Texas Holdem Strategy

nsidestrate · ITH MVP Joined: 26 May 2004 Posts: 21647

At least this one has some strategic elements. I've played this while drunk at a party and on on-line forums and think it is at least mildly amusing. It is currently quite popular at 2+2, which may be a strike against it.

The game is called "Mafia" and the set-up is like this. We need a bunch of players (I think it plays best around 15 or so, but it can work with numbers as low as 9 or 10). I will assign roles randomly to those who sign-up from the following categories:

Mafia: These are the "villain" characters and they play against the rest of the group. Their goal is to eliminate all the other players in the game.

Innocents: These are the other side of the game. Their goal is to identify and eliminate the mafia characters.
Detective: A special class of innocent, these players can investigate other characters and determine if they are mafia or innocent.
Doctor: A special class of innocent, these players can protect any one character from being killed in a turn.

Assuming we get 16 or so interested participants, the breakdown would be something like 4 mafia, 1 detective, 1 doctor, 10 innocents.

Play proceeds as follows:

Each participant gets their role assigned via PM. Mafia players are advised who the other mafioso are. Mafia players are permitted to interact with each other via PM, innocents may only interact in public on the posted thread. Mafia players will, of course, also post on the public thread as well.

During the "night" phase of the game, the mafia will send me PMs indicating which inoocent they intend to kill during that round of play. The detective sends me a PM indicating who they intend to investigate and the doctor sends me a PM indicating who they intend to protect that night. The doctor may protect themselves. The mafia's victim will be selected by majority vote. If they are dumb enough not to have a majority in their PMs, then no innocents will be killed on that turn. If they select someone who was protected by the doctor, then the person will not die. Otherwise, the person they finger will show up dead the next "morning." I will send a return PM to the detective indicating if their investigation revealed the subject to be mafia, doctor or innocent.

Once I post the results of the PMs, the "day" phase of the game begins. During the day phase, the players who are still alive discuss who they think might be a mafioso and vote for someone to kill. The mafioso are posing as innocents during the day and they also vote with the innocents. A plurality of innocents is required to reach a decision. If there are 15 innocents alive, then 8 people must vote for the same person in order to "lynch" them. When the person is lynched, I will reveal if they were innocent or mafia and we will begin the cycle again at the top.

There are a number of strategy elements, but it is usually more fun if I let the players work that out on their own.

In slower moving forums, the "day" phase is usually indicated at a specific time each day. In faster moving ones, it ends when a plurality is reached. We'll see how it goes, but we'll probably target one round per day.

Let's see. Once a player is "dead", he can no longer post anything of substance to the thread. He can post a "How could you have done this to me?" type thread, but he absolutely can not share who he suspects the mafia were or what he knows if he was the detective.

The game ends when the innocents have lynched all the mafia players or the mafia have killed enough inoocents that the innocents can no longer muster enough votes to lynch any mafia players.

You can read about other variants of the game on Wikipedia.

If you think you are interested in playing, post here to indicate that you want to play. You should be willing to commit to being able to read the game thread and post at least once per day, so that the game moves forward at some pace.

If there is enough interest, I'll start up a game thread and send off the initial PMs to the players. If not, I'll just return to posting about poker and White Castle.

I'm going to target 15 players. The list thus far is:

1. therivierakid
2. ey215
3. Poker_elmo
4. angel-fish
5. cicerius
6. taz115
7. Piemaster
8. SteveGriff
9. Damo_1
10. toom
11. McFoldem
12. Cybrarian
13. Malteg
14. irishiain
15. Darvon
16. Suited_pair
17. Fumseck

therivierakid · 53o Joined: 22 May 2005 Posts: 5216 Location: SuA

Oooh, oooh, pick me pick me...

I wanna play!

ey215 · Joined: 18 Nov 2004 Posts: 649 Location: Escondido, CA

I'm always up for something like this.

poker_Elmo · 2K Club Joined: 17 Jun 2004 Posts: 2647 Location: PA

This sounds like a fun way to waste time - sign me up!

nsidestrate · ITH MVP Joined: 26 May 2004 Posts: 21647

Just to clarify, there is no real "picking." If you wanna play, you are in. I'll even take newbies, I just would hope that no one signs up who then fails to post, because it screws up the game.

angel-fish · Joined: 27 Dec 2004 Posts: 709

Sure, I'll give it a try. Very Happy

Cicerius · Joined: 21 Feb 2005 Posts: 612 Location: Dublin

I want to play too. Potentially killing off a bunch of ITH:ers seems a good way to mark my return to the forum. Very Happy

ey215 · Joined: 18 Nov 2004 Posts: 649 Location: Escondido, CA

chillrob · 1K Club Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 1114

I'm not sure I get it. for example, how can the detective investigate anything?

nsidestrate · ITH MVP Joined: 26 May 2004 Posts: 21647

taz115 · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:34 pm Post subject:

Yeah sure sign me up.

Cicerius · Joined: 21 Feb 2005 Posts: 612 Location: Dublin

So, the rest of the innocents are, in effect, assistant detectives? I'm guessing how they get on with him or her would be an important and interesting aspect of the game?

nsidestrate · ITH MVP Joined: 26 May 2004 Posts: 21647

Piemaster · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 3:17 pm Post subject:

I'll play

taz115 · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 3:21 pm Post subject:

So the doctor/detective cannot communicate his position unless it is in the open forum? Interesting...

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