Grrl Power #853 – Pyrrhic poker
I guess strip poker is on hold while Sydney plays a few hands. She might have her brain in neutral at the moment, but she’d still probably figure out what they were doing the first time someone sells their boxers for $100 in chips to stay in. I assume that’s how strip poker works. I’ve only ever played a version on the Amiga with cartoon chicks.
Sydney is actually quite bad at poker. I know, you’re all shocked. As pictured here, her only shot at winning is this slow attrition, because she’s all tell. If she’s not leaping into the air, she’s giggling maniacally, wailing dramatically, or giving someone a death stare while drawing her finger across her throat.
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she’d be too out of it because of the blood rushing to her head-
There are plenty of games where the player has three “down” cards, but I don’t see any “up” cards in front of Sydney. That tends to eliminate the “hold ’em” and stud games. No, it looks like they are playing Ichi Ni San, Japanese for “One Two Three.” It’s a lowball, or worst hand wins game. The perfect hand is, as the name implies, 1/2/3. Straights and flushes do not count, or count against you. There are three draws – Up to three cards the first time, two the second, one the third, with betting before each draw. Fun.
Hah, I put the three face down cards on the table as a placeholder to remind me to put face up cards in their place, but I obviously forgot. :/
The real problem in playing poker with someone whose ADD meds have worn off isn’t just that their all tells… its that the tells don’t always match the hands… That and the fact that sometimes the hands they think they have don’t EXIST.
I’ve played poker with a friend who has not-quite-Sidney levels of ADD. He claimed a pot with a straight… I felt compelled to point out to him that 2-4-6-8-10 ISN’T a straight in any known game, let alone 5-card draw. And three hands later, that a flush has to be all one suit, not just 5 red cards… We quit playing after that… still don’t know if his processing was that screwed up, or if he was just bored and trying to be funny (his sense of humor gets REALLY wierd when his meds wear off)!
Actually, I first came across that hand in a Piers Anthony book from the apprentice adept series… 2-4-6-8-10 is a skip straight… Here is the article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_poker_hand
“Skip straight: Also called alternate straight, Dutch straight, skipper, or kangaroo straight, Cards are in consecutive order, skipping every second rank (example 3-5-7-9-J).”
It’s basically a house rule, not recognized as part of the official rules.
The problem is, Poker is treated as this ‘Big Serious Game’ when a lot of it is basically Calvinball.
Thar is one of the best short descriptions of poker that I have ever read…
Poker is not at all Calvinball. Poker hands are ranked in order based strictly on probabilities.
Only when you start introducing things like wild cards, which are not used in any professional poker that I’m aware of, do things take a Calvinball turn.
Strip poker on the Amiga, I remember that game!
The Amiga, I remember that system!
Actually I have a working A1200 in the living room. Pssst, it has a super fast processor in it… hundreds of megahertz at least… Apollo Vampire 1200. Cost me a pretty penny, just came out too.
We had the Amiga600HD (which was the 500, with a built in Hard Drive)
Unfortunately, one night, there was a blue flash and the HD died (the machine still worked and could play disks, couldn’t use anything that was on the HD, like the text-to-speech program, which was great for coming up with weird ‘alien’ names: randomly mash the keyboard, and if the t-2-s could pronounce it? congratulations, you just came up with a new name! :D)
Friend had an Amiga back when it was new. He enjoyed mocking my father’s computer because his “slower” Amiga out performed the “faster” PC. My father, who had a temper, threw him out of the house several times for that. He couldn’t admit that the Amiga, at the time, was the superior computer. Sadly, while they were building a superior machine, IBM was marketing theirs. In many ways, they were seriously ahead of the times in terms of computer design.
Ditto.
Whoop!
What, no-one’s ever seen maskirovka used as a poker technique?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception
…seriously, the only reason the Russians haven’t conquered the world is because they maxed out their Morale, Tactics and Endurance attributes by using Economics as their dump stat.
…I wonder what Sydney is doing with her paycheck?
oops forgot to set the email alert sorry
My guess is a good percentage is hitting the swear jar.
