CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

Ink Disparity

Member

Registered: 2015-06-13

Posts: 5

Getting the word out.

I just joined today and to be honest this game completely sailed by my radar despite reading the forbes article back in the day and also stopping by the game booth at PAX south. I wouldn't have picked up on it at all if not for a hackernews post that I barely noticed (almost no comments).

It is kind of nice how small this community is at the moment, but at the same time it was pretty stressful playing the same person so many times in a row today. Perhaps a contest to recruit more vic... people is in order?

jere

Member

Registered: 2014-11-23

Posts: 298

Re: Getting the word out.

Hmm. I guess you saw my blog post then? I posted it in recently (again) in this thread (a fascinating read on it's own about a blackjack player robbing casinos blind).

Something about this game..... most comments are of the flavor "interesting, but I'll never play it." I don't know what can be done and I'm quite sad about the state of affairs. Jason held a HUGE launch contest and gave away tons of prizes including gold amulets and cash. There was some uptick in activity, but not as much as I expected. So yea, a contest is not the answer unfortunately. :\

I also saw that you posted in the twitter bot thread, so I will just respond here with: thanks!

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Canto Delirium: a Twitter bot for CM. Also check out my strategy guide!

Discordant Mind

Member

Registered: 2015-05-05

Posts: 14

Re: Getting the word out.

Tell your friends. But most importantly, keep playing.

Ink Disparity

Member

Registered: 2015-06-13

Posts: 5

Re: Getting the word out.

I'm actually going to demo the game before the finale of game of thrones tomorrow to my group of friends a few are rather interested.

It is an interesting thing, this game is surprisingly robust in the way it allows this strange organic logic to transform into skill to leverage wins. Perhaps it just hasn't been pitched to the right audience the right way it might also be a visibility issue, youtube has hardly any recording of play sessions and the only one of note was a strangely mesmerizing demonic theme'd "let's play".

Perhaps the best method would be just to sponsor a few twitch streamers to play, quazi legal blackjack has been rather popular as of late on there.

Dan_Dan84

Member

Registered: 2015-02-14

Posts: 106

Re: Getting the word out.

Hmm. I guess you saw my blog post then? I posted it in recently (again) in this thread (a fascinating read on it's own about a blackjack player robbing casinos blind).

That is an interesting read. When I was on holiday back in April and away from computers (and experiencing some CM withdrawal symptoms), I brought along a book I had picked up at a used bookstore: Bringing Down the House, which later was made into the film 21. It's about the MIT Blackjack team (card counters) that took Vegas (and other American casinos) for millions.

The height of their success was in the mid-90s, until the casinos started getting wise to them (aided by an insider who gave the casinos identifying information on them). I know since then, casinos have turned to auto-shufflers which negate serious card counters' edge.

So amazing how this guy, over a decade later, managed to turn these casinos' desperation against them. After reading the comments on HN, I'm inclined to agree that he just got lucky at the "coin toss" he rigged out of a blackjack table.

jere

Member

Registered: 2014-11-23

Posts: 298

Re: Getting the word out.

He may have gotten lucky. Hard to tell because it's not clear how many times he played each casino really. But like I said on HN, he didn't need luck. With the 20% loss protection, his per trip ROI was somewhere around 10%.

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Canto Delirium: a Twitter bot for CM. Also check out my strategy guide!

..

Member

Registered: 2014-11-21

Posts: 259

Re: Getting the word out.

Hello.

The lack of videos is extremely dire, I would place a lot of blame on that. Last I looked, there wasn't a single video giving you a hint of what double guessing and betting is like. Needs narration, not just explanation. Is it even possible to explain all the guesses and doubts that pass through your mind? Maybe not.

...

Interesting article and scheme. His expected ROI would be 10% if he stops when he hits either -$500k or $500k. I believe that when he keeps playing while he's ahead, his RoI gets asymptotically closer to 20% as the amount that the casino is willing to lose increases. Suppose that the casino stops the game once he's won $1500k and he's got $500k to invest. Consider:
Game A: He starts with $0k profit, and has even odds of hitting either -$500k, at which point he stops, or $500k, at which point he enters Game B....
Game B:  He's initial $500k up. With even odds he would either reach $1500k or $-500k, so the expected profit starting from here is (1500-400)/2 = 550k.
So the expected payoff for Game A (the original game) is (550 - 400)/2 = $75k. On an investment of $500k that's a return of 15%!
Iterating again, if the casino stops at $3.5M loss then his expected RoI appears to be 17.5%, and at a $7.5M cap, it's 18.75%.

However if your odds were only something like 48-52 I would think that would take many multiples of 2% off the RoI.

Also, that's not really a Markov chain (unless you consider one with one state per possible balance, though it doesn't seem interesting), it's a random walk.

Last edited by .. (2015-06-14 17:37:35)

Cobblestone

Member

Registered: 2015-01-28

Posts: 212

Re: Getting the word out.

Videos, live streaming, and local events are all good plans to get the word out.

These are all things I've meant to do, but life caught up with me the last few weeks. Hopefully I'll have a video done soon. I've live streamed three times now and the few folks who watched thought it was really interesting. Of course, I play with an 8 minute delay to avoid the stream being used against me, so that hampers things a bit since it limits my ability to answer questions in real-time.

I've mentioned several times that I want to host a CM party, and I want to continue working toward that. Doing what Ink Disparity has done and actually playing the game live for people seems to be a great way to encourage others to try it for themselves.

jere

Member

Registered: 2014-11-23

Posts: 298

Re: Getting the word out.

I demoed CM to a few people at IRDC two weeks ago. Jeff Lait remembered Jason specifically because they had both entered a competition at IndieCade (I guess they submitted "Fatherhood" and "Gravitation" respectively) and Jason won. Interesting story that one. I was trying to prod some people to gamble with me, but didn't want to push it too hard. I still would really love to play in person.

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Canto Delirium: a Twitter bot for CM. Also check out my strategy guide!

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2014-11-20

Posts: 802

Re: Getting the word out.

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.

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2014-11-20

Posts: 802

Re: Getting the word out.

Just found out about this list of places to promote stuff:

http://promotehour.com/