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A secret poker game you can play on the subway
- tromp 2y ago> Each type of passenger corresponds to a specific poker card value: Child: Counts as a 10 Teenager: Counts as a Jack Woman: Counts as a Queen Man: Counts as a King Elderly Person: Counts as an Ace How do you get the players to agree on whether some person is elderly or not? Some people look 10 years younger than their age, while others look 10 years older. Short of asking people for their age, it seems to remain guesswork...
- ziddoap 2y agoIt's not like it's an official competition, and it's (probably) not for money, so I imagine you can just wing it and it will be fine. If there's a disagreement you just talk it out, which is also a good way to pass time on a subway.
- bombcar 2y agoI'd be more worried about overlap; if there are five women, and one is elderly, I'd rather count it as five queens than four and an ace.
- motes 2y agounless you include Balatro hands where Five of a kind, flush five, and flush house are possible hands with some modified card decks.
- jbs789 2y agoIt’s not clear to me when or how you “choose” your row of 5. I feel dense but I don’t think this is described…
- motoxpro 2y agoSeems fun! You choose any time to start (mutually agreed upon) You can choose any row you want. The chance (skill?) comes into play in that people can get up from those seats and new people can come in. That's why you have to choose an end station. It probably wouldn't be very fun for just one stop.
- remram 2y agoBut what's the play? It seems you don't have any control over the hand, no control over the evaluation, and there is no betting either. Something more akin to bingo, where you call out when a winning combination is found, would be a lot more engaging. Or maybe keep your chosen hand a secret, so you can do the normal betting/bluffing/folding of Poker? With the added fun that your hand might change over the course of the game.
- latexr 2y agoNotice the image which says “A pair of aces is a good start”, because two elderly people are sitting there. Think of it like each row being a pre-populated hand (which may be missing some cards) based on the people already sitting there. You pick it and then the “cards” change themselves between stations. In other words, you pick immediately once the game starts. Look around to see which row you think has the best chance to develop into something good by the time you reach the designated station.
- hot_gril 2y agoThis makes it sound a lot more fun.
- permo-w 2y agothis is a far better explanation than the article
- marras 2y agoI found myself looking for some rules on how you can influence your "hand" - is it "legal", for example: - to stand in a specific place in order to (subtly) direct other passengers into a specific section of the car, or - to take a seat yourself and give it up to an elderly person later on, in an attempt to gain an extra ace ;)
- dbl000 2y agoA group of friends and I used to play what we called "cheater's poker". There were no stakes expect bragging rights, but you were allowed to cheat in anyway what so ever. Stacked decks, marked cards, false shuffles etc. I'm curious what that would look like in this game and how far you could take it before it became socially awkward. Could you ask a friend/plant to come to a particular station at some time and sit in a specific seat to aid/hinder a set? Gesturing to someone a specific seat is open? How about outright asking someone if they'd be willing to sit in a particular spot?
- kelseydh 2y ago
- Aransentin 2y agoThis article has a strong ChatGPT smell. Things like "in the world of", "let's dive into", the bullet points, "conclusion" section, etc. Anyone else have the same feeling?
- Feathercrown 2y agoFeels this way to me too.
- Philpax 2y agoYep. Read the first few paragraphs and immediately noticed the stink. Using it as an assistant is fine, but you really shouldn't leave what it outputs untouched, especially when it's this obvious!
- cauliflower2718 2y agoIn section "Works in every major city!", the author mentions they are from France. Given that, it's not surprising that they used an AI to help with translation.
- Aransentin 2y agoSure, but the structure seems quite ChatGPTish as well, with e.g. the bullet points and section choice. You wouldn't get that by just faithfully translating a french source text from English.
- topherclay 2y agoYou might also note that in their first blog post they use the French language convention of puting a space before their exclamation marks and in this latest post they use the English language convention of no space. >Now I can update this blog and push to github, instant deploy ! vs >I would be delighted to hear from you!
- pmarreck 2y agoWhy do people care about this?
- tomcam 2y agoGreat thing about the Lexington Ave subway in New York is that you can legally gamble with your own money just by setting foot on it!
