Game #18: Pokerface by Darkehorse

I think I have a feel for the "hand" cards, those seem pretty intuitive. I would like to see the gambling mats and the gambler cards. I know that players get bonuses if they guess the other player's gambler cards, but what information is on the gambler card that can inform the players into an educated guess?

Thanks!

It sounds like a nice game. I have a couple of comments.

In your upgrade table, what does it mean for a straight to be "same suit" as a flush? A straight doesn't have a suit or it would be a straight flush already. Also, how does a straight and a flush lead to a straight flush? If the straight is 2,3,4,5 of clubs, 6 of spades and the flush is 2,3,4,5,7 of hearts, these can't be combined to form a straight flush.

Is the starting player just the player who gets to select the gambler and go first that round? With 8 rounds, unless it's a 4-player game, the players will get to go first an uneven number of times.

Jason

First off, I love the theme. I like the idea of playing big-stakes poker like you might see in the movies: where every player has four-of-a-kind. Fun stuff.

I'm a little confuzled by the rules, however. I guess that's what we're here for, right? :)

1. First off, I'd like to see what the Gambler Mats look like. Also, do the gamblers have any special powers, or are they all the same? It seems like they should be a little bit different at the start of the game -- something to disginuish them from each other besides the picture. Maybe they can start with different resources? (See my VP idea, below...) What are the special hand cards like?

2. When do the players get the special poker hand cards? I can't see where it says to deal them out. Likewise, I see in the rules that a player should ante for their chosen Gambler, but I don't find how many chips you start off with. Do the winnings go to the player, or gambler mat? Does the player ante from a personal stock, or the Gambler mat?

3. This game might suffer from the extra level of abstraction of hiding the original Gambler cards. If I don't choose my Gambler card, then I have little motivation to help him win. (In fact, I would want him to lose, I think!) However, if I pick my own, (and try to win) the other players will see that and get bonus points. About the +number of players or -1 scoring. I'm not so sure about that. That's equivalent to the winner getting a number of points equal to the number of players plus two (with the other players staying the same.)

I might suggest... How about if you have some sort of VP tokens to keep in a special place on the Gambler card. If a Gambler wins, you take his VP tokens for yourself. (And there's no penalty for losing.) If a Gambler loses, they gain a VP token. So, the more a Gambler loses, the better a chance of their "luck" coming in.

4. I'm not exactly sure how the Bluff card works... perhaps a bit more detail is needed for that.

5. I think 8 rounds might be a little long, but I haven't played it. (And I'm biased towards shorter games.) I can see each round taking 10-15 minutes.

6. I think the bonus scoring (while kinda cool) may be a bit too complicated. I can see non-gamers scratching their heads... "Huh?" It has multiplication and subtraction in it, which might throw people for a loop. Also, the more people that play the game, the wilder the bonus score will be. (In a six-player game, a player has a possibility of getting 36 points in the scoring round!) That seems a little lopsided to me. Making it a bit more modest I think would work a bit better... Like 5 points for each correct guess? Maybe 3 or 2? In either case, it doesn't make sense to penalize the player... It just adds more math, and the other players getting points should be penalty enough.

7. The purse rules make me a bit dizzy, too. I imagine there's a way to simplify that, too. I'll think about it.

Best wishes.
-- Scott S.

I haven't actually gotten a chance to read the rules yet, but I'd like to see all the stuff you have- so by all means post the Gambler mats and whatnot.

- Seth

Like the new rules. If I understood correctly, there's no board. Are the mats even necessary? Gamblers could be represented by pawns or cards. They would be easier to move between the rounds that way.

I like the cards and the illustrations on the gamblers are cool. I don't recognize them however.

What was not working during your playtest? Was it the bluff element? The fact that it was too easy to discern who's got who?

Hi there. I have a few more questions about Pokerface...

I don't quite understand this rule. In a four-player game, do two of the mats get 7, and two of them get 8? Or, do they each get 30? Also, I don't think "deal out" is the proper phrase here... perhaps, "evenly divide"? The rules also suggest that if a Gambler is bankrupt, to give them 10 chips. If the Gamblers each start with 7 or 8 chips: Wow!

