Auction Calypso v0.0.1

09-06-24

As mentioned previously in attempting to find versions of Calypso that allow for slightly more strategy, I have experimented with an auction version of the game. Here I'll outline the set of rules as they stand currently, as I did with Kaiso.

Before that, I'll briefly discuss the difficulties with a naïve auction version, which should help motivate some of the design decisions in what follows.

Difficulties

Let's say we take Calypso as-is, and add in an auction at the start of the hand. We immediately have some questions to deal with.

Firstly is the question of what players will be bidding for. In auction games players are bidding for some kind of benefit (otherwise why bid?). These tend to be some combination of three options (as far as I can think of) — two are tangible in-game benefits, and one that is purely to do with scoring:

  1. The right to name a trump suit (or perhaps the 'type' of game)
  2. Some way to improve your hand (through e.g. exchanging cards with a talon)
  3. The right to earn points (you may only be able to get points by winning the auction, or perhaps are afforded extra points)

We'll disregard 2) for now, as we aren't (currently) changing the structure of the game. If we only did 3), while this would be possible, I suspect it might be a bit flat in terms of what it adds to the game. But if then we are choosing trump suits, there are a couple of additional problems.

One is that there is not just one trump suit. While we could have players choose their own trump suit on winning, the other players would also need trumps, and there is no guarantee that they would be in any worse position than declarer (as they may well have many of their own trump suit). This makes it difficult to bid, as there is less of a clear advantage to the winning bidder.

The other big question is as to what happens in subsequent hands? Are players stuck with the same trump suit? If they switch (via an auction) what happens to the cards in progress at the end of one hand? How can we manage this four-deal structure of the game?

The other difficulties arise around the auction itself. Suppose we have one auction (of some sort) at the very beginning. Then players will be making decisions based on their first hand, and committing to some sort of contract, which then plays out over three further hands. This hasn't really sorted out our (lack of) strategy problem — even if you start with a great first hand, and bid as such, you can very easily still do poorly overall if your subsequent three hands are rubbish.

Maybe then there should be auctions at the start of each hand. We then have the issue mentioned above of figuring out what happens if suits vary. But also, we have to consider what players are contracting to do? We would expect that players would be trying to make a certain number of points — but in Calypso points aren't fully realised to the end of the fourth hand. So we again have the problem of speculating on future hands.

I spent a while trying to work with some idea along these latter lines, of a 'progressive auction', without much success.

Eventually I decided that the best way to get Calypso to work with an auction was to break the multi-deal format of the game, and turn it into a series of continuous hands as in most other games (albeit with some stateful carry-over from one to the next), which led to Embers Calypso. This allows a more measurable hand-by-hand way to have goals for bidding. Another aim of this version of Calypso is to try to increase, on average, the information players have about the cards likely to be in-play (by giving knowledge of some of the cards that will not be in play in the next hand), with the aim of allowing for more strategic card-play.

The other key point I decided on was in terms of the 'benefit' of winning the auction to ensure that the winners hand is 'boosted' compared to the others. This was the ability to not only choose your trump suit, but also that of your opponents. To aid in informing that decision, including the suit as part of the bid felt crucial, so that players have some hints about where there opponents' strengths lie before making this choice. This also introduces an interesting potential for 'bluffing' bids that have a slightly different angle than in other games. This therefore means that scoring benefits of the auction are needed, to ensure that players are sufficiently keen to bid that this mechanism works.

Alltogether then I have come up with a set of rules for this version of the game. At the end I will discuss some issues and some directions I might take for the next iteration of the game, but first I'll outline the rules as they currently stand. I will update here as and when newer versions come out, but until then any feedback would be most welcomed.

Auction Calypso Rules

Three-handed Auction Calypso

Auction Calypso for Three is played with four identical packs of cards (i.e. a 208-card deck), as in Standard Calypso. Each player plays for themselves overall, although each hand will involve one player against the other two, as in games such as Skat, Vira, or Preferans (and shares with the latter a slight element of competition between the defenders).

Setup

There is an optional setup phase. This is recommended particularly if you are playing a shorter game, but may still be desired in a longer game, to get things rolling. With this, instead of players starting with no calypsoes-in-progress, they instead start with a selection of partial calypsoes, rather than building them up from scratch. There are three versions of this.

Balanced random

Deal 30 cards from the deck, face up. Set any duplicate cards to one side for the moment, and arrange the rest into suits, in ascending order. These are then placed in front of dealer, as their initial calypsoes-in-progress — one for each suit (although there is a chance some may be empty). The same set of cards are then extracted from the deck twice (and the duplicates set aside a moment ago), with the exact same arrangement placed in front of both other players. Thus all three players start with the same set of cards seeding their initial calypsoes. All remaining cards are shuffled together, ready for the first deal.

The expected number of cards players will end up with in front of them is around 24 (after discarding duplicates), though of course this varies, and values 21-28 are fairly typical.

In the unlikely event that one of these calypsoes is already complete, the cards are shuffled back into the deck, leaving significantly fewer in-progress cards. Everyone gets 500 points, as a nice little boost to get started with.

