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I've just increased the ante per round from one coin to three coins. We'll see how this changes the game.
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Has the tribute gone up as a result?
Edit: I do think the net tribute has gone up. In the old way if you folded on the first turn when both sides have only bet 1 chip, the game didn't take any tribute. With the new ante, if one side folds with 3 and 3 bet, the game takes a tribute. I am fine with the game taking tribute in this case, but I think it needs to be pointed out that the game now takes tribute on games that don't make it past the first betting round (not that any deception is taking place!). Also, after playing a few games, I have come to the conclusion it's more than fair for the game to take a tribute in this case as the games are quite a bit shorter. While, I was initially surprised by the increase - thinking, "my take after winning on an all in play is only 188, but that was a short game!". The reality is my take is always somewhere in the 180s, so the result was exactly the same, just the game happened much much faster. So my vote is a big yes for the 3 ante, it has made the game so much faster and more exciting in my opinion.
Last edited by cullman (2015-01-12 03:57:53)
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The old tribute was taken whenever the pot was at least 6 coins.
The same tribute applies now, but the pot is ALWAYS at least 6 coins!
This also simplifies things, because there's a 1-coin tribute taken from EVERY hand now. That's about a straight-forward as it can get.
I could change the formula so that one is taken only if the pot is 8 or more (i.e., if both players bet at least one). But let's see how it goes here first.
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Yea, I am thinking the tribute is going to be a problem. I played several long an drawn out games this evening, and what I found is that if I played a tight game, I didn't really make much money. I could actually cause the other player to lose a fairly significant portion of their stack, but in the end I still more or less broke even. You know, the thing is, I really think it would be better if the tribute system was changed as well. Maybe not now since we don't really fully understand the effect of changing the ante, but it's something that I wish could be addressed.
I still think the most fair system is to just deduct the tribute at the end of a game based on how much money changes hands. That way, in a tight conservative game, a profit is still a profit even it it's small, and in a game that ends with quick all in, much more money will be taken, but it's still okay because in the end it was all taken from the winner, and they probably won't feel too bad about it. The way things are now, I really don't feel like you can make a lot of money without taking serious risks, and doing so really only ever works in my favor against inexperienced players. In my perfect world, I would love to have an ante of 5, and a tribute of 0-10 chips that were deducted in proportion to the amount of money that changed hands. You could have the tribute scaled so the point at which five chips was taken, would be the average amount of money that changes hands in a game. That would allow you to have a very predictable and stable amount of profit.
On another topic, one thing I definitely noticed is that raising the ante did not make games shorter. In fact, I played the longest game I had ever played earlier this evening. I made a comeback from less that 10 chips twice over the course of the game. I don't think the game has lost any depth whatsoever by raising the ante.
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Well, the tribute on every card at the .1 level is probably fine but if you're playing for higher stakes it would be nice to have a cap per match or something to that effect. I'll have to think about what would work best for the players and the server but if you play higher stake games now you're paying a lot more. I know Ano said he had a game where almost 50 chips were gone to the tribute. I know I was personally playing/betting harder to try to get games to end faster so the tribute didn't eat up too much profit either way.
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I know Ano said he had a game where almost 50 chips were gone to the tribute.
Surely that was with the initial tribute system, not the current max-1-coin one? I remember playing a game with total tribute of 80 coins under that.
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the Sid Meier principle of game balancing is to double a value and see what happens. Tripling in this case seems extreme, but we'll see.
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Yeah, I thought about doubling it using the Meier principle. But I was attracted to 3 because of numerology.
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So far, the 3x ante hasn't changed overall player behavior.
More than half the games still end with a fold. Roughly 1/3 of the games end after a one-ante fold (a fold where one player hasn't bet above the ante). And about 1/3 of the games make it to reveal.
What HAS changed is that I'm taking 2x the tribute. I'll have to fix that.
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yeah, I mean the idea was one doubles a value. If that change was too strong then one knew it was somewhere in between. If the changed was minimal or insignificant, you'd double again and repeat. That way you're controlling for relative effects of the change (the new value is always twice as high) while testing the absolute effects.
In this case, on would go from 1 to 2 and, judging from what you said that 3 has had no effect, then again from 2 to 4. Then to 8 if 4 had no effect. Then if 8's to high, you know it's between 4 and 8. If you just kinda eyeball it and aim for intermediate values, it can sometimes be tough to know if your at your desired spot or just below it.
Last edited by wap (2015-01-12 17:21:46)
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Well, I'm not sure I *want* an effect in this case in terms of player behavior. Do I want players folding less? What would that mean for the game overall?
