Poker is not even remotely “all about bluffing”. Professional poker play is almost entirely about tilting the RNG in your favor by playing the right hands and making the right bets considering the pot and the community cards.
Tell that to five-card draw, or is that not considered poker anymore.
In what way is five card draw poker similar to Hearthstone? Even comparing Texas Hold’em to Hearthstone is quite the stretch, but at least there’s some public information to make the analogue vaguely useful.
Hearthstone contains a small but sometimes important amount of bluffing. But the average turn in the average game contains no bluffing at all. The board is super important in most match ups.
While it isn’t bluffing per se, Hearthstone absolutely has a significant amount of player psychology and vicarious problem solving, which necessarily includes an element of deception.
It’s pretty narrow though, all you can really bluff is that you have or don’t have a card your opponent might care about. And frankly, if you focus on good technical play and ignore your opponents signals you’ll probably win more than if you try and get too clever. It’s called fancy play syndrome.
Ok, while not super-useful, if I see my opponent exchanges all of his cards prior to the start of the game, I think I may have an easier time of it than if he changes zero cards.
Plus there is the whole ‘I take off a piece of clothing every time I lose’ aspect as well.
Strip Hearthstone? Wow. Well I guess that would spice up those long control vs control match-ups.
Both of these points are entirely true of Hold 'em, until you get to the higher stakes limit stuff. Even low stakes no-limit stuff. “All you can bluff is that you have or don’t have a card your opponent might care about” is obvious. If I have crap but want you to think I have the best hand, I’m bluffing. If I have the best hand, but want you to think you have the best hand, I’m bluffing.
Similarly, most (even slightly above average) players don’t know how to bluff, or don’t know the right situations to try and bluff in. If you focus on playing the right starting hands, and pushing your edges when you have them, you can play the game without looking at anyone else at the table. Bluffing done well and at the right times is just gravy.
I’m not sure what the argument was, or who was on what side, but there can be bluffing in HS, I’m pretty confident.
I’m not sure there’s an argument as such, just a discussion about the influence of randomness and bluffing on outcomes in Hearthstone.
Perhaps I did not explain my point very well, obviously in poker and Hearthstone you are bluffing regarding the contents of your hand. I was just suggesting that the times that your opponent will attempt to bluff about those cards is fairly infrequent, and the times that it actually matters and you should alter your play are vanishingly rare. But I don’t know Texas Hold’em well enough to know if that’s true, my experience is you always want you’re opponents to think you have a different hand because they will bet wrong.
When people talk about Magic strategy, they often use the word ‘represent’ rather than ‘bluff’. I actually thing that’s useful way to look at things, because bluff feels very focused on representing something you don’t have. Which seems like only half the picture when discussing the mind games you can use. It’s just as important as when you represent the thing you do have. Both are avenues to influencing the behaviour of your opponent.
As an aside, I think the biggest problem with comparisons of Poker to Hearthstone is that Hearthstone is one v one where as poker is mostly played with several people.
Either way, Hearthstone is still primarily a game of skill. RNG comes into it, but no one can deny that high-level Hearthstone players are operating with skills above those of the average. You cannot just rely on building a good deck beforehand. If that were true, anyone that could Google a build would be able to reach those tourneys.
Hearthstone obviously has a much bigger possibility space because unlike poker:
a) there are more cards available
b) there’s more variation in board state, which affects the relative value of cards
The latter is unavoidable, but the first one is really just a question of understanding the current meta. If you’re playing a warlock, you aren’t actually playing the entire card possibility space, you’re basically playing about 50-50 Zoo / Handlock, and once you’ve hit turn 2 you probably know which one of those. So, the effective possibility space is much smaller than it appears (although still larger than poker’s).
#JustPriestThings
The story of that 4/7 Drake is very “Priesty” too. I Facelessed his 4/4 Drake, then Shadow Madness on his Cleric. Banged his Cleric and my Cultist into his Drake to buff my Facelessed Drake to 4/7. We then used Mind Control to play pass the Drake four turns in a row.
Thesper
1936
Looks like you accidentally ended up playing a Monoblue MtG mirror match by mistake. You’ve even got the 4 card deck limit covered!
Heh. I broke that limit a couple turns later when I drew my fifth Mind Control.
Thesper
1938
Well now, that’s just cheating.
prolix
1939
I played a game recently against a Shaman in which we had five Kel’thuzads on the table through some unholy combination of Faceless, Ancestral Spirit, and Baron Rivendare. It did not go well.
I learned recently that sadly, Kelthuzad does not trigger on minions with Power Overwhelming. I guess both abilities proc at the same time (“end of turn”), so the minion hasn’t actually died yet when K-T triggers. Boo.
slantz
1941
I wonder if you’d played PO before KT if it would have worked due to timing/trigger rules. The PO should trigger first, then the KT, but maybe that only applies to card-triggered effects and not end-of-turn triggered effects.
Also, another neat trick as Shaman to get more KTs is to use Reincarnation. If I have the cards in hand and 10 mana on the table, KT+Reincarnation is a great way to get 2 KTs on the board. It’s hard enough to kill 1 – most players can’t kill both in one turn with no prior notice. And then from there the real shenanigans can begin…
I run that deck. It’s fun.
slantz - Yup, and you can do it in one turn with 10 mana.
Seen the Goblins vs Gnomes cards?
For Shaman, well, that’s a real nice 2-mana minion (all classes seem to be getting one, but this is up there with the Druid’s), and the chaos value of Ancestor’s Call…especially against say Zoo, where they will probably get a small minion and you’ll get a nice one…
