Why can't anyone make a decent version of Global Thermonuclear War?
They tried it out in Japan, but it wasn't well-received. It started out with a bang -- it was really hot for a while and made a lot of noise at first -- but there was a lot of pressure which led to some major backlash, then the whole thing mushroomed from there. Overall, it was a big bomb.
They developed an upgraded version for the US and Russia, but that went cold and was never implemented. The plan called for an initial launch in Cuba, but there was some sort of crisis and everything that had been shipped was recalled.
Sorry, but apparently that video is not available on the old continent, so I cannot see what you are referring at.
Are you buy any chance talking about DWF's Eschaton [nowhereband.org]?
[Illustration [flic.kr]]
Bah, Go is only another game in the same class as chess and checkers.
D&D, why not mention that? How could they miss D&D, classic D&D with pencil, paper and polygonal dice?
My choice is Poker, because for me, it's the most social of the games listed. When my friends and I were all local to each other (we're now scattered to opposite ends of the country), we'd get together for penny-ante games that were more about conversation, jokes and obscure movie references than about gambling. The big winner of the night might leave $4-5 richer, the big loser might drop $2-3, but everyone would have had a great time.
We still use one of the big poker sites to host our free games, then include a Google Hangout on top of it for some multi-person video conferencing, allowing people cross-country to virtually play at the same table.
We did that a few times with Texas Hold'Em except with a winner-takes-it-all prize, but the challenge was finding the sweet spot where there's enough at stake that people take it a bit seriously but not too seriously. With no money involved it was just crazy random play, people didn't care so they played the way that was most fun like playing every hand, pulling off the most absurd bluffs and so on. It gets old pretty quick and there's no penalty to busting out, the resemblance to real poker was minimal.
Of those listed, Chess is the only game (possibly the only game ever invented) that has no element of chance whatsoever. You win or lose purely by the decisions you make and the power of your own intellect. Even though I'm not very good, I do find it a stimulating and very satisfying game.
Chess is the only game (possibly the only game ever invented) that has no element of chance whatsoever. You win or lose purely by the decisions you make and the power of your own intellect. Even though I'm not very good, I do find it a stimulating and very satisfying game.
Possibly the only game event invented that has no element of chance? You need to try more games, it's not even the only one in that list. Anyway, a lack of chance doesn't by itself make chess better or worse than anything else.
When you play a bridge tournament, you play as part of a 4-person team. All the cards are dealt and placed in boards such that once they're played, they're replaced back as the North, South, East, or West hand.
Now your team of 4 is split into two partnerships, one playing all the N/S hands, one playing all the E/W hands. For any given hand of N,S,E,W, what counts isn't what your partnership does on your cards (either N/S or E/W), it's the delta between what your other partnership scored and what you scored.
While this is an important part of making competitive bridge fair, I'd argue that there is still an element of chance, since players lack perfect information. As with chess, the notion of strategically perfect play makes sense. However, in contrast to chess, a bridge player could make the "wrong" decision based on a poor assessment of probability, yet still be rewarded when their bad guess happens to be correct. In any given game, this could lead to a bad move having a better outcome, even when the other
I was going to say pretty much the same thing and you beat me to it. When I was young I loved bridge so much. My parents played duplicate bridge in a local group and taught me to play and let me say, being a bridge-playing only child is incredibly frustrating. The only way I could get a chance to play was if someone came to visit by themselves, who also played bridge, and who didn't mind playing with a young kid. That didn't happen much.
I played a lot of bridge in college & grad school, but then only read about clubs playing in the middle of the day. Just six weeks ago, I found a local club that has evening games, and I'm getting back into the groove after two decades of playing only bad contract bridge every other year when Christmas was at my parents' house.
Check for local bridge clubs where you are; they love to have younger players, and most are happy to accommodate singletons until they find a regular partner.
It is correct that duplicate and tournament play eliminates most of it, but bridge still has some second-order luck component. The most classical example is the two-way finesse [wikipedia.org].
The AI in master chess computers, in essence try as many combinations as possible to find the best outcome. However it still takes way to long to process all the possible games. So there is a degree of trimming involved. Meaning not all combinations are in play. So there is a particular degree of randomness based on what future actions we choose to predict and not.
