More than 20 years ago I tached on to Sid Meier's Civilaztion computer game as my fix for a strategic and competitive outlet. Despite the primitive graphics by today's standards I still find myself venturing into it. It is the mostest purefical (both real words) strategy game ever made.
And it's been a great tutor for my when trying to understand the lack of math when playing Internet poker and supposedly meeting up with hundreds of thousands of real people where maybe someone is simply just better than you.
In Civ (can I call you that? Civvie? Little Scivy? The Civmeister?) You get to pick a level of competition. At this point in my life playing anything other than the second to highest mode is a colossal yawn fest. I've invested so much time that all the little tricks have been figured out. But as my Accounting 102 teacher Mr. Nguyen said, "Life is not so simple my friends." Real quote that leads up to a joke. You can't Nguyen them all.
If you play perfectly on Civ and have built yourself up to be the biggest dog on the planet the AI does this cute little "pact making" thing where they share knowledge, make treaties and do everything in their AI power to make you lose.
PokerStars does the same. The clueless AI is gone. Now you are up against AI rigged to great cards and....
Yes Dorothy there is a Kansas, fake ruby slippers made with carbonite and red dye number two and people that don't have to follow the rules.
When you play smart poker on PokerStars and fold the first 20 hands because you get crap hole cards the "good player" AI has already cleaned up the "bad player" AI. Apparently the idea is to force the real human into a desperate all in and bad beat them. But since I'm so conservative I get the joy of making it to the final table, watching the good AI kill of the bad AI sitters that never should have had enough chips to buy into the game in the first place. Go all in and cross my fingers, rub my rabbit's foot, watch the rabbit run away into his cage and wonder why I can never get an ace before the 10th hand. (You should get at least one by the 6th or 7th. Tonight's ace on the 9th hand was the best in ages - i.e. non-random cards.)
I've been a good little boy lately. I haven't taken a ton of extra time as a gesture of defiance. And the collective unconsciousness on PokerStars has responded in kind. Speed of play is normal. Chat is normal instead of insane. I've made the final table and:
Let me think. Why are people folding into a sitter when all they have to do is call to win the hand? Answer - the AI is programmed with a certain set of parameters that doesn't care about chip stacks. understanding when to fold a good hand and raising on the most marginal of cards.
So when the AI gets burned off and there are three real human players left (me and three or four admins) they do this cute little trick of playing to make me lose instead of playing to win.
I expect this on Civ, but on PokerStars, even if it's just plain money my eyebrowws burned off in that charcoal grill accident have to say -
Bullshit.
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