- remram 2y ago> Selecting a row near the doors can increase the likelihood of passenger turnover I don't think that's true. People get off when they get to their destination whether or not it is easy to reach the door, and sit in available spaces.
- LelouBil 2y agoPeople that only have a few stations to go tend to sit closer to doors. But also, now that I think about it, this may only be caused by french metro layouts, I'm from France too and this fact seems true to me. If your train is only a long corridor with seats on the edges, the "difficulty" of getting to/from a door is almost the same everywhere. But in the french metro you have foldable seats right next to the doors, and groups of 4 seats between doors, and when the metro is busy, it's harder to get out of these 4 seats groupings.
- remram 2y agoI mean, I totally agree, but I assumed you would play during high traffic when all seats are taken. The rules don't even say what you do with a non-full hand.
- ZoomZoomZoom 2y agoEach card value has the same probability, but subway riders' distribution is all skewed. A way to make the hands fair that comes to me right away is to take some unambiguous information about riders (coat color, presence of a hat, etc..) and calculate a hash that you can read as/transform to a hand. This should transform the distribution to uniform, at least to a degree suitable for an occasional play. Though, this will void the strategical part of the game.
- ZoomZoomZoom 2y agoThe most obvious issues with this is that the game boils down to predicting passenger patterns, but you're still just comparing two RNGs, which is one of the worst kinds of games. I also don't think this can be called Poker, really. Poker is an imperfect information game, where your hand tells you some information about your opponents' hands. It would be interesting to read HN's ideas on how you can simulate the shared information part of the game in such a scenario.
- mihaaly 2y ago[flagged]
- dbl000 2y agoYou might be able to do that with a betting aspect? If you and your partner both select two "rows" and keep them secret and then after each station you could change how much you're willing to stake you get some information based on the bet. It's an imperfect solution but I still like the premise of this game, it just needs to be field tested a bit.
- hsbauauvhabzb 2y agoIs human behaviour not predicable enough for you? I bet passengers are more likely to congregate on the side that the door enters/exits, etc
- 2y ago
- jameslars 2y agoDoes 5 of a kind beat a royal straight?
- risson 2y agoAccording to Balatro, it does
- zahlman 2y agoTraditionally, in poker variants with wild cards that enable 5 of a kind hands, it does IIRC beat a royal flush. )"Royal straight" isn't a thing; AKQJT straights are sometimes called "broadway", but they're never distinguished as a separate hand type. Whereas royal flushes do get distinguished from straight flushes, but not for any good reason.) But all of this is moot because TFA doesn't define "suits" for the "cards" anyway. And of course the relative probabilities do change when you only have 5 ranks. (And we're also effectively "drawing" without replacement; there are an effectively unlimited number of each rank available.)
- golergka 2y agoFor a second I wondered how would you assign suits to people — but quickly realized that this would be easy, but probably racist.
- dbl000 2y agoIf you eschew the standard 4 suit deck and go for a differently scaled one I think it's pretty simple - just do it based on clothing choices or items carried with more value given to a rarer case. Things like beanies, grocery bags, formal shoes could all be used to make suits and you have a bit more choices to play with on how you count the person. Do I count them as a "formal shoes" or a "grocery bag"? What do I think I'm more likely to see board later?
- hot_gril 2y agoMaybe if the passenger is literally wearing a suit, that's a suit. Or any shirt color besides white. And you can't get a flush of non-suited passengers.
- yapyap 2y agoI can imagine the discussions on whether someone fits the ‘elder person’ description that would ensue.
- oktcho 2y agoHappens all the time when I play with my son :P Same with kids and teens.
- deepAIhunter 2y agoSo you need to click pictures of random people in the subway to play this game?
- dewey 2y agoNo, you use your eyes. That's why you play it with a fellow commuter.
- fitsumbelay 2y agoThis is great. I've had some (probably naive) imaginings about extremely short term multi-player interactions in public spaces/public transport like this but always got stuck at the "how will they know it's there" part
- mplewis 2y agoThere should probably be a way to play this that doesn't rely on assuming the gender of someone you see in public.
