CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

I would be very much interested in the new game format proposed!

As much as I like and admire the symbolic and mathematical elegance of CM, I started to feel a certain "tiredness" as several other long-time players expressed lately...
I agree that the monotonic nature of how the value is computed must have a role in it.

The game would probably become more complex in the new format, but I believe that it would nevertheless be by far more welcoming and "tempting" for the newcomers, at least for two reasons:
- an enormous lot of people are familiar with cards style and value system (and gambling with cards is well established and "accepted")
- Maths scares people. Of course the base calculus is just a sum and the graph on the right does all the homework... still most people say "no thanks" as soon as they see a grid of numbers (maybe unconsciously avoiding that horrible feeling associated with Maths at school...).

In CM's chat there's the joke "all CM players are programmers"... maybe that's a reason for that

Great reply!

Thank you Jere and Frosty.

When I joined CM I was much concerned about my ability to avoid to loose all of my balance before starting having a grasp on the game.

Of course it sounds silly to anybody who knows about bankroll management (or read Jere's and  Asminthe's posts), but I came from a poker experience in a club as a newbie where I was often out of the game before understanding what was happening.

The very day I joined there was a tournament with i think a 10c entry fee and 1c fixed stakes games.
That was the warmer welcome to me: the fixed entry fee a playing stakes made me feel like things were in control...

I think that in the post-amulets era small-stakes tournaments might be considered as a "safe" space for beginners. A way to nurture the players base

Incidentally: a good old round robin tournament is almost an implementation of a CM table game.

On the other hand high-stakes tournaments might be a motivation for "pro" players which might have difficulties in finding opponents.

Great article Jere!
Thank you for writing it.

It seems the image you posted on Reddit is no longer visible.

I would prefer that no more than one cash prize per person is allowed.

It would keep people motivate to fight event for 5th or 6th place (or more) if the usual suspects get always on top

The fact that the gold amulet's weight is increasing should motivate the day 5 gold winner to fight in at last two days...

This format seems to work fine, it will be very important to have an sufficient number of cabal members.

One note: of course it is fair to remove points for lost coins, but compared with awarding only "positive" points for coins won I think it will discourage newcomers: people who make a "false start" might think they will never make it as they are already too far behind when they start to have a grasp of the game.

+1 for the 3$ "starbucks" cap.

While I'd feel much more comfortable with a $1 cap, since i almost never play more the 30c, I hope it will be at very least 2$ to make the game more exciting.

Also I hope this will encourage a post-tournament scenario when not only the elite players play for 50c or more.

I think that because of the risk "attached" to an amulet, the perceived value of its 100 points per win would be even higher. Therefore loosing 1 point every 2 minutes would be enough to "keep it rolling" (at least it would for me!).
It also would be less punishing against longer, well fought games.

Edit: I see the amulet points were already set to 200, loosing 1 point per minute

Agree with the cap for amulet games.

To encourage to play as much as possible while holding the amulet I would prefer that the inactivity time is measured: for example the amulet is lost after 20 or 30 minutes of inactivity.
The amulet holders would still be encouraged to play and they would maintain the possibility to make a long strike of wins if they have the stamina + skills + minosons smiling at them.

Also having the amulet taken away for timeout after few games against slow opponents would be infuriating and perceived as unfair (even if the rules are clear), aggravated by the fact that you cannot leave an amulet game while in advantage without loosing it.

I would say I am a slow player. I like to study a bit the board in the first round and I often end up with the bell sound.
Still I'd be glad if the game becomes a bit faster.

My vote for a time limit would go for:
1st pick: 60s
2nd pick: 50s
3rd pick: 40s
reveal: 30s

About the bets their "difficulty" actually increases over turns, but I think that a constant time (like 40s) would work fine.

I like the gold, silver, copper tokens idea very much!
Even more if you cast them yourself

Every Token game would be thrilling. Still after you loose a token you would be motivated to play again and try to have a chance to do better with another one.

I enjoyed much more the games tonight