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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. ------

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 100% accuracy on common attacks), leads to very rich gameplay, interaction and reads. I personally see Poker as just one game in a large family of simultaneous-choice, random-chance, incomplete-information high-skill gaming. Magic: The Gathering is another one. The cards your opponent plays necessarily reveals information (the colors of cards reveals what kind of strategies they are going for, and your opponent chooses to reveal that information only when necessary). I've won games by "holding onto lands" (worthless cards), bluffing that I had a response against my opponent's moves. Just delaying a turn or two (keeping them cautious) bought me the time to draw the cards I really needed to turn the game around. And I've lost games by going all in (assuming my opponent was bluffing, so I did a high-risk move), and lo-and-behold, my opponent had the "combat trick" needed to break my attack.

mirceal 4y ago
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.
- jrockway 4y ago
  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.)
  - ohwellhere 4y ago
    I only net deck in both MtG and Pokémon. :sweat_smile:
    - mirceal 4y ago
      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?
      - bluefirebrand 4y ago
        Similar enough, yeah. Both are quite complex but in different ways.
  - danielheath 4y ago
    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.
  - mirceal 4y ago
    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.
  - coconut08 4y ago
    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.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    You can't cut and paste in Draft or Sealed, which were my games of choice. I found constructed to be far more pay to win and copy-based for my tastes. But draft forces you to make due with the cards you get at random. ------ Cards are uniformly random according to rarity, but picks are not. If you get passed a rare and 3x uncommons in the draft, you know the left-hand player picked a common card. After 8 passes, your original stack comes back and you can get a feel for everyone else's deck. When pack2 opens up, you start working towards the 'underrated' colors at the table and going for the meta strategy no one has picked yet.
  - gwd 4y ago
    I played in a MtG draft tournament once, and it was great. It gives everyone a level playing field (barring chance) and adds another whole level to the game. I got my butt handed to me in the "real" tournament. I've since run little draft tournaments with friends on occasion, and it's been a lot of fun -- nobody has to invest any more money than the packs they buy for that day; and nobody has to invest time play-testing decks to have a decent shot. I tend to spend my time on other things these days, but if I wanted to get back into it, going for draft tournaments would be the way to go.
    - mirceal 4y ago
      The playing field is level only theoretically. Experience drafting and knowing really well the set you're drafting from are needed for anything more than just a friendly game.
      - gwd 4y ago
        I guess I meant, level the same way that chess is level, or Starcraft 2 is level: it depends only on individual skill, not on how much money you've spent on your deck. The fact that drafting is itself a skill that can be acquired is part of the attraction to me -- that's why I didn't mind having my butt kicked in the "real" tournament, because I knew it was a result of my inexperience, rather than my lack of monetary investment.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
le-mark 4y ago
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?
- teej 4y ago
  Just like in real life sports - high school basketball often devolves into who is tallest. That's a little different than professional basketball, where being tall is necessary, but not sufficient to compete. There's lot available on the internet to learn about competitive pokemon. Something like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBw6UXAiq0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBw6UXAiq0A) is a good entrypoint. But even better - go to a competition with your kids! If they're interested, of course.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Pachirisu was the star of VGC a few years ago. https://pokevillebloggers.blogspot.com/2014/08/pachirisu-2014-world-champion.html?m=1 https://pokevillebloggers.blogspot.com/2014/08/pachirisu-201... A very weak Pokemon, but had the right moves and right team support. The video game is far more about teamwork and team composition than just throwing the highest stat Pokemon at each other. ----- Stats matter for your sweeper (attack and speed), pivot (attack and defense) and sponge (hp and defense). But there are a whole slew of 'trickster' Pokemon, like Pachirisu, Ninjask, klefki, whimsicott and others who have rare moves and/or abilities that can beat raw stats in the right situation. Some lower stat Pokemon, like Clefable, are used despite better stat Pokemon (ex Blissy for sponge purposes) because of teamwork, movesets, typing, or abilities.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  When playing against friends–sure, because everyone loves to spam Hyper Beam when they're playing for fun. Competitive Pokémon is entirely different.
- orwin 4y ago
