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A secret poker game you can play on the subway

(experience.prfalken.dev)
298 points oktcho | 2 comments | 18 Feb 25 10:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ZoomZoomZoom ◴[19 Feb 25 17:39 UTC] No.43104905[source]▶
The most obvious issues with this is that the game boils down to predicting passenger patterns, but you're still just comparing two RNGs, which is one of the worst kinds of games. I also don't think this can be called Poker, really. Poker is an imperfect information game, where your hand tells you some information about your opponents' hands.

It would be interesting to read HN's ideas on how you can simulate the shared information part of the game in such a scenario.

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kuboble ◴[19 Feb 25 20:24 UTC] No.43107133[source]▶
> . I also don't think this can be called Poker, really. Poker is an imperfect information game,

There is no game of Poker. It is a wide variety of games like 5-card draw, Omaha, Texas, studs, Chinese open face poker. Also a slot machine where you draw 5 cards or pretty much any game that uses classical poker hand rankings is called poker. There is also a planning poker.

I think the name is fine

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ZoomZoomZoom ◴[19 Feb 25 20:31 UTC] No.43107240[source]▶
The card games listed have the information aspect in common. The slot machine is not a Poker, it's a poker-themed slot machine and the game people play with it is called losing money.
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1. apgwoz ◴[19 Feb 25 23:01 UTC] No.43108872{3}[source]▶
“Poker is a family of _comparing_ card games in which players _wager_ over which hand is best according to that specific game’s rules.”

— [WikiPedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker)

I don’t think I would have gone for that definition, but now that I see it, it sums up everything I’ve ever known “Poker” to be. The game is won by comparing cards you have left (meaning that Rummy, Go Fish, or Bridge are different), and there’s a wager about the game (possibly just bragging rights if not playing for money).

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2. ZoomZoomZoom ◴[19 Feb 25 23:15 UTC] No.43109009[source]▶
I totally agree, but I stand by the opinion that imperfect-information bit is so essential that it's simply assumed (it's, naturally, not specific to just poker card games, though). If you come to the table with your own stack of cards to draw from, it's very likely going to end badly for you, depending on how transparent you're with the matter.