I personally stink at chess and can barely see 2 moves ahead of me.
While it seems likely that perfect play by both sides in chess will result in a stalemate, a quick search didn't turn up any actual research that proves it. Interestingly, for Go, there is a simple argument to see that perfect play will result in a draw, provided that the komi [wikipedia.org] (handicap points awarded to white as compensation for moving second) are chosen optimally.
Let's say we have two theoretically perfect players playing a game of go. In normal go games, it doesn't matter what the difference in points
I always played chess to stalemate. It's usually a mistake on my opponents' part that hands me the game. I've lost probably 2% of the games I've ever played.
It can be, but it can also get to be a bit of a slogfest with more than two or three players. I've played games that have lasted six hours because the incentive is to constantly team up against the person in the lead, and there are so many ways to knock them down. I've also seen people get pissed off at other people while playing, which is probably to be expected in a game that openly encourages you to stab your buddy in the back.
It's clever and the cards are especially funny the first three or four times
It's the one group game I get to play semi-regularly - my wife and I have been playing it with the same friends ever since we got out of college, back in the 80s.
When I was still in college, Cribbage, Hearts, and Spades were all very popular in the dorms.
I've always wanted to learn Bridge, but since I'm the only one in my circle with any interest - it's never happened.
Pinochle wipes the floor with the rest of these. There is chance involved (based on the deal), wagering, trump cards, having a partner whose cards you are not fully acquainted with, and various styles of play that have all sorts of good and bad consequences based on all of the above, as well as the opponents style.
From my experiences playing checkers with my coworker while waiting on fried catfish at the local spot, the rules of checkers can vary quite a bit. You should have seen the insane jumping she did once she got a king -- like traversing multiple empty spots to get my piece.
When I was little, my dad and his friends were playing bridge. Then I recall them wanting me to join and play as "the dummy". I still am annoyed about that...
The non-computer game I like best right now is Oh Hell, [wikipedia.org] especially at a penny a point. I've been playing it for decades at a club I belong to and according to the records kept by one of the players I'm "lifetime positive" because I've won more overall than I've lost. Most players consider it a cheap form of entertainment but I'm one of the few who considers it a minor source of income.
That's one I used to play when I was a kid. We played games every Sunday, before the Disney movie of the week started at 8:00. We would play board games like Monopoly, Life, Careers, and so on, or play card games like pinochle, canasta, and poker. Not all on the same night, of course.
With poker, we played many different types, including 5 card draw, 5 and 7 card stud, something dad called baseball, Oh Hell, and a few others. The dealer called which game we played, and the deal passed to the left after each
Unsurprisingly, someone actually did make a serious attempt to compile those rules [bartel.org] into a coherent form online. Kinda misses the point, IMO, but there you go.
I voted for poker, but only if it's casual. I'm no world class card player. But from that list, it's what I could spend an afternoon doing with a group of friends. Second would have been Checkers, but that is slightly limited.
I started playing bridge during my PhD, at 25. it's a very interesting strategy game, once you get over the "game for old people" stereotype. If you can find a few friends to learn and practice with, I definitely recommend it.
There is also a very nice web-based community (so you can play it even without friends and without leaving your mom's basement); most active players play online on bridgebase.com, including the pros -- on that website you can easily find world champions playing a hand or two just to chill out. It's free (as in beer), unlike the face-to-face tournament which are sorta expensive.
How is this not in here? Must be the most popular card game I have ever played. I have in the euchre club in my high school. We did not have a football team, or any official clubs that I know of, but we had euchre every day.
I can't believe that Cribbage isn't on the list. Then again, maybe it doesn't meet the Slashdot demographic. My parents, who are in the 70s+ now, and their friends all play Crib. Maybe it just isn't as popular in the US as it is in Canada.
I've always been interested in learning how to play Go, ever since I read about the game in an old DIY woodworking book. My plan was to build a Go board and then learn the game. It's one of those projects on my To-Do list...
I choose Chess because of the ones listed, it's the on I enjoy most with my kids, but if I was playing a game against Magnus Carlsen, then Chess would just be a waste of both our time. Granted, a brief waste.
In a casino, the house still gets a cut of poker games. You might be playing against humans, but the house is still milking $120/hr off your average $1/$2 NLHE table either in rake or time payments.