  Competitive is different. You can play an attrition team, where every opponent switch hurt him, or a clone+relay team (my favorite) where you stack attack buffs then use relay to transfer them to your hard hitter. You can play a mix of those, or just good pokemons with tight strategy (the equivalent of Jund zoo basically if you're a MTG player) Unless you talk about pokemon TCG, and in this case, 8 don't know.
derivagral 4y ago
I grew up on Pokemon & MTG. Got competitive, made the Tour, etc. I am not sure I want to repeat this with my son. A friend is going through this with his child (<10); can they afford the packs? The cards? What about his son asking everyone for free cards, since they didn't want to start down that path? There's gambling in these games, and a lot of it is in how exactly you get those cards. The upside is that a healthy exposure to "work doesn't equal outcome", risk calcs, and reading people are very helpful lessons to learn, so personally I'm a bit torn on this. I wonder if there isn't a happy middle ground these days that doesn't require a "buy packs" element.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Pokemon the video game, not the TCG. The video game requires no money aside from the cartridge, and the strategy is surprisingly deep: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discussion-thread-v7-usage-stats-in-post-3539.3672210/ https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discuss... Magic is the superior TCG in my opinion, thou Pokemon TCG is fun. In any case, don't play the 'pay to win' formats. Instead, play draft or sealed, which are much more fair.
  - jpe90 4y ago
    It can be a good way to spark interest in programming as well! :) https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/569688211158511616?lang=en https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/569688211158511616?... (definitely stealing this technique, we'll see if it pays off in... nine years or so?)
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    Or use proxies. Cockatrice is a good client for MTG as well, it doesn't enforce the rules but provides everything you need to play online with friends.
  - xmprt 4y ago
    And if you want to play Showdown, you don't even need to pay for cartridges either. Plus there's no grinding for EVs, IVs, moves, and items.
pessimizer 4y ago
> Its got all the reads, bluffs, random chance, meta-gaming, math and strategy, and none of the gambling. The gambling is the most important part, it's balancing between risk and concealing the signal you're sending. Bridge would be another option with a similar problem to be solved, but I don't think pokémon has any of that. edit: also, the last thing you want to do is get your kids addicted to a pay-to-win game. It's child exploitation.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Pokemon the video game is NOT a pay to win game or gambling game. Everyone is on fair grounds. The strategy is surprisingly deep. See one discussion thread from Smogon: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discussion-thread-v7-usage-stats-in-post-3539.3672210/ https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discuss...
  - gambiting 4y ago
    The strategy only gets deep towards the endgame - for the first 30 hours you can literally just keep pressing A at every single encounter and win majority of the time. There's zero reason to use any status effects against AI because it's so shallow and if you never switch Pokémon you will end up massively overleveled for everything the game throws at you before the elite four. Yes I am aware that the latest games in the franchise attempt to address this somewhat - but pick any Pokémon game from the last 20 years and it will be true 99% of the time.
    - Shugarl 4y ago
      I thought this discussion was about games you play against other people ? Pokemon battles against anyone who know basic strategies are hard as hell
    - andrepd 4y ago
      Again, we're talking about pokemon battles against other players (e.g. pokemon showdown), not the story mode of the games.
butwhywhyoh 4y ago
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!"
aaron695 4y ago
99_00 4y ago
Pricing risk is something I assume Pokémon doesn’t have. But I’m not going to encourage my kids to play poker. I will teach them the game if they want. But without the risk of actual material loss, the game loses a lot. Money is highly emotional. It’s gain or loss, the emotions that triggers, manipulating those emotions in others, predicting their behaviour based on their state, and even simulating “tilt” and presenting an emotional state are all things that is the makes poker what it. Without that it’s a below average game. And I’m not going to allow children to gamble with money.
- mod 4y ago
  > And I’m not going to allow children to gamble with money I thought for a couple minutes about whether this was really noble, or flawed thinking. I didn't come to a conclusion. I doubt it's very important if children gamble with money or not. I think probably most of them do at one time or another, anyway.
  - 99_00 4y ago
    My memories of gambling as a child were cheating, sore losers, reneging, and fights. As an adult there are people who I just won't gamble with because of the above reasons, but they are in the minority. As a kid they seemed to be in the majority.
- matwood 4y ago
  > And I’m not going to allow children to gamble with money. Kids are likely to gamble either way, best to teach them how to handle the loss and emotions. When I was kid a lot of us would gamble our lunch money (75 cents) playing quarters with each other. Some days I had to skip lunch, some days I got an extra milk, and some I was caught and given detention. A lot of lessons in those outcomes heh.

