You want to play high stakes poker? Not here.

[magellan]

Balancing stuff is hard, and I had some thoughts about poker.
Right now a bet at one of the main stations is 50 cr, and 100 cr at one of the small stations.
Maybe that is too much, and would be more appropriate with 5 and 10 Cr. Seriously high stake games (100, 250,500?) could be reserved for places like Murchesons ditch or the pirate homeworld or maybe some of the human colonies.
What does the community think?

[Happy Corner]

I have always been completely indifferent to the poker minigame, and have never even tried it... and probably never will.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you threw the poker in there. It's a nice flavor thing, and something you might expect to see at a human space station on the rough-and-tumble galactic frontier (well, and exotic space age drugs with silly names). It's just that I'm much more interested in exploring and looting shit. I guess I'd be the kind of prospector captain who's all business and never fucks around when he's in town.

I'd say your ideas about the stakes are good. Keeping the stakes small at the main stations feels more logical (I can easily imagine most of the prospectors there would be poor themselves, and would shy away from high stakes), and it's less open to exploitation by players.

Making the high stakes games much more rare gives gamblers another reason to be explorers, too. Maybe the biggest games could be invite-only, requiring players to do a quest or have enough reputation first (with so much at stake, they wouldn't let just anyone belly up to the table, now would they?). That actually sounds like kind of a fun idea, a gambler searching for his invite to a legendary high-stakes game...

[magellan]

Actually the main Inspiration was "They played poker all the time on the Enterprise-D"
But your narrative fits too!

And trying to get an invite to that legendary game in a cave on an airless planet, with pirate kings, station commanders and megacorp execs attending, with incredibly high stakes, does sound like fun!

I guess I'd be the kind of prospector captain who's all business and never fucks around when he's in town.

Wouldn't your tribble make you a little more mellow?

[Arek_PL]

high stakes will be exploitable for people with some match skills (or google skills)
in rulette with some match its possible to get alot of starting money just make sure you never aproach 50 credits limit (IRL cheating like that will quickly be noticed) but poker is harder to cheat with so idea of searching for great game is nice and its new reason to explore