It almost got spent on a horse, remember?
I don’t think a jar can hold the money anymore. They probably upgraded it to a Barrel by now.
Seriously though, she was probably convinced to invest or save most of it. Possibly even put into options that can’t be easily withdrawn from. Ie someone who knows how to keep the soldiers from overspending probably has a program set up to invest money for every employee. And she was probably “required” to use it.
Know when to fold em becomes know when to make Them fold with her. Hehe.
no one expects sydney to have a poker face, so instead, she can freely act how she wants and everyone takes it at face value without questioning if she’s bluffing or not. that’s how she’s winning, and she’ll take you to the cleaners because you are expecting a spaz and look no further
Bah! We ALL know how Sydney is really winning!
She KNOWS people EXPECT her to leap & shout for joy, whine in despair, and cutthroat death-glare. They EXPECT her to be manic about her hands, one way or another! She’s TOTALLY psyching them!
…I shall cling to this headcanon as the TRUE explanation of how she’s winning…
(Because the only other explanation is a combination of genuine confusion & NO one wanting to see Sydney stripping. (And not for the reason you’d think! No, it’s not the A-team, but rather, rumors of the Mega Nega Nosebleed from back when Harem demanded Sydney flaunt ’em in payback for the bikini-top loss at the pool.))
I imagine its a super sneaky plot to have Sydney join in the game for awhile. Afterall, if Sydney is back, Maxima is almost certainly back too. Having Sydney play gives them a valid exscuse of “strip poker? of course not. sydney would never play that with us. we were just playing comfortably. honest maxima!’
Then once they are safe from Maxima, the game can resume…
Hah! Joke’s on you! One of her unknown orb powers is “luck”… BET!
I have a question about how the orbs attachment works.
Back when she was fighting the invaders on the Alari homeworld, Sidney at some point made in-flight manoeuvers while flying with speeds much greater than mach 1, and the orbs pretty much stayed hovering around her head. Here, she just jumped up from her chair (with speed much less than mach 1, I’m pretty sure) and the orbs had some kind of inertia, it took them some time to go to where here head had moved to.
So unless there’s conscious manipulation of the orb positioning here (i.e. deliberately keep them down as she stands up, then have them move up for dramatic effect), something feels off to me – my syspension of disbelief is cracking a tiny bit.
Maybe its relative to how much and type of danger she is in how they react?
Syddles does have some… mental… control of them, in that just by holding her hand ready the correct orb will float into it, being the one she wants (or subconciously needs) at the moment. A couple of times she has… ordered?… one to smack into someone’s leg/head/whatever.
the orbs are the a level of “super tech” that being self-aware is basically a given. we’ve even seen hints to this in comic, like how they were like how the react after Syd falls asleep sometimes and its very likely that Sydney didn’t find the orbs they chose her.
so in the end don’t think of the orbs as mindless tools think of them of personal AI assistants that react to the world in the best way to help Syd most.
falling behind while moving at high speed would be a disadvantage so that doesn’t happen. comically bobbing around Syd’s head adding to her performance of a fool helps her out so its fine.
“… Sydney didn’t find the orbs they chose her.”
Just like when you go to the refuge. The dog you want is the one that chose you. Have you noticed they read your mind so they know what size/gender you are looking for?
There is actually some truth to the idea that pets choose you. Last time I got a cat from a shelter, one of the cats saw me and absolutely refused to leave his cage. He made his view of me perfectly clear. I told the folks at the shelter “Let him be. He’s made his decision.”
Animals can sense things that humans can’t, or at least have forgotten how to notice.
Not that I’m against the idea of pets also having preferences, but that example is confirmation bias in action. There’s no information in that story that suggests the cat’s reaction was specific to you.
Maybe that cat was just having a bad day and would have reacted like that to anyone. Who knows.
Remember that the Forb maintains a bubble of ‘normal’ space around Sydney when it’s in use, so Sydney’s not affected by momentum effects while she’s flying. When she was making those Mach1 maneuvers on Alar, she essentially wasn’t moving at all within the Forb’s bubble, so the orbs were unaffected.
