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Just got back from my second trip to Vegas.
Made a few more contacts and connections. One of the friends that I've made there has helped me come up with a plan to move forward into more awareness in the poker world. I'm going to give that a try as a last attempt to make this game take off financially.
Yeah, it should be fine at running the server. I'll turn opt on in the compile script for the magic square code.
The client works but has visual artifacts as seen above. I don't think it's possible to get it looking good on the Pi's graphics chip without a substantial re-write and re-think of how the brush strokes are drawn. Note that it's only visible when the strokes are fading in, so it doesn't affect the gameplay at all.
Well, there is a 6-coin penalty for leaving, but after the ante gets bigger, it matters a lot less.
I think the penalty for leaving should go up the longer you stay in the game. It should start at 6 and go up by 1 each round, just like the ante. So, if you're leaving in round 20, you'd pay a 26-coin penalty. I'll make that change this week and we'll see how it goes.
Hmm... well, the current server code spaces them out based on a start date for the whole run of tournaments going all the way back to the beginning.
I could run two each day, spaced out by 12 hours. Maybe that would be better and hit everyone?
Well, the current server code doesn't support more than one running at a time, so that's a problem.
Also, the auto-tournaments currently all have to be the same duration and spacing.
But the manual tournament can interrupt them.... so it could work to have the small weeklies and then periodically schedule a long manual one.
Yeah, this isn't settled... I just changed Sunday to $1 to be more democratic. But I'm not sure what timezone you are in... maybe that's Monday morning for you...
Anyway, this isn't totally settled. The rotating tournaments every 3 hours were clearly failing to achieve critical mass. I'm trying the opposite approach by scheduling them in the peak time only. We'll see what happens.
A new schedule for tournaments is in place starting tonight, Tuesday, June 9, at 6pm PDT.
One tournament will run each day for 3 hours starting at 6pm PDT.
The buy-ins for these daily tournaments are as follows:
--Monday: $5.00
--Tuesday: $1.00
--Wednesday: $5.00
--Thrusday: $1.00
--Friday: $5.00
--Saturday: $10.00
--Sunday: $1.00
6pm PDT was chosen because it is the time of peak activity in the game.
A listing showing the current and upcoming tournaments is here:
http://cordialminuet.com/gameServer/ser … ournaments
A list of past tournaments is here:
http://cordialminuet.com/gameServer/ser … ournaments
Only tournaments that had at least one player will show up on this history list.
What happened here was a bug on my end. When I made that change, the currently-running tournament's prizes ($200 entry fee) were awarded to them by accident. I had to go in and fix everything manually. In the mean time, the bot noticed.
Well, if it changes, it can be recomputed from the whole history like last time.... so at least we have that.
I was playing Gospo's Great Adventure like a madman. It's a really well-designed game with plenty of room for skill:
http://www.royalgames.com/games/strateg … uage=en_US
But it's just a single-player game where two people (or more) play the same board in parallel and compare scores. You can join in very large tournaments where the top prize is huge. Whoever has the best score on the same starting board wins. It's actually subject to chance, though, because you can only see the upper part of the board at the start. You can't see further down, so the random layout down there is hidden info chosen by the RNG. Very much like table cards in holdem (in that they effect all players equally), but there are no hole cards.
Actually, now I remember that GameDuel was better than Royal.
There's a balloon-ricochet-popping game, Balloon Blast, where the two players take turns.... kind of a Puzzle-Bobble clone, I think. But it is highly competitive between the two players. Pretty amazing.
Just got back from the Post Office.
Boy, Registered Mail is a hoot.
Domestic packages must be each placed in a special brown cardboard envelope.
Each package is sealed three ways with special brown tape that must be hand-wetted with a sponge. The tape is stamped around its edges to prove that it hasn't been removed or replaced.
Each package gets a unique Registered number.
Each one is hand-logged into an ancient looking ledger book.
After being verified by another clerk in the back, all registered packages for the day are put into a special bag with an irreversible, serial-numbered metal zip tie and a padlock. The package remains under lock and key until is is delivered to you.
