Round 10/Reference

Auction Poker is a game where players compete in auctions in order to gain randomly generated cards each week, then present cards in the hand contest to receive prizes, including the ability to create proposals and fractions of victory itself.

This page will endeavor to teach new players how Auction Poker works.

Secret Actions

Because we operate on a sealed-bid system and because in real poker hands are not publicly displayed, we use something called secret actions. Essentially, to take a secret action, you write a description of the actions you want to take, then hash them using the SHA-256 algorithm, finally revealing them after the secret information's "maturation date." Make sure to save the unhashed text somewhere else. Hashes are an irreversible process. We post the unhashed text so that other players can independently create the same hash that you did so that we can verify it.

Best Practices:

• When posting your unhashed text, reply to the message with your original hashed text to make it easier to verify.
• While you shouldn't use it as a primary method of hashing, the Poker Face bot is a useful tool to help verify a hash. ( Command: &sha before your message, example: &sha My hand is the following lol: Ace of Spades, Ace of Spades, Ten of Spades, Ten of Spades, Four of Spades, Four of Spades )

Phases

There are two "phases" in a week. The week starts on Monday (UTC). The first phase, the "auction phase" runs from Monday to Wednesday. The second phase, the "bartering phase" runs from Thursday to Sunday. In building this game, we have taken great care to ensure that players only have to check in at most twice a week to be on equal footing with everyone else. In this section, we will give a rundown of what actions you should take each phase.

Auction Phase

During the Auction Phase, you can submit secret actions for two events: the card auction and the hand contest.

In the card auction, we exchange chips for "lots," each of which contains 3 cards. Someone will draw cards before the week starts, and thereafter the cards will also be listed on the Gamestate page.

In the hand contest, we choose sets of cards from our inventories and submit them. The hand that gains the most points gets the top prize. There are seven prizes, and the seventh prize is given to everyone who submitted a hand but did not achieve any of the first six.

Bartering Phase

During the bartering phase players reveal the unhashed text of any bids and hands they submitted (See the Secret Actions sections for more info on that). Players also barter amongst each other to try to get the edge in the upcoming weeks by buying/selling cards (or occasionally other items).

Weekly Income

In an effort to make sure that idle accumulation of chips and huge blanket bets is not an optimal strategy (as its an incentive to not participate), the income players gain decreases as their wealth goes up. (In most cases, wealth is equal to a players chip count, but can also be impacted by the player being in contracts that have chips)

The number of chips a player gets at the start of the auction phase goes down by 5 for every 20 wealth they have above 300. Players who have less than 320 will gain a full 100 chips every week. The table below is a quick way to see how many chips you'll gain at the start of the auction phase based on your current wealth.

How many chips you'll gain going into the auction phase, based on your wealth.

Wealth between this	And this	Gain chips equal to
300	319	100
320	339	95
340	359	90
360	379	85
380	399	80
400	419	75
420	439	70
440	459	65
460	479	60
480	499	55
500	519	50
520	539	45
540	559	40
560	579	35
580	599	30
600	619	25
620	639	20
640	659	15
660	679	10
680	699	5
700	719	0

Stuff we should probably add to this

• An explanation of the hand system and hand math
• Add text to bartering system
• Beginnings guides to Slots and War
• Pokerface commands (Mentioned briefly in secret actions now, but not fleshed out)

* Explanation of how/why the tax system was designed the way it was and play impacts