CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

I'd like to caveat this by pointing out that I have not played even one game of CM. I love gaming and game design; I just don't enjoy gambling online.

It seems to me that the major consensus is that "conservative play is boring, but safe" which to be fair isn't exactly true. I'm sure it is both boring and safe, it's just not conservative. The style of play is similar to how you'd bet conservatively in a blind bluffing game, but in most of those games betting is the major source of information exposure. In other words, "conservative" play in those games is about giving as little ambiguous or false information as you can, using trustworthiness as a (generally poor) tactic. In CM, information abounds. The expected values early in the game may be wide open, but the expected values late in the game are almost completely known. Betting here is just a facet of the information, instead of all of it.

With an ante or a blind, two people playing at roughly the same skill level will fold equally often, so the change will be a wash. The underlying problem is that folding resets the information, and you can reset for free. At some point in the round the expected value to call for one player shifts negative, so the appeal of a free alternative is obvious. It's probably worth making folding cost something explicitly. Instead of the tribute being a traditional rake, (by the way, I am a bit confused on the tribute, if you play 200 rounds in a game are both players at 0 chips?) it might be an interesting idea to make the tribute the cost to fold. In other words, if both players call all the way to the end of the round, which is something I assume almost never happens, then there's no tribute. But either player can fold at any time by paying one chip to the house. Or maybe one chip for each round folded. There you go, each game costs at least 5 chips to fold, but not all of that may go to your opponent. If you fold early, your opponent doesn't get the cash, but you also won't be able to win it back.

Anyway, just thought I'd toss my 2 cents in here since I'm not planning to do it in the game. Y'all have fun!