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[JoshuaFH]

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 War

Basically, it's War:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_%28card_game%29

but 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'em

I'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_holdem

Like 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'em

This 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.

[finka]

Symmetrical Strategy War

This one sounds very close to Gops (short for "Game of Pure Strategy"), in which the main difference is that the point values of the turns vary.  A good choice, I think: in a fresh game of Symmetric Strategy War, what is there that you could reason from to have any idea what your opponent's first play might be, and from there how to react?  (The same for any other turn, but less so 'cause now your hands probably differ.)  In Gops there's the catalyst of whether this is a valuable turn or not. 

[JoshuaFH]

Really, there's just your opponent's personality and whether you feel they may use a high card or not, so just intuiting your opponent's moves basically. In the version I laid out where you bet on each battle, where in essence the objective changes from having the largest discard pile to having the most money/chips/tokens at the end, that adds another dimension where bluffing and chip count is important, that that motivates players in that way.

Thinking in terms of Game Theory, I'm not sure if there's a strictly dominating or dominated strategy.

Reading Gops though, this is also very interesting. Fighting for scarce resources adds another level of richness, you can say.

Thought of another little game:

Swiss 5-card Draw

Play is exactly like 5-Card Draw, except is designed to only accommodate two players:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-card_draw

Though some extra requirements are necessary. Each player needs a concealed piece of paper with pen, and there needs to be a neutral third party to act as the card dealer for the entire game.

The difference being that at the end of each hand, a player (taking turns at the end of each hand) takes the piece of paper and writes down the name of a card and gives it to the dealer, who then removes that card from the deck and places it where noone can see. Then play continues in this fashion until there are only 20 cards left in the deck, in which case players no longer can remove cards from the deck. In the case where a player asks for a card that has already been removed, the dealer simply shakes his head to confirm that that card is not available, and that player's turn at removing a card is wasted.

How I imagine it is that play is normal at first, but then becomes warped as certain hands become impossible, and each player needs to be constantly paying attention to the cards that are revealed to ascertain which cards have been removed by the other player, and thus knowing which cards are left in the deck and thus which hands are possible.

The name "Swiss" is from, of course, the cheese, as the deck gradually has more and more holes poked into it.

[JoshuaFH]

Thought of some gimmicky variations that I thought might be fun, and whenever I get thinking about game design I remember that I should just be writing down whatever idea that pops up:

Kingdom's 5-card Draw Poker

Played like normal five card draw, with the following changes.

Players ante, then are dealt five cards, then there's one round of betting before the card changing rounds. Unlike normal 5-card draw, there are five rounds of card changing done in a row, where players may discard any number of cards from their hands in return for an equal number of cards. However, discarded cards are turned face-up and remain on the table.

After the five rounds of changing, there's the showdown and people face off with the hands they built.

I wanted a more elegant way of adding strategy and extra risk-taking to an old game without forcing alot of contrived extra rules into the mix. While thinking about it, I also thought of this:

Mahjong Poker

Each player antes, then is dealt four cards, followed by the only mandatory round of betting for the hand. The object of the game is to be the first player to make a five card hand that is atleast a straight or better out of their dealt card, or another player's recently discarded card. Allow me to explain.

Each player in turn is dealt a card, and then discards a card, which is placed face-up on the table for all players to see. If a player is dealt a card that completes their hand, they reveal their completed hand and win.  Whenever another player discards a card, if that card completes their winning hand, they can claim it and declare victory; and if multiple people claim, it's down to an ordinary showdown.

Players continue the process of being dealt and discarding until a winner is decided, or until the deck runs out of cards.

Any player may once per hand, as they discard, force another round of betting where they must bet atleast double their existing bet, and other players must meet it or fold. However, once a player has done this they must discard every card they are dealt unless it completes their hand. This would be the Mahjong equivalent of Riichi where you have a nearly completed hand of four cards, waiting for the card to be dealt or discarded to complete it.

If the entire deck of cards is used, the hand is a draw, each player gets their bets back, and all hands are revealed.

That's basically the rules of Mahjong deeply simplified and roughly converted to make use of a standard 52 card deck and preexisting poker knowledge, adding in an element of strategy in being forced to watch what people discard for fear of dealing into people's hands, while attempting to be clever in discarding to build a good enough hand to win and trick people into dealing into your hand.

Looking back, these are kind of similar to Landmine holdem or discard holdem, but I think these are a bit more elegant in design. Granted, only someone with prior knowledge of how mahjong works would be able to pick up on the second idea easily.