CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

Last tournament (probably related to time limit), the highest scores went to those who played more players which may have either been more frequent all-ins or table hopping.

Denied unexpectedly. I went all in and then they would go all in too and almost right away denied by server. I dont know if all in is part of it but both times it happened recently were exactly that way. Id get worried, hit leave and see that I left with my profit at least. I have a screenshot from the first time I think if that helps.

Just got a denied by server a few min ago. It's the second time it's happened after winning with an all-in.

I can definitely see why the prizes would be small, but if you keep whatever profit you make from the matches at just the tribute cost then you'd still be making extra money at the end if you place in the tournament, because you're taking from the pot tribute. In the end its way more similar to playing normally (which I believe is what you wanted). The only thing thats much different is fixed stakes and a higher tribute that is basically just a multigame pot for the best players. That makes it just a small metagame on top of the regular one that rewards more skilled play but doesn't change the structure so much that it will change how people play much. Because the structure is very light on top of the normal game I feel like you could run this often so that even if the extra profit was small it could be profitable to do frequently.

I agree that the tournament structure can really change how people play so that it rewards the tournament skills instead, which is what my suggestion was trying to avoid. I know poker was the inspiration for the game and I worry that the differences in the two games are making things a bit more difficult.

That being said, I had been doing more research on tournament poker as I am admittedly not much of a poker player and would definitely love links and suggestions to some good resources if anyone has some.

I haven't had much issue with it being too slow on my tablet pc thankfully except for oddly enough on the Waiting for Opponent screen.

I like the idea of the rising stakes but I can see a few potential issues:

1) What's the downside of just waiting it out for the $5 stakes? Obviously you don't get to take money from the earlier plays but you also don't risk an early dropout.

2) This is a sort of soft elimination in that you can have $0.99 left and be priced out of the $1 games then, which is ok but do you get to keep that $0.99 when the tournament is over? If not players might feel a little burned by the 20 min stakes timer.

3) Having the 20 min stakes timer means if I'm far ahead I'm going to abuse that and stretch out any game I'm not winning for the chance at eliminating my opponent from the next stake level.

4) What happens in a sitation where the profits are too spread out among participants due to elimations that a high stake level is reached that no one can play yet there are tons of people left, like if there are a ton of players with $3.01-3.99 when $4 is reached. Would it just award highest remaining? In that case I could purposely stick with my initial $5 and let everyone else wash out and potentially win without entering a single match. The more people that enter the less likely this is as all the weaker players will feed the more skilled but dilution is still a possibility, especially if I collude to start above $5.

Part of me thinks you should have to play X matches but length of matches will be pretty variable against a 20 min timer, especially if waiting for an opponent happens often (I had at least a good minute or two waiting in the last tournament).

I definitely think the no matchmaking and drop in/out style tournament makes coming up with an ideal format difficult, but a fun constraint.

While that's definitely true in poker, I think there's an important difference in CM. In poker you can fold without revealing ANY information about your hand. In CM anytime you play you are potentially revealing picking preferences. Also the columns with extremely low numbers also often have the higher (30+) numbers. That means a very low intial pick increases the chances of a low total AND reduces my chances of a long shot high number. My main interest in folding early was to avoid wasting what limited playing time I have just to save 1 coin in a low stakes game for a long shot. My 5 minutes is more valuable than 1 penny.

That being said I thought about what you said and decided I'll just use those bad hands to provide misinformation and learn more about their picking strategies.

I did some example games of this on paper and it looked to me like if you scored players entirely on post-rake profit (meaning I could only gain $0.90 of scoring profit per match) then the more you collude with yourself the more you'll actually lose money in the tournament since the top prize is only a percentage of 4/5ths of the total rake (as the total rake is divided across the entire prize pool). The upside for non-colluding players is they still keep any profits from beating the other players so as long as they get a high enough place to cover their individual match table rakes then they get a nice bonus.

In a way you've established some parameters for "winning" for a 1v1 table by giving fixed starting coins of 100, thus providing two losing conditions and giving players an equal starting place (unlike poker where you may lose by smaller bankroll). The basic losing condition is something you mentioned above, leaving the table with less coins than the other player. Note that I'm saying YOU leaving with less, not based on the other player leaving. Imo the true competition between highly skilled players is that whoever leaves the table loses (assuming you are forced to leave at 0 coins). This means you win by either chipping out the other player or getting them to leave to preserve their bankroll.

I consider this the best definition of better player because the better player should (given enough time) eventually chip out the other player unless the other player forfeits first. Obviously real life intervenes and matches between evenly skilled players can go on for an indefinite period of time. It's likely though that eventually one of the players will make a mistake and the balance will shift.

Perhaps there does need to be a side pot rake that slowly whittles away at both players coins and the player who doesn't leave the game gets it. This way there's at least a finite number of matches.

I don't think people should be punished heavily for leaving games, but I also don't think they should be encouraged to table hop too much either, as it diminishes the value of learning anything about your opponent. I even purposely leave and rejoin games just to make my opponent think I could be someone new, and I think that exploits the anonymity TOO MUCH. If I rarely ever know much about my opponent it feels more like a slot machine than a poker game.

Stakes played each hour. So I can see what kind of stakes are common and decide which are likely to find an opponent. If its too much of a pain to display each stake, then the most played stake of the hour would be good.

Would be kind of interesting to do a profit race. First players to make X profit wins. Once a player reaches the goal they are out of the running. This would give incentive to stick it out until its over or you make goal. Just a random thought.

I definitely got burned a bit by the format and timing of the tournament. I was only able to play the second hour and the limitations of that definitely showed. I started out fairly strong and got to around 5th place quickly, but a single bad all-in knocked me way down and gave me little I could do to make up for it. I ended up down at 17th place and could have done much better but my opponent purposely stalled every move up to the bell. I got him with an all-in at 12:01ish but that did no good.

Part of the problem with the time limit only and no matchmaking of any kind means unless the turnout is high, I can be stuck with the stalling or bad player. If I leave and try to find a new opponent, unless I wait a little bit I'll probably just get stuck with the same guy.

I agree that the people who were doing well in hour 1 have no real reason to give others much of a chance in hour 2. Had I simply done the same thing and played conservatively I could have maintained being in the top 10 and not given anyone else a chance to move up. I played probably around 20 rounds but only 4 unique opponents. I noticed the top players played more. Assuming that means they either table hopped more to hold onto winnings or they drained their opponents down in coins.

I don't think i'd play in this format again as is.

I recorded all my matches as individual animated gifs if anyone is interested.