Let's play a variation on poker! Like all the decent games of poker, this will be a lot about leveraging luck with strategy and mind games; a perfect match for a place about predictions imo.
We're playing a variation based on Texas Hold 'Em specially designed for working on Manifold over a series of markets, but everyone can participate and bet even if they're not given a hand.
Here's how it works:
( CHAOS ) This question is the buy-in for the hand. The bettors with the top 7 largest YES positions at close get a personal hand. Bots and alts are allowed, but I'll need a way to contact you to give you your hand, such as discord. Then this market will resolve NO. How much do you want it?
I may place limit orders and bets on the buy-in. Any profit I make here will become a prize for the winner at the end.
Players who get a hand are welcome to share it, or team up, bluff, obfuscate, and misdirect, whether on the questions, over discord, or wherever they see fit. They're also welcome to bet for or against their opponents!
Once the players are chosen, I'll make a general question about "who will win" that will track the status of the game, and then rapid (roughly 1 day) multi-choice questions for each of the four rounds of betting (Deal, Flop, Turn, River). I may close each of them at an unannounced time up to 4 hours early, but will try to do so when the betting isn't active and hot.
( CHAOS ) Each player who is at 10%+ in the round question at close advances to the next, whether or not they even bet on themselves. We'll go by what it says in the UI.
If two or more players stick it out to the end I'll reveal their hands, announce the winner, and resolve all the remaining questions accordingly.
All of the questions resolve at the end of the game to the winner (or to multiple equally if it's a split).
The Audience Hand works exactly like personal hands, except it:
is publicly visible
doesn't have to buy in
As you might have noticed, the rules of this special variant allow for very mismatched bets by players, so feel free to jump in even if you're intimidated by a whale in the water! But this is CHAOS mode so, you know, careful out there and maybe bring a friend to back you up.
As I'll know all of the cards, I won't be betting or playing in the rounds, and I cannot be bribed to reveal other players' information or tilt in your favor. My house cut is simply the trader bonuses on any questions I make for this, though I'll accept tips for my role as dealer if you're so inclined.
Of course, side markets are welcome. Feel free to add them to the Manifold Plays Poker group and comment them here for shared visibility.
🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ246 | |
| 2 | Ṁ228 | |
| 3 | Ṁ36 | |
| 4 | Ṁ29 | |
| 5 | Ṁ12 |
a new hand, and the start of a tournament!
https://manifold.markets/Stralor/manifold-plays-poker-buy-in-hand-4?r=U3RyYWxvcg
@SimonGrayson 😂 but is that what you want? as folks talked about after the last one, y'all want stakes; I've really gotta figure out how to make one of these buy-ins where you feel good taking a real loss
@Stralor Maybe just a straight up auction and then pay you by manalink? Here I'm not convinced that the mana we lose is actually ending up in the pot (as opposed to going to other traders), and people are buying in at different costs per share depending how long they wait.
@A yeah, I've been considering stuff like that, but I do like the public, accessible, and native nature of a question. if Manifold had auction markets that would work!
@Stralor It would be a shame not to have the Manifold mechanics being part of the betting.
I think this version actually works. I can decide between gaining a profit or buying a hand if I want it badly enough!
@FionBull sure if you want to play two hands idc, especially in chaos mode. if you want to hand off profit/ manipulate, Manifold might take issue, but that's not in my purview. I did say alts are allowed
@Stralor damn, these meta markets stress me out. So much potential for manipulating the poker game to profit on derivative markets. I can't get my head around it!
@Stralor I want a hand, but I also wouldn't mind a profit...
Now I need to figure out the optimum level to bet at!
I'm still chewing on optimizations for our normal mode of poker and thought changing things up dramatically for a hand could be fun. We'll see how it goes, maybe it's terrible and we never do it again, or maybe the chaos is exhilarating and this mode enters into rotation.
Key points for past players:
The buy-in is YES shares only, but the question resolves NO
I'm building a prize pool in this market with my gains against your bets
You might never need to bet to advance, it's all about being higher than 10% in the UI
Sabotage, negotiation, forcing players with bad hands in, or simply holding at an efficient percentage... it's all fair game