mirceal 4y ago

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.

jrockway 4y ago
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.)
- ohwellhere 4y ago
  I only net deck in both MtG and Pokémon. :sweat_smile:
  - mirceal 4y ago
    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?
    - bluefirebrand 4y ago
      Similar enough, yeah. Both are quite complex but in different ways.
- danielheath 4y ago
  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.
- mirceal 4y ago
  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.
- coconut08 4y ago
  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.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  You can't cut and paste in Draft or Sealed, which were my games of choice. I found constructed to be far more pay to win and copy-based for my tastes. But draft forces you to make due with the cards you get at random. ------ Cards are uniformly random according to rarity, but picks are not. If you get passed a rare and 3x uncommons in the draft, you know the left-hand player picked a common card. After 8 passes, your original stack comes back and you can get a feel for everyone else's deck. When pack2 opens up, you start working towards the 'underrated' colors at the table and going for the meta strategy no one has picked yet.
- gwd 4y ago
  I played in a MtG draft tournament once, and it was great. It gives everyone a level playing field (barring chance) and adds another whole level to the game. I got my butt handed to me in the "real" tournament. I've since run little draft tournaments with friends on occasion, and it's been a lot of fun -- nobody has to invest any more money than the packs they buy for that day; and nobody has to invest time play-testing decks to have a decent shot. I tend to spend my time on other things these days, but if I wanted to get back into it, going for draft tournaments would be the way to go.
  - mirceal 4y ago
    The playing field is level only theoretically. Experience drafting and knowing really well the set you're drafting from are needed for anything more than just a friendly game.
    - gwd 4y ago
      I guess I meant, level the same way that chess is level, or Starcraft 2 is level: it depends only on individual skill, not on how much money you've spent on your deck. The fact that drafting is itself a skill that can be acquired is part of the attraction to me -- that's why I didn't mind having my butt kicked in the "real" tournament, because I knew it was a result of my inexperience, rather than my lack of monetary investment.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

le-mark 4y ago

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?

teej 4y ago
Just like in real life sports - high school basketball often devolves into who is tallest. That's a little different than professional basketball, where being tall is necessary, but not sufficient to compete. There's lot available on the internet to learn about competitive pokemon. Something like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBw6UXAiq0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBw6UXAiq0A) is a good entrypoint. But even better - go to a competition with your kids! If they're interested, of course.
dragontamer 4y ago
Pachirisu was the star of VGC a few years ago. https://pokevillebloggers.blogspot.com/2014/08/pachirisu-2014-world-champion.html?m=1 https://pokevillebloggers.blogspot.com/2014/08/pachirisu-201... A very weak Pokemon, but had the right moves and right team support. The video game is far more about teamwork and team composition than just throwing the highest stat Pokemon at each other. ----- Stats matter for your sweeper (attack and speed), pivot (attack and defense) and sponge (hp and defense). But there are a whole slew of 'trickster' Pokemon, like Pachirisu, Ninjask, klefki, whimsicott and others who have rare moves and/or abilities that can beat raw stats in the right situation. Some lower stat Pokemon, like Clefable, are used despite better stat Pokemon (ex Blissy for sponge purposes) because of teamwork, movesets, typing, or abilities.
saagarjha 4y ago
When playing against friends–sure, because everyone loves to spam Hyper Beam when they're playing for fun. Competitive Pokémon is entirely different.
orwin 4y ago
Competitive is different. You can play an attrition team, where every opponent switch hurt him, or a clone+relay team (my favorite) where you stack attack buffs then use relay to transfer them to your hard hitter. You can play a mix of those, or just good pokemons with tight strategy (the equivalent of Jund zoo basically if you're a MTG player) Unless you talk about pokemon TCG, and in this case, 8 don't know.

derivagral 4y ago

I grew up on Pokemon & MTG. Got competitive, made the Tour, etc. I am not sure I want to repeat this with my son. A friend is going through this with his child (<10); can they afford the packs? The cards? What about his son asking everyone for free cards, since they didn't want to start down that path? There's gambling in these games, and a lot of it is in how exactly you get those cards. The upside is that a healthy exposure to "work doesn't equal outcome", risk calcs, and reading people are very helpful lessons to learn, so personally I'm a bit torn on this. I wonder if there isn't a happy middle ground these days that doesn't require a "buy packs" element.

dragontamer 4y ago
Pokemon the video game, not the TCG. The video game requires no money aside from the cartridge, and the strategy is surprisingly deep: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discussion-thread-v7-usage-stats-in-post-3539.3672210/ https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discuss... Magic is the superior TCG in my opinion, thou Pokemon TCG is fun. In any case, don't play the 'pay to win' formats. Instead, play draft or sealed, which are much more fair.
- jpe90 4y ago
  It can be a good way to spark interest in programming as well! :) https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/569688211158511616?lang=en https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/569688211158511616?... (definitely stealing this technique, we'll see if it pays off in... nine years or so?)
- mattnewton 4y ago
  Or use proxies. Cockatrice is a good client for MTG as well, it doesn't enforce the rules but provides everything you need to play online with friends.
- xmprt 4y ago
  And if you want to play Showdown, you don't even need to pay for cartridges either. Plus there's no grinding for EVs, IVs, moves, and items.

pessimizer 4y ago

> Its got all the reads, bluffs, random chance, meta-gaming, math and strategy, and none of the gambling. The gambling is the most important part, it's balancing between risk and concealing the signal you're sending. Bridge would be another option with a similar problem to be solved, but I don't think pokémon has any of that. edit: also, the last thing you want to do is get your kids addicted to a pay-to-win game. It's child exploitation.

dragontamer 4y ago
Pokemon the video game is NOT a pay to win game or gambling game. Everyone is on fair grounds. The strategy is surprisingly deep. See one discussion thread from Smogon: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discussion-thread-v7-usage-stats-in-post-3539.3672210/ https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discuss...
- gambiting 4y ago
  The strategy only gets deep towards the endgame - for the first 30 hours you can literally just keep pressing A at every single encounter and win majority of the time. There's zero reason to use any status effects against AI because it's so shallow and if you never switch Pokémon you will end up massively overleveled for everything the game throws at you before the elite four. Yes I am aware that the latest games in the franchise attempt to address this somewhat - but pick any Pokémon game from the last 20 years and it will be true 99% of the time.
  - Shugarl 4y ago
    I thought this discussion was about games you play against other people ? Pokemon battles against anyone who know basic strategies are hard as hell
  - andrepd 4y ago
    Again, we're talking about pokemon battles against other players (e.g. pokemon showdown), not the story mode of the games.

butwhywhyoh 4y ago

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!"

aaron695 4y ago

99_00 4y ago

Pricing risk is something I assume Pokémon doesn’t have. But I’m not going to encourage my kids to play poker. I will teach them the game if they want. But without the risk of actual material loss, the game loses a lot. Money is highly emotional. It’s gain or loss, the emotions that triggers, manipulating those emotions in others, predicting their behaviour based on their state, and even simulating “tilt” and presenting an emotional state are all things that is the makes poker what it. Without that it’s a below average game. And I’m not going to allow children to gamble with money.

mod 4y ago
> And I’m not going to allow children to gamble with money I thought for a couple minutes about whether this was really noble, or flawed thinking. I didn't come to a conclusion. I doubt it's very important if children gamble with money or not. I think probably most of them do at one time or another, anyway.
- 99_00 4y ago
  My memories of gambling as a child were cheating, sore losers, reneging, and fights. As an adult there are people who I just won't gamble with because of the above reasons, but they are in the minority. As a kid they seemed to be in the majority.
matwood 4y ago
> And I’m not going to allow children to gamble with money. Kids are likely to gamble either way, best to teach them how to handle the loss and emotions. When I was kid a lot of us would gamble our lunch money (75 cents) playing quarters with each other. Some days I had to skip lunch, some days I got an extra milk, and some I was caught and given detention. A lot of lessons in those outcomes heh.