Invented Circus Games - Feedback Sought (1 Viewer)

MrCatPants

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I've been a little obsessed with trying to make games work with two different mechanics - one is a board comprised of discards (but not as stupid as shuffle derailment), second is a face up draw. I think I've settled on these structures - what do you think? Any issues/changes/oddities of how they might play?

SNAKE DRAFT - Dramaha-like mechanics, but the draw is a single card face up out of a pool. Gives those out of position a balance of power given they draw first.

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EMINENT DOMAIN - Board comprised of discards, bomb pot format straight to a flop to ensure board "makes". High-lo nature causes all cards, inclusive of aces, to potentially be in the discard pool.

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I posted this elsewhere a while back, but FWIW this is my favorite circus game. No idea who invented it—never met anyone outside of my area who has heard of it. You would think there was no strategy involved at all, given the setup, but experience shows that there are people who are much worse at this game than others...

Note: When it says “two winners,” that means it is a high/low game. Best high among all the boards, best low. Must use two cards either way, but they can be different cards from your hand.

rose with a tail.webp
 
I posted this elsewhere a while back, but FWIW this is my favorite circus game. No idea who invented it—never met anyone outside of my area who has heard of it. You would think there was no strategy involved at all, given the setup, but experience shows that there are people who are much worse at this game than others...

Note: When it says “two winners,” that means it is a high/low game. Best high among all the boards, best low. Must use two cards either way, but they can be different cards from your hand.

View attachment 1666182
Fixed limit/how much is a card for buy or trade? What is a trade? Do all turns come our at the same time? And all rivers?
 
Fixed limit/how much is a card for buy or trade? What is a trade? Do all turns come our at the same time? And all rivers?

You could play it as fixed limit if you wanted, I suppose... We use PLO rules (pot limit).

A trade is where you throw a card into the muck from your hand and get a fresh card off the deck. The cost of a trade is usually at least half and sometimes substantially lower than the cost of buying a card. In reality, there are very few situations where you’d ever want to trade before the river, so it makes sense to incentivize it with a much lower price.

The turns all come out together, as do the rivers.

As for pricing... Entirely dependent on your game. We typically play it as a $5 preflop ante, and go straight to the flop. Trades are $2, buys are $10 (option for one or the other on each street). Again, pot limit.

As a rule almost no one ever trades on the flop. You want and need more cards. Experienced players also tend to avoid trying to bloat the pot on the flop, as the nuts can change so rapidly—and with the game being pot limit, building a big pot on the flop courts potential disaster. But it happens.

Bluffing tends to be limited (A) to rivers with potentially disastrous, board-changing runouts; and (B) when someone has the nut high and wants to try to scoop by pushing out non-nut lows. But there is a lot less pure bluffing in this game since someone almost always has something.

Best played 4-5 handed, but can still be fun with 3 or 6. More than that and you typically have to eliminate burns or buy/trades.

If someone gets it all in before the final buy/trade, with others still having chips behind, we give everyone a free card on any remaining streets rather than buying/trading.

Buying in short is sometimes not such a bad idea in this game. Makes decisions a lot easier. Once people get really deep, it can get pretty terrifying.

Remembering any cards you did trade away, and scanning both your hand and the board for counterfeits is crucial. Even experienced Rosey players sometimes miss key things, because there is so much going on.

Another big part of the game is anticipating the math of the chops. Getting quartered with the nut low is fairly common. This isn’t always a disaster (if there was so much already in the pot from 4-5 players) but it often turns winning hands into small losers or breakeven.

This sounds complicated/berserk, I know. But once you get the hang of it, it is very addicting. So many times I’ve seen people go from saying “This is stupid and ridiculous” to “I can’t stop playing.” We tend to only deal it very late at night once the table has thinned out, and only if the remaining players agree. Once it starts, people are constantly saying “OK, this is my last hand” ... then they stay another hour.
 
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