Have I mentioned how much I love Nao? She has the best determined faces.
Anyway, this chapter means Rules. Rules mean searching for loopholes.
I have to wonder what the purpose of the tablet is. On one hand, it nominally looks like a way to prevent cheating, in the sense that someone can’t bid in place of another player. On the other hand, stealing someone’s tablet is a way to prevent them from putting in a bid. I also wonder if we’re actually going to see the physical cards or gold coins, and if so if there are ways for players to trade cards among themselves, not just between the dealer and the players. And this is the Liar Game, pretty much any rule that exists to ensure fairness has something to exploit.
What’s going to be interesting about the card game itself, is that because the lots are shown to everybody, and the winners announced, everyone will be playing the game with their cards face up. That is, people will have to build their hands not just to a mind with getting five cards, but also knowing what hands the other players may be aiming for.
With 11 people and one deck of cards, at least one person will end up with less than 5 cards, possibly more depending on how many people end up with more than 5 cards. However, it’s not exactly true in all cases that a hand with less that 5 cards couldn’t be ranked. If someone had 4 cards of the same Rank, then it would actually be quite easy to tell where they stood, even without a fifth card.
Not that anyone should actually depend on that being a loophole though.
Provided that someone’s balance is at -50 million or better, it seems possible that purposefully ending up in last place by not bidding would be a profitable move:
(300 million to start – 100 million collected at the end – 150 million for last place – 0 spent on bidding = +50 million)
However, Nao is the only person in Block A who is confirmed (by the reader at least) to be in that position. Depending on the debt of the person Akiyama replaced, he may or may not be. It’s probably safe to guess that anyone who participated in Akiyama’s popularity contest has debt. Harimoto’s group hasn’t given any information one way or another. It would be pretty safe to say though that unless Nao can convince them otherwise, everybody will be playing.
Block B is actually very interesting. Both Fukunaga and Yokoya have positive balances (Yokoya’s taken a LOT of money from other players, and even his losses in the last game haven’t negated that), so this might actually be a more viable move there. That is, if they both weren’t pathologically competitive.
The game seems to be balanced in such away that while it’s possible for everyone to break even and gain money, it’s also possible for multiple people to end up in an even bigger debt than before. In the case of multiple players in last place, if they’ve bid any money over 50 million for their cards, then they end up in the red. I wonder if this is the trap that Nao has spotted.
And Harimoto definitely seems to be setting is sights on Nao, judging from who volunteered to practice with her.
The Liar Game 
I can’t seem to place the exact trap. However, it should be noted that if Akiyama took over for someone, it might be possible for him to do something similar. If his given goal is to soak up all of the debt that others have made, then as long as his substitute’d debt is less than 150 million, he could intentionally lose, pay it off, then take over for someone else in the actual around.
Wow, it has been a while since I lasted post something here. Anyways, if I understand the rules correctly to this game the sequence of events should go like this. The first part is bidding on starting hands which there should be ten of (52/5= 10.2) eight will have 5 cards and two will have 6 cards. Everyone gets ten minutes to bid on starting hand A and after the ten minutes the winner of that hand is announced and bidding on starting hand B begins. This continues until all the starting hands are gone then the discard rounds start. At the beginning of the discard round, everyone discards the cards they do not want and each person’s discarded cards will get placed into a random lot. Those lots are then bided on the same way that the starting hands got bided on (i.e. 5 minutes to bid on discarded lot A, announce winner, 5 minutes to bid on discarded lot B…) This discarded round is repeated five times. After the fifth discard round the game ends and each players hand is ranked. Please let me know if this is incorrect.
(Note that if you want to come up with strategies on your own then do not read the next paragraph.)
There are still a lot of questions I have, the biggest one is can you give money to other players. If so then I predict that a similar strategy used in the downsizing game will be used here. For instance let’s say you got one of the starting hands that have 6 cards in it and you have a card that someone needs to make a good hand. You can tell them “hey if you give me X amount of coins, I will discard this card and you can try your luck at biding on it.” Now couple this with spending all you money to get three starting hands. First off the bat, there will be four people who will become pigs since there is no way for them to make five cards. You can then make them pay you just to discard cards and make a lot of money. Sorry if this was too long. Anyways, thank God that the Liars Game is back. I wish they would make a game show based of it.
The Trap is that the first biding money for the slot is going to the LGO. But I have an assumption that akiyama will be the pig with a big gain and will then replace another poor guy.
Depending on if I understood the rules correctly here are my thoughts:
1) Depending on if you must discard in order to bid in the change round then discarding is useless (and even if you must you could still discard one card to enter). Especially if only one deck is in use and that only the unused cards are put up on the change rounds. Hoarding cards is most likely going to make later Change rounds have fewer cards in the lots making getting any hand even more expensive. I think that’s the trap, bidding high to get a good hand instead of bidding low to get any hand at all.
2) They never specified what happens to the bids after the bidding round is over. It’s most likely that the LGT takes the money so that if they all bid high then the players lose the 200 mil throughout the game.
The thing Im wondering about is if the losing bids have to pay. I guess not as that would mean people would bet little amounts instead of large ones (I only have 300 coins and I pay each round so I best use small amounts vs if I bet 100 coins I get a pair of cards making me safe).
The bids naturally will be taken by LGT as otherwise they would lose majorly in this game (note that all the fines that the losers pay go to the top 3 players).
The trap in this game is how easy it is to become a pig player, and from the example shown the 3 cards the example player discarded were not in the lots shown, making people want to change hands as they should roughly know what everyone else has (due to the winners announcement).
This game is certainly going to be interesting. I wonder if you can see who else is biding on that lot and how much they are bidding. I want to know how many rounds there are going to be. If there’s more than one we are going to be going on a crazy ride.
Also now that they have the players finger prints, I wonder if they are going to be used in future games. That kind of data base is very dangerous. I shiver to think of what’s coming next…
I think the first trap would be that since their are 11 players and a maximum 10 hands, there will automatically be one pig by the end of hand bidding under the pretense that you get cards if you don’t discard. Next would be that people would naturally go for a high value hand when the real objective is to get any hand for minimal amount because there will be a loser by Round 1. Finally, the last one is that one person or group can monopolize the deck by buying a greater amount than the people they have therefore raising their chance of 1st and gaining more money because of the pigs that result in it.
That what i think.
NIcely called.
I miss this blog. 😦
I miss this blog, it was such a good thing. Now no one bothers with it…
Chapter 142 and 143 are out.