This is the recommended setup procedure, as it gives some interesting variety, without giving a significant benefit to any individual player (on average, at least).

Standardised setup
Standardised setup for Auction Calypso. The set of in-progress calypsoes for each player.

This is similar to the balanced random setup, except there is no dealing cards from the deck to seed the initial calypsoes — instead, the choice of cards each players starts with is fixed. Each players starts with the following cards:

If you want a consistent game, or to compare more easily like-for-like, then you may prefer this setup.

Fully random

If you wish to inject a dose of extra randomness to the game, you may instead follow the procedure for the balanced random setup, except instead of the two-non-dealers copying the setup of dealer, each player instead is dealt 30 cards, and keeps what remains after duplicates.

If you don't want this to swing too wildly, you may instead, for the latter two players, keep dealing out cards to them one at a time until they have the same number of non-duplicates as dealer, rather than dealing 30. This ensures that each player at least has the same number of seed cards.

The deal

An initial dealer is selected, the cards are thoroughly shuffled, and seventeen cards are dealt to each player (as in the final hand of Neutralised Calypso). Players may then inspect their hand.

The auction

The auction then begins, with eldest (player to left of dealer) first to speak. In turn each player may either:

A positive bid consists of three parts:

Each positive bid must be higher than any previous bids. A bid is higher than a previous bid iff:

As Calypso was developed by a Bridge player, and originally adopted by several high-profile Bridge players, suits rank (for auction purposes only) as in Bridge, which is to say that they rank, in ascending order, as:

If you are not already familiar with Bridge, you may remember this as being in alphabetical order.

If you bid zero calypsoes, you must bid at least 170 points, making the smallest bid 170 clubs. If you bid a non-zero number of calypsoes, there is no points requirement.

A player who passes is perfectly free to re-enter the bidding at a later stage if they so wish. The auction continues until two players pass in a row, in which case the last player to make a positive bid becomes the declarer, with their last positive bid being their contract.

Here is an example auction:

Bids Notes
Alfie Jo Ken
Pass 170 Clubs 170 Spades Spades outranks clubs
180 Spades 190 Clubs 190 Spades Alfie rejoins. Points must be increased to outrank same or lower suit
240 Spades Pass 270 Spades
1 and 20 Spades Pass Pass Alfie commits to a calypso (and 20 points). Both other players pass, so auction finishes with Alfie as declarer

Note that unlike in most other games, it can actually be a good choice for players to compete in the same suit. If opponents have many cards of your trump suit, not only does it mean they are more likely to have fewer of their own, it also means that they will have to follow your trump lead for longer, allowing a greater amount of simple tricks from your trump lead.

If all three players pass with noöne making a positive bid, the hand is played as misere. The hand is played without trumps, and all cards going to the trickpile. Left of dealer leads first. The player taking the most points scores minus the total of their points added to that of the lowest-scoring player. The middle-scoring player scores simply minus their total. So if players take 10, 18, and 23 points, the first player scores nil, the next -180, and the final player -330.

The play

Once a player has won the auction, they become declarer. Before play to the hand begins, they must select trump suits for each of the opposition players. Declarer's trump suit is fixed by their winning bid. All trump suits must be distinct - the remaining suit is a plain suit for everyone, as in Neutralised Calypso. If you like fairly formal procedure, then this should be announced by reïterating your trump suit, followed by those of your opponents in clockwise order, in the in the format "Playing Clubs, against Hearts and Diamonds", which indicates that you (having won the auction with Clubs) play with your left-hand-opponent with Hearts as trumps, while right-hand-opponent has Diamonds.

As well as setting the trump suits for everyone, an additional benefit of being declarer is the initial lead. Declarer leads to the first trick, and thereafter trick winners lead to the next. Trick-play rules are as in Standard Calypso.

The only difference is in terms of where the cards go upon winning a trick. Any card not of the trump suit of the trick winner goes into their trickpile, as in Standard (cut-throat) Calypso. Cards of their trump suit go face-up towards a calypso of that suit in front of them. Duplicate cards, as usual, go instead to their trickpile. Note that, as the game goes on, players will have calypsoes-in-progress for each of the four suits ( and may even start with some if you play with one of the setup options outlined above). In a given hand, players only accrue cards towards the calypso of the trump suit they have for that hand.

Scoring

After all seventeen tricks are completed, the hand is scored. Defenders count their trickpiles together, at the usual rate of 10 points per card, and each score half the total. So, for instance, if they had trickpiles of respectively 7 and 10 cards, they would each score 85 points (170/2).

Declarer's score depends on whether or not they fulfilled their contract. Fulfilling their contract requires that they:

The number of points declarer earns in tricks is also 10 per card in their trickpile. However if, with all the cards in their trickpile, they do not have enough to fulfil their contract, they may 'sell' cards from the calypso-in-progress of the suit they have played in. To do so, they remove these cards from their calypso, and add it to the discarded cards from the round. Each card sold in this way is worth 20 points. Declarer may either sell none (and thus lose the contract), or the smallest number needed to fulfil their contract. For instance, if they bid 240, and take 19 cards in the trickpile, they are 50 points short of their contract. They may sell 3 cards from the calypso to bring their total from 190 to 250, and thus fulfil the contract.

