Starting to lose interest...

AnoHito · 2014-12-07 01:40:57

After refining my strategy a bit, I now have it down to the point where it will either accomplish one of two goals. It will either make money against an unskilled player, or it will help me identify the skill of another player quickly enough to avoid losing money to them. This is fine if you're looking to play Cordial Minuet for money, but for me it's just making things boring. I'm either up against someone who I win against all the time, or I avoid the match entirely because it's too difficult to win a significant amount of money against a player who knows what they're doing. Even if I do win in the end, the matches just end up being a time sink. In most games I enjoy close matches more than anything, but in Cordial Minuet, due to how strong a conservative betting strategy is, they tend to just be tedious and frustrating.

I've already voiced a lot of my concerns with this game in other threads, and it's probably not a secret that I believe Cordial Minuet has problems that will prevent it from working on a large scale. Which is too bad, because I actually think the idea behind Cordial Minuet had a lot of potential. But in my opinion, the current implementation doesn't live up to that potential. Still, I wish you the best of luck and I do hope you are able to make Cordial Minuet a success. However, I will most likely not be a regular player. Though I still might play again for a while when the game is publicly released so I can finish winning back my original $10 buy-in.

jere · 2014-12-07 02:19:05

I haven't witnessed a lot of alphas/betas for games, but The Castle Doctrine was one of the ones I've participated in.

And almost identical threads were made constantly. It was a game where you only won if you could trick the other player and yet... people often simultaneously complained that it was too easy to get robbed and too hard to rob other people. It's nonsensical. Not to be snarky, but this thread reminds me a lot of that stuff. There was no way to just grind on a weak AI opponent, so there were constantly people threatening to leave. The parallels between the two games are pretty interesting...

You're claiming that you can easily beat unskilled players and have a hard time winning against players of your own skill. OK. Isn't this exactly how it should be? How else could it be? Do you want to win against people that you are equally skilled against or what?

I think I'm doing pretty well. Maybe that's why I don't view the game in a negative light. I'm up 50% on my $10 buy in and my biggest complaint so far is that there is hardly anyone playing. Even considering all that, people that are willing to play aggressively scare the hell out of me. One unlucky round and they could take the whole pot.

I just don't get what the ideal outcome would be. It's a zero sum game. A negative sum game in fact. Somebody has to lose.

AnoHito · 2014-12-07 03:28:59

jere wrote:

You're claiming that you can easily beat unskilled players and have a hard time winning against players of your own skill. OK. Isn't this exactly how it should be? How else could it be? Do you want to win against people that you are equally skilled against or what?

No, that's not quite what I meant. What I meant was, it takes so long to win a significant amount of money against someone who is playing a tight game, it's not worth the time and effort. It's not really fun, and I lose more money to the house than I usually win for myself.

jere wrote:

I just don't get what the ideal outcome would be. It's a zero sum game. A negative sum game in fact. Somebody has to lose.

Yea, my theory is that when the majority of people playing the game are losing money, rational self-interest would have to kick in eventually. Because the game in and of itself really isn't interesting enough to keep someone occupied for a long period of time based on it's own merits. Then again, there are competitive rock paper scissors players, so who knows?

jasonrohrer · 2014-12-07 05:48:58

These are important questions to be asking.

One answer is "raise the stakes." If you're making X% an hour, and that results in a cashflow that is not worth your time, bigger stakes at the same skill level would raise that cash flow. It obviously requires more capital and more risk.

In one online poker room, the cheapest buy-in in the whole place is $5. It goes way up from there. The biggest game in CM history, so far, was $5.

I'm also curious about the "on its own merits" part. It seems like Holdem poker isn't so interesting on its own merits, though there is the thrill of the killer hand that shows up every hundred hands or so. That's just the gambling thrill though, I think. The thrill of the heavens aligning and you "getting lucky." This game doesn't have that rat-pushing-lever thing going on, so that "merit" is missing. That might also be why "games like this are legal." You're not hooked.

There is a thrill waiting here when your opponent has the second best score at the table and you know it---they're falling into your trap so perfectly, betting high trying to scare you.

Anyway, I intentionally designed a very simple game where betting strategies would be the focus---a game that wouldn't function on its own merits. I wanted to make a betting game, not a game with betting slapped on top. But that doesn't mean that what I did worked, of course.

AnoHito · 2014-12-08 01:06:00

jasonrohrer wrote:

One answer is "raise the stakes." If you're making X% an hour, and that results in a cashflow that is not worth your time, bigger stakes at the same skill level would raise that cash flow. It obviously requires more capital and more risk.
In one online poker room, the cheapest buy-in in the whole place is $5. It goes way up from there. The biggest game in CM history, so far, was $5.

I think if players who were better at the game consistently played games that were higher stakes it might make things more interesting. One idea would be to create a ranking system that would be tied to the amount of money you were allowed to bet in a match. Things could be set up so a lower ranked player could only join or create matches in low stakes rooms, while a high ranked player would only be able to create and join high stakes matches. Of course, making it clear what the skill of the other player was before you entered their room would create an incentive to game the system, so I'm not sure how well this would work in practice.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm also curious about the "on its own merits" part. It seems like Holdem poker isn't so interesting on its own merits, though there is the thrill of the killer hand that shows up every hundred hands or so. That's just the gambling thrill though, I think. The thrill of the heavens aligning and you "getting lucky." This game doesn't have that rat-pushing-lever thing going on, so that "merit" is missing. That might also be why "games like this are legal." You're not hooked.
There is a thrill waiting here when your opponent has the second best score at the table and you know it---they're falling into your trap so perfectly, betting high trying to scare you.
Anyway, I intentionally designed a very simple game where betting strategies would be the focus---a game that wouldn't function on its own merits. I wanted to make a betting game, not a game with betting slapped on top. But that doesn't mean that what I did worked, of course.

In Cordial Minuet, the problem becomes that because the other player actually has fairly reliable information on how strong their position is compared to yours, it's extremely difficult to entrap a skilled player. Most of the money I lost from my original buy-in was because I spent some time studying how other players bluff, which of course required me to call in situations where I knew it wasn't the greatest idea. What I found is that really good players rarely bluff. So in general, unless you have a very good reason to believe the other player is bluffing, or you know your current position is one with good potential to win, you should always fold to a raise. On the other hand, if you know you have a strong position, you probably shouldn't raise anyway because another strong player would just fold unless they had reason to believe their position was even better. Worse still, if they then re-raise against you, you could be put in the position of either folding away all the money you just bet, or completely committing yourself to a round you aren't sure you will win. I'm not entirely sure the best betting strategy in Cordial Minuet isn't to just never be the first person to raise.

Last edited by AnoHito (2014-12-08 01:07:16)

CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

#1 2014-12-07 01:40:57

Starting to lose interest...

#2 2014-12-07 02:19:05

Re: Starting to lose interest...

#3 2014-12-07 03:28:59

Re: Starting to lose interest...

#4 2014-12-07 05:48:58

Re: Starting to lose interest...

#5 2014-12-08 01:06:00

Re: Starting to lose interest...

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