CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

The eleventh amulet was forged in the fires in secret by the dark lord, which he kept to control all others.

Remembering what you said, I didn't even wait for them to go all-in, I did it myself. S/he went all-in simultaneously.

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Yes, they would.

What do you mean you went all in? You went all in and then left that round before seeing the result of that round? In that case you wouldn't have any coins left to forfeit (penalty capped at the number of coins you actually have left).

I think that's on-topic. Well, you're right. Bad memory on my part - I know games make it to the front page, but I could only remember articles at least partially aimed at game developers (of which there are certainly plenty on HN), including "We released XYZ - here's our story"-type articles. (Obviously I totally forgot about 2048)

What I anticipate is that if someone wrote an article describing their CM bot, or a game-theoretical discussion, it could do very well on HN. "A game played on magic squares as payout matrixes": Good for HN. Anything mentioning Jason Rohrer: Definitely some fans. "Win real gold in this online gambling game": Terrible. "Cordial Minuet uses real money to conduct real occult rituals": Even worse

What image?

I wasn't suggesting posting to HN; it's not in scope. I was only comparing Reddit to HN because they're similar (HN was sort of a predecessor to Reddit).

I notice that the contest itself is hardly or not mentioned in most of these articles, which makes me sad. The contest could always be emphasised more. For example if it were obviously stated that there are over US$4000 worth of prizes being handed out then I'd think journalists would mention that fact. They almost seem unaware.

Damn, someone actually pointed out to me that the download links were wrong and I forgot to tell you.

CM is perfectly playable at 240x240 (normal is 666x666) and looks surprisingly good; I've played it at that resolution on my cellphone. Which also uses OpenGL ES and has a problem with the blending modes. But it's only cosmetic, only affecting the strokes while they're animated in. Jason, are you suggesting you saw more significant blend mode artifacts which would make it hard to understand the board?

I still want to figure out the blending problem. Not that I understand anything yet about Open GL blend modes or how exactly the strokes are blended.

As for the low frame rate, you can reduce the target framerate by editing settings/halfFrameRate.ini: 0 for 60 fps, 1 for 30, 2 for 15 etc. If it can't hit the target framerate then the game doesn't automatically drop frames as you noticed, which is unplayable. But with the target reduced it's perfectly playable even at less than 7 fps like on my cellphone.

I'm using two CRTs right now. One even has no cover, so the huge circuit board with hundreds of components and wires but almost no chips can be admired.

Nice explanation. I didn't realise that those yellow, white and brown trees were the actual gold, silver and copper amulets. They're unreal.

jere: sounds like why I don't spend time on Reddit. Even on HN downvoting gets misused too much.

Yes, being able to spectate games would be great! I find that televised poker, where you can see the cards all players have, can be very entertaining. But revealing the numbers the players have would create a huge risk of cheating. I wonder what it would be like to watch a game and not know either player's picks. I think it would require more than twice the amount of mental arithmetic than just trying to predict your opponent, as you have even less information about what each player doesn't have. Still, ought to be watchable even if you focus just on betting.
Delaying the "broadcast" until the whole game (not just one round) is over is another option.

Regarding other forms of communication, how about something inspired by how there are different ways to  perform physical actions like betting: do you throw in your chips aggressively, or mechanically, or as if reluctantly? (I don't know how to translate that into the game... click and drag to push/throw your chips would be both ridiculous and amusing. Actually, it might be possible to show some information about the opponent's mouse movements?) Right now we have the proxy of the length of time you take to bet or pick a column, but you can't even see how long the other person took to bet if you take longer, which is a pity. I think "COMMIT" starts flashing immediately after they pick columns, but I'm not sure.

Regarding bluffing, jere gave excellent advice in that guide you linked to. In particular many players will simply refuse to fold. They're playing badly, but you need to figure this out before you attempt to bluff big. They are many of these players now with all the new players. You really do need to adjust your play to your opponent, but it sounds like simply bluffing less would be a good start.

The "pick column with lowest high number" strategy is very common. I like to use it just to make opponents worry that I'll continue using it. If you only do it 40% of the time many players will overreact to it, picking columns too predictably. (I've seen research showing that most humans are bad at working out optimal ratios for mixed strategies at least in certain contexts.)
Regarding that "go-to" picking strategy, I categorise players into those so bad they don't even think to do that, those that do that, those that check whether their opponent does that, those that double-guess the former, etc.

Also nobody wants to play CM when they could instead wait 10 min and then score points on an amulet.

We had 4 cabal members turn up right after midnight (the majority of active players), but I think they were putting in token appearances.

I was surprised to see the number of active players suddenly exploding (has been amazingly slow) and yet not more than a couple new registrations. Now I see the email set to existing players.

So the asterixes would mark players who have already won a better prize and won't be winning anything according to the current standings? (It would be nice if the scoreboards for previous days also show the latest information.) But if there's even one person who wins two coppers uncertainty could ripple on, so "definitely has already won a better prize" could become false in a lot of cases. I don't think there is a good way to summarise the state of the awards tables for this contest.

Here are some FAQ questions:
How many cabal members are there?
Are you told after playing a cabal member? Even if your score remains the same?

So exactly 48 people will win a prize. I think that should be clearer. Back when the idea was that there would be 36 amulets it was clear that you had 36 chances to win a prize, now it appears at first glance that while there will be 12 amulet winners you have to be in the top 4 just to win a crummy $5, which sounds horrible.

So how many cabal members are you actually going to have? As many as you can trust? Seems like you'd need a lot to give people half a chance of playing a game per day against one, even with just one or two hundred players per day.

I assume you'll still see at the end of a game whether you were playing against a cabal member. I think this should be mentioned, possibly even on the page and not just the FAQ.

Frivolous stuff:

Probably why it's called TwoClaws

No, supposing that one iteration happens per day (Jason sends out emails and everyone responds), the maximum is 11 days, because at least one amulet is awarded per iteration, and I assume there's no point asking about the other prizes (do you want $50 or $10?). That worst case happens if player 1 came first for all 12 amulets, player 2 came second for all 11 that player 1 didn't want, etc, all the way to player 12.

I agree with you. There is however the chance that the following occurs:
Gold 1:
1. Adam
2. Biff

Gold 2:
1. Biff
2. Adam

But Adam wants gold 2 and Biff wants gold 1. In that case they should talk to each other and agree to swap prizes, rather than complicating your prize awarding algorithm, so I'm only mentioning this because it's relevant to that proof of correctness :)

Argh, I failed to realise the markers would be ambiguous. I'll have to think about it. I know you want to be consistent with the appearance of parchment, but that doesn't exclude placing things like small stones with carved symbols on the board.

Yikes, it's been 5 months since you opened these forums. I guess that easily adds up to a year. Certainly more important things to prioritise.