...and if you aren't playing in a casino, any other casino game can have the responsibilities of being the house rotate among willing players.
I, for example, have a craps table -- not a fancy one, but a table nonetheless. On casino night, I'll let whomever wants to handle the swings of the table be the house,
I'll let whomever wants to handle the swings of the table be the house
Whoever, for goodness sake! They are doing the wanting (ie whoever is the subject and thus stands in the nominative case), nor does the 'to' in the infinitive act as a preposition (in which case it would be dative and 'whom' would be most correct, though it is used in the accusative also). "Whomever I permit to be the house" is OK, but "whoever I permit to be the house" is probably better: you are doing the permitting, and even th
Based on the content of the list alone, either you're not nearly as nerdy as you think you are, or else you're so nerdy that you've transcended normal nerd culture to the point that you are a thing to be feared and reviled...
Shall we play a game? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Shall we play a game? (Score:5, Funny)
Or Tic Tac Toe...
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Or Tetris...
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Why do we let EA live?
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Who's EA?
[Runs away and hides...]
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Re: Shall we play a game? (Score:2)
3D is for pussies. The only way to play tic tac toe is on a 4x4x4x4 hypercube. A straight line of four in any direction wins.
Seriously, try it.
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Yeah, nothing like playing a game and having an ad pop up as you are about to make a move... Tic-Tac-DOH!
Re:Shall we play a game? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't anyone make a decent version of Global Thermonuclear War?
Because the only way to win is not to play.
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No love for DEFCON [introversion.co.uk]?
Re:Shall we play a game? (Score:5, Funny)
Why can't anyone make a decent version of Global Thermonuclear War?
They tried it out in Japan, but it wasn't well-received. It started out with a bang -- it was really hot for a while and made a lot of noise at first -- but there was a lot of pressure which led to some major backlash, then the whole thing mushroomed from there. Overall, it was a big bomb.
They developed an upgraded version for the US and Russia, but that went cold and was never implemented. The plan called for an initial launch in Cuba, but there was some sort of crisis and everything that had been shipped was recalled.
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First Strike (I have it on Android) is pretty good as well. Fast paced once things get started.
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Are you buy any chance talking about DWF's Eschaton [nowhereband.org]?
[Illustration [flic.kr]]
Go (Score:5, Insightful)
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Atari.
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Gin!
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Touchdown!
Re:Go (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh, how I wish I had moderator points.
There is death in the hane (Score:2)
Go. How could you miss that one?
Someone should hane whoever came up with this poll.
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Social Opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
My choice is Poker, because for me, it's the most social of the games listed. When my friends and I were all local to each other (we're now scattered to opposite ends of the country), we'd get together for penny-ante games that were more about conversation, jokes and obscure movie references than about gambling. The big winner of the night might leave $4-5 richer, the big loser might drop $2-3, but everyone would have had a great time.
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We still use one of the big poker sites to host our free games, then include a Google Hangout on top of it for some multi-person video conferencing, allowing people cross-country to virtually play at the same table.
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We had games like that in high school. Best poker experience ever.
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Penny ante sucks and is not really poker. You can't bluff in penny ante, everybody is always going to call. Might as well play 'go fish'.
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We did that a few times with Texas Hold'Em except with a winner-takes-it-all prize, but the challenge was finding the sweet spot where there's enough at stake that people take it a bit seriously but not too seriously. With no money involved it was just crazy random play, people didn't care so they played the way that was most fun like playing every hand, pulling off the most absurd bluffs and so on. It gets old pretty quick and there's no penalty to busting out, the resemblance to real poker was minimal.
On
bridge is social too (Score:2)
All of that applies to bridge too. The main problem with bridge is that you need multiples of four to play.
Chess (Score:4, Funny)
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possibly the only game ever invented...no element of chance
Wat?!?
Go? Arimaa? Tic-Tac-Toe?
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Chess is the only game (possibly the only game ever invented) that has no element of chance whatsoever. You win or lose purely by the decisions you make and the power of your own intellect. Even though I'm not very good, I do find it a stimulating and very satisfying game.
Possibly the only game event invented that has no element of chance? You need to try more games, it's not even the only one in that list. Anyway, a lack of chance doesn't by itself make chess better or worse than anything else.
