About tokens

That is genuinely all you need to know. The rest of this page is why.

I have a web server. I pay for it every month whether anybody uses it or not, and for a long time it mostly sat there doing nothing. It seemed like a waste, so I built this — the card games we grew up playing, so the people I care about can sit down at the same table without being in the same province.

But a web server is not magic. Every hand that gets dealt, every card that slides across the table, every laugh in the chat — all of it is work for the same machine, and there is only one of it. If a handful of people played all day every day, everyone else's game would slow to a crawl and I would be buying a bigger server. As it stands the bill is small and most of what this site costs me is my own time — the About page sets out exactly what it costs and what it would cost if this gets busy — and tokens are how we keep it that way.

Tokens are how we share it fairly. Nothing more than that. They are not points and they are not a score — nobody is ranked by them and hoarding them wins you nothing. We are all sharing the same web server — don't be greedy.

• 200 tokens when you join. A gift, from me.
• 200 more every year, on the anniversary of the day you joined — not on the first of January. They are added to whatever you still have; being careful with them is never punished.
• Tokens you are given never expire. If you do not use them, they are still there next year.
• Invite someone, and if they join and play a game you get 50 tokens. This place only grows by people bringing people, so that is worth something to me. There is a limit of 10 a year, because otherwise it stops being a thank-you and starts being a way to manufacture tokens.
• A friend can send you tokens. They travel as a gift and stay a gift, and both of you can see it in your history — who, when and how many. There is a cap of 200 tokens a year that any one person can give away, which is generous for helping a friend out and no use at all for feeding one account out of another.

What	Tokens
A game — any game, any number of players	1
Playing on your own against the computer	1
Watching, for the whole visit	1

That is it. A four-handed game of 120s costs you the same one token as a quick hand against the computer. The size of the table makes no difference, and the computer players do not pay — a game on your own against three of them costs one token, not four.

Why does watching cost anything? Because your screen is connected to the same server, being told what everybody plays, in real time — that is nearly as much work for the machine as playing. But watching is meant to be there, so it is one token for the whole visit, not one per game. Sit in for the evening, drift between tables, watch four games and heckle your brother's card play: one token. You can take part in the party without playing a hand, which was always the point of a Newfie kitchen party.

Four of you, playing 5 games every second weekend, all year? That is 130 games each — 26 sessions at 5 games a time. You are given 200. You would finish the year with 70 to spare.

And here is the part worth getting right, because it is easy to get wrong. At a table of four, everybody puts in one token, so the table pays four in total — but there are four of you, and you only paid one of them. A game costs each player one token, whatever the size of the table. So 200 tokens is about 200 games — not 50. I had that wrong myself in my first set of notes, where I divided by the size of the table, and it matters: the wrong version makes the yearly gift sound four times smaller than it really is.

It is also exact, not an average. In an ordinary game there is nothing to win and nothing to lose — every player is simply down one token, win or lose, every time. One token, one game, per person. The gift is not "enough if you are lucky". It is enough, full stop.

If a host wants to, they can set a table where everybody puts in more than one token, and the winner takes the extra. It is optional, the price is on the room before you sit down, and the host picks it from a short list — 1, 2, 5, 10 tokens a seat. The most a seat can ever cost is 10 tokens, because a box you can type any number into invites a 500-token table at a family game night.

Worked through, at 4 seats and 5 tokens a seat:

Each player pays	5
Total on the table	20
The site takes (one base token each)	4
The winner takes	16
So the winner's night is	+11
and everybody else's is	−5

The site never takes a share of the bet. One token a head is all the site ever takes, at a betting table exactly as at an ordinary one. And over a long run of games, a betting table costs you the same as an ordinary one — one token a game — it is just a much bumpier ride. That is the whole reason betting tables have rules around them and ordinary tables do not.

Some things about betting tables that are not up for discussion:

• You cannot bet against the computer. Only against people.
• Under 18s cannot sit at a betting table, though they are very welcome to watch.
• You cannot bet money. Tokens are the only thing on the table, and the only thing anybody wins at a table is tokens.

At a game of 120s, the winning side splits the pot. 120s is two partnerships and there is no winning player, so six and six out of twelve. If a game ends in a tie, the pot splits equally between everybody who tied, and a token that will not divide goes to the site. And if a game somehow ends with nobody winning at all, it goes to the last player knocked out — it does not sit there dead.

If the site breaks the game, it costs you nothing. A hand that was dealt and never finished — a crash, a server restart, whatever it was — refunds every token every player put in, base included, automatically. A game the site broke is not a game you lost.

I will say the other half of that out loud, because it is the honest thing to do: the site counts those refunds. Not to catch anybody out, and never to take anything off anybody automatically — but a full refund every time a game breaks would otherwise be a reason for somebody who was losing to break it. If one account is being refunded over and over, I will see a line about it and I will look. That is all that happens.

If the host ends the game, nobody wins it. Everybody gets their bet back — including anybody who had already walked away from the table — and the site keeps the one base token, because the cards had been dealt and the machine had done its work. If the game had not been dealt yet, the site takes nothing at all, because nothing had been taken. The same is true if everybody leaves. Ending a game can never hand anybody a pot, because there is no pot to hand over: there are only refunds.

You will never be told you cannot afford a table with three people watching. You are told when you go to take the seat, before you sit down, and it is between you and the screen.

Neither of these works today, and I am being careful about how much I say about them — the first one is not even fully decided yet. They are here so you know they are coming, and so that nothing above this line gets mistaken for something that is still being worked out.

Play. Watch. Talk. Take the mickey out of each other's card play. That is what it is for.

When tokens are switched on, you will be able to see exactly where yours went — every one, what it was for, when, and whether it was one I gave you or one you came by some other way. Every movement of every token is written down and nothing is ever quietly edited. If something ever looks wrong, tell me and I will sort it out.