A declarer who fulfils their contract scores for whatever total they have in points taken (trickpile and any cards sold), and in addition scores the points bid. So the above example would have them scoring 240 + 250 = 490.

A declarer who fails to win their contract scores no points for any cards won, and instead scores minus the number of points bid (plus a negative bonus for any calypoes bid, see below). In the above example, if they chose not to sell those 3 calypso cards (or did not have 3 to sell), they would score -240.

A double or redoubled contract multiplies the contract bonus by 2 or 4 respectively (both positive and negative). So the above contract, doubled, would lead to 240*2 + 250 = 730 on success, or on failure -480.

Calypsoes

Completed calypsoes score 500 points each. However, any calypsoes bid and made have a bonus associated to them. This bonus depends on the number of cards still required to complete the calypso at the start of the hand. The bonus value is 40 points plus 10 times the number of cards required squared, as detailed in the following:

cards required bonus score
1 50
2 80
3 130
4 200
5 290
6 400
7 530
8 680
9 850
10 1040
11 1250
12 1480
13 1730

All three players score 500 points for completing a calypso - the only situation where you don't score for the calypso, is if you are declarer and fail your contract (even if you make the calypso required, but don't score enough points).

If declarer has bid for calypsoes, they score the bonus for a successful bid. For a failed bid, they score minus the bonus, calculated in the same way, as well as minus any points bid, and minus 500 for a failed calypso (otherwise bidding one calypso with no additional points would be a very small penalty). In the very rare situation of bidding multiple calypsoes, each bonus is calculated separately.

Ending the hand

After the hand is all settled, all cards from trickpiles, and any sold from calypsoes-in-progress are set aside (to form the 'sin-bin'). Cards from completed calypsoes, and any previous sin-bin, are shuffled together as the 'green room'. This is the deck used for dealing the next hand. This procedure is the same as in Embers Calypso.

The deal rotates to the left, and the next hand is dealt out. If there are not enough cards for the full deal, then once the green-room is depleted, the cards in the sin-bin are then shuffled, and the deal is completed from this. There will always be enough cards to complete the deal this way.

Ending the game

Play continues for a pre-determined number of deals, ideally a multiple of three. Perhaps 18 is a reasonable number. Any calypso-in-progress cards remaining on the table at the end count 20 each to their holder.

Partnership Auction Calypso

The game can also be played with four, playing in fixed partnerships. The structure of the game is fairly similar, with a few changes, noted here.

Comments and thoughts

This is my initial version of the game. As with Kaiso there are various aspects that I think could do with tweaking/rethinking, but I think this at least serves as a reasonable blueprint for my 'vision' (excuse the vomit-inducing phrase) of the game. I'll outline a few concerns here.

Throughout I have tried to balance several things:

I think these current rules roughly do these things, but that perhaps remains to be seen in more detail. I'm also not sure, particularly with the scoring, whether there are situations where the incentives are working against the game, and discouraging the sort of play I am aiming for. It perhaps doesn't matter (or is even interesting) if this happens occasionally, but just want to avoid things being properly broken.

The main thing that I think may need adjusting is how slowly calypsoes build up. I introduced the 'seeded' setup to try to counteract this, so that there is interesting stuff happening from the start, but there is still potentially an issue once these have been completed, and additional calypsoes need building. It seems maybe 4/5 calypso cards added per hand is about the amount in practice, and as players have one in each suit, this build-up can take a while. It would be nice to speed up the accumulation of calypso cards.

The other issue is to do with the number of cards out-of-play. I think games tend to be more interesting when players have a decent idea of the remaining cards in play (perhaps with some small uncertainty - but not a lot). Knowing all or most of the cards in-play allows for more interesting card-play (usually at least), as it allows players to better plan longer-term playing strategies. The limiting factor here is the number of partial calypsoes in play — each gives a swing of 0-12 cards on display. If the table is fairly full, not many cards are out-of-play, but if it is empty then we have three decks worth unknown. It would be good to find a way to reduce this variance in the unknown cards, as well as limit the number in general. Possibly limiting the total number of cards in the game will help also, as it is not ideal for players to have to study the layout in detail to determine which cards are missing (and therefore likely to be in-play).

I've got a few options I have considered to help with these, in rough decreasing order of my current preference:

I haven't yet figured out exactly what I'm going to do with the next iteration, but I think some combination of these ideas might prove fruitful.

I initially developed this game as a three-hander, with half an eye on the four-player partnership version (as is probably apparent from the write-up). I forget quite why I had it this way round - probably as three-player version is easier to handle mentally when thinking about design. Probably in further development I will focus a bit more on the four-player version, as I think that is perhaps more promising, although I would love to have decent versions of each.

I'll wrap up with a list of things I like about the game (at least in theory), and that I'd like to try and retain (or imbue, if they are not really already present in practice). They may not all be possible at the same time, as requirements sometimes come into conflict with one another, but as an ideal to aim for this is probably a useful list for me to bear in mind:

Let's see where things land in the next iteration, and if we can get a bit closer to finding a version of game that meets more of the design goals.