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When you play a bridge tournament, you play as part of a 4-person team. All the cards are dealt and placed in boards such that once they're played, they're replaced back as the North, South, East, or West hand.
Now your team of 4 is split into two partnerships, one playing all the N/S hands, one playing all the E/W hands. For any given hand of N,S,E,W, what counts isn't what your partnership does on your cards (either N/S or E/W), it's the delta between what your other partnership scored and what you scored.
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I was going to say pretty much the same thing and you beat me to it. When I was young I loved bridge so much. My parents played duplicate bridge in a local group and taught me to play and let me say, being a bridge-playing only child is incredibly frustrating. The only way I could get a chance to play was if someone came to visit by themselves, who also played bridge, and who didn't mind playing with a young kid. That didn't happen much.
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I played a lot of bridge in college & grad school, but then only read about clubs playing in the middle of the day. Just six weeks ago, I found a local club that has evening games, and I'm getting back into the groove after two decades of playing only bad contract bridge every other year when Christmas was at my parents' house.
Check for local bridge clubs where you are; they love to have younger players, and most are happy to accommodate singletons until they find a regular partner.
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The AI in master chess computers, in essence try as many combinations as possible to find the best outcome. However it still takes way to long to process all the possible games. So there is a degree of trimming involved. Meaning not all combinations are in play. So there is a particular degree of randomness based on what future actions we choose to predict and not.
I personally stink at chess and can barely see 2 moves ahead of me.
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Actually, if properly (perfectly?) played, doesn't White win? So that random selection at the very beginning really determines the inevitable outcome?
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Nope, if both sides play pretty much perfectly they'll always draw, I think.
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While it seems likely that perfect play by both sides in chess will result in a stalemate, a quick search didn't turn up any actual research that proves it. Interestingly, for Go, there is a simple argument to see that perfect play will result in a draw, provided that the komi [wikipedia.org] (handicap points awarded to white as compensation for moving second) are chosen optimally.
Let's say we have two theoretically perfect players playing a game of go. In normal go games, it doesn't matter what the difference in points
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I always played chess to stalemate. It's usually a mistake on my opponents' part that hands me the game. I've lost probably 2% of the games I've ever played.
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Actually, if properly (perfectly?) played, doesn't White win?
It's an open maths question, nobody has ever number crunched the perfect game.
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I don't know.
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Spades (Score:2)
Spades is my favorite card game. Used to play just about every night with my suitemates.
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Nah, 500.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5... [wikipedia.org]
Missed a lot of classes in college playing that.
Munchkin! (Score:3)
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It can be, but it can also get to be a bit of a slogfest with more than two or three players. I've played games that have lasted six hours because the incentive is to constantly team up against the person in the lead, and there are so many ways to knock them down. I've also seen people get pissed off at other people while playing, which is probably to be expected in a game that openly encourages you to stab your buddy in the back.
It's clever and the cards are especially funny the first three or four times
Pinochle (Score:2)
It's the one group game I get to play semi-regularly - my wife and I have been playing it with the same friends ever since we got out of college, back in the 80s.
When I was still in college, Cribbage, Hearts, and Spades were all very popular in the dorms.
I've always wanted to learn Bridge, but since I'm the only one in my circle with any interest - it's never happened.
What a crappy of options! - no Pinochle? (Score:2)
Pinochle wipes the floor with the rest of these. There is chance involved (based on the deal), wagering, trump cards, having a partner whose cards you are not fully acquainted with, and various styles of play that have all sorts of good and bad consequences based on all of the above, as well as the opponents style.
Re: What a crappy of options! - no Pinochle? (Score:2)
So a poor man's Bridge, then?
Obvious missing option (Score:5, Funny)
Duh!
Pencil and Paper Games? (Score:3)
This is slashdot why is there no AD&D option? No Gurps? and worst of all no cowboyneal?
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CowboyNeal is my stable hand in World of Warcraft.
*This is an outright lie. I don't even play WoW.
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" No Gurps"
I agree, Get rid of GURPS.
Chess... (Score:2)
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You don't know the rules for Checkers?
Re:rules for Checkers (Score:2)
Bridge has two essential features (Score:2, Funny)
Chance and partnership - when you lose, you can blame the cards or your partner.
