2004-08-18 RussCon Report

w00t! My deeply-played meta-strategy, combined with my execrable lack of knowledge of African geography, grants me meta-devil status again.

I've recently been enjoying the surfeit of poker on TV, particularly famed magician Penn Gillette's implosion on "Celebrity Poker". So this week's meta-game is about poker and magic.

POKER:

At any time, anyone at RussCon may challenge any other to a hand of Liar's Dice. If accepted, this goes exactly one hand (i.e. one person gets to roll, and the other gets exactly one chance to believe or disbelieve).

Scoring: the winner of the hand gets 3 meta-points. The loser gets 1.

MAGIC:

You can earn meta-points by performing or observing magic tricks. To perform, you must gather at least 3 people to be your audience. ("N" is the number of people in your audience.) You then perform your trick, and each member of the audience gets one chance to explain how the trick was done. The performer then reveals how the trick was _really_ done. All performers and audience members must be at RussCon at the time.

Scoring: the performer--and each member of the audience--gets one meta-point for participating. If the trick was adequately debunked (in the consensus of the audience), the first debunker gets N-1 meta-points. If not, the performer gets N+1 meta-points. The performer gets to decide the order in which audience members may debunk the trick. If you have debunked a trick for person X, then person X may not be in the audience for a trick you perform.

EXTRAS:

Anybody at RussCon while I'm there gets 5 meta-points per signature for showing me an original signature from either Penn or Gillette. Anybody at RussCon while I'm there gets 10 billion meta-points for showing me an authentic World Series of Poker bracelet.

RULES:

It is up to the high scorer in any encounter to record the result on a page I will bring. I will also bring dice to play Liar's Dice with. For purposes of this meta-game, the rules of Liar's Dice are as follows:

Start with 5 6-sided dice. The roller rolls them in view of both players. The roller then gets two rounds. On the first round, s/he may take some or all of the publicly-visible dice, re-roll them in private, and make some or all of the resulting dice publicly visible. On the second round, s/he may re-roll some or all of the dice that are still private, and make some or all of the resulting private dice public. At the end of the two rounds, the roller must make a claim about how good the resulting hand is, and the other player must orally believe or disbelieve that the actual hand is at least that good. If that guess is wrong, the roller wins. Otherwise, the other player wins. The ranking of hands is as follows, worst to best (when in doubt, standard poker rules apply):

• Shmaltz, a.k.a. 6-high.
• One pair
• Two pair
• Three of a kind
• Full House
• Four of a kind
• Straight
• Five of a kind

TIES:

Ties will be broken according to whichever player's RussCon name is lexicographicaly closest to mine ("BD"; case doesn't matter). Further ties to be broken by Russ at his whim.