Why not both or a combination? MTG has elements from both chess and poker and it's surprisingly easy to learn but stupid hard to master. You also don't have to worry about sex ed :))
Downside is you might lose money faster than gambling lol
Teach your kids poker, not chess
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Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess
#32How about we play competitive Pokemon instead? Its got all the reads, bluffs, random chance, meta-gaming, math and strategy, and none of the gambling. ------ Don't get me wrong. Poker is a great game. But if we're talking about "reading" the opponent, relatively simple decisions that have deep mathematical backgrounds... a large variety of "simultaneous choice" video games (Pokemon, being a turnbased game with 60% to…
Mtg is poker on hard mode. You don't know what the opponent's deck has in it or what combos you need to defend against.
The game meta + competitive play are wildly entertaining.
Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but in the same sense that there's a chance in Chess because you could be sick the day of your game and play worse as a result. The game itself doesn't have intrinsic chance, but as with everything in life, the players do. I do agree with your last point though, winning doesn't mean you played well, it just means you played better than your opponent.
My experience is that it doesn’t even mean you played better than your opponent overall, just that you “made the second to last mistake”. I also think there’s a larger element to reading your opponent in chess than many people give it credit for — what are they planning? …can you “tilt” them to make them play worse? Etc. It’s only at the very highest level you should expect people to play nearly perfect games… and ev…
That's certainly a thought from a brain. I'll hazard that parent's chess knowledge extends to "how the pieces move", possibly Scholar's Mate and its basic refutation (kidding, parent just read about Scholar's Mate on Wikipedia).
Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a naive view of poker, which is absolutely a game of skill. You can't force a good hand, but you can use your understanding of probability and human behavior to estimate the value of the hand you are dealt. The bets you place can be more important than the hands themselves. In fact, the best hand can lose you a lot of money if you play it wrong.
Those two things, skill and chance, are not mutually exclusive characteristics. My point is more so that poker should not be treated as if all the skill in the world can account for all the bad luck in the world. I mean there’s a reason there’s no equivalent of the patriots in professional poker. No one is going to win every single game every single time. And I think that forgetting that in the games portrayal is mod…
The reason there’s no equivalent to an NFL team in poker is that an NFL team plays 19 games a year and there are only a couple dozen competing at all.
If the world of professional poker only involved a couple dozen players and they only played 19 hands a year, you would absolutely see dynasties and near-perfect “seasons”.
Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess
#35Poker is dumb. Préférence is better.
Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess
#36According to Reid Hoffman (Linkedin) - Avalon Hill and Runescape are the games to play - YMMV.
Reid Hoffman: Board Games Led To My Success
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqwOLhSkn3g
Military-themed games helped him combine tactics into a strategic plan, while role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Runequest taught him problem solving. Playing against real people and not computers helped him keep his competitors’ motives in mind.
“A real strategy is based off of: what are your competitors doing? What is their mindset? What are their assets? What’s the way you can make that work?”
Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess
#37How about we play competitive Pokemon instead? Its got all the reads, bluffs, random chance, meta-gaming, math and strategy, and none of the gambling. ------ Don't get me wrong. Poker is a great game. But if we're talking about "reading" the opponent, relatively simple decisions that have deep mathematical backgrounds... a large variety of "simultaneous choice" video games (Pokemon, being a turnbased game with 60% to…
Mtg is poker on hard mode. You don't know what the opponent's deck has in it or what combos you need to defend against. The game meta + competitive play are wildly entertaining.
I've never played MTG, but do people "net deck" in that community? I've played other card games and I usually know their deck after seeing the first couple cards. Sure, maybe they added some special flare, but most people cut-n-paste from the Internet. (And those decks crush people that don't, unfortunately.)
Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess
#38My parents let me play with them and their friends when I was a kid. I got WAY better as the night went on and they got loaded.
Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess
#39How about we play competitive Pokemon instead? Its got all the reads, bluffs, random chance, meta-gaming, math and strategy, and none of the gambling. ------ Don't get me wrong. Poker is a great game. But if we're talking about "reading" the opponent, relatively simple decisions that have deep mathematical backgrounds... a large variety of "simultaneous choice" video games (Pokemon, being a turnbased game with 60% to…
I’m a noob when it comes to Pokémon, I only learned to play with my kids. Seems like Pokémon alway devolves to who has the strongest (most hp, best attacks) characters. Sure there are all the special attacks, deck manipulation that can be done but it seems very shallow to me. What am I missing?
Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess
#40Yes, having played a bunch of both, chess is cool but poker is a better and funner bet. Only turn based game where you can make proper money if you are good enough (not to mention you can make solid and reliable money as a private game dealer). And the player pool is a much more diverse and amusing bunch of degens
Would also be happy to see my kid get into fighting games, CCGs, MOBAs, FPS games....they're all cool and fun and deep as hell