As some of you might know, I really like this like shows and stories about high stakes gambles, but the games they play are never traditional ones, they're always interesting twists to make things more exciting, so I wanted to think of some myself. These are shows like Liar Game, Kaiji, Akagi, and the like.
I particularly like the idea of taking an old idea and adding a fun spin to it, but my favorite spin is adding a psychological or strategic aspect to things.
Just some of my ideas:
Symmetrical Strategy WarBasically, it's War:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_%28card_game%29but there are a few changes:
1. The deck of cards is divided evenly in half, with each player getting two of each value card. Two aces, two kings, two queens, etc. This is the Symmetric part of the name.
2. Those cards are in that player's hand, and instead of being dealt randomly, they choose which one to reveal for each 'battle'.
3. Cards don't return to the winner's hand. They're placed into a discard pile exclusive to each player.
4. The winning player is the one with the most cards in their discard pile at the end of the game.
These changes serve a purpose. #1 ensures that each player is on equal footing at the start of the game. #2 adds the strategy and need to guess what your opponent is going to play, and also what you should conserve. Similar to the variant listed in the Wiki article. #3 ensures that the game is brought to it's natural conclusion within a short time frame.
Naturally, to make it a bit more exciting a bet could be placed before the game starts and the winner gets the bet at the end. Or more interestingly, that each card is worth a certain amount and the loser pays the winner an amount equal to the difference between the size of his discard pile and the other player's.
So for example: if each card were $1, and you lost, and you had 12 cards in your discard pile, and the winner has the other 40, you'd pay $28.
Another method of betting I thought of would go like this:
Each player chooses and places their card for the battle face down, then before the cards are revealed, a player (the player to bet first would be decided by a dealer chip that's passed back and forth) can place a bet or check, then the opposite player can match the bet/check, raise, or fold and allow the other player a no-contest victory for that battle. In a fold, the cards are flipped to reveal what each player had put down before going to the winner's discard pile. This would add another layer of bluffing and psychology to the game, that I feel would enrich it.
Another idea:
Discard Hold'emI'm sure everyone is familiar with Texas Hold'em. Well, given the multicultural presence on these forums, that may be an exaggeration, but it's a simple enough game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_holdemLike in ordinary hold'em each player is dealt two cards, and then there's a round of betting.
Here's the few critical changes:
Instead of cards being dealt out of the deck randomly to make up the Flop, Turn, and River, starting with the dealer, a player draws a card into his or her hand and then chooses a card to discard out of their hand. That card makes up the first community card.
Then there's a round of betting, and the next player to the dealer's left repeats this process, and this process goes around the table until all five cards of the community are made up. Then there's a final round of betting before the showdown.
Rather than being a game of luck with all the skill being placed into bluffing and betting strategy, there's another layer of strategy to make the community cards favor your hand, alter your hand to better fit into the community, and to read your opponents so you're not playing into their hands.
10 Step Landmine Hold'emThis one is inspired by a recent game in the latest Kaiji chapters, but whereas Kaiji is playing Mahjong, we're playing a game similar to Texas hold'em.
I'd like to offer a great deal of critical changes that alter how the game is played.
The game is played much like Discard Hold'em, with each player being dealt two cards, and then drawing and discarding to make up the community cards.
Unlike in normal Hold'em, where you can use five community cards to make your hand, you can only use the last three discarded cards, and the hand can continue until there are 10 cards on the table, but the hand can end when there are only 3.
Starting at the third discard, when a player discards, any OTHER player may declare “Stop” or to be particularly flavorful, “Boom!” and then each player reveals their hand, and the best hand wins.
While I wish I had enough friends to act as players to give it a trial run, just to experiment, how I imagine it is that it becomes a lot more tense, with players trying to avoid dealing into eachother's hand, while also trying to coax them into dealing into their own and end the hand then and there, or even better, deliberately dealing into another player's hand to coax them into ending the hand when in-fact you've dealt into your own hand for the win.
Betting also becomes different, since slow playing with a good hand becomes hard to do in this variant, since the community cards are always changing, and there can be many or very few rounds of betting. Just the meta changes, not the actual act of betting.
I'm currently toying around with a variant of 7 Card Stud in my head.