Comment by max-sixty on Poker is a bad game for teaching epistemics. Figgie is a better one. · 2024-07-12T00:31:17.314Z · LW · GW

(Excellent post, strongly agree at the object-level)

It's worth considering why poker is so popular relative to a game like Figgie — I'd claim is significantly helped by the downsides you outline in obfuscating the quality of decisions and increasing the emotional stakes.

For a betting game to be successful, you need an ecosystem which includes lots of bad players, who ideally don't realize they're bad. So having your mistakes laid bare is prohibitive. And some emotional journey is fun, both for playing and watching other play.

Is there some way of making games like Figgie also have some of these properties? (preferably something more connected to the actual game than "winning a game of Figgie gives you get a 60/40 chance to win $x"...)