Chapter 86: Poker
Inside the experience store.
Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi were busy working on *Life Line*.
The others were doing their own things. Wen Lingwei was lounging in the massage chair in the experience store, watching a drama on her tablet.
The experience store had now become the most common gathering place for Wen Lingwei and the others. They would drop by whenever they had free time, and also to urge Chen Mo to make new games.
Chen Mo said, "Everyone, take a break. Let's play a game."
"Huh?" Su Jinyu was a bit confused. "Play a game? What game?"
Zheng Hongxi looked up, his face full of bewilderment. His plot development was stuck at a particularly tricky point.
Jia Peng said, "Sounds good, boss. We've got nothing to do anyway. What game is it?"
Chen Mo pulled out a deck of playing cards. "Poker."
Jia Peng: "...You guys chat. I'm leaving first."
Chen Mo chuckled. "It's fine, you can watch. Or you can be the dealer."
Wen Lingwei said lazily, "Boss, don't tell me it's Landlord. There are seven or eight of us here."
Chen Mo said, "It's not Landlord. It's a type of poker none of you have played before."
Chang Xiuya asked in surprise, "None of us have played it? That can't be right?"
Chen Mo said, "Come on. There are eight of us here now. Jia Peng will deal the cards, so we'll play a seven-player table."
Su Jinyu asked, "Are there any requirements for the number of players?"
Chen Mo shook his head. "No requirements. Two to nine players can play. The rules support it."
Su Jinyu asked, "What about more than nine?"
Chen Mo said, "Oh, theoretically, more than nine can play too, but the table wouldn't be able to fit everyone."
Su Jinyu: "...That's pretty convenient."
Chen Mo said, "Come on, everyone. Let's go to the meeting room. I'll teach you how to play."
Wen Lingwei said, "What's so fun about poker... Is there a prize for winning? If not, I'm not coming."
Chen Mo said, "Of course there is. First place gets a gift worth up to five thousand yuan. Everyone can choose."
"Five thousand yuan?"
"Any gift we want?"
"Damn, boss is different now that he has money!"
Everyone stood up in unison and swarmed into the meeting room.
Zheng Hongxi: "..."
Everyone sat around the long table in the meeting room.
Chen Mo pulled out a set of chips from somewhere, packaged in a special chip case.
Su Jinyu asked in surprise, "Boss, what's this?"
Chen Mo said, "Chips. Well, you can think of them as money. But we can't play with real money—that would be illegal gambling. So we'll use chips instead."
As he spoke, Chen Mo distributed the chips to everyone.
The chips were small round tokens, slightly larger than coins, with different numbers written on them and different colors.
Chen Mo gave each person one 500-chip, three 100-chips, six 25-chips, and ten 5-chips.
"This way, everyone has 1,000 chips. Whoever wins all the chips from everyone else wins. There will only be one winner in the end," Chen Mo explained.
Su Jinyu curiously fiddled with the chips in her hand. "Boss, are you sure we won't get arrested for illegal gambling?"
Chen Mo: "...No, as long as you don't throw real money on the table."
Wen Lingwei played with the chips in her hand, making a clattering sound. "Do we really need these to play? It's not like Landlord?"
Chen Mo nodded. "Yes, chips are necessary. Alright, everyone take your seats. Jia Peng, you sit here, right in the middle. Yes, you'll be in charge of dealing."
Wen Lingwei raised her hand. "I object. I feel like if he deals, everyone's luck will get worse."
Jia Peng: "...Senior, could you please consider my feelings?"
Chen Mo said, "It's fine. If everyone's luck gets worse together, it's still fair."
Jia Peng: "...I don't feel comforted at all!"
Everyone was seated.
Chen Mo held the deck of cards, spread them face-down on the table. "Since we're playing casually, we'll simplify the rules a bit. Everyone draws one card. The highest card is the dealer."
Su Jinyu asked, "What does the dealer do?"
Chen Mo said, "The dealer has a more advantageous position. Come on, draw your cards."
Everyone drew cards. Wen Lingwei drew a King and thought it was the highest, but Zheng Hongxi ended up drawing an Ace.
Jia Peng said, "All lucky dogs... I'm trembling."
Chen Mo placed a plush toy in front of Zheng Hongxi. "This represents the dealer. After each hand, it passes to the next person clockwise."
"Let's do a practice round first."
Chen Mo began explaining the rules of Texas Hold'em to everyone.
Texas Hold'em is a game that's easy to learn but hard to master. Learning the basics takes less than five minutes.
With Chen Mo's guidance, everyone quickly started playing like pros.
...
Half an hour later, Chen Mo watched a couple more hands, confirmed that everyone had grasped the rules, and then went back upstairs to continue organizing his design documents.
