CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

I'm comparing this game to poker in terms of critical mass potential.

We've already talked extensively about the parity issue.  Essentially, this game can only accommodate an even number of players who pair up, and then only if their desired game stakes match up.  As the live player population grows, there are very minimal network effects.  Each new player to join a pool of N players does not add +N utility the way such a player would with the telephone system, P2P networks, The Castle Doctrine, Rust, or even an FPS deathmatch.  (The +N factor comes from this new player being able to interact with each of the N existing players.  Furthermore, the new player is even more motivated to join than the Nth player was, so it snowballs.)

In CM, each new player that joins is an immediate opponent only for one player---the very next player to join.

Poker doesn't have this problem because of tables.  You can have two people sitting at a table, and they both server as opponents for the third, fourth, etc. players that join.  Most Holdem tables are capped at 9 or 10 players, but the game can theoretically handle up to 22 players.

I used to think that the large table in online poker was a vestigial feature left over from live poker (where the dealer is the most expensive element in a poker room).  If computers are dealing, wouldn't heads-up be the ideal form of the game?  Obviously, it eliminates collusion, but beyond that, way more hands become playable (less likely that someone at the table has better cards than you).  Playing well at a 10-handed poker table is literally like this:  fold, fold, fold, fold, fold.  It's pretty boring.  Online, it's so boring that it's hard NOT to play at multiple tables or at least do something else online while playing.

So, I was confused by why the heads up games aren't more popular online.  They are offered, but you often have to wait a while for an opponent, while the 9-player tables are often full.

Okay, so the network effects and lack of parity problem are important, but I now think there's more to it than that.

Heads up is like a duel.  Very few people duel anymore.  Why?  Because one person will die, and there's a 50% chance of it being you.  Heads up means one of us two are going to lose money.  There is no other possible outcome.  If you're the fish, then good for me, but you'll learn pretty quick and stop playing, and then I have to find another fish.  If we're evenly matched, it's a coin flip.  Thus, two pros would never want to play heads up.

Larger table games are different, because the only thing that's guaranteed is that ONE person will lose money.  There's a much smaller chance of it being you, even if everyone is evenly matched.  Most likely, someone is worse than you.  And it's plenty possible for several good players to make reasonable money from one bad player.  8 sharks can share one fish.  Thus, the pros are more than willing to sit down with each other and a larger table game.  It's not like they look for a table with no other pros.  Maybe they avoid tables that are full of nothing BUT pros, but even then, they have only a 1/9 chance of being the losing pro that day.

Over time, a game of skill like Poker will tend to weed out the people who aren't good, leaving a population of very good players.  As long as there are a few bad players left around (and there always are, for example, during the weekends in Vegas), the pros will keep playing.  All you need is 1/9th of the player population to be bad.  One player per table, in a room full of pros.

In a heads-up game like CM, each pro needs to be matched with a bad player.  That means 1/2 of the players need to be bad.  Obviously, that's probably not likely, and certainly not sustainable over time.

Thus, you'll notice an extreme risk aversion among the pros in this game.  Most of the best players have made a single small deposit and built it up from there.  No one is saying, "Hey, I'm good at this game, let's try playing for $500 every game, because that will increase my income."  Because who else would play for $500 but another pro?  Meaning an evenly matched opponent for you, with way too much risk.  Yes, $500 games of CM have happened, but the "pros" playing those games were playing with money they had already won in CM, not "real" money from real life.

Sitting down with $500 in a poker room, on the other hand, is perfectly normal and actually considered small stakes.  In online poker rooms, which offer microstakes, $5 is the minimum game stake.  That's the very bottom.

There are over 1100 accounts now, and only seven people have ever deposited more than $50.  Only three people have ever deposited more than $100.  Only one player has deposited more than $300.

Unfortunately, the critical mass issues described here are fundamental to the game.  There is no way to extend 2-player CM into 10-player CM.

I'm going to Vegas next week to immerse myself in the world of professional poker for a few days.

If you live there or have any contacts in that world, drop me an email:

jasonrohrer@fastmail.fm