CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

Well it seems silly to rewrite the game in SDL2 just to then use an SDL2 compatibility layer. I guess if you can't get 1.2 running on android natively then it's a reasonable step.

I'd like to try writing a javascript client, but there's no way I'll have time to polish it (or likely to even get it working functionally) any time soon. I might have a fiddle with emscripten myself to see how many tweaks are necessary.

Edit: Porting might be more difficult than I thought - SDL is used to set up the window, but the graphics is all drawn with legacy OpenGL code.

After modifying the Makefile for emscripten and commenting out SDL_GL_SWAP_CONTROL, it compiles and successfully initializes the 666x666 webGL window along with the sound system. However, it doesn't like the legacy OpenGL methods at all - in emscripten's LEGACY_GL_EMULATION mode it can get as far as loading the textures only when the webGL inspector is enabled (yay heisenbugs), but fails upon trying to blit them. I'm guessing much of the graphics code will need to be rewritten if this is going to run on Android, whether it's via WebGL or OpenGL ES. @cullman: did the SDL1.2 -> 2.0 port for TCD also involve updating the OpenGL code?

if only someone would play at stakes greater than 5 cents and less than $100

Very true - if you're able to quickly identify a playstyle you're weak against then this lets you avoid that weakness being reflected in your rating. However, I would argue that the very ability to make such a quick identification is a valuable skill in a gambling scenario; and indeed leaving these games quickly is a good strategy if you're trying to maximize your bankroll. In order for this kind of strategy to help you in terms of your Elo, of course, you do need to be playing some high-ranked players: if you only play fish then increasing your rating much past fish level should become impossible.

So the question is: if you have the ability to beat some high-ranked players and not others, and you also have the ability to identify those you can't beat before losing much too them, should this be punished? The answer depends upon what you want the rating to measure - if it's designed to highlight good tournament players then it should be punished, but if it's designed to highlight online money-making skills then it should not.

"One game" is a much less meaningful unit here than in chess. If two players fight it out for a bunch of rounds and end up at 95-95, they could leave the game and start a new one with very little effect, and this first game would be treated as a tie by the ratings system. It just feels natural to me that the rating system should be "additive" - if they instead play until one chips out from the 95-95, the long, close fight should be taken in to effect. Granted this is very different to how ratings systems work in other games - a Fool's Mate and a drawn-out endgame are weighted the same in chess. The reason I would treat this differently is that in chess all that matters is whether you win or you lose; while in a gambling game with the option of leaving early, there are various degrees of success and failure.

Additionally, weighting by the number of times the chips change hands is very different than weighting by the length of time (or number of rounds, etc.) that passes - here I feel like we're really just getting back to the question of punishing early leavers.

I guess overall I just think it's best to make "good play" be universal, whether you're trying to maximize your rating or bankroll. If (as you said) you don't think this matters, then most of my points are irrelevant; but you end up with conflicting motivations for your players, and perhaps discourage people who care about their rating from playing high-stakes games.

Here's a question for you: have you considered a separate "ranked" mode where you compete for rating only, instead of for cash? This would avoid all the issues you're having - as you say, if you leave before your opponent chips out, you lose. If you put this rule in place without splitting the gamemodes then I feel like you are to some extent restricting people to care about either rating or making money, but not both.

You don't need to expose Glicko's RD in the leaderboard - it's just a nice number to keep track of internally, and solves the issue of skilled new players/accounts demolishing the ratings of the players they are matched up against while climbing the ladder. The arithmetic is a little more complicated, but I'd say it's worth implementing.

I like the idea of a fixed buy-in with increasing ante and no re-buy: as far as I know that works well for online poker and I see no reason why it would be different here.

After initial $5 deposit:  vbaseline = 5, bankroll = 5, ratio = 1
After making $10 profit: vbaseline = 5, bankroll = 15, ratio = 3
After winning a $15 prize: vbaseline = 5 + 15/3 = 10, bankroll = 30, ratio = bankroll/vbaseline = 3
After another $10 deposit: vbaseline = 10 + 10 = 20, bankroll = 40, ratio = 2

So it's basically making the assumption "based on your past ratio of 3:1, you could have increased your bankroll by $15 by playing with an extra $5 from the start". This isn't quite true (we expect higher stakes games to have more difficult opponents) but it seems like a reasonable heuristic to me.

Heheh, I did something rather similar early on and was left with a negative balance. I went a little crazy on the next table (the old "get back in it now or just go to sleep" strat) and came back immediately, but I think I played too conservatively throughout the rest of the tournament.