CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

I haven't witnessed a lot of alphas/betas for games, but The Castle Doctrine was one of the ones I've participated in.

And almost identical threads were made constantly. It was a game where you only won if you could trick the other player and yet... people often simultaneously complained that it was too easy to get robbed and too hard to rob other people. It's nonsensical. Not to be snarky, but this thread reminds me a lot of that stuff. There was no way to just grind on a weak AI opponent, so there were constantly people threatening to leave. The parallels between the two games are pretty interesting...

You're claiming that you can easily beat unskilled players and have a hard time winning against players of your own skill. OK. Isn't this exactly how it should be? How else could it be? Do you want to win against people that you are equally skilled against or what?

I think I'm doing pretty well. Maybe that's why I don't view the game in a negative light. I'm up 50% on my $10 buy in and my biggest complaint so far is that there is hardly anyone playing. Even considering all that, people that are willing to play aggressively scare the hell out of me. One unlucky round and they could take the whole pot.

I just don't get what the ideal outcome would be. It's a zero sum game. A negative sum game in fact. Somebody has to lose.

I think face to face CM would probably be amazing. I'd be terrible at it though.

Thanks for chiming in. I was worried that I was just slow or something.

Having a few seconds to look at the board (as long as pick order was somehow illustrated) would be a good step forward. A replay would be a lot easier to understand though and wouldn't require adding extra labels.

Then it's a question of pacing. It adds more time to each round. Unless you fit it in between the animated payout and the next round: you watch it while your first round clock is ticking and can escape at any time.

I put in my two cents.

Some of these ideas were discussed in this TCD thread.

A few things here. Wouldn't this apply equally to online poker? Since the skill gap seems higher in poker, the bot could easily be making money off weaker players AND driving rake to the house. And anyway is there anything legally problematic with that? In the above thread, it's mentioned that casinos sometimes hire players just to a) eat up weaker players and b) consistently provide opponents at the table.

In fact bots might be advantageous for CM for that last reason. I'd like to think finding opponents will be a non-issue when the game goes live, but knowing the fate of TCD (and the parity issue), I worry about it.

And finally, maybe this sounds naive, but Jason is the last person I'd expect to do something like that considering his publicly stated financial requirements, revenue, and just how plain stupid it would be.

This is expected though, right? At least the column picking part. Frankly, I've already started using an RNG for both some column picking and early raising. Otherwise, I imagine I'd be rather predictable.

For the betting part, it's been said here that bots are pretty bad at no-limits betting.

True, you sometimes know you have absolutely won. But more often you don't know. And even when you know for sure, the most important thing is reading the other person so you know how much you get them sink into a losing hand. Seems pretty intuitive to me why bots would be bad at that.

By the way, I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head around the probability in the very last betting round. It seems like each option is 50-50, but it also reminds me a little bit of the Monty Hall problem.....

"Other games" are supposed to be waiting, right? Or are they active games? I constantly see a 1c game while queueing, but it's not on the main screen.

How apropos, since that video is supposedly part of the inspiration for Cordial Minuet. I think I'll watch it now.

I briefly had this concern, but realized it makes no sense. Once you've lost 10 chips, you've lost 10 chips. Your opponent is also giving up the knowledge of your tactics and since they're the ones beating you, I'd say the loss is theirs. The whole concept of "winning back" what you lost smells like sunk costs and gambler's fallacy to me.

If the games are consistently short, that indeed seems annoying, but I haven't had that happen very often.

I'm not convinced. I don't think the word "always" should ever be mentioned while discussing column picking. If you're adopting the same column picking strategy every time, you're easily beaten. If your opponent was always giving you the row with the lowest high number, then they are easily beaten because you get like a 29 and you've probably got a 50% chance to give them sub 10.

My strategy yesterday was actually to pick one of the highest numbers to min/max my hand. I'd rather know out of the gate if I have the advantage or not.

If there ever is an "optimal strategy" I expect it to have more to do with betting than anything else.

I do think writing a bot would be interesting though.

Keep in mind that the average of each column and row is, interestingly, always the same average on the first round, so that wouldn't help until later.

From the Kotaku article:

Isn't this completely negated by being able to specify stakes? Need to transfer $20,000? Set your stakes to $19,876.54. Worst case, a random wealthy third party joins and you lose $200 on the first coin. And even that seems pretty unlikely.  I was wondering if creating a finite number of stake options or limiting to one significant digit would help, but I don't think it would. Perhaps what you have is enough to say you've at least made a good faith effort to prevent this kind of thing? I dunno.

Heh. One of the things I like doing is playing what I feel is a "newb" move on the first turn to both a) see if the other player is expecting it and b) trick my opponent into thinking that's my playstyle. Is there really such a thing as I newb move? With all the second guessing, I suppose not, but picking the column with 36 feels like it to me. There's definitely a reading aspect.

I really tried. Stack? Shove? I looked up some of these terms, but almost everything Asminthe is going over my head. I'm awful at poker. Every time I play is essentially a charity drive for my friends. I really appreciate how CM tells me exactly which possibilities exist. Thus I can focus on reading and betting, instead of spending all my mental effort doing probability calculations. Seems like that makes it a lot more beginner friendly. The game is a lot simpler than I expected after reading the Kotaku article.

I think I waited close to 2 hours this morning on a game. Too satanic for Sunday morning I guess? I had a similar complaint during TCD testing, but it'll probably be a non-issue when the game opens up. Still, it'd be nice if the waiting screen had something else to it. A way to browse leaderboards? An option to doodle while I wait (appropriately themed to CM) or some creepy visualization?

I wish I had more helpful suggestions. The only thing that really bothers me is that the "old balance" value is post-stakes. I'd rather see where I was before I joined the game at all, so I know if I came out on top.