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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

Is it even possible for a "game of skill" arcade machine that dispenses high value prizes to be profitable? Seems like any such game would just breed expert players that clean house and win all the iPads with their skill. If not, surely it would invite some hacker or tinkerer to invent a device to augment their skill and (again) clean house and get a bunch of cheap iPads.

Maybe you could have arcade machines where you:

- play AlphaGo/Stockfish

- factor a huge prime

- Some other "hard" feat

and if you succeed you get an iPad. Those are the only "games of skill" that wouldn't get you bankrupted by expert players

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The luck mechanic could be made obvious.

For example the game where the lights go around a circle and you try to land in front of you for the most tickets could instead have you land the light somewhere and then dice are rolled to determine your actual landing spot.

I'm sure a real game designer could think of something more fun where your skill at the game increases your chances but ultimately luck at the RNG determines your prize.

Unless you're Jonathan Schrantz, who famously beat stockfish on the hardest difficulty as black by playing the Stafford gambit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27829913 That being said it doesn't work with Stockfish 12.

But yeah dressing what is essentially a pure con (I don't think these even count as games of luck given the payout is not fair from game to game) as a game o skill is terrible.

Your link goes to this current page, I assumed you were linking to an article about that anecdote.

That's annoying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6miHXytFWQ is the original. He has done some followups.

For non-chess people, the Stafford is pretty dubious but very trappy.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the operator were required to print the winning odds on the machine somewhere. I think it’s just that the odds are secret that makes it problematic.

The arcade machines in actual Japanese arcades are pretty fair, at face value at least. Though the prizes are typically not worth as much.

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