When the orb’s not in use, momentum effects TOTALLY apply.
Yes, that seems to make some sense I guess. Suspension of disbelief restored!
Sometimes the orbs follow consistent rules, and sometimes they follow the rule of funny.
Exactly, sometimes it works to have a characters abilities be dismantled for the laughs. And then, a savvy writer can later bring that ‘lapse’ up in a serious way as a polite nod to the former joke.
Personally i expect some level of intelligence in the orbs. Probably something along the lines of dog. Very good at what it does, and adapting as it goes. Add a mental link and them automatically moving for dramatic effect as sydney often does everything sydney does lean that way… you might notice, they increased the radius to make room. Or, sydney just unconciously adds them to whatever dramatic flair she gives off, much like throwing hands into the air.
Adding to that, I think the orbs knew she was going to sit back down and they weren’t in her way to move.
The speed of the orbs’ response to Sydney’s movements may be linked to how much mental preplanning is involved in the movement. A course change while flying is deliberately decided upon, so the orbs (via their mental connection) have enough warning to follow the manoeuvre. A reaction jump like this triggers on reflex, and by the time the orbs can react or by the time they apply that delay to a planned action they’re already at armpit level.
Pannel 7 is her YugiohFace
Personally, I think Sydney playing them. Using her rep for being goofy to fleece them. Good acting apparently.
Plot twist, Sydney is doing this all on purpose and is a poker champion because of how unpredictable she acts.
Being a chaotic distraction is Sydney’s normal behaviour. I think she is just being herself here.
I had a tabletop game where one player was always acting as a looney so we didn’t pay attention when he did strange things or things that endangered us. Turned out he had lots of single sessions with the story teller and was a super serious spy/saboteur and just acted stupid to evade suspicion.
Ah yes, the spy who is too stupid/bumbling to be taken seriously (trope), yet somehow devastatingly effective. For some reason I am a sucker for spy movies playing this trope with an unwitting lead, but not ones that lean into it too much (e.g. Austin Powers).
Off the top of my head:
Pink Panther – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057413/
Get Smart – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425061
Man With One Red Shoe – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089543
Johnny English – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274166
True Memoirs of an International Assassin – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542768
Spy – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3079380/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Never got around to that one, but looks like one I’d like. Oh to have free time again. :(
Syd channeling her inner Phoebe from Friends there
She’s only ‘bad at cards’ if that’s actually a straight.
She’s not winning, Bodie, you are just losing
Perhaps her newly enhanced glasses are helping Sydney!?
Yes, as I said before!!!!!!
How is Dabbler not winning. She is a genius at math and can hear or sense if someone has good cards.
I guess she proposed the strip poker.
Is it possible that Dabbler is not embarrassed by stripping, and may even encourage it …?
She certainly is not, and she absolutely will.
Her aim will be to get everybody to the optimum degree of nakedness that will encourage lewd feelings and behaviour (which is not necessarily ‘completely naked’).
Sydney is just pretending to be off her meds, so that her bluffs are super convincing.
Hi yorp.
“Aboyne (v): To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him.”
~ “The Deeper Meaning of Liff”, Douglas Adams
Bonus points if you can get them to throw in the towel.
Who’d have thought Sydney would know how to bluff?
Panel 9: Aaaand I’m staring at Sydney’s butt again.
It is only bluff if it is not true.
This really is how confused she is.
I think you replied to the wrong comment.
heh, best way to psyche people out in poker, is to never look at your own cards, and randomly decide if you are going to play like it’s a winning hand. Straight up screws with everybody, because they’re trying to figure out your tells on whether your hand is a winning one, but if you don’t know, and literally only playing by acumen- do they call you out on it, and hope you are unlucky? Do they try to pump pots to push you out of the game? adds a whole other dynamic to the table.
Lol, good job Sydney. I’m amazed not only at how bad she is, but at how unaware she is of how bad she is. Does she seriously not understand why people are folding?