Suggestion for wording:

I know what you're trying to say here, but it seems a bit wordy. Perhaps you could say that each player may discard any cards they don't want to the discard pile. Then, the discard pile is shuffled back into the deck for the next round... (You only have one deck, I believe, so you don't have to use so many adjectives, like "poker hand deck."

Later you say, "The active player shifts to the left of the current active player." I'm not sure if the active player is the one doing the dealing and initiating, but if so, you could say, "The deal passes to the left." or something similar.

Then you say, "That player deals enough cards to each player so that they have three hand cards (when coupled with the bluff card, they will each have four cards in their hand)." The parenthetic part is a bit awkward; I would suggest: 'The dealer deals enough cards to each player so that they each have three hand cards, in addition to their one bluff card.

My good pal Carl (who edited my Sticky Gulch game) got on my case for Capitalizing Everything Syndrome. I capitalized things like "Drifter Card" and he suggested I move things to lower case. Here, I think it may be justified, however. Each player has a hand of Hand Cards, and a player might bluff by playing a Bluff. I think a little bit of capitalization might help legibility and understanding here.

Please understand, that these are only suggestions, made with kind intentions. But please take them with a grain of salt, because I don't know everything. :) I do, however, want you to succeed! Best of luck...

-- Scott S.

What if the gamblers were on a board, all of them central. Then all the 'reaching' will be to the board, not in front of people.

- Seth

But then you lose the idea of sitting behind the gambler, which you may like as part of the feel of the game.

Interesting. Is it possible that a player who wins a big hand may not have to work as hard to win if other players fold out early (due to a heavy penalty in a "big money" hand)?
How would play be effected if you don't penalized the losing player so much in a "big money" hand? The players may be less likely to fold under the pressure of being heavily penalized.

Example: Hand with $500 in the pot. Winner gets 6 bonus points, losers are penalized 1 point. In a hand where the winner wins $50, he is awarded 1 point & the losers are penalized 6 points. After further thought, this type of scoring may push players to bet more on a sorry hand.

Just a thought...

A way IMO to solve this is to go with math. I have a couple of ideas that go that road.

First off, for each 10 dollars they bet (probably at one time), (or whatever the number, maybe $100) each player that loses the hand will also lose 1 point per set amount that they bet, minimum of 1. This could be tracked on a player's mat, or players can be given a different kind of token when they bet that amount. So small bets will not hurt the player, but large, tanking the gambler bets will. You will probably will need to make the number high enough to encourage some bets, but small enough as well.

Using this system, the player who wins the pot, gets 1 point per set amount of the pot.

Maybe a player can only lose points when they raise. That seems a little more fair.

I think this matches what you were looking for. Hope it helps.

-Steve

On the one hand, I don't see how this is different than playing for money. The last post suggested betting money and points, which is effectively the same thing.

Now, if there are indeed both money and victory points in the game, and they are not the same thing, then they need to do different things.

I never finished reading the rules, but I'd have to assume that the PLAYERS have VPs and the GAMBLERS have money. Is that accurate? So what's the point of the game? To bankrupt the other Gamblers? Or to earn the most VPs over the course of the game?

Perhaps 'paying' VPs in order to do things like raise the bet is a good solution to people trying to tank a Gambler. If they want the Gambler to lose lots of money, then it will cost them VPs. Therefore tanking gamblers does not help you win the game. This is somewhat similar to the dual-bet that Random_Person suggested. If it's the case that money moves between Gamblers and VPs move between players, then maybe the dual pot is a good idea. Then the Gambler who wins the hand gets the cash pot and the player playing him that turn gets the VP pot. So you are always interested in winning pots, or getting out of a losing pot.

However, there would have to be some other mechanism for gaining points based on the performance of "your" Gambler- maybe 1 VP per $X they have at the end of the game?

I'll go read the rest of the rules now and see if anything hits me.