Poker Ante

[Soul Thrift]

Now as i think about it, Hold 'em requires a little bit of skill and luck. Where is the skill in RWK hold 'em? You only lose 10 ash and 100mil per round. Petty cash as most would say. An ante would be a bet before the round starts, to put a little bit of cash in the pot for the winner. That would be 100mil and an automatic ante you can lose every game. Now that would seem a little silly, needing more than 10 ash to even play, however... Soul Thrift has won the full pot of 0 with a full house! 100 ash bonus! yay i beat the dealer. That's silly.. full pot of 15, or 5 with a full house! 100 ash bonus! Sounds a little better i think. So whats that have to do with skill? Well when there are more than 2 players the point of the game is to win and take their ash, or just conserve your own. Skillfully you can do both, folding an unwinnable hand, and betting on a winnable 'won'... one i mean. But what do you have to lose if no one bets anything? There is no actual gamble until the game starts, except the 100mil. But with an ante there would need to be more ash to be able to bet with. Instead of betting 1 or 2 on the first round, it would have to be like 3 or 4 or maybe 2 and 5. A low bet and a high bet, it can show that the other player has cards to play with or to bluff with. With the 2 and 5 the max pot possible with one player would be 25. Hence the ash to begin playing starts at 25, not the origional 10. With an ante you know how many people will be playing right away. Without an ante though, 10 ash seems....obsolete. With having max bet be 2 and 5 there would be 20 ash per player for a possible end bet. Either way i think there should be an increase in ash to begin play and bet with.

[doug]

i think it should be made like proper hold them

where u can bet w/e u want

make it no limit hold them

at least then u can get something from it

and makes it more of a challenge no 1 cares about lossing 10 ash on a duff hand just to see if they get lucky

but if they were gonna lose more then they might care

though this would favour the folk with more ash for chips say

but maybe something like this so u can bet higher to get rid of folk just looking to get lucky

and actually win with a good hand a lot

[Northern Silence]

98% of players just use poker for card collecting...
1% of it use it to change gold into ash
and 1% of newbs actually play it hoping to win some gold...

making it no limit hold em' will just make a mess, any kind of conection problem and you end up with tons of bitching people... 10 ash nobody will really bitch if their hand gets folded by accident...

If you want to actually make some ash, play poker and collect sleved cards then wait till you need the 1 card for a RF and swap it... will take a while but theres you a good amount of ash...

i'd say it's more like 99% of noobs playing to try and get gold/ash, 1% ubers trying for cards, and 1% playing for cards.

[Northern Silence]

well trully you wont know the numbers because the people playing for just cards dont ever bet any ash. but you get the point....

the people who arent noobs that get cards drop tects/stones almost always. even randy

If you play with skill then you're already at an advantage unless those that just click the call button mindlessly keep getting the best hands. Playing without betting is also a strategy, and if you don't ever bet then whoever does has an advantage since they can actually win the hand. If you bet then you're forcing them to either call or fold, I don't think this feature is necessary; it may disuade some people into calling but I'm willing to bet (no pun intended) that a few would just not play.

[Soul Thrift]

I guess I'm the only loser playing to do something other than the regular routine. And when my chat is on, if i see someone trying to get others to play so he can win some more gold to play again, I play to beat him and take his ash and gold away. Just because i hate it. I like poker myself, if i could hold a tournament somehow i would. But for now on RWK i play to win when i can, sleeve a card, and maybe win a bonus. Thats less ashing i gotta do later, and pretty much the only things you can do playing the game. But the thing i would enjoy with an ante, is that poker noobs, heh heh, would lose more ash. If you think about it, the people trying to sleeve cards by poker would resort to tecting for cards, rather than waste 5 ash and 100mil for a chance to even sleeve a card. They can fold if they want and lose 5 ash, play depending on how many are in, or just say screw it and abandon it. But players seeing a 50ash ante would love to win it. Which would lead to max bet each round. The question is, is 5 ash worth the trouble and fold, or should i risk more? With an increase in ash used to play, that means pay out is bigger. Kind of nice if you need it, seeing as you need 50k ash to make real use out of it. Every little bit helps, gas prices went up and the industry made a huge profit. Just something to think about.

[Hopilus]

there is an easy way to get a bigger payout in poker. log mules. i do that all the time. ever tried playing poker by yourself with 5 chars? nice to know you are gonna win. and just fold the chars that you dont want to win. i play alot of poker. one of the few things i do on rwk when i have a spare 20 minutes after work and before bed.
making it so there is a 50ash ante or whatnot, would cause those who are surbound, to not be able to better their chars. how i got off of surface was poker and ashing. was a pain in the rear. most of the "ubers" who play poker, do so for ****s and giggles. most of the people. who play poker, are those trying to get in game ash for upgrades. and would not be able to spare the extra 40 plus ash per hand, just to see if their fullhouse beats someone elses fullhouse. 10 ash and 100m per hand is a safe bet.

Playing poker to make ash is pretty dumb if you can't afford to lose the ash. You have almost as much chance of losing ash as you do of making ash. You're better off just to ash and buy ash off other players. Use mules to poker gold to fund it, or make a plex if you can afford it.

