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. If y'all love it, we'll do more hands. Here's how it works:
We had a market to buy in for the hand. This is the first round of betting!
Players are welcome to share their hands, or bluff, obfuscate, and misdirect, whether on the markets, over discord, or wherever they see fit. They're also welcome to bet on their opponents! (Such bets have no bearing on if their hand continues)
The 6 players in this round who have the highest YES positions (minimum 20) on themselves at close advance to the next round. Everyone else is considered "folded". This market will only resolve at the end of the game to the final winner, whenever that is determined.
If for whatever reason every player folds at any stage, the win goes to the player who held the highest YES self-position on the previous round (including buy-in, if it happens to be this round).
And as a bonus for this first trial run, I'm awarding 100 mana to the winner. Congrats to them!
Minor detail, for those who care: I've properly dealt out all hands, the flop, turn, and river with a single deck of cards in real life. Just like any game of hold 'em the fate of the cards is predetermined when the shuffle is complete, but sometimes serious players dislike it when the future rounds are laid out early anyway. In this case, it was simply more practical to avoid mistakes and so I'm not holding a whole deck's state over weeks.
As I know all of the cards, I won't be betting or playing, and I cannot be bribed to reveal other players' information or tilt in your favor. My house cut is simply the (hopefully ample) trader bonuses on any markets 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 for visibility.
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Trader | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ74 | |
| 2 | Ṁ37 | |
| 3 | Ṁ30 | |
| 4 | Ṁ14 |
How did people feel about this? What worked? What was confusing? What was frustrating? What would make it even better? (I have many ideas for future hands, curious if they vibe)
@Stralor nice to see something like this on manifold. 👍
stakes feel way to low, but i don't think you can do anything about that. feels weird betting from the side, like i don't want to screw it up for the players.
shorter times between rounds, 1 per day maybe.
will play the next one, now that i understand how this plays out.
@nickten re low stakes, it feels like there's an attractor state towards not betting anything until the last second, because placing a big bet on yourself (to make sure you don't accidentally fold), allows people to hold larger positions against you for less money. i suppose maybe the answer is limit orders on yourself. (although the math for optimal limit orders on yourself with 2 forced folds eludes me)
the current ruleset is whaleproof but lacks a mechanism to incentivize bluffing and high stakes imo.
@Stralor i suppose it depends on the implementation, but I'd think not. e.g. everybody under 10% is force folded, whale puts 100,000 limit order at 90% etc etc
@Stralor I enjoyed it a lot, and I'll try and get into the next one as well. I'm not sure how to make it better, but it definitely felt suboptimal. Bets were essentially invisible, so it was hard to see who was betting big on themselves. Also, it was possible to bet YES on everyone, getting an arbitrarily high stake on yourself but without any risk. So I disagree that it was whale proof. Any whale could have got to the final round but even been net NO on themselves. (The final round is whale proof but that's easy to achieve.)
I think something with displayed probability is worth experimenting with. That way bets are very easily visible and you can't cheat it by betting on everyone. Downside is force folding. I think you just need to introduce a house rule capping the total bet.
Final:
Kongo's hand is Queen of Spades and Five of Hearts
Christopher's hand is King of Hearts and Five of Diamonds
wins with a pair of Kings.
@ChristopherRandles thanks for the consideration, but I think for poker to work we oughtta keep earlier bets locked in (even though manifold kinda already does this for us). anyway, that's what Winston's market is for. I'm idly workshopping ideas on how to change this up for possible future hands tho
Kongo, feeling nervous completely missed what brubsby said, looks at his cards 3 more times, and asks:
--Does anybody have ten?
He observes the people at the table to capture any reaction.
--Wait, why is a penguin here?
@KongoLandwalker Penguins are very good at poker because they are very hard to read.
Unfortunately they struggle to hold their cards, don't understand the first thing about probability, and can be very easily bought off for fish.
@Fion 40 more than my balance, how strangely close. Anyway too steep for me,
Dutch auction, I'll fold for 7000M.
-- Wow, the penguin talks and even bargains. Maybe I am to drunk for the game.
Kongo looks on his cards again just in case he remembered incorrectly because of being drunk.
-- Anyway, you might be curious why I gathered you all here tonight. The thing is, I don't even know how I got here. Where are we?
@ChristopherRandles I was going to say I'd fold for 101 mana but then i realized that the mana value of the information in my hand is worth more than 1 mana to me
@KongoLandwalker We are (possibly jokingly or bluffingly) trying to buy or sell resignation but not succeeding at least not yet anyway, so not yet clear on that one yet. There may well be value to the information in each hand. I suspected there could be more value in knowing the intentions of players, certainly both of these is worth more than either one. So maybe that is at least 3 different things with potential value, Whether they can actually be bought or sold is less clear: If I say I will fold for 500 mana and accept a deal can I later say I was bluffing when I said that and bet on myself once it reaches a really low %? Bluffing is clearly and specifically allowed here but maybe making a deal is something different or maybe not?
An alternative of trying to get a read through text also seems pretty iffy.