| GAMES ROOM - For those of you who are beginning to think this series of articles
will never end, I have good news for you. This is the final instalment. And for
those of you that have always wanted to play the more complicated high-stakes
games, I have even better news for you. I am actually going to explain how to
play them.
As we have discussed before, a game of chance is any game you have to pay
to play. Some are based of pure luck and some require a little strategy to improve
your odds on winning. There are even some games where you lose even if you win.
This is kind of like fighting on the side of Darigan in the Meridell war.
JubJub Blackjack
Location: Games: Luck/Chance
Cost to Play: 400 NP maximum bet
Limit: None
This is simply Blackjack. You get the JubJub part of the name at no extra
charge. For some odd reason, you play against your own pet, which means he will
burst into tears if he loses. Which is odd, because if you lose, you
won't have any Neopoints to buy him those Rainbow Snowballs be keeps claiming
to be hungry for in random events.
Blackjack is fairly easy to play, but it does require you to be able to add
up to the number 21. Eww. Math. But I wouldn't worry too much about this, because
the game tells you how much you have and how much your pet has showing. Aces
count as either one or eleven and face cards count as ten. Your pet always has
a card face-down, but since in a deck of 52 cards, 24 of have the value of 9
or higher, there's an almost 50% chance that the face-down card will be a high
card. "Black Jack" is any ace and a face card and will earn you 50% more of
your bet if you have that combination.
Now comes the part where you actually have to use some brain power. Both you
and your opponent are dealt two cards. Both of yours are showing, but only