Next Big Esports Betting Game

What do you guys think of Hearthstone becoming big as a betting game in Esports?

I think Daniel Negrauananao and Elky are becoming ambassadors of the game getting more people from the gambling world to take a look at it. Those people might like it as a 'spectator sport' making bets on it.

In case you guys missed it: http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/gen...legend-returns-introducing-liquidelky

Elky returns to Esports via Hearthstone.

I wonder how serious that is by elky. So will he train 8+ hours a day now? Or just a good marketing stunt

He has that luxury. I mean he made millions in poker already.

"E sport" is a bit retarded for a game like that, where all top pros make the same decisions in 99% of spots. It really sucks Blizzard gave up on competitive side of games, i'm slowly completly losing interest for their games, which is crazy to say considering how big of a blizzard fan i was.

And its not because a card game can't be competitive. I played another game called "Infinity wars". The skill involved in this game is so insane the best player in the world can probably give me 95%+ of the time. And its not because of his cards.

HS prizepools are too small for betting to get very big yet because small prizepools + big esports betting = match fixing

On November 15 2015 02:03 Smuft wrote: HS prizepools are too small for betting to get very big yet because small prizepools + big esports betting = match fixing

Do you see that changing in the future?

it has great potential to bet on matches imo, variance is always good for betting

but whats the point on highest level theres almost no skill difference because the game is too easy, might as well flip a coin

I find some of the arguments presented here kind of weak. It is the same as outsiders talking about poker ("Oh, its just random luck, everyone can make flushes!".
Hearthstone has many similarities to poker, imagine Fixed Limit HU for example. You only have few choices and everyone can make these choices, but making them at the right time, over and over again thats what seperates the ok from the great players. Using game theory, psychology and dynamic decision making based on patterns, reads and game flow - while maintaining calm and analytical without getting tilted... that's what can make you a world class player.
Same holds true for Hearthstone, it is not the same game but there are many similarities to poker and I am astonished that so many of you do not see that.
Of course StarCraft is far better for betting / calling out skill levels because it is closer to chess or other high level strategy games, but thats not what makes a great betting game necessarly.
Chess has almost zero betting capabilities and backgammon has died down considerably due to good computer programs. The only reason people make money with poker is because of egos and information asymmetries.
Hearthstone is very much skill based, the fact that smart guys like you do not see it is a testament to it. Is it the best game to bet on? Probably not. Is it the best eSport game of the future? Most certainly not. Is it a great eSport and maybe future betting game? I think so - for the time being it seems great at elevating gamers into casters/celebrities and giving them the ability to make a lot of money without ever winning a tournament.
Elky made a smart and overdue move, using his brand value and sponsorship contract with Pokerstars and their lack of an idea how to fix the crumble of poker worldwide, while using his desire to compete/play hearthstone and making money.
The future is gaming and not poker anymore, I am contemplating how and when I will make my own move in that direction. For now I am too occupied with running my gaming startup but I have played games for more than 25 years and we are still at day 0 of the internet and furthermore gaming. Moving back into gaming will proof to be a genius move by Elky, one that he should have done years ago.
I also think most outsiders greatly overvalue tournament results in poker. 11 Mio in cashes doesn't mean 11 Mio. in the bank, he probably would be semi broke at this point without the Pokerstars sponsorship deal and I don't mean that as an attack on him, I mean that as a reality check statement. Poker is dying for many years and with computer programs and very smart kids it is inevitable that it will change for the worse (in terms of opportunity to young ppl joining the game, obv. it will be around for many years, just not as interesting/that lucrative). Unless Pokerstars or others come up with a great new version of it (that cannot be solved easily and offers opportunities to new and old gamers), there is no way the industry can be saved. Unfortunately running a big company like Pokerstars, while being at the stox exchange listed and being focused on quarterly profits/ only maintaining the platform, will might result in something we have seen with Apple when Steve Jobs left (when John Scully took over, not when Jobs died). Maintaining and upgrading existing products, without true innovation and vision.

Anyhow /rant, just felt obligated to jump in

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Rapoza: Couldn't disagree more. Livecash game or Tournament poker are 15 hands an hour. Hearthstone Facehunter = at least 6 games per hour (with possibly at least 6-7 rounds and 13-14 turns total each).
Think about HU FL, the game is solved or close to it and the edges are raiser thin. Does it mean there is no money to be made on Highstakes? Very little. Do I know people that were/are successful at HUFL ? Yes, at least 5 friends of mine come to mind that made a million playing that game.
A 100meter spring is decided by 0.0X seconds per 100m. If you are a raiser thiny bit faster than the competition you are the champion. It takes only seconds and you cannot run 1000times a day. Maybe even very few times a year when it counts. There is a huge skill/genetical/drug element to it, but tiny razer thin edges make ALL the difference.
Just because you have no big samplesize and there is a lot of variance doesn't mean there is no skill involved, it is just much harder to see who is better. There is a reason Lifecoach, Trump and so forth are brilliant players and some of them were very successful at other games. Show me a stupid but very good hearthstone player and I won't believe it.
Playing the lottery is like super high variance and you only have 1 shot for 1 entry. Does it mean that it is random? The outcome is random, yes but there is strategy involved (don't bet common numbers because your expectation is lower, don't bet when jackpot is X or Y). Difference is mainly that the lottery is bullshit and you lose like 50% on average. Roulette is much better but still -EV unless you are one of the few who mastered it. Blackjack is different, tiny razer thin edges, but you can beat the system, albeit it is very tough to implement because the casino doesn't allow you to do it once they know you have skill. I am a little bit surprised that there is a debate about luck/skill when it is super obvious that it is clearly a skill based game. Of course the edges are small and the variance is high, but building 30 card decks, considering the meta, understanding each cards value etc, there is a LOT of skill involved. Magic the Gathering might have a higher skill cap but I am not gonna argue that Magic is a luck game. What about the stox market or sports betting? All luck? Razor thin edges and a ton of skill AGAIN. Don't get fooled by the looks of it, the reason why poker can be used as an income source is exactly because people do not believe the skill level involved

Agree with everything Fisheye said in his last post

Haven't played any Hearthstone, more or less skill than Magic?

From what I know it is less skill, but Magic is around way longer and Blizzard is adding a ton to the game. Magic as a video game sucks tho from what I heard, so Hearthstone is def. better as a pure video game.
Also there is not much money in Magic, with Hearhstone you can make a lot just by being a known streamer (I dunno exact numbers but the top tier Hearthstone streamers should make more than 20k/month without even playing tournaments, just from viewership/donations/subscriptions). In Dota2 and LoL you can make easily 6+ digits a year as a top tier player. Brand creation, sponsorship and all the possibilities for the future are worth a lot more, gaming and eSport is on the verge of becoming the biggest spectator sport of the world at a rapid pace. If I had to choose again I wouldn't go into poker anymore, but back then the market situation was different, little money in gaming and big whales in poker. Now it is quite the opposite and many see and adjust to it

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Well I don't mind if you are douchy, as long as you have sound arguments. But why not present the arguments, without being douchy, that should be possible. Otherwise you might come off cynical, which might make you look far worse than what you wanted to avoid. This is a discussion board and I was jumped in to give my thoughts and insights and can defend my point of view, because I have been a professional Gamer that turned Poker pro and eventually turned Gaming Entrepreneur. So I should know the fuck I am talking about and if you know more/better I would love to learn from you

There are lot of small edges in hearthstone, some decks have very few hard decisions but those matter a ton. I'm a bit worried that they keep adding so many RNG cards tho. There are alot of better ccgs like Hex, which are more complex and just overall better(imo), but those games can't really have the success of a game made by blizzard, which has access to alot more players/fans. Some pros really seem to be here just for the show but imo most of the good ones keep going doing good.

I don't really understand all the negativity about poker when there are many people making lots of money with it, more than they ever could being eSports world class champions (which is comparatively harder to do). Yes the game gets harder and edges thinner but that's how it works with every discipline. Very good poker players who fail to make high income just choose the wrong tables because of ego, stubborness or laziness.

ClouD87, it is increasingly harder to make money, there will be a point (like with Fixed Limit), where games will almost be dead. The Number of elite players making a ton of money is decreasing, but right now great poker players can still make more than great eSport players. I believe that eSport will be way bigger for Pros in a foreseeable future. the difference to when I played 15 years ago is extreme. The internet is still in its infancy and not gonna stop. Due to different ways of making money (streaming, sponsorship, donations, subscriptions, coaching, tournaments, etc.) people do not need to be great players anymore. There is also value in being entertaining (like on YouTube). Poker is a great game but as chess and backgammon offer very limited ways of making a living today, so will poker become more a solved game and therefore only a very selective niché group can make a lot of money (mostly live vs big whales). Gaming itself will transform drastically in the next years to come, VR is just the beginning. You cannot compare the cardgame of poker to a whole industry (especially when poker itself is gaming online, but with a gambling attribute). In terms of viewership and importance poker is already smaller than eSport. Not being negative towards poker itself, just stating what the statistics and common sense suggest. Poker gambling and overall market size is shrinking (in terms of people making money not in terms of what Pokerstars makes) vs eSport gaming exploding (especially because you do not need to invest money, only time).

On November 16 2015 20:15 FiSheYe wrote: Well I don't mind if you are douchy, as long as you have sound arguments. But why not present the arguments, without being douchy, that should be possible. Otherwise you might come off cynical, which might make you look far worse than what you wanted to avoid. This is a discussion board and I was jumped in to give my thoughts and insights and can defend my point of view, because I have been a professional Gamer that turned Poker pro and eventually turned Gaming Entrepreneur. So I should know the fuck I am talking about and if you know more/better I would love to learn from you

I still feel like hearthstone is more luck based than poker and the fact that they added a lot of new rng cards doesn't really help. There is still more money to be made in live casinos but like everything it won't last long either.
But hey I'm not really a pro at hs. I could be totally wrong, and I'd be glad if that was the case.

Well I never said that poker is easier/less skill than Hearthstone, all I said was that there is a ton of skill involved. Poker has many different games, FL HU could arguably be less complicated than Hearthstone but that wasn't part of the discussion so far. A game like Starcraft with mouse/keyboard/reaction time adds a different layer than with turn based strategy games, so with these kind of games I am fairly sure it is more complex than say NL HU.

ye
if live life over again then play brood war super hard for 2-3 years right after release just to become good at games and master the multitask of multitable poker, then switch to poker in like 2001, then play poker until like 2007, be millionaire because it's been so easy, and then start gaming like crazy cuz don't have to work

^^^ lol great master plan

Or play 1 week of Dota2 in August https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_2015
18 Mio prizepool with ZERO financial investment of players. Obv. that tournament is rare but has grown a lot in its initial prizepool and it came mostly due to player donations. Think about the future if that prizepool is already possible this year. 10 years from now you can maybe win like a WSOP ME tournament prizepool but without investing 10k, while making tons of money with sponsors/brand/viewership/subscriptions and then being mainly skill driven, not as much luck as winning a WSOP ME.

I understand where you guys who switched to poker early come from but at the same time I can't help but think you underestimate the amount of catching up and sacrifice needed to make money with videogames.

The nice thing about poker (or at least online cash game) that no videogame has ever had is the instantaneous monetary gratification. You play the game and at the same time as you progress, if you do it properly, you get rewarded according to your ability. When I was a Starcraft2 progamer I had it pretty good and was overall lucky in finding myself in that position but I've seen incredibly smart and talented people fail at going from novice to progamer. Reason is the lack of monetary gratification between the two levels is far too big.

In the end the vast majority of progamers are some of the guys who were there at the right time after having followed their passion fruitlessly for years. It's no coincidence that progamers are often socially awkward and seem somewhat retarded in many aspects. Most of them simply choose the game as a way to cope with an unsatisfying life and ended up reaping the fruit of their unhealthy passion without even having planned it happening. TwitchTv is more accessible but it's pretty much the same, it's super saturated and it's a career that has incredibly big challenges itself, also without the instant money gratification. I don't know about eSports betting - perhaps that's where it's possible to do it and make money right away with enough proficiency and knowledge.

Having experienced both sides so far and having entered poker in a super advanced and somewhat declining state I have to say that this is the right time to play poker. Not from an economic standpoint of course but from a personal growth standpoint. The amount of intelligence, wisdom and capability gained in trying to strive in today's super hard games is invaluable. It's a great investment to do because other than having a really nice, stimulating and comfortable job you also get to push yourself to the limit in every single area in order to do better. This happens because you get to compete with people at your same level and at the exact same time you also play incredibly bad and clueless players who haven't put a thousandth of your effort in learning the game: the good ones will give you insane difficulties and challenge, the bad ones most of your paycheck. Basically if you go through today's poker and come out as a winner you can really do anything in life. On the other hand I would never suggest anyone to play videogames, unless they have a genuine passion and thousands of hours to invest in becoming half decent. You get to always play people at your level and have to reach a critical point in order to start making money - before that it's just endless practice.

I think sc2 awards you way more based on your ability than poker does, it's just that the overall amount of money is so much smaller that you have to be one of the very top players to make 'a lot'.

I'm not disputing that it's still easier to make 'a living' playing poker than playing games (way bigger percentage of poker players who win money than gamers who win money), but making more than a living playing poker is becoming increasingly harder - especially online, and it can only be expected to keep becoming increasingly harder.

On November 17 2015 02:14 Liquid`Drone wrote: I think sc2 awards you way more based on your ability than poker does, it's just that the overall amount of money is so much smaller that you have to be one of the very top players to make 'a lot'. I'm not disputing that it's still easier to make 'a living' playing poker than playing games (way bigger percentage of poker players who win money than gamers who win money), but making more than a living playing poker is becoming increasingly harder - especially online, and it can only be expected to keep becoming increasingly harder.

Regarding your first statement I somewhat disagree. I only play cashgame and it's all about fairness and work ethics. In cashgame you get exactly what you deserve as long as you play a decent amount of hands. As long as games are running you will never experience in poker having to play very, very few major tournaments every year where you will not be able to overcome variance and get what you really deserve. A single good performance at one of these tournaments could change your career and your life forever so the variance is even higher if you consider all the implications. Sure in Starcraft if you are on a different level compared to other players you will most likely end up winning tournaments, but your edge over other players has to be considerably big in order for this to happen consistently.

On November 16 2015 23:18 FiSheYe wrote: Well I never said that poker is easier/less skill than Hearthstone, all I said was that there is a ton of skill involved. Poker has many different games, FL HU could arguably be less complicated than Hearthstone but that wasn't part of the discussion so far. A game like Starcraft with mouse/keyboard/reaction time adds a different layer than with turn based strategy games, so with these kind of games I am fairly sure it is more complex than say NL HU.

First off I want to say I agree with most of Fishy's points and also think HS is a legitimate strategy game. I've personally stared at "simple" turn 1, 2, and 3 decisions until the rope comes out many times and sometimes taken SS to analyze later. Elky, as great of a gamer as he is still took a few months of play before he was able to reach legendary (a fact I was able to profit from via sidebets).

On top of in game decisions there are also out of game decisions that matter a lot as well, most commonly the deck you choose for ladder and then recognizing the metagame changing then tweaking or choosing and entirely new deck because of it. In competitive HS deck selection skills matter a lot more since you have to bring multiple decks to a tournament and then choose which order you play them

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However I think that saying HS is arguably more complicated than HUFL and BW more complicated than HUNL is going too far. How do we quantify how "complex" a game is? The best way I can think of is to look at the size of it's relevant game tree and how hard it is for a human to analyze the game.

ie. tic tac toe is a very simple game with a small game tree where even a small child can workout what went wrong, chess is a very complex game with a large game tree that you could spend your whole life analyzing

HUFL vs HS

HUFL? It took a team of game theorists/programmers/scientists at a university a decade to weakly solve this game (not a perfect solve but pretty much solved) and they only finished earlier this year.

"The scientists explained that during the preparation phase of the bot, they have used "a cluster of 200 computers, each armed with 32 GB of RAM and 24 central processing units" for 70 days"

Safe to say the game tree is pretty large.

Hearthstone? What would happen if we had an equivalent team that solved HUFL for this game? As I started off this post with, I agree HS is a worthy strategy game but I do not see a GTO calculator equivalent for HS running on 200 computers for 70 days and not solving the game 10x over.

Most professional HS players can analyze their games and learn while they play and some of the harder working ones analyze their stream video or take SS of difficult spots. The game is analyzed more or less intuitively.

Does this mean HS is a fairly easy to analyze OR is it that the competitive HS community is currently unsophisticated? I think the answer is yes to both.

Re: HUNL vs BW

As complex as the HUFL game tree is, in HUNL we can now bet any amount we want any time, exactly how much bigger does that make it's game tree? Well we start PF in HUFL with 1 bet size, in NL now we have 100+ (assuming 100bb start), granted most of those are irrelevant choices, at least limping, 2x, 2.5x, 3x, 3.5x will be potential choices. From the flop we probably have another ~5 or so relevant choices between 25%-150% pot. Long story short, I don't know how much more complex the NL game tree is but it's a lot.

BW is a complex strategy game as we saw new strategy archetypes coming out even 10-15 years after it was released. There are a number of relevant strategical choices in each matchup and many ways the game can progress with some crazy late game scenarios and sometimes even stalemates. Still though, how could this ever compare to the complexity of HUNL?

Fishy mentions that using a mouse/keyboard in real time adds another layer to the game. I agree with that but I don't think it's necessarily adding to the game's complexity, it adds another variable to the game, it makes the game more intense and interesting (as real time games usually are more interesting than turn based). Performance and execution become much more important but does that make the game more complex?

If you miss a pylon, a round of production, or fail to send a ctrl group of units into battle you just do your best to do that better next time. If you make a strategical error, you have to go back and rework your decisions at a certain node in the game tree. Maybe this is a matter of definition but for me the first one is not very complex and the second one is very complex.

How do players of these games analyze and understand them? Top BW players watch replays and add an APM counter/timer to their game overlay, in extreme cases like the finals of a tournament the team's coach and other players will analyze the player's replays and playtest.

In poker well we know that most of us have 5-10 poker programs for different purposes, HEM for review, CREV for game tree mapping/EV calculation, and GTO calculators for solving the game tree given certain parameters. This game is very difficult to analyze and understand without the use of extra software.

Finally would like to add that even though poker is a turn based game, performance and execution still play a huge role. Especially for online poker, playing at a high level for many hours a day takes a lot of mental ability and although it's not as sexy as playing with 300apm, I'd say it's also a very difficult skill to learn and comparable on the scale of complexity.

On November 17 2015 00:33 whamm! wrote: ^^^ lol great master plan

I wouldn't mind that tbqh... Except the "being a millionaire" part didn't quite work out...

On November 16 2015 10:21 maryn wrote: but whats the point on highest level theres almost no skill difference because the game is too easy, might as well flip a coin

.... dude people not only bet on flipping a coin but even with knowingly bad odds, people enjoy variance, people dont bet in chess matches because there is usually very clear edges, that is what makes Heartstone a good betting e-sport, not its skill

Smuft I said that I didn't argue for which one is more skill based, but here are my thoughts: The fact that neither Hearthstone nor Starcraft has been solved by computers when FL HU and NL HU to a lesser extend are, shows you that it is not an easy argument. Starcraft's APM combined with strategy and psychology opens up a WAY bigger decision tree than NLHU, as you can make a ton of moves every second of every minute of every game. How good are the best SC1 or SC2 computer programs more than 15 years after the games release? Terrible. How good are the best FL HU bots? Well they are better than the humans, at least thats what I heard. The decision tree in FLHU is arguably much smaller than in Hearthstone, especially with new cards being added and adding a lot of new strategies. Of course Hearthstone appears very simple on the outside, but so does Fixed Limit. The reality is that 17 years ago, people thought that 1 base 5 gate archon and 1 stargate scout was the way to go. Thats how they won their games and people were shocked at their strategical genius. By now the game has dramatically changed and poker has evolved a lot, too. However as someone who has followed both scenes I think SC is far more complex, yet far less solved. I wouldn't even know how to calculate a computer program that works with 5000 apm and has all the strategical / game theoretical correct answers in an almost limitless decision tree. Having that many actions per minute available ADDS to the tree, it is not a "nice to have". The fact that 200 computers were solving poker when there is not even a program's idea in SC to solve it, should make a case for which game is less easy to be solved. Your argument about being intuitive is the same as poker players were arguying about math guys 20 years ago. It is a feel game, not a math game. You see people bluff or you don't have that ability, everything else is mombojombo. By now none of these so called Pros is even around anymore. In poker there was more incentive to solve the game and it is easier to work out a decision tree and program an application for it. Remember how in SC1 the computer would basically only sit around after 10 minutes, not knowing what to do. Well that was a shitty program to begin with but I wouldn't even know how to build a system that plays out every possible action in every second combined by all strategies that are available while still being competitive vs the maximal exploitive player strategy.

The fact that in poker you have many programs doesn't mean it is more complex, it just means there are more programs to solve it (which arguably means it is easier to solve because one knows how to go about it). I love both games so I didn't really want to argue which one is tougher to master, as I wouldn't know how to prove the point mathematically and it is a feel based discussion anyhow. All I am saying is:
Poker is shrinking, Gaming is on the rise. Poker is a game as is SC, but with a gambling element. As poker is a subset of gaming, it cannot be bigger than the whole industry longterm, especially when the industry is exploding. So will poker make you richer as a world class player than the top games can in 20 years? I would bet a lot of money that it is not the case anymore. Do I think gaming is more lucrative than poker right now? Not yet, unless you consider money invested/risked as an element, then gaming always wins. Will gaming be the next thing and investing now in brand creation and fan following is a good move? Yes, I absolutely believe that there will be plenty of gamers making a million plus in the next years to come, even without winning big tournaments. There are already 1.6 billion gamers worldwide (when I played competitive there were mabye 5 Million). It is already the biggest spectator sport outside of traditional media, and it is not artifically created but a grass roots movement.

here comes fisheye with the corsairs ~_~

As long as some game is unsolved and has interesting competition it will be popular and possibly there will be money around it.

E-sports are on the rise (again), but it is hard to predict where they will be in 5, 10 or 15 years from now. The future of poker on the other side is quite easy to predict.

As for HS, with 4+ expansions per year, game just rocks. There is a lot of luck involved atm, but this will change in the future as the meta will slowly move in the anti-aggro direction - more control, meaning longer games, more decisions, more skill involved with building and executing your decks etc... Will HS become popular for betting on? Definitely.

I can see a future for poker where the game explodes again, unfortunately you need brash entrepreneurs with long staminas and a dream. I don't see Pokerstars being that company (anymore), neither is the industry full of good people behind the scenes. It was created and is run by porn industry/criminal/greedy people. Blizzard would have never been able to release games like SC, HS, WoW etc. if they were those kind of people and thats why I am so bullish on gaming, tons of great people behind and in front of the scene. Poker needs a reboot, very smart people would need to invent new versions of poker that are innovative with a lot of depth but also very enjoyable. Unless that shift happens I can only see the road of quarterly company gross revenue increasement, no matter how. With that approach you can make a ton of money short-term but destroy a industry long-term.

Boxing and MMA is not a great comparison, but the lack of vision/colloboration and change in boxing is what destroys the sport. Few can make a SHITLOAD, but the long-tail is fucked and it is just not the future of combat sport. MMA on the other hand has all that grass root movement and it has a ton of good people working in that industry and contributing (also UFC as bad as they are at times, they are still way better for the sport than some of the boxing promoters).

I don't see Hearthstone having an interest spike nearly as high as LoL or Dota or becoming close to a top esports game ever. Game simply doesn't deliver as much emotion to the global scene and isn't dynamic enough and will never be, simply cause its a card game. It could however still be on a fairly high esports level, just never on the top, nor will any other card game ever be.

Hmm that seems like a retarded statement to be honest. How could a card game NEVER be on top of eSports? Thats like saying a girl will NEVER be UFC's top athlete or there will never be flying cars. You cannot know that, it is unlikely tho. Hearthstone is def. a top5 eSport game at this moment in time from Twitch.tv and viewership. Nowhere near LoL and Dota2 but that is basically the first time Blizzard has done a card game like that, Warcraft 1 wasn't StarCraft, takes time to get to know a category and master it. I disagree about emotion and dynamic, tho. That is exactly why Hearthstone has become big, the drama and the emotion involved in it (plus the ability of regular players to be their own caster due to the round based game mechanics). Wasn't intended as an attack on you Spitfiree, I just think it is usually unwise to use the word never or ever in a context like that one (Anderson Silva will always be the GOAT, nobody will ever break Usain Bolts record, etc. those statements, while trying to make a point are kind of ridiciulous).

I understand your view, I also use words as strong as never when I'm 100% sure in my guts about something. It's quite surprising you think otherwise considering your past esports pro history. Games like Starcraft and Warcraft had insane dynamics, LoL and Dota are not even close compared to them and they are still much more complex. While HS is hard and complicated in depth there s not much to the eye for the normal viewer, not many objectives to go around, could possibly compare to the meta game of any other games, however viewers that care about meta game have most likely already become fans. Sorry, but speaking about dynamics there could not even be a comparison. Card games are strictly limited to the cards thats the problem. Strategies and MOBAs play around too many things that keep the viewers busy and interested. I'm not speaking about a fan base that plays the game. LoL has already gone far beyond players only viewership for example. I guess the core of my argument is that the game is just too static to keep the attention span of the average viewer for long

P.S. no offenses taken, i'd be on the same opinion about words like ever/never 99% of the time plus words like retarded are too standard for the ex gaming community to be butthurt

Well, I do believe a card game could become eSports biggest hit, albeit I think it is very unlikely. I don't agree that there is no dynamics and emotion (DEATHWING with 1 HP left, then turn games around, new cards adding new sensational moments, most streamers having best of moments and memes around their reactions to situations). I found myself laughing very hard at some of these videos and I have found myself being emersed in the streams for hours when very sophisticated pro players give their analysis. However I do believe that other games offer more in terms of what games are capable of, I believe nobody can really understand what great VR games can do for gaming longterm. Also could transcend online viewership, as you could be more "in" the game and there could be a layer of commentary/casting on top of it. A ton will happen over the next years, I see it from every angle happening simultaneously and it is amazing. I never played LoL or Dota2, so I never understood the hype but it is for sure good for gaming in general. Just very optimistic of what the future will hold for us geeks&nerds

On November 17 2015 00:32 Liquid`Drone wrote: ye if live life over again then play brood war super hard for 2-3 years right after release just to become good at games and master the multitask of multitable poker, then switch to poker in like 2001, then play poker until like 2007, be millionaire because it's been so easy, and then start gaming like crazy cuz don't have to work

1999 FL holdem at Paradise poker
2001-2008 NL holdem
2009-2013 Pot Limit Omaha
2014-x live poker high stakes + make "coaching videos 500nl zoom"

imo ^^

On November 17 2015 10:50 FiSheYe wrote: The decision tree in FLHU is arguably much smaller than in Hearthstone, especially with new cards being added and adding a lot of new strategies. Of course Hearthstone appears very simple on the outside, but so does Fixed Limit.

Hey Fisheye,

Smuft wrote an excellent write up but I wanted to point out that game tree in hearthstone is nowhere near close to HUFL. In HUFL, you have 1300 combination of hands which majority go passed the first decision tree. Tree gets smaller by each street but complexity that involves in solving this is an impossible task without a simulator. If you compare that to hearthstone, you are playing with a deck consisting of 30 cards, solving the mulligan is an easy task that only requires few minutes of lab work from a bright mind. Also, as a lot of the posters mentioned in above, a lot of the decks plays it self and there's really only two or three different options to choose on tough turns.

Closer comparison we can make of hearthstone to poker would be 30bb HU SNG.

I respect Fisheye so much but comparing Starcraft to HU NLHE doesn't seem very convincing. No way Starcraft is harder in my opinion. It might seem that way on paper but when we factor inherent human limitations in the ability of splitting attention and performing manual tasks skill ceiling becomes so much higher in HU NLHE.

Well, keep in mind we're all way above the average Joe when it comes to skills in bw. We all played tremendous hours over the year to reach the level we have now.

Either way I find it hard to compare because it's not really the same skills...

The reason why i find HearthStone betting not very interesting is because to me, its literally just flipping a coin. Pretty much every pro players will play every spots the same, and when there is a difference of play, its because the outcome is almost meaningless. I am pretty sure pros playing pros, nobody will ever have long term win rates over 55%.

If there is one sport/game i find REALLY fun to bet on, its MMA. Maybe its because of my fishy side, but i really feel like sometimes there are some really good bets you can make. For example, this weekend, i honneslty feel like Holm can at least beat ronda 60% of the time, and she was paying +1200 at one point, such a +EV bet. At the opposite, there are sometimes some bets i made which, after some thoughts, i clearly realize they were horribly stupid, for example, betting on Barao in the rematch against Dillashaw.

There will never be any such things in hearthstone obviously. I can't imagine a way to find an edge in hearthstone betting. Maybe i'm wrong, but i think bettors at least want the illusion they can be a winning player long term.

5-10 programs to analyze poker?

what the fuck?

+1 to banning hand histories, huds, all that shit then

@AndrewSong: The hard tasks in HS won't be mulligans or turn decisions in the future, rather deck building. If the tournament scene of HS gets bigger, then a very tiny change in your deck will shift the odds in different match-ups. Preparing your decks is going to be the hardest part and that will surely be not so easily solvable by AI. So, I am with Fisheye on this one (HS vs HUFL).

As for comparing an RTS game to HU NLHE, I'd say I favor poker although the two are quite different activities.

Fishy,

I agree with a lot of your points and especially that this is a "feel based" conversation it's hard to prove anything and it's probably more suited as a fun talk over some beers. The one below as the only thing that needed a response

On November 17 2015 10:50 FiSheYe wrote: Starcraft's APM combined with strategy and psychology opens up a WAY bigger decision tree than NLHU, as you can make a ton of moves every second of every minute of every game.

I see what you are saying with this and it's something I considered as well. However I don't think it opens up the "effective game tree" very much because 99% of the movements we can make in BW are horrible and not worth considering. Also IMO, if we had a super computer with 1 million APM it'd limit the number of potential strategies by a lot since slow units would be horrible, strategies that use units with the best acceleration/deceleration/attack animation would dominate all others to the point they would be unusable. There is kind of a real life example of this of koreans in zerg vs zerg, as soon as they learned how to micro mutalisks properly, hydras were never used anymore and would automatically lose vs korean mutalisk micro, as would inferior mutalisk micro from foreigners.


btw I'm interested in bo100 random vs random BW for some decent sum of $

last time i played was 2012 about 1-200 games

On November 18 2015 09:40 Expiate wrote: @AndrewSong: The hard tasks in HS won't be mulligans or turn decisions in the future, rather deck building. If the tournament scene of HS gets bigger, then a very tiny change in your deck will shift the odds in different match-ups. Preparing your decks is going to be the hardest part and that will surely be not so easily solvable by AI.

good point imo

Yes deck building is by far the most difficult thing in Hearstone, the only reason why we dont feel a huge skill gap is because we are allowed to copy decks from the internet

yeah the "incomplete information" part of HS is much less of a factor, even without being able to copy online decks, you can learn someones deck after playing them 2-3 games

the incomplete information aspect in poker is much bigger though, we have 100s of stats and 1000s of hands on a guy and still sometimes say "not big enough sample to know what he's doing..."