LindaTam wrote:I agree with jindog; just play and have fun Get your mind off the world and enjoy the game.
Why would anyone want to cheat? At anything. Theyre only cheating themselves. Cheats, Liars, Thieves; theyre all the same.
Cheating is really addictive. It's usually a way that people release tension and is often accompanied with other rather negative things like abused drugs. However, being an intel analyst in the past, I often challenge myself to understand and recognize the 'other side' of those things. Like- why would someone cheat? It doesn't feel very compelling to me, it doesn't feel satisfying. I had to study the Taliban in a similar manner. In shifting my perspective, I understand fully where the mistake lies, and it's not with anyone's character; anyone can be become a cheater if they just give it a try. You'll
It doesn't to them either. What it does mean is they gave up trying, and that's a lot more important than thinking of them as thieves. It means they're either taking advantage of that and helping others down that path, or have just succumbed to the pressure of life and in some cases it even becomes a 'well, everyone is cheating, so of course I have to cheat too', when that's very far from the truth. What I did learn from existing amongst such communities is they are identical to other negative-stigma communities; they are empathetic with one another and everyone else shuns/ridicules them, so even if they wanted to stop, once you get to a certain point people just scoff at you and no one asks if you're okay.
Of course, cheating in a single-player game with no one being harmed is totally meaningless to me in the scheme of things. I don't care how you skip steps in a game, and sometimes it's justified if it's grindy enough, my problem starts when it's also impacting other real players. Cheating at poker also is a skill, since poker is a game of trickery to begin with, not a game of luck.
You can try and 'game' blackjack with solvers, texas hold 'em would not be as efficient as that since there are far more possibilities, but really, blackjack is rather intuitive but the dealer always has a slight advantage. The hard part of gambling isn't figuring out how to keep going, it's figuring out how to stop when you're ahead.
Notably, I'm incredibly good at gambling when it's not real money, but the minute I tried a hand in Vegas I got dealer 21'd and went back to my room.
Anyway I found this site because I wrote a science fiction setting in 2015 (with roots to 2011) called Prospera and the main cast of immortal science-ego ascended gods were called Prospectors, so finding a scifi roguelike years after the fact is much nicer than finding out that 2010 tempest movie used the name Prospera so it's already been abused and thrown away into the forgotten movies den. Just wanted to rant about how cheaters need love too, or they'll never realize how much they're hurting people by cheating. Learning about cheating and how it's done actually teaches you basic fundamentals of the topic at hand, and teaches you the most simple exploits that can be observed and reacted to even playing clean.
I do highly recommend occasionally taking skill points in forgery, it may be useful, since no one takes forgery.
Magellan hasn't been on this forum for a year though so I don't suspect he is concerned with the stakes of poker in the game anymore.