New web game that takes 2 min to play (and perhaps a lifetime to master?): Outsmart. “Five rounds, first to 3 wins. In each round, the higher bet wins. You have 100 total points, so bet wisely. Can you outsmart the machine?”
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Victory! 3-1. I bet zero on the second round.
So far throwing the second & fourth round (0 bets) has worked if I manage to win the first one.
I do wonder how much the computer's strategy changes from game to game and round to round.
My initial assumption was that the computer would bet a little more than 1/3 of its pot on the first round, so I bet 40. It bet 28.
Funny…I’ve had better luck throwing the first round. Terribly addictive.
Also, cheers to my brethren who struggled with the slider.
I made the game, so I can share a little context here.
The machine has a couple of «personalities» it can use going into the game, so it might start out more aggressive or more defensive trying to save points for later rounds.
In later rounds, it takes into account what it knows about the player's remaining points (max and min) as well as the current score. So it behaves differently when it only needs one more round to win the game. Or if it needs to win the next rounds in order not to lose.
I'm still tweaking the strategy, there are still a couple of strategies that allow you to win almost all the time, but it's getting harder :-)
Fun fact: One player managed to win a game by using only 18 of their 100 points.
I don't get it. I played one entire game and never grasped what is going on. Is it a joke? I assume it's a joke.
took me a handful of games to get it (i _think_ i get it now anyway)
- both you and the computer have 100 points total to bet
- you win the game if you win 3 rounds
- whichever bet is the highest wins the round, but whatever you bet is deducted from your total. so if on round 1 you bet 99 points and win, for round 2 you only have 1 point left to bet
- after the first round, only the winning bet is shown. so if you bet 29 and win, you only know that the computer bet less than or equal to 28
- so it seems to be a game of odds calculation with like some chains of suspicion reasoning
Thank you. I could not figure out what we were betting on. I thought it was like final jeopardy where you determine your bet before you hear the question but no question ever appeared. This game doesn't do it for me, it needs another element to be entertaining enough to spend time on.
I got outsmarted because it took me forever to figure out I had to enter my bet using the slider thingy!
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