This game is so rigged.

[jpstew]

I have lost every single game I've played in my 3 hours of playtime, and now have -500,000 balance. There is absolutely no strategy in this game. I can play safe, folding until I have a great hand, and I still lose to unbelievable full houses and straights on such low cards. And everytime I've tried holding out for a straight or flush? I lose, every time. Fix the damn game.

[Thufir]

It's not rigged, it's poker. You're not betting on your hand, you're betting on your opponents hands.

[ProfTigger™(closed)]

Just keep trying, occasionally the games mechanics will be in your favor. The same thing happened to me.

[TaxidermyCat]

You clearly do not know how to play poker

[RatBastage]

I have to agree it is rigged. Using the tells it is fairly easy to see what kinds of hands the other side has. And I have seen the AI have good hands FAR above the average they should have.

This does not mean you can not win, heck I win all the time. It just means the computer cheats in an attempt to make a more challenging game.

I just did 6 games using a poker calculator and a list of all the known tells and found that using this I can win about 1/2 of the games. So if your poker odds are perfect, and you have a DAMN good idea of what the tells are you can win.

However doing that also let me watch as the flop destroyed my odds of winning far more often than it helped. I.E. If pre-flop I had a 20% chance of winning with all 4 AIs there, then on average 1/2 the time the flop should help and 1/2 it should hurt. Instead the flop helped about 1/3rd of the time.

And by the time I was down to just 1 AI the flop was helping about 1/4th of the time.

So... the AI is looking at your cards to decide what to give you, and is somewhat stacking the deck in the favor of the AI. The main thing that lets you win is that they bluff, without bluffs you would have almost 0 chance of winning.

[jpstew]

Originally posted by RatBastage:

I have to agree it is rigged. Using the tells it is fairly easy to see what kinds of hands the other side has. And I have seen the AI have good hands FAR above the average they should have.

This does not mean you can not win, heck I win all the time. It just means the computer cheats in an attempt to make a more challenging game.

I just did 6 games using a poker calculator and a list of all the known tells and found that using this I can win about 1/2 of the games. So if your poker odds are perfect, and you have a DAMN good idea of what the tells are you can win.

However doing that also let me watch as the flop destroyed my odds of winning far more often than it helped. I.E. If pre-flop I had a 20% chance of winning with all 4 AIs there, then on average 1/2 the time the flop should help and 1/2 it should hurt. Instead the flop helped about 1/3rd of the time.

And by the time I was down to just 1 AI the flop was helping about 1/4th of the time.

So... the AI is looking at your cards to decide what to give you, and is somewhat stacking the deck in the favor of the AI. The main thing that lets you win is that they bluff, without bluffs you would have almost 0 chance of winning.

Wow, thanks man. I appreciate the stats. I was just raging a bit. Kind of ticked because I'm just looking to get those Borderlands 2 skins.

[RatBastage]

Use this to get an idea of what tells they have, it is still being built so take the tells with a grain of salt.

http://theinventory.wikia.com/wiki/Tells

Use this if you are not sure of the odds of your hand winning.

http://www.pokernews.com/poker-tools/poker-odds-calculator.htm

Between them you can beat the game, Just keep in mind if everything were even you would only win 1 game in 5. However with the odds and the tells you should be able to win about 1/2 of the games.

[Knusperfrosch]

Buying the characters drinks with inventory tokens makes the tells clearer. Not sure if it also makes the AI take higher risks on their cards.

And like in Poker Night 1, some characters play it very "safe" with lots of folding (Tycho in PK, Sam in PK2), others play a steady strategy (The Heavy in PK1, Brock in PK2), and some are prone on bluffing on bad hands in an attempt to drive the other players to fold (Strongbad in PK1, Ash in PK2). Max and Claptrap were the wildcards.

But just to go by how "hard" it seemed to get good cards, I couldn't help but have the suspicion that the AI cheated slightly in my favor as long as I was playing to unlock the promo items, and that maybe it rewarded me with a good Turn or River card when I stayed in the hand (esp when Ash tried his "all in" bluff crap). Because back then I seemed to get triples and Full Houses and Flushes quite often and managed to win several tournaments in a row. Got the promo items after a couple hours of play.

