Texas Hold Me
All of the Sandpit rulesets were migrated to our new Ludocity site in July 2008.
You can find the latest version of Texas Hold Me there.
A fast-paced social game of poker, lies and self-aware playing cards.
Photo: Playing Card Death in Vietnam by Abulic Monkey.
DESIGNER: Alex Fleetwood
STATUS: Awaiting Playtest
NO. OF PLAYERS: 6 - 12
PREPARATION: None
STUFF REQUIRED:1 pack normal playing cards
CREW REQUIRED: 1 Godlike Croupier Figure
TIME : tbc
ACTIVITIES: Bluffing, trading, trust
WRITTEN UP BY: Alex Fleetwood
Preparation: The players gather together. This is a fast-paced social game, so you will need a room with space to move around and ideally alcohol and snacks. Players elect a Godlike Croupier Figure (GCF) to run the game.
Instructions: The play area is divided into two.
A round begins when players each receive a card from the GCF. Three cards are displayed face up, as pool cards.
Players are never allowed to show their card. Put it in your pocket NOW.
Once everyone has a card they must announce a value in turn (nb you ARE allowed to lie about your card)
Players then self organise into groups of three, based on their assessment of the best possible hand. The GCF must ensure that groups are formed as rapidly as possible.
Players then show cards.
Each person on the team with the best hand (that is, the best 5 card poker hand made up of team cards and pool cards) gets a point.
The game is won by the first person or persons to reach five points.
Instructions for the GCF: Speed is of the essence. Keep the game flowing. You can penalise players for slowness. Your decision is final.
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January 23rd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
perhaps being the ‘owner’ of a hand could be part of this. i.e. if there are 12 players then there are 4 potential hands. 3 people can volunteer to be the owner of a hand and will be ordered appropriately. As your position in the line up would be an added selling value it would offer up the question of why you volunteered – is you card crap? If you have a crap card but a good place in line would it balance out your perceived value?
January 29th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Is there any way some rounds of betting could take place? So for example, if only two house cards were shown at the begining, the groups could bet their points, followed by the third and final house card being turned over, and another round of betting. this might make the game more exciting and have more risk. This way there is also a way for players to double cross each other. For example, if someone were winning by quite a lot it would be possible to join their team with a bad card (of course lying and saying that you have a good card), and encourage a large amount of betting even though there is the potential of loosing because of your card, this way the person who is winning can be taken down a peg or two when they loose all of their points becuase of you. I hope that is understandable, lol.
Oh and when the face book group is up can you let me know so that i can post it on the sheer lunacy group. cheers. pete.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I think betting adds an unnecessary and complicated mechanic to execute in an H&S setting. Who decides how much of each players’ individual pot is bet as a team hand? And I think it’d get messy with counters, it’s a very different scale of space – if you make players into cards it’s the same scale as chain tig. Hmm, maybe that’s not a reason but still, wield Occam’s Razor and see what it’s like without.
Ownership is interesting but I think something like that would self-organise better. And you’d want to be able to change the hand you were in. But again, I don’t think it’s necessary.
I actually think Alex’s basic plan works pretty well.
I’d add that there is simply a time limit applied per round (or turn of a pool card).
At the end of that time limit, you have to be in a distinct group of 3, linking arms.
Any players who are not, are simply discarded from the round…?
So all the croupier needs to do is to arbitrate in situations where say a 4th player is hanging on for dear life to a group of 3. Which is easy enough.
I’m not even sure necessarily that we’d need to forbid players from showing cards. It’d be pretty hard to police it and it would be such an obvious way to cheat. Let them work out how to play it. There’s a good tension between the reward for mutually showing cards – you know what they’ve got – versus the penalty – they know what you’ve got, which would play very well. It would play better if there were enough physical space for the group to fragment into smaller grouplets.
The point is that there is practically no hand that is unbeatable. Or more to the point, no card that is rubbish. It’s combinations. And the pool cards will change the game every time they turn, so you could be in with 3 aces but then two kings turn up and the kings in the room are now trying to find each other. (I think we are definitely talking Hold’Em rather than Draw for this, although it might be nice to play the Draw version just to see what the base mechanic would be).
ah, I just reread your pitch Alex and you have all the pool cards up from the start. I think turning them one at a time might be more interesting because they’d change the game in that way. but that’s a good thing to playtest. the trade-off is with the time for each hand
What if every turn of pool card, rather than betting, the 3 cards had to declare what their hand was? Which could be collective or individual bluff or truth.
As for the ganging up on players with 4 points, I think that they’d probably work out ways around it if they’re smart and it’s actually a good levelling-up mechanism.
Certainly I’d echo Alex – keep it simple first off, playtest it, see how it works and then add further rules as necessary to refine play. The emergent complexity of this simple mechanic is pretty big. It’s a nice mechanic though.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
We playtested this at the Sandpit this evening. Thoughts:
- People name which card they have by going round the circle. This creates an asymmetry (in terms of motivation to and safety of lying) between the first person to speak and the last. This part has to be quick; it trips up people who haven’t decided what to lie
- The members of the team which won the last round have to speak first, second and third.
- We started with two pool cards, and then played an extra two after the teams were formed. This worked very well.
- IMO, it’s better if you have a number of players divisible by three. We played one round with 10, where one person was left out. You shouldn’t allow people to form groups of less than three, because forcing a three means that two people with good cards will have to take someone else along for the ride.
- For the second round, we added a “lying bonus” - if you lie, and your team wins, you get two points. This was interesting. If you don’t play with it, first to four is better than first to five.
- I won the first game by telling the truth every time. The close runner up was the most frequent liar.
- There are a few practical issues to do with displaying the cards. It might be good to play with an oversize pack, or at least one with extra-large indices.
Gerv
February 15th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
[...] about 5hrs before we had to split. during that time we played lots of games inc the gossip game , texas hold me, Mudlarking With Francis Barking, some paper based games I forget the name of and lots of games [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Thanks to all the players and for all the comments on the game - I really feel like I’ve got a grip on a truly playable version. Playtesting works!
February 18th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Having played the game at Shunt im now even more convinced that it needs a bit more conflict and risk involved… a betting round or maybe a way of swapping alegances etc. It would make the game less repetive as it is very much the same in every round.
August 25th, 2008 at 3:43 am
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