All this for between $12 and $19 extra per package (depending on where it's going and what the declared value is).
Players haven't found it yet. I've been able to get very little coverage in the poker world. Just one article, that I wrote as a guest:
I'm going back to Vegas in two days to give it another shot. Last trip paid off by getting one pro to play actively and getting me an in to write that article.
Yeah, I'm going to make some adjustments to this soon. Probably one daily at a peak time, with a bigger one (larger fee) every weekend.
Hmm... yeah, that is weird, isn't it?
Will check it out.
There's also the board/card game Mage Wars (see it on BGG where it is well-rated). It's like Magic, except your deck is a full "spell book" of cards that you can leaf through and select whatever you can afford to play. There may be other randomness in the game (like dice rolls for certain cards, I'm not sure).
Event thematically, it makes a lot of sense. In Magic, the only possible thematic hook for the shuffled deck is a very scatterbrained wizard....
Okay, fixed.
Yeah, actually, that does sound broken. Oops, yeah, I see where it's screwed up now. Will fix that.
In listening to the interview it got me thinking ... why aren't other completely skill-based games like chess available to play for money online in a similar way to CM? (You bet on each game before going into it)
This exists:
https://www.chessmoney.com/cm/main
http://www.velocitychess.com/
But who would play? Certainly not me. I'd just lose money!
There's also this, which was a big influence point for me:
http://www.royalgames.com/how_it_works.jsp
I won money consistently on Royal until the matchmaking caught up with my skill level. Then I started winning only 50% of my games, and the rake (which is like 25%) quickly chewed me down to nothing.
Still, I HIGHLY recommend putting $10 bucks into Royal. It's a pretty thrilling experience.
On the show To the Best of Our Knowledge, which airs on Sunday, June 7.
It's online now, though:
Yeah, this is operating as it should, I think.
You can't just take 6 coins and leave. The min profit for a prize is 20% of the tournament stake (so, 20 chips at least). If no one has won a net of at least 20 chips, then "no one gets a prize," which triggers the "give everyone's entry fees back 100% rule."
Thus, I don't think there's ever a risk of joining a tournament with too few people or not enough action from your opponent.
You won $18 because you were the only player who won at least 10 cents. The other player was below that threshold (in the negative) so they got no prize. Thus, you got both prizes added together.
Updated with a list of upcoming tournaments.
Okay, added the OVER message.
Josh implemented those "bars" for CM experimental mode, so you should find out from him how helpful they were.
Hmm... that's an interesting point about the CANNOT AFFORD thing.
I wonder if there's room there for CANNOT AFFORD $200.00 TOURNAMENT. I'll check.
Okay, no room for that with the dollar amount, but room for CANNOT AFFORD TOURNAMENT. This change is in place for v27.
Yeah, that tournament where no one had enough profit to get a prize is currently sitting in limbo with no prizes assigned. I'll fix the code tomorrow to handle that, and the refunds will be given in the next flush after that.
In a case where 0 players win a prize, all players will get their entry fee back. That's a simpler way to handle it than dealing with the one-player case specially.
In the case where you join a tournament and never get to play anyone, that is very unlikely, because the matchmaking is first-come first-serve. So, if you sit there waiting for the 10-c game forever, the next tournament player to ask for a 10-c game WILL get paired with you.
I.e., as soon as the players get out from their last game and go to play again, you're next in line.
Now, if their game lasts the full 2 hours, okay, but again very unlikely. If you join toward the very end, you risk not finding a game, of course.
Those times in the table are when the tournament record was last updated. I think that happens after the last game is played. Those tables aren't the best.
Also, there is currently no record of tournament duration (for the old ones, for example). All the new auto ones are 2 hours each.
They are 2 hours each with a 1-hour break between, so they run every 3 hours. Thus, they repeat every 21 hours, meaning that the cycle of 7 moves back by 1 slot every day. Tomorrow, the $1 tournament will happen at 1pm PDT instead of 4pm PDT.