I was trying to do something more subjective and immeasurable, which is to rebalance the two skills in the game, putting slightly more focus on the picking skill and slightly less focus on the betting skill.
The complaint from more skilled players was, "When I'm up against a conservative player who folds a lot, the game is a slow, boring grind, one chip at a time, even if I'm out-picking them." Perhaps the increased ante hasn't changed the prevalence of conservative, fold-heavy play, but it has changed the result for the player on the other end, because you can chip away at that player in only 34 rounds now instead of 100 rounds, especially if you're skilled at picking.
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ah, I understand
just noticed an added benefit is that if you win efficiently, you lose less to tribute than with the previous system
Last edited by wap (2015-01-12 20:11:03)
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Has the tribute gone up as a result?
With the new ante, if one side folds with 3 and 3 bet, the game takes a tribute.
I found that this wasn't the case while playing. If my opponent bet 10 coins in the first bet and I bet 0 coins and consequently folded, I found that all 13 of the coins went to the opponent and none went to tribute.
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Yeah, I just changed this. Now if there's not at least one coin matched above the ante, there is no tribute taken.
If you bet your side up to 10 and your opponent folds, you get your 7 back, your 3 back, and you win their three.
If you bet your side up to 10, they bet their side up to 4, and then they fold without matching your 10, you get your 7 back, your 3 back, and you win 3 of their 4, and one goes to tribute.
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I think there is an issue with a low starting ante not just because the the stakes are so low that folding is essentially "free" (more so at 1 coin ante per player than the new 3) but also because the pot odds are pretty unappealing, whether players are actually thinking about the math or feeling it intuitively.
After the first move, it becomes difficult to make a meaningful bet without offering your opponent somewhere in the range of 1:1 odds of winning. E.G. if you get a 'good' starting number, somewhere around 25-30, and you make a 'strong' bet of 10 coins, you are putting your opponent in the situation where they have to call 10 coins to win 22, meaning they have to feel like they are going to win ~50% of time for their equity to dictate calling.
The numbers vary of course if your opponent has a decently strong start and decides to bet 5 themselves, making it so that they would have to call an additional 5 into a pot of 22, putting them around the 25-30% range of needing to win for the call to be profitable.
However, I get the sense from reading the other post that the default strong conservative strategy is to bet 0 (check) on anything other than a top number on the first turn. So, more often than not there is an asymmetry where one player is betting and offering ~~1:1 odds, and the other is simply forced to fold on any start that is average or worse. You could argue that players are foregoing equity because they may have above average expected scores on subsequent turns, depending on what is eliminate after the first round, but for simplicity sake I think this plays into it a lot even if others are not explicitly stating it when discussing this issue. I thnk this explains why ~half the games are folding at this point.
This issue would be less exacerbated if the value of the coin were higher, e.g. if it were a 10 coin stack (setting aside other issues of going to smaller stack from other thread) and an ante of 1, the normal bet size would be more like 1-2 coins instead of the 5, 10, 20+ that happens more often in games that are not folded now. This would set the odds into a more speculative range, someone betting 1 coin into the starting pot of 2 offers the opponent 3:1 to call, meaning they could justifiably continue with as little as 25% chance to win. currently these scenarios are incredibly rare for the first hand of the game, and can only happen when a reasonable pot of 20+ chips has built up.
The tl;dr of it is, I think going up to 3 ante is good, but if its not having effect on the folding patterns seen from before the change, I think it means simply that its not enough. I'd expect we would need to see it move in the 8-10 range to allow for round 1 betting to not be so easily solved.
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^that sounds like madness. To me, at least, no offense intended. I was a voice in favor of antes, but still I've definitely felt like there was more of a reason to commit. And it seemed like my several games with several different opponents today reflected that.
In any case. Is one day of data enough? I think we should at least stick it out and have a look at a week or so.
Try Linux, get free. #!++ (CrunchbangPlusPlus) is a stable distribution based on Debian 8. Keep it fast, keep it pretty.
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Totally true, could be that 3 is fine and people just need to adjust. It also might be different at higher stakes when betting 1-2 chips would be much more meaningful, but since so many of the games seem to be around $1 or less stakes, the value of chips is so low that when people bet they tend not to bet 1-2 at a time, but 5 or 10 or more, making for the problem of all the folding on the first betting round. I personally don't have the patience to play a fold heavy strategy, but I do try to keep my first round bets at 5 if I intend to play (I will fold if I get whammied with a really low number, but I have won enough game starting with a 10 or 12 to at least stay in if it is cheap) simply because I want to discourage folding at this point and at least see what the next round brings.