- didgetmaster 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DecentShoes 2y agoExactly... isn't this post "transphobic" and "bigoted" according to woke-ass Hacker News?? According to what everyone here believes, you'd have to walk up to every person and ask their "gender identity". Funny how suddenly everyone snaps out of it and knows what a woman is when they don't have an opportunity to attack women's rights.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoRight so, you don’t need to talk to them. If you guess wrong about their gender identity, there’s no risk you insult them. That’s the difference.
- didgetmaster 2y agoI wasn't trying to be trans-phobic. I was just wondering how you are supposed to resolve it when you think you have 4 kings and the person you are playing against thinks that two of them are queens.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoThat’s a fair question. The game sorta suffers from a lot of ambiguity, like with the elderly. I think I just misread you because of that guy who responded to you.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoJust guess man it’s fine.
- shlomo_z 2y agoI prefer not to play a game that requires assuming anyone's gender or age But its a cute idea
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoAw I feel like it’s perfectly harmless in this instance, right? You don’t need to talk to the people, so there’s no risk of insulting them.
- shlomo_z 2y agoAgreed, but you risk normalizing it for yourself, and the partner playing it with you. I don't think it's particularly harmful for someone to play it, but I would rather set the bar higher for myself.
- kulesh 2y agoI don't know why, but I vibe-coded AI Subway Poker https://x.com/stas_kulesh/status/1892328616609841290 https://x.com/stas_kulesh/status/1892328616609841290
- acqbu 2y agoOkay nice but what if queen identifies as king?
- failrate 2y agoSecurID fob poker, anyone?
- dankwizard 2y agoHumans slaved away to give me the perfect entertainment device at my finger tips and you're trying to drag me away with what looks to be the most boring game I've ever seen? And to think Poker is the right move after we all battle our Balatro addiction?
- lupire 2y agoLaughing on the bus Playing games with the faces They've all come to look for America
- AStonesThrow 2y agoAdaptations here may account for: no "rows of 5" or even 4 seats (a photo anticipates this variant But moreover, folks here buffer a lot of personal space, and seats fill in checkerboard patterns, bags and parcels on unoccupied seats, and when the checkerboard is full, most folks would rather stand than request/insist/apologize for sitting down
- aqueueaqueue 2y agoThe teenage and elderly classifications gonna be problematic.
- Refusing23 2y agoSo you ask their age or what? when is a women a women? and when does she become 'elderly' ? you also cannot see if a teenager is 19 or 20.
- tjpnz 2y agoUse your best judgement.
- uncomplexity_ 2y agoUse your common sense.
- bibelo 2y agoWho cares, it's a game, don't push your woke agenda into it
- HenryBemis 2y agoA more legit question would be "in a deck of cards there are 4 of each". Now, I don't play poker, but assuming that is 1 deck, it's 4 aces. If it's 2 decks it's 8 aces. What happens if you get on 'that time of the day' and/or 'that specific station' and there are a bunch of old folks and you end up with "all cards are aces?". Someone is cheating!!! :)
- Rumengol 2y agoThen you're playing Balatro.
- bibelo 2y agoI like the WarGames reference
- fumblebee 2y agoI assumed that from the first picture this game would consist of counting the number of folks in a row looking at their phones at a given time. Which, frankly, I quite prefer since there's less fuzziness about classification of age groups.
- vekatimest 2y agoClicked off as soon as I read "let's dive into"
- dbrumbaugh 2y ago> [...] adding a layer of excitement and unpredictability to your journey. That's the bit that did it for me.
- lozf 2y agoVery reminiscent of "Tube Poker" (2005), A short mockumentary film by Simon Levene. ("Tube" has long been a colloquial term for London's Subway system). - https://www.simonlevene.com/portfolio/tube-poker https://www.simonlevene.com/portfolio/tube-poker - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0818537/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0818537/ Edit : in fact the points are exactly as describes at around 03:45 https://youtu.be/UttaYUv5zYg?t=221 https://youtu.be/UttaYUv5zYg?t=221