Quote:
Originally Posted by Erin Pavlina  If I understood the betting and those blinds and all that stuff I would really love to test myself at a poker playing session in a casino. Steve plays sometimes but the problem is that he often just doesn't get a good hand and spends most of the time folding his cards. There's gotta be a better game for trying the psychic stuff. Something that would go a little faster than poker. |
Erin, and others interested in testing what Erin mentioned:
I recommend the competitive online card game,
Kongai (available to play for free). It's in closed beta right now, but in (I estimate) one to three months, it should be publicly available.
What is Kongai like?
Kongai, at the core, is a simple turn-based game of rock/paper/scissors played in a double-blind fashion (i.e. "double blind" = players make decisions without knowing what decisions their opponent is going to make), but with an added layer of complexity on top of that to give the game some depth.
It's
almost a game of complete information, in that you don't have to memorise much or internalse many mechanics; most information is easily accessible on-screen.
Some things that are hidden from you include: you can't see what cards your opponent has until they bring them into play; you can't see what decisions your opponent makes until they make them and the turn ends (there's a focus on "guessing right", which is less about guessing and more about making good decisions).
It rewards and tests all of the skills poker rewards and tests, and has significantly less randomness. The abstraction is two "character cards" battling it out, but that's just a representation—a construct—for the real mind/thinking game underneath. You could represent poker with on-screen characters, too, if you wanted, but the underlying game—the rule set: the very soul of the game—would remain unchanged.
For more information about Kongai, see my
Kongai FAQ, or my
"what is Kongai like?" FAQ post which covers the game in much more detail than I talked about here.
Alternatives to poker and Kongai
If you don't like online card games, a friend of mine (David Sirlin, a competitive Street Fighter champion and professional game designer)—the same person who designed Kongai—is making two physical card games ("Yomi", and "Spellblind"). He'd like to try to get them playable online, too, but they, unlike Kongai, can be played with physical cards. (Kongai needs a user interface, etc. It'd be too difficult to reasonably represent with physical cards and the like.)
Learn more about Sirlin on his site,
Sirlin.net — Your source of shocking insights on game design. I'll probably make a post about Kongai, Yomi, and Spellblind on the forums once they're released (since they're really unique, well-made games that will most likely appeal to many forum members/readers).
Hidden requirements for the test to work
While you may think you'd be able to test out psychic stuff with a game faster than poker, it may be a bit more complicated.
I try not to actively "cheat" and use any psychic ability when playing games, and it's hard to get an intuitive read on people I don't know that are a continent away from me (I seem to need to be able to at least pick up on their energy before I can read them; not so easy when there's little representing them apart from in-game decisions), but competitive games that are played quickly seem to draw on non-psychic skills (even Kongai, which has zero execution required. I.e. You don't have to put in a tricky button combo. You just click an option, and it happens in-game).
I also think that experienced and expert players would beat you even if you did use your psychic ability, because they'd—somehow—use the one skill that most expert players seem to all use to make superior decisions. Their ability to do that would probably, at least at first, trump your ability to consistently your use psychic ability to make winning decisions.
As most of you know, psychic ability is just that: one ability among many others, and many get by just fine without them. Perhaps if you were an expert player with honed or latent psychic ability, then you'd be able to test things decently. Alas, I am neither, but I'm working on the "expert player" part.
A note to Sirlin
(This part is slightly off topic. Forum members: replying to this part of my post would probably disrupt the topic and drag it off-course. Please refrain unless constructive.)
Sirlin, if you read this, which you might because this post will probably ping your blog, don't get hung up on my usage of "energy" and "psychic." They're just labels I give to abilities myself and others seem to be able to use. Whether it's supernatural or not, it's an interesting think to explore, hence my posting here. I find assigning "a" label better than "no" label while you explore the actual *meaning* and possibility.
Most skeptics, however scientific they may say they are, seem to be more interested in fearfully shooting down ideas because they aren't "logical" or "likely" when, to me, science is about exploration and deliberately doubting your doubt to explore untapped potential and find those fascinating, unlikely insights. (Also note: I prioritise effectiveness; whether I can explain something is less interesting to me than discovering a useful mechanic. Explain it *after* you discover it—the meaning—not before.)
I find being able to consider and explore two conflicting ideas and beliefs, especially when "the masses" disagree with you, is worthy of aspiring to. I'm inherently an optimist, so I bet zero skeptical people reading this will agree with me (which is what they do! Disagree and prematurely doubtfully-question instead of consider possibility and doubt their doubt; I use the latter approach).
Either way, what "the masses" believe is often plain bad and limiting. Most business, scientific, or psychology-related discoveries that buck common belief are called revolutionary. When people make discoveries in the paranormal category, even if they can't yet be fully explained, they're called not-kind words. In the latter case, fear seems to be the ingredient cultivating said not-kind words, not inquisitiveness and wonder. (I don't believe the
scrub-like fear approach would not be effective in competitive games, either.)
What is the nature of reality? A fascinating, worthy question, whether considered on a specific or general level. So far my studies show that the universe is resting on a giant turtle, with "turtles all the way down," but I need more testing to be sure.