[Hopilus]

using poker to ash isnt a dumb idea at all. think about it. 100m. no one else playing. bonus pots. thats how you get some 2k ash an hour. and dont say it isnt possible. if you can ash about 1k or so an hour from straight ashing. plus a few fullhouses or 4oaks, you can easily make 4k ash a day. do that for a week, and you have 28k ash. do that for a month, and you have more than enough to get off of surface, to upgrade an earthen to a crystal and then to a shadow. between selling gold for in game upgrades and ashing them, it doent take that long to make a decent char.
and for surbound chars, ashing on surface is a pain in the rear. been there, done that. refuse to do it again.
not everyone has the spare money to just go and buy upgrades.
i agree, selling gold. saving the money. and buying the trans package is ssssssooooooo much easier than just ashing. but most that are surbound, dont have that luxury. so they have to make do with what they have.

Yah sitting and waiting for bonus hands I do agree is helpful. I was under the assumption that people meant actually playing poker, ie. betting and trying to make an ash profit.

The thing about poker is the fact that there ARE underage players, and the last thing Jeff wants is a lawsuit about somebody's precious child becoming a chronic gambler. It starts with an innocent poker game on a seemingly innocent online site, but then they grow up, go to vegas, and lose all their money, get in debt, get their legs broken by a loan shark, become a parapalygic drug dealer, get shot, nearly die, recover, manage to walk again, take revenge on the assailant, get shot dead by other dealers and die. That is the last thing Jeff wants, so personally, I do not see an increase in the ash "ante" anytime soon. If you want a "ballsy" game of poker, join one of the umpteen dozens free poker sites out there, but don't bitch about rwk poker.

[Hopilus]

know someone that has happened to Rag? lawl. parapalygic drug dealer. imma be giggling about that one for a while.....
in all seriousness. there is no need to change the way that poker runs. if its not broke, dont fix it. if you hate poker, dont play. if you find it boring, dont play. if you want a challenge, try logging 15 chars into one hand of poker. (if it actually works, i want a screenie. ((inside joke))) and actually playing all 15 of those chars.
let those who play poker by themselves to get the bonus pots, continue to do that. without worrying about having to ante up.
question. would you suggest that it automatically took the 50 ash ante? and what happens when no one else antes up. what if there in all actuallity, was only 1 person with it up who hit the play button. and not 4 who hit play but dont raise or call. would you have them win the 50 pot? or lose it.
i get it, would look better for someones esteem to "win a pot of 50 with 100 ash bonus". but its the same exact thing as "win a pot of 0 with 100 ash bonus" just means they have to have more for entry. which keeps anyone who just spent all their ash on public spawns out of the running.
i will reiterate what i said before, if its not broke, dont fix it. and this is one of the few cases where i believe that saying applies.

[Soul Thrift]

Well here's the thing, it's only your opinion. I just had an idea and ran with it, which is a lot more usefull than just arguing about it. Some people only decide to see the bad out of it that the good cannot be found. I'm not saying have a 50ash ante, and I'm also not saying its broken. What I am saying is that poker is boring unless it's right before acumen with 100 ash pots. Usually if something isn't so popular, it gets changed. Then people can complain about it saying 'i have to f 'in actually bet ash to play? That's gay to the maxzors.' or whatever made up word you want. Yeah a 5 ash ante, now you know how many people are playing and only the winner MAKES any ash. Yeah, sure it sounds dumb seeing as 5 players at the same time don't lose anything unless there is an actual bet, and yeah of course people will bet max if there is more ash in the pot. No one has to bet, hell why not just make blackjack, get 21 you get a bonus depending what cards you get to make 21 right away? Because that's dumb. The only reason poker is what it is now is because you can't lose anything but gold for ash bonuses, and you can have as many people possible to play. That's how it started and should stay normal through the game length. And, low and behold, we know you can log mules and do whatnot, but with an ante there is a chance you won't win anything for logging multiple mules seeing as 5 mules would be 25ash ante, or 4 mules and 1 main. Then you got someone with 1 main and 2 mules at the same time, that's 15 more ash added to it with 40ash ante/pot total. Either way each character loses 5ash and if there is no bet (like usual) that's more bragging rights to take their 5 ash from each mule. I don't want poker to be an ash collectors dream, i.e. no loss of ash and only gain like ash lotto. With an ante that turns everything around unless you are the ONLY one playing, or if you win a lot. So ok, maybe that sounds weird, but if you think about it it makes sense. Why should things stay the same? I mean what was the point in having it be level 500 or whatever to show your coordinates? The way it used to be, your coordinates were always shown without templar no matter the level. It got changed because people got dumber, and nukers got less greedy and more lively. Then there was the stipulation to have 10bil in assets to keep morale. That makes it so new players can't build and keep kingdoms without gold. So why keep the level 500 coodinate show if you can't even build a kingdom without 10bil? Because you can still pk that person until they flee the area, which leads to loss of interest if they keep getting killed after asking chat questions. That was never broken and poker isn't broken. You have to figure out that things change, for the good or for the worse. If you don't play poker because it's obsolete, then don't. If anyone wants to change anything its Glitchless (or Jeff, if you are on first name basis) who will do it. If Glitchless likes the idea they can do whatever they want, it's only an idea anyways.

Poker is going to be boring regardless because it's online. It sounds to me like all you want is a forced bet so people can't just bet nothing and still get a bonus. How about make it so you have to bet every round in order to win anything? That way there's a minimum of 3 or 4 ash bet in order to play the round through, and if you have good cards you raise your bet to the max and if you don't have anything you fold. Even if all you do is always bet the max (on 1 char or 15) you're still going to come out ahead, or you can play smart and come out with more. Forcing people to bet to stay in gets rid of the noobs that only play for bonuses which is what poker has become now.

Got to know when to hold'em...