CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

One thing I've noticed with the experimental game is that it is a lot more open to chance - there isn't a lot of difference between 1st round picks and if one of you is betting the ante on the first pick then the other really should be joining.

This is quite different to both vanilla CM and poker in which you have a decent idea of your chances from the very start - the difference between a 36 to start or 1 to start in vanilla is quite large. So you have more of an opportunity to pick your fights and play conservatively. Conservative play is also rewarded in poker. Conservative play against a non-conservative opponent in Exp Mode will not work out so well though.

I've gone through and made a list of the actual rankings once repeat winners are taken out:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ … sp=sharing

Names marked with a (*) are uncertain and so any ranks after them could be moved up.

Some of the prize winners ranked up to 9th/10th on the day, so make sure you check the list even if you don't think you won any!

The assumption is that players will choose gold > silver > bronze > no amulet.

There is a complication in that a few players have won multiple cash prizes of the same value. These are:
exclusion cooper, colony patent, and potentially journal doorman.

The question is what happens to those ranked below them? It doesn't make sense for them to choose one. So does everyone below them just increase a rank?

One question that I don't think has been answered:

What happens in the event of a draw on the leaderboards?

Personally I quite enjoy the game as it is and if it was designed to appeal to the masses I probably wouldn't. People seem to really enjoy the ability to play low stakes and I'm glad there aren't people playing and losing their life savings.

Of course this in the end makes the game less profitable and I hope it hasn't been too much of a financial loss for you.

One thing that I believe works against a lot of people picking it up is the Satanic theme - it is going to turn away many people who are religious, superstitious or don't want to be seen playing a 'satanic' game.

In the end if you want lots of casual players you would probably have to make it aesthetically a lot less interesting. You know, bright colours, fireworks when you win money, cheezy noises etc. Things to emphasise the good feelings of winning and de-emphasise the bad feeling of losing. The kinds of things that slot machine makers put a lot of effort into refining.

Thanks Jason! And send my thanks to JA as well.

I just beat Jeopardy Alcohol in a $10 game, taking $9.10.

It was his 1001st game .

EDIT: Or maybe not! It is saying he played 1000 games now, and I was the last to play JA!
I think CD was a little late in updating making us think it was Rosin Gymnastics.

Whoever wins two claws will most likely be happy to swap it for a gold amulet Cobble. So you'd probably just both have to let Jason know of the arrangement before he sends the amulets off.

Sure, each day at least one amulet has to be awarded, but who that amulet ends up with is not set in stone. There is nothing stopping the person awarded the amulet from being given the choice of a different amulet later on, allowing them to put the other amulet back into the system. Overall, each person awarded an amulet on the first day theoretically can reject all but one of the amulets and each day could see only one amulet given up.
So the process can last for:
((Number of amulets - 1) * number of amulet winners on the first day) days
as you need at least one amulet passed on to the next day, the maximum number won on the first day is: (Number of amulets - 1)

And so the theoretical maximum number of days the process could last for is:
(Number of amulets - 1)^2

So for 12 amulets this is 11^2 = 121 days.

Here is an example with 4 amulets - labelled 1234 and four players labelled ABCD:

Ranking order of each amulet:
1:ABCD 2:ABCD 3:BCAD 4:CABD

Day 1 - A12: A chooses 1
Day 2 - B23: B chooses 2
Day 3 - C34: C chooses 3
Day 4 - A14: A chooses 4
Day 5 - B12: B chooses 1
Day 6 - C23: C chooses 2
Day 7 - A34: A chooses 3
Day 8 - B14: B chooses 4
Day 9 - C12: C chooses 1

(The second column shows the player with multiple amulets and which ones they hold)

So as you can see, with 4 amulets the choosing can last 9 days (4 - 1)^2.

I think an easy solution to stop people going into the negative while discouraging reckless play is to not allow scores to go below 0. I guess this might mean players might play recklessly until they get some points but once they have some then they should just play as normal.

Doesn't look like v22 is up on coastcaravan...

You would have to make sure there is no great advantage to Americans just because they are awake at the same time as Jason. The idea of different amulets for different times might fix this - though still someone with similar sleeping patterns to Jason will have the opportunity to complete for more amulets and this will still improve their chances.

Jere: It's not 100% collusion proof - you can get a slight advantage with colluders by simply exiting any game that you start between another colluder as you know it isn't a game against Jason. Also, it will require additional server code to keep track of score etc.

So the only big worry now is one person creating lots of alt accounts or a large group of people helping to prop up each other.

The second seems unlikely and the first seems more likely and tricky to do without gift cards. I think I mentioned this before but couldn't you ban gift cards from creating accounts? Use something like address verification to check if it is one?

In both cases we are talking about very overt and very noticeable behaviour. You won't need much detective skills to figure out what is happening. Why not now just say, ok, I am going to make a rule against collaboration that is totally at my discretion. Anyone who I deem to have used extensive collaboration to win an amulet will be forfeit the prize. I don't see any problems with this and think in the end it will stop anyone from doing anything with 25 accounts. And if they do, people will notice, there will be records and they won't get anything. All without much effort needed from you at all, though I think it will act as enough of a deterrent that it will require basically no effort.