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)
 * The ruleset includes links to online services which will compute the hash for you (copied below for convenience). If you are on a UNIX-based operating system, you should have a command line utility to do this same thing (usually called sha256sum).
 * https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/sha256.html
 * https://passwordsgenerator.net/sha256-hash-generator/
 * https://xorbin.com/tools/sha256-hash-calculator

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). The bartering phase can also be a great time to spend any extra chips you have lying around either through gambling or trades with other players, since having a high amount of chips can impact your wealth.

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. Wealth is increased by the amount of Trungs (secondary currency) and Chips (primary currency), which gives players an incentive to find ways to spend or manage their wealth instead of hoarding it.

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.

Making Proposals
There are two kinds of proposals in Round 10, standard proposals and urgent proposals. While both of these are made in the #proposals channel, they have some important differences.
 * Standard Proposals: These require the player to spend a Standard Proposal Maker, which can be acquired by spending Trungs (a secondary currency) or by placing high in the hand contest. Voting on Standard proposals happens in the phase after it was submitted, and needs at least 1/2 of the votes to be in favor. These proposals contain any kind of changes to the game state or rules that you want them to. NOTE: Since votes are counted at the end of a proposals voting period, votes cast before its voting period officially begins are still counted! So don't forget to vote when you can


 * Urgent Proposals: While they don't require a resource to make, Urgent proposals should only be used to correct the game to an intended state and keep it playable. Voting on Urgent proposals begins immediately, and only succeeds if no more than 2 votes against it have been made.

Due to the nature of Standard Proposals requiring a limited resource, co-authoring and collaborative proposal writing are commonplace in Round 10. A lot of these proposals are drafted publicly on the wiki Proposal Ideas and Discussion. Players looking for proof reading, feedback, or help with creating mechanics use the #prospective-proposal-crafting channel to workshop proposals without clogging up the main channels.

Stuff we should probably add to this
* Explanation of how/why the tax system was designed the way it was and play impacts
 * An explanation of the hand system and hand math
 * Beginnings guides to Slots and War
 * Pokerface commands (Mentioned briefly in secret actions now, but not fleshed out)
 * Add text to bartering system (Partially completed but probably could use more detail)