Chen Mo taught these people Texas Hold'em mainly to see how well it would be accepted in this world. It was also a rehearsal for promoting the game.
The rules of Texas Hold'em are extremely complete, having been verified by countless tournaments in the previous life. They were flawless. But the main question Chen Mo was considering was how to use its characteristics to promote *Thunder Chess & Cards*.
The popularity of Texas Hold'em abroad was mainly because professional players could make steady profits from it. In the end, it came down to money—money was the most effective incentive.
But Chen Mo couldn't do that. First, playing with real money was illegal gambling. Second, gambling had social harms, and Chen Mo didn't want a game he made to ruin people's lives.
So, Chen Mo's idea was to minimize the gambling aspect of Texas Hold'em as much as possible and promote it through tournaments. Let players experience the fun of Texas Hold'em by playing with Happy Beans.
Just like Landlord and Mahjong, once you remove the gambling element, they become great board and card games.
In the previous life, many big shots in the tech and investment circles liked playing Texas Hold'em, and it wasn't entirely for the money. These people were all worth hundreds of millions; they didn't need to make money playing poker.
For them, Texas Hold'em was a brain game, similar to entrepreneurship and investing. It involved judging others' actions, strategizing against them, and cutting losses when danger was detected.
After verifying that Texas Hold'em also had a strong appeal to people in this world, Chen Mo had a preliminary promotion plan in mind. Through this plan, he could maximize the acquisition of users from other card games, let them experience the fun of Texas Hold'em, and ultimately keep them.
...
Days passed, and the development plans for *Life Line* and *Thunder Chess & Cards* progressed steadily.
In the first Texas Hold'em tournament, Zheng Hongxi, relying on his ridiculously lucky nature, defeated Wen Lingwei and won the five-thousand-yuan prize.
Chen Mo even specially made a small trophy with the words engraved on it: "First Thunder Poker Internal Tournament Champion."
From then on, everyone's interest was piqued. Several people would play poker in the meeting room every day when they had nothing to do, all holding their breath, wanting to win first place the next week and claim the prize and trophy.
To everyone's surprise, the more deeply they played, the more hidden intricacies they discovered. It was a game truly worthy of the phrase "easy to learn, hard to master."
Two weeks later, the vast majority of people were already addicted to this type of poker.
Of course, this was under the premise of prize incentives.
Without the prize of a few thousand yuan, these people would have lost interest.
As for the plot of *Life Line*, it was constantly being refined. Zheng Hongxi had lost count of how many drafts he had revised, but it was indeed getting more complex and more interesting with each revision.
Chen Mo smoothed out the timing of all the dialogues, basically ensuring the game's pacing matched the previous life. Of course, the specific text content was different, but it didn't have much impact.
For Chen Mo, these two games were very simple. Including art resources, they were finished in a month. The next step was continuous optimization, tweaking user experience and details.
During this month, the seemingly calm mobile game market was actually brewing an undercurrent.
Just from various miscellaneous channels, Chen Mo heard that at least three or four game companies were developing card games similar to *I Am MT*.
That was just what Chen Mo had heard; there were probably more he hadn't. In terms of progress, these games would be fully developed and released one after another, within two months at the fastest, four months at the slowest.
The mobile game market was very likely to experience a wave of card game fever, just like in Chen Mo's previous life. Players would once again experience the fear of being dominated by card games.
These card games might have different art styles and themes, but one thing was certain: their monetization models and numerical frameworks would heavily borrow from *I Am MT*.
However, Chen Mo didn't care at all. For him, this wasn't entirely bad news.
*I Am MT* had firmly secured its first-mover advantage. All the subsequent card games that flooded the market would forever live in the shadow of *I Am MT* and could never shake its position.
These games would, objectively, help "expand the user base for card games."
Of course, these fast-moving game developers would also make a killing, but that was inevitable. For Chen Mo, you earn, I earn, but as long as I earn more than you, that's fine.
Moreover, a massive flood of card games would conveniently divert the attention of the game industry, giving Chen Mo more room to pave the way for his future plans.
What truly threatened *I Am MT* were games like *Dota Legend*, which fully innovated and surpassed the first-generation domestic card games in gameplay. But Chen Mo estimated that it would take other designers at least a year, at the very fastest, to reach the design level of *Dota Legend*.
Because first-generation card games were inherently a type of game that made money while lying down. Stimulated by this powerful profitability, most designers would lose their drive for progress and even fall into a "comfort zone," unwilling to innovate on the gameplay of first-generation card games.
Only when players got bored and completely sick of them would designers seek change and reform the gameplay of first-generation card games.
Within this one year, Chen Mo could accomplish far too much.