Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teach your kids poker, not chess

momentofdeep.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 242 posts

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#41

Post by ohwellhere »

jrockway wrote: post #37
mirceal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I only net deck in both MtG and Pokémon. :sweat_smile:

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#42

Post by bb88 »

Why not both?

Chess teaches "Deep" thinking about complex problems, which is useful particularly with programming. Much of my day is spent in deep complex problems.

Poker teaches quick calculation, negotiation, bluffing, and reading other's motives, which is useful for everything else in the world.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#43

Post by ohwellhere »

plandis wrote: post #31
mirceal wrote: post #30

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

Right out of school I lost $300 playing poker at a casino and it stung for years.

It stings a lot less now thinking of my MtG, Pokemon, and Hearthstone spending.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#44

Post by Asraelite »

One of the worst things about poker IMO is that everyone unnecessarily links it with gambling.

It's one of my favorite games to play with friends and money is never, ever involved. You just play to win as many games as possible.

I feel like a lot of people miss out on a very fun game simply because they don't want to gamble and can't imagine playing without doing so.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#45

Post by photochemsyn »

The element in poker that tends to be missing in chess is the side bet on the outcome of a game and the various ways the probabilities of winning/losing are calculated (with respect to winning the bet, not game outcome itself).

Ideally, if chess was 'solved' like checkers reportedly has been, then the superior chess engine would win the match and betting on the outcome would be a meaningless activity.

Poker remains interesting because the ability to guess the opponent's position hasn't been 'solved' by AI algorithms. If a poker player's position could be read by AI interpretation of facial expressions, body language, etc. I imagine casinos would be all over this.

The real Turing Test question is, can AI simulate players in D&D games well enough to fool human participants?

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#46

Post by danielheath »

jrockway wrote: post #37
mirceal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Those who enjoy the deck design challenge tend to play draft games (construct a deck by drafting one card at a time from three packs of 15, and then play a tournament with it) rather than open “bring a deck” games.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#47

Post by mirceal »

jrockway wrote: post #37
mirceal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Yes. Yes, it's frustrating some times, but the cool thing is that if you play against an experienced played that deck is only gonna get you so far. Also, there are many archetypes and to get a deck that can be competitive against all is pretty hard.

+ I also enjoy events where you build your deck on the fly from boosters. Those are definitely a lot of fun.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#48

Post by butwhywhyoh »

dragontamer wrote: post #20

How 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…

How about when we make statements like "poker, not chess", we stick to well known games that go back centuries?

Stating "There are other games that are even MORE complicated with even LESS information! That's the game we should be talking about!" adds nothing to the original point the author is making.

When you heard the original saying "we're playing chess, not checkers", are you the type of person to say: "ACTUALLY, Go is far more complicated than chess. The saying should reference Go, not chess!"

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#49

Post by mirceal »

ohwellhere wrote: post #41
jrockway wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I only net deck in both MtG and Pokémon. :sweat_smile:

Question: Is Pokemon like MTG? From 10000 feet away only by looking at a few cards and maybe hearing people chat about it, sounds like games are similar. Are they?

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#50

Post by coconut08 »

jrockway wrote: post #37
mirceal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

any card game that is competitive and popular is going to have net decking in their constructed formats. this doesn't just apply to card games though... non-card games have this as well. world of warcraft has a metagame of arena compositions, league of legends has compositions of teams and roles. in a game that allows you to explicitly construct the composition of your deck or team before each match there is no other way for it to play out.

there are game modes such as drafting that introduce randomness and dynamism to deck construction that avoid this and most card games have this type of game mode.

Post reply on HN