I also think that people fold a bit too much, but that could be the nature of the game at this point. I have had people fold out of games in the 3rd round where they needed to call 7 more chips to win ~80, which seems like pretty big stretch. I have also called down with some pretty low totals, and won a few of them, because the odds were so good it wasn't worth folding.
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I think the question right now is, is it worth it to pressure your opponent to fold after the first pick? The balance between betting and picking comes only when pressuring someone to fold becomes meaningful. Right now I think the answer to that question is yes, but only just barely. With an ante of 3, you can gradually pressure a conservative player to fold themselves into oblivion, and make on average about 20% of the stake in the process. But usually what happens is that the player who is folding will, instead of countering you by betting more aggressively, just leave the match when they become short stacked. This means that ultra conservative play is still finding a niche, even if it is not as profitable as it used to be. Maybe this is as it should be, since you don't necessarily want to make conservative play completely unprofitable. But I still think and ante of 5 at a minimum is really required to completely balance out conservative vs aggressive betting styles.
Edit: You had asked before about what statistic you should measure to determine the success of the new ante system. I believe I figured out what that should be. The most meaningful statistic, is the ratio of money lost in games that do end in an all in, to games that don't. Right now the biggest problem with Cordial Minuet, is that players feel like they need to go all in to make any real profit. Games that aren't won or lost in an all in aren't usually worth it in terms of time played vs. profit gained. Even when players have a good back and forth match, it often ends in an all in that completely overturns everything else that had happened in the match up to that point, because in the end both players really just want a decisive result. Ideally, I would think the ratio should be something like 2/1, meaning the average game that doesn't end in an all in should result in one player losing around 50% of their chips. Even 3/1 would probably be okay. Right now, I have no idea what the actual ratio is, but I'm sure it's not that high.
Last edited by AnoHito (2015-01-13 19:05:07)
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In poker, when you play heads up, the blinds are typically high enough that they encourage action. The blinds force players to defend their blinds or risk losing too much of their stack to a more aggressive player. This, by extension, also encourages players to bluff more than they would in a multi-handed game. I've only been here a short time but I think the blinds are too low to encourage play. I'm not saying you shouldn't fold but the game is more fun when it is being PLAYED. I realize we're playing for stakes here so fun has to be balanced by risk/reward but I'd rather play a game more often than fold over and over. Have you considered a big blind/small blind alternating structure? This forces a player to make a decision on betting while also allowing there to be a balance. Additionally, and especially in tournaments, it might be fun or strategic to add an increasing blind structure of some kind. 3 chips/6 chips for small and big blinds with an increasing structure so after 5 rounds it becomes 6/12 etc. This could also eliminate games that seem to drag on forever................just my thoughts so far.
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Blinds in heads up poker are currently smaller than this game. Big blind is 1/100 of the max stack size, small blind is 1/200 of the max stack size. With the new 3-coin ante in this game, the ante is 1/33 of the max stack size. That is appropriate, though, because there's a core picking skill in this game in the place of the random number generator that drives Poker. Still, antes might not be large enough here.
Increasing blinds at one table, gradually as the table lives on, are something to consider as the main mode for the game. Still, the bigger the blind relative to the stack, the shallower the stack effectively is, meaning betting skill gets reduced as this happens.
For tournaments, this is fine, because remaining players have stacks that have grown from beating other players who are knocked out (so as the blinds go up, the stacks are growing to match them).
So, if we had rising blinds at a normal table, what would we be saying? Yes, games would speed up, but we would also be saying something like, "Betting skill matters at the start of a table, but gradually matters less and less as the table lives on and the blinds grow." Picking skill would dominate at the end. Maybe this makes some sense, because by the end of the table, you should be able to read your opponent's picks much better. Still, it seems like a very delicate thing to balance. It's much easier to balance the game by picking a good ante.
The obvious thing to do would be have the ante increase by one coin per round. Starts at 3, goes to 4, 5, 6, etc. This is linear growth, but the relative growth to the last ante is decreasing non-linearly. I.e., the ante going from 3 to 4 is a much bigger deal than the ante going from 19 to 20. This may also make sense, because what you learn about reading your opponents picks will decrease over time as you settle in with them.
So... why not start at 1 coin, and go up by one coin each round?
This would certainly make the game more dramatic as it continued (as opposed to more and more of a grind).
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