was kind of lost) but yeah, it somewhat resembles Anaconda for two players.
It just seems to play well with those numbers. Keeping only four makes it possible to keep most of a straight or flush, which makes it possible to reason very specifically about what the opponent might hand over. Passing more cards results in an excess of strong hands, which makes the game less fun to play. In principle one could write a script to check what the probabilities are of one side having an unbeatable set of cards to hold with various numbers of cards held and passed, but I haven't done that, and the question of 'how interesting is it' isn't really well defined.
>> What makes play interesting is that if you can guess what cards your opponent will keep there's almost always a set of cards you can set aside which will make you win.
Doesn't that lead to a Vizzini Delimma? (ie "I can't drink the wine in front of me, but you would know that I know that, so I can't drink the wine in front of you?")
Yes, that's central to the strategy of the game. I don't know how practical it would be to write a program to actually calculate the nash equilibrium of 'ideal' play.
Well, exactly. But then it's not really different from any particular poker variant in that the skill comes in playing the opponent rather than your cards, and that, ultimately, you're still only playing the percentages (ie there's a lot of luck to guessing what your opponent is going to do), which means that you still need to play a large number of hands to let skill rise in importance.
As a side note, I've often wondered why there are so many variants of poker. The mathematics of, say, Texas Hold'em are essentially the same as Omaha are essentially the same as Stud Poker etc (certainly, the odds of particular hands are different, but the process of calculating those odds is the same). The techniques of playing the people around the table are also the same (as far as I can tell). Yet, different people seem to excel at different games. To be sure, many top-level pros are very good at several varieties. But, everybody seems to have a specialty.
Comments 9
Was there specific reasoning for the numbers you chose? Or does it just seem to play well that way?
Reply
It just seems to play well with those numbers. Keeping only four makes it possible to keep most of a straight or flush, which makes it possible to reason very specifically about what the opponent might hand over. Passing more cards results in an excess of strong hands, which makes the game less fun to play. In principle one could write a script to check what the probabilities are of one side having an unbeatable set of cards to hold with various numbers of cards held and passed, but I haven't done that, and the question of 'how interesting is it' isn't really well defined.
Reply
Doesn't that lead to a Vizzini Delimma? (ie "I can't drink the wine in front of me, but you would know that I know that, so I can't drink the wine in front of you?")
Reply
Reply
Reply
As a side note, I've often wondered why there are so many variants of poker. The mathematics of, say, Texas Hold'em are essentially the same as Omaha are essentially the same as Stud Poker etc (certainly, the odds of particular hands are different, but the process of calculating those odds is the same). The techniques of playing the people around the table are also the same (as far as I can tell). Yet, different people seem to excel at different games. To be sure, many top-level pros are very good at several varieties. But, everybody seems to have a specialty.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment