Betting Mechanics that lead to a showdown between two players

One of the simplest ways is to limit who is interacting with whom. This could be a secondary card play, Yellow, Red, and Blue. Each player would choose a color and lay it among their card (Face up? Face down?) and their hand would only interact with people who chose the same color. This could be made much more interesting by offering red, yellow, and blue different “pots” of money (if it ends up being a betting game) and allowing people to choose which pot they are competing for. If red has more than blue, and blue has more than yellow, and you secretly choose which pot you are going for there could be some interesting decisions and bluffing involved.

Alternately you could set it up so that 1 paper beats ALL rocks, 1 scissors beats ALL paper, and one rock beats all Scissors.
The problem with this become which resolves first, right? I mean if Jimmy’s rocks take out your first, than scissors aren’t there to destroy my paper, which resolves last destroying Jimmy’s rocks. HA HA I WIN!
How to settle this? I’d say have it be something people pay for. I buy the right for rocks to resolve first for 5$. I bid 6$ for scissors (you say)! 7$ for rocks (I say) 8$ for paper (says Nancy)! I’ll pitch in 2 dollars for Jack’s bid for rocks, bringing the total bid to 9, says Peter (my 7+ Peter’s 2).

The more complex way is to introduce more cards that make it so there is one clear winner. This becomes really hard and cumbersome.
http://thefuntimesguide.com/images/blogs/rockpaperscissors.jpg
But some fun (serious) options here are:
God: beats everything (except the following…).
The Problem of Evil: Loses to everything but God.

I think the real question is: How do you resolve RPS where each player has a hand of cards that are all active simultaneously? You talk about open and closed cards and a final resolution, but I imagine ever if there were a final two players who were the clear winners how would you determine which one won if each had 5 cards in a mixture of rock paper and scissors?
Pick them all up and then have each player (knowing what his opponent’s hand is comprised of) pick a single card, play face down, reveal simultaneously, and resolve seems the obvious option. Are there others?
Finally. What would such a game achieve that poker does not? It could be argued that, for a gambling game in which multiple players are bluffing to determine who has the strongest combination of cards and in which some information about those cards is open and some is not, Poker is already doing this quite well.

Could you just require there be only two players at the showdown? Make it so raises are automotaic and continue untill all but two players remain.

I am a poker player, and I think you need to reconsider your game. In poker, there are clearly determined ranks of hands, such that when a showdown occurs, one player wins and the other loses, period. This means that the only way to win is either a) have the actual best hand or b) bluff and get everyone else to fold. The bidding rounds narrow the field because players figure out they won't be able to win through either of those methods. If I know I'm not going to win, I won't put any more of my hard earned money into the pot.

From what I understand of your game description, players would be betting for the right to play RPS against one other player. That is, once all the betting is done, there is still a game of RPS to be played, rather than the best hand winning. The very nature of RPS means that there is no such thing as the "best hand". This would be a very difficult thing to wager on, because you never be confident in your chances of winning.

Basically, the only thing that you are betting on is your own ability to win an RPS match. This is a very different wager than "who has the best hand". How do you know when to fold?

Speaking of folding, this brings up one other issue (which is common to all free forms of poker): Why would anyone EVER fold? If my money is not at stake, I might as well just play every hand. That takes the bluffing element completely out of the game.

I'm not trying to discourage you, but I am trying to make it clear that I don't think your idea is very feasible. Don't worry though, every game idea I've had so far has proven unfeasible. Keep thinking and eventually the right ideas will come together. :)

This is a helpful explanation of your earlier posts. Thanks!

I still feel like this is very problematic due to there being no objective "best" hand. I understand a little better how you can determine the "quality" of your hand, but the RPS nature of it makes so arbitrary.

In your example, what if there is another player who is showing 4 rocks? which one of the three would fold first? What if two players each have 4 scissors? I think that nearly every hand would be impossible to judge its value until sufficient other players have folded. But again, I can't see any reason to fold ever.

Moreover, if the showdown is determined by playing a single card in turn, you really would only need to worry about your neighbor to the right.

It may be possible to have a showdown between 2 players, where you just count how many of each type both have and determine the winner that way:

Suppose: I have 2 rock, 4 scissor, and 1 paper. You have 2 rock, 3 scissor, and 2 paper.

Then, my 2 R lose to your 3 S. Your 2 R lose to my 4 S. My 4 S beats your 2 P. Your 3 S beats my 1 P. My 1 P loses to your 2 R. Your 2 P beats my 2 R. So therefore you win.

I just see something like this as being too difficult to really read as a player.

And again, what incentive does anyone ever have to fold? If I'm playing 7 stud and one opponent has 4 aces face up, unless I've got a straight flush I'm going to fold. Actually, I would have folded way earlier in the hand. But if I look around the table and see these hands: 2R,1S,1P; 3R,1P; 4S; 1R,1S,2P. How do I know who is winning?

RPS by definition means that nothing has intrinsic value- only in relation to what the other player has. That can be a very fun mechanic, but I feel pretty strongly that it does not fit this situation.

What are players wagering in this game? Money? VPs? Some other in-game resource? What is the penalty for not folding?

One more thing: Your mechanic of going around the circle playing one card each until someone cannot "beat" the top card could be pretty fun in an LCR kind of way. I would just remove the betting aspect of it, deal the cards out, and let people play. Actually, if it was a more complicated RPS system (more than 3 options) this could turn into a very fun, strategic game. I just don't see betting/folding as a useful mechanic to go along with it.

First of all I love the theme. This sounds really cool. Im not sure I understand your betting mechanic. If the last one to raise is the first to play what is my motivation to raise since I'm at a disadvantage? Also when and how often are bets occuring?

Random thought that just popped in my head: what if instead of chips to bet you assigned a qi value to each card. Each player has their own deck (of equal total value) that they draw and play from. The card you play is also your bet. The winner of the hand claims all the cards played and sets them aside. So if I feel I have a strong hand I might play my 5 qi earth instead of my 2 qi earth. End the game when the deck runs out. Highest qi wins.

Anyway just a thought. I really like your game so far.