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Re: Bridge has two essential features (Score:2)
I believe the term you're looking for is 'centre hand opponent'...
Traditional missing option (Score:2)
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That's one I used to play when I was a kid. We played games every Sunday, before the Disney movie of the week started at 8:00. We would play board games like Monopoly, Life, Careers, and so on, or play card games like pinochle, canasta, and poker. Not all on the same night, of course.
With poker, we played many different types, including 5 card draw, 5 and 7 card stud, something dad called baseball, Oh Hell, and a few others. The dealer called which game we played, and the deal passed to the left after each
The glass bead game (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Calvinball (Score:5, Funny)
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Unsurprisingly, someone actually did make a serious attempt to compile those rules [bartel.org] into a coherent form online. Kinda misses the point, IMO, but there you go.
Poker, with caveat (Score:2)
I voted for poker, but only if it's casual. I'm no world class card player. But from that list, it's what I could spend an afternoon doing with a group of friends. Second would have been Checkers, but that is slightly limited.
Fizzbin! (Score:3)
Euchre (Score:3)
Bridge (Score:3)
There is also a very nice web-based community (so you can play it even without friends and without leaving your mom's basement); most active players play online on bridgebase.com, including the pros -- on that website you can easily find world champions playing a hand or two just to chill out. It's free (as in beer), unlike the face-to-face tournament which are sorta expensive.
Re:Bridge (Score:4, Funny)
"There is also a very nice web-based community"
and if you want to keep it that way, you'll stop promoting it!
Kaiser! (Score:2)
Global thermonuclear war? (Score:2)
Come one, how can you not have that as a choice? It has all the movie and nerd cultural references you could ask for.
Euchre (Score:3)
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Dragon Poker (Score:2)
straight to Falken's Maze (Score:3)
Anyone who voted anything else=fail. Please turn in your Nerd Pass immediately.
Hearts & Cribbage & Go (Score:2)
I can't believe that Cribbage isn't on the list. Then again, maybe it doesn't meet the Slashdot demographic. My parents, who are in the 70s+ now, and their friends all play Crib. Maybe it just isn't as popular in the US as it is in Canada.
I've always been interested in learning how to play Go, ever since I read about the game in an old DIY woodworking book. My plan was to build a Go board and then learn the game. It's one of those projects on my To-Do list...
Personally, I like Hearts. I find it has th
so many card games, and you missed one. (Score:2)
whist! But I rather play a board game. power grid, agricola, pandemic, 7 wonders ...
We're not supposed to complain about lack of choic (Score:2)
But in a poll like this there really, really needs to be an "Other." I'm a Scrabble man.
Fizbin ... (Score:2)
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Bam! Well done sir.
With who? (Score:2)
I choose Chess because of the ones listed, it's the on I enjoy most with my kids, but if I was playing a game against Magnus Carlsen, then Chess would just be a waste of both our time. Granted, a brief waste.
Solitaire (Score:3)
I stopped playing it, the cards kept flying off the car's dashboard as soon as you get the windows down on the highway
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In a casino, the house still gets a cut of poker games. You might be playing against humans, but the house is still milking $120/hr off your average $1/$2 NLHE table either in rake or time payments.
I, for example, have a craps table -- not a fancy one, but a table nonetheless. On casino night, I'll let whomever wants to handle the swings of the table be the house,
Grammar Narcissism (Score:3, Informative)
I'll let whomever wants to handle the swings of the table be the house
Whoever, for goodness sake! They are doing the wanting (ie whoever is the subject and thus stands in the nominative case), nor does the 'to' in the infinitive act as a preposition (in which case it would be dative and 'whom' would be most correct, though it is used in the accusative also).
"Whomever I permit to be the house" is OK, but "whoever I permit to be the house" is probably better: you are doing the permitting, and even th
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I haven't played that game in 20 years. No one I've met outside of Michigan knew it.
But back in high school, spending a Friday night playing euchre, eating pizza, and slowly getting drunk (not necessarily in that order) was great fun.
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That was my answer.
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Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan or Werewolf are now mainstream
but there are still people playing and buying monopoly ... *shudder*
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Yeah. Of the list, I picked Blackjack, but I'd prefer backgammon.