But after I had unlocked the items and am now only playing for fun, to see all the various video cut-scenes and to get the final achievement, suddenly some of the characters (esp. Claptrap and Ash) seem to have absurd brazen luck on their side Even if they bluffed on a hand that was at the start much worse than mine. Or maybe I just had a streak of ridiculous bad luck (20 tournaments lost in a row before I started winning again). I dunno, the game just feels more difficult rather than easier since I unlocked the promo items. I haven't kep any statistics, though. Maybe the fact that I seem to be better at Texas Hold 'Em than Omaha had something to do with it, too. *shrug*

[orangesims]

Originally posted by Knusperfrosch (TF2CrunchyFrog):

Buying the characters drinks with inventory tokens makes the tells clearer. Not sure if it also makes the AI take higher risks on their cards.

Thats the way it seemed to work for me. Sam played more hands and risked a bit more, Ash actually tightened up a bit which honestly made him a bit more difficult. Brock was a bit more prone to silly bets on poor hands too. I never bothered buying claptrap a drink, I can't see it doing anything significant.

I have to agree that the game seems rather heavily stacked in the AI's favor though.

[Duckilous]

Originally posted by Doyle_876:

You clearly do not know how to play poker

that's not very nice

[kitzschy]

It does feel like it's only getting harder the more I play -- that said, I'm not sure if it's just me getting more and more tired and frustrated (read: sloppy) grinding for that one last achievement, or if there really is something changed under the hood. I've certainly felt abnormally unlucky lately, seeing much fewer good hands than before, and even then the opponents somehow getting even better ones much more often than seems statistically likely.

Never used any calculators or bought drinks, yet I was $300+k in the green when I got the last unlocks and started buying a round of drinks at the beginning of every tournament (so it /should/ be getting easier, right?), but now I'm really struggling to even break even in the long term, and my all-time win percentage has gone down from 25% to 22% (meaning it must be closer to ~20% after the last unlocks). Those may seem like small differences, but since there are five players at the beginning of every tournament, all other things being equal 20 is the magic number above which is money coming in and below which is only losing it. It does feel quite frustrating not getting any closer to my goal no matter how much time and effort I put into it, unless I get that percentage on the rise again.

Currently I "only" have ~80 tournaments played, but at this rate it'll take hundreds before I'm done getting that million. I guess that's one way to add longevity to the game, but not one I enjoy very much.

[Cajun]

The only game I played of it...before it refused to load completely. I wanted to end the game so I planned to lose. I went ALL IN every single time...after about 20 rounds I won.

[Jeo Nugu]

I've won several tournaments, but I usually lose 8 or 9 in a row in between. There was one where I was in a showdown against Ash, and I only had $7000, while he had all the rest of the chips. Believe it or not, I came back to win that one! Oddly enough, on the very next tournament, I busted out on the very first hand... went all in with three kings, thinking sure I had that hand, but Claptrap had four 9's. Un-freakin-believable.

But, there does seem to be some... suspicious... logic going on. Just tonight I watched Claptrap win 4 tournaments in a row, and in one of those, the tournament was finished in about 20 hands, and he won every single one of them. Possible, but highly unlikely in the real world.

[Two Clicks]

If youre in the red then you arent playing poker how you should be. I dont think I was ever in the red after my 10th game. 2nd poster said it.... play the opponents hand and Ill add, learn to play the opponent to.

There are a few posts about that explain how each ai player tends to operate. Just dont get fixeated on betting or trying to win each hand. Choose your battles carefully and bet big when you are more sure than not you will win. Oh and make youre only luck by understanding the likelihood of opponents getting better hands then you. Folding is your friend!

Good luck

[Two Clicks]

Originally posted by Cajun:

The only game I played of it...before it refused to load completely. I wanted to end the game so I planned to lose. I went ALL IN every single time...after about 20 rounds I won.

Originally posted by Scarmax:

I
But, there does seem to be some... suspicious... logic going on. Just tonight I watched Claptrap win 4 tournaments in a row, and in one of those, the tournament was finished in about 20 hands, and he won every single one of them. Possible, but highly unlikely in the real world.

Ive lost allins on the first hand and also ko'd two or three players in a first hand... but never won a tournament outright on the first hand. To do so you have to be v. lucky and get the right cards. But you can also bully any opponents and take their money if they have chosen to bluff.

Ive won many tournaments this way by betting v. aggressively in the first three hands and buildingt a sizeable pile of chips which i then used to bully those left in play. Having and keeping a substantial pile of chips is key if you want to win tournaments quickly otherwise its a grind at best.

[Crohns Racing]

or you just suck at poker