A secret poker game you can play on the subway | Hacker News Reader

A secret poker game you can play on the subway

experience.prfalken.dev

301 pointsoktcho110 comments

The 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.

You 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.

Is human behaviour not predicable enough for you? I bet passengers are more likely to congregate on the side that the door enters/exits, etc

You can definitely select a new hand each station by making inappropriate gestures or sounds.

I was waiting for the author to discuss actual strategies, like subtly herding new passengers toward a seat, sitting in your own row so you can get up when the right person comes along and graciously offer them your seat, saying "I think there's some spilled Sprite there" if the wrong person attempts to sit down (only if there are plenty of seats left, of course), etc.

Other ideas?

I was definitely thinking along the spilling fluids strategem. Coughing without covering your mouth, playing obnoxious music, making unnaceptable agist comments...

As for enticing the desired people, perhaps carry lots of baggage to fill the spaces around you and selectively offer to remove them when people come aboard

Hi, OP here. I love your suggestions, and I love the way HN comments turn. I play this for fun and never really thought of creative strategies like yours, but they are great ! I will definitely use them next time to win with my son :)

> . I also don't think this can be called Poker, really. Poker is an imperfect information game,

There is no game of Poker. It is a wide variety of games like 5-card draw, Omaha, Texas, studs, Chinese open face poker. Also a slot machine where you draw 5 cards or pretty much any game that uses classical poker hand rankings is called poker. There is also a planning poker.

I think the name is fine

The card games listed have the information aspect in common. The slot machine is not a Poker, it's a poker-themed slot machine and the game people play with it is called losing money.

Not that I disagree with anything about the nature of those games, but your narrow usage of a word poker is wrong.

I even checked the Wikipedia article about Poker and there is a quote very similar to my wording:

"Other games that use poker hand rankings may likewise be referred to as poker."

Well, it's my opinion based on the assumption that players used to specific common card games under the moniker might be disappointed when a new game with the same name lacks an essential component (and it's not cards).

Naming things is hard but there's no hard limits for the expansive approach, you can call all card games or all 5-things-games Poker. Your mileage as to communication with other people may vary, though.

Where we're disagreeing is at how we're seeing what's conventional.

All you say is true. Except in your first post you didn't say "I personally prefer a convention of calling only those games poker".

You said "you can't call it poker" with a tone of an authority.

And I say that you can.

> You said "you can't call it poker" with a tone of an authority.

This is a misquote, if I ever saw one.

What I've actually written (emphasis added): "I also don't think this can be called Poker, really."

In other words, this is my personal line of thought, with the argument given in the next sentence, and "really" means "to some extent it can, but not to the full".

Fair enough. My mistake.

Refrain from using quotes unless you are actually quoting something that someone has said word for word. One good aspect of quoting the actual words someone has said is that it can act as a sanity check against potential misinterpretations you might have made.

The actual quote, word for word is "I also don't think this can be called Poker, really."

There is nothing suggesting a tone of authority, on the contrary this is someone explicitly sharing their own opinion on the matter.

You can call all Fizzy soft drinks coke, at that point you're relying in shared context to make it work, not in hard definitions

“Poker is a family of _comparing_ card games in which players _wager_ over which hand is best according to that specific game’s rules.”

— [WikiPedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker)

I don’t think I would have gone for that definition, but now that I see it, it sums up everything I’ve ever known “Poker” to be. The game is won by comparing cards you have left (meaning that Rummy, Go Fish, or Bridge are different), and there’s a wager about the game (possibly just bragging rights if not playing for money).

I totally agree, but I stand by the opinion that imperfect-information bit is so essential that it's simply assumed (it's, naturally, not specific to just poker card games, though). If you come to the table with your own stack of cards to draw from, it's very likely going to end badly for you, depending on how transparent you're with the matter.

In the style of Texas Hold'em, both players could secretly choose two seats each and write them down. Then, you'd collectively choose 5 seats to be the shared "cards."

This next suggestion would stretch the "poker" definition somewhat, but I think it retains the same characteristics (imperfect information, shared "cards").

You start from a shared list of attributes (coat color, presence of a hat, etc.) and designate a row of seats. Each person gets one attribute secretly. You wager after each stop following poker conventions.

Only downside to this is that unlike poker, your hand can get worse after a stop.

This misses the information your secret hand gives you about the other player's chances. In poker if I got an Ace in my hand the chance of the opponent having an ace lowers.

If I got somebody wearing a black coat, this has no impact on the chance of my opponent having a black coated passenger.

This actually increases their chances, because they can pick the same seat.

Discard any hands where you pick the same seats, at the end.

You can also play actual poker like this. Each player writes down random numbers 0-51 in predefined order. You reveal some of those numbers to the other player who adds their own number mod 52 to get their private hand. You all slowly reveal both numbers for shared cards. If one of your cards matches the shared card you have to start over, same deal if at the end multiple players end up with the same cards.

It’s a slow process, but when the goal is wasting time and you don’t have cards it’s a poor substitute.

The other day I was playing a game that let me project fire from my finger tips and fly. It was a lot of fun, but in reality it made no logical sense...

> The most obvious issues with...

... your comment is that you're trying to analyse everything instead of just having fun. Not everything is a math' problem. It's OK to have fun things that don't make sense. I don't think the author is trying to create a perfect gaming experience. I think the author is just trying to have fun.

I'm just pondering on how to change the game so it becomes more fun for me. Coincidentally, I know I can have a great time playing a game commonly known as Poker, so it's natural to compare the two.

I also expect HN to have lots more people interested in game theory and game design than any random place so it seemed appropriate to share and invite people to throw ideas about (which is also kind of fun).

Let's have fun any way we can!

I made a more poker-esque game that doesn't require any dice or other materials, cause my friend and I were waiting in line forever somewhere. You play as a buyer haggling with a seller over some shiny vase. Each player establishes a secret random number*, being the max the buyer will pay (demand) or the min the seller will sell for (supply). Then they haggle, then they win the difference between the agreed-upon price and their secret number. Or, either can kill the deal at any time, and both are penalized based on their secret number**.

It's limited info, random, there are weak or strong starting positions, and you can bluff. Tournament style might be interesting because of the Prisoners' Dilemma. But I gotta say, it's a lot nerdier than this subway game.

* Both think of two numbers 0-50 and only say one aloud. Add the other person's number to your secret one and mod by 50. Then buyer adds 50.

** Seller penalized N, buyer penalized N - 50 iirc.

Poker is not a card game, it's a betting game with imperfect information. This has no betting round so it is not poker.

You can fix this by allowing each stop to be a round of betting.

From a ludology perspective poker definitely is a card game. With the cards leading to various dynamics.

The betting aspect features in the short mockumentary film from which this comes: Tube Poker (2005) by Simon Levene.

- https://www.simonlevene.com/portfolio/tube-poker

- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0818537/

Oh that's where it comes from ! I couldn't find it, thank you so much ! I will edit my article with the link.

Without the iterative rounds of betting, raising and folding (which require imperfect information) it isn't poker, it is only a luck contest using poker-like combinations.

Each 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.

> 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...

It'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.

I'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.

unless you include Balatro hands where Five of a kind, flush five, and flush house are possible hands with some modified card decks.

> 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.

People 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.

I 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.

It’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…

Seems 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.

But 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.

Notice 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.

this is a far better explanation than the article

I 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 ;)

A 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?

Cheaters poker sounds like a blast, but it sounds like it would descend pretty quickly into a physical game of trying to peak at other people's cards and them defending theirs (and the game deck).

This makes it sound a lot more fun.

The teenage and elderly classifications gonna be problematic.

This 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?

Feels this way to me too.

Yep. 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!

In 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.

Sure, 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.

You 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 !

>I would be delighted to hear from you!

Why do people care about this?

I got that feeling because of adjectives like “innovative”. Thought that it might be impolite to imply that in the comments, and was relieved that someone already did.

The premise of the article is still interesting.

The premise is straight out of Simon Levene's short film from 2005, "Tube Poker". The point-allocations are described as in the article at around 03:45.

- https://www.simonlevene.com/portfolio/tube-poker

- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0818537/

Is there a list of phrases and words to avoid, to not be accused of using AI? It's getting kind of ridiculous what people identify an "AI smell". I understand if the word "delve" shows up five times in as many paragraphs, I guess, but just having a "conclusion" section is a smell now? Using the word "innovative" is a smell?

I feel awfully sorry for kids in school these days. Teachers must think everything they write is AI, considering they're still learning to write effectively and probably like to use bullet points, popular phrases like "dive into", and structured layouts that include introduction and conclusion sections.

I don't think it's any particular word or phrase that makes it seem like AI but instead the overall feel of the writing. I can't quite describe it, but it feels like it's been sandpapered of any emotion or author's voice and just feels banal. Compare the wording and voice in this post versus one of the author's earlier ones (https://experience.prfalken.dev/english/exercism/) and I think you'll see what I mean. Some of this, especially the 2nd sentence, just reads with the standard "wall of text without substance voice" that I've personally come to associate with AI.

As another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43105143) notes, some of the author's earlier blog posts use a different style of punctuation so I'm willing to bet that they might be using AI to help them write or reformat some of their ideas. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but without some re-edits to the AI text it will take on that distinctly AI tone.

Kids who are still learning how to write still have a tone/voice/style that comes across in their writing and I think that's the particular distinction being made here.

The sad thing is ChatGPT didn't invent that style. That was just the way clear, concise writing by skilled writers was at the time they trained the model. So now if you are actually a skilled writer who tries to convey ideas in a clear, concise way, you will appear robotic :(

Your writing needs to have flavor and personality, rather than reading like a business email.

Certainly I've seen elements of this style in pre-ChatGPT writing. (Of course, it didn't just invent the style.) But I disagree strongly that it's clear, concise or skillful. The way that bullet-point lists are used here is highly distracting and frankly counterproductive, and a "conclusion" hardly seems necessary for a piece that presents the rules for a simple game. Entire sentences like "Let’s dive into the rules and strategies of this captivating game." are pure fluff here, too.

FFS. I read it and learned something. Stop jousting windmills just because they seem like propellers on warplanes that are coming for you. Sometimes they are just windmills.

"Learned" what, exactly? Anyone could make up a game like this. And it really does read to me (as it apparently did to GP) like something even an LLM could make up nowadays.

Agree -- especially if this was a post about something a real person thought of, but edited with AI (the author is in France, so it seems reasonable to use AI for editing; also it's a small blog that has been around for a while and not a content farm).

For some reason I think I would find it less valuable if the idea itself came from an AI, too.

I wrote the article in a much simpler and "french to english" way, and asked the LLM to format it in a better english style. Looking at these comments I don't think I'll do it again. But it's also the only article that made so many reads and comments. What should I conclude ?

Very 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.imdb.com/title/tt0818537/

Edit : in fact the points are exactly as describes at around 03:45 https://youtu.be/UttaYUv5zYg?t=221

Adaptations 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

For a second I wondered how would you assign suits to people — but quickly realized that this would be easy, but probably racist.

If 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?

Maybe 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.

Does 5 of a kind beat a royal straight?

According to Balatro, it does

Traditionally, 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.)

I can imagine the discussions on whether someone fits the ‘elder person’ description that would ensue.

Happens all the time when I play with my son :P Same with kids and teens.

This 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

Great 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!

High crime rate

Okay nice but what if queen identifies as king?

There should probably be a way to play this that doesn't rely on assuming the gender of someone you see in public.

It doesn’t matter if both players assume the same gender.

Agreed. I posted the same thing but unfortunately got downvoted.

I don't imagine this game can cause any direct harm, but assuming someone's gender is not something people have a habit of doing.

I 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.

SecurID fob poker, anyone?

Clicked off as soon as I read "let's dive into"

> [...] adding a layer of excitement and unpredictability to your journey.

That's the bit that did it for me.

I don't know why, but I vibe-coded AI Subway Poker https://x.com/stas_kulesh/status/1892328616609841290

Laughing on the bus

Playing games with the faces

They've all come to look for America

So 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.

Use your best judgement.

Use your common sense.

Who cares, it's a game, don't push your woke agenda into it

A 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!!! :)

Then you're playing Balatro.

I like the WarGames reference

I prefer not to play a game that requires assuming anyone's gender or age

But its a cute idea

Aw 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.

Agreed, 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.

So you need to click pictures of random people in the subway to play this game?

No, you use your eyes. That's why you play it with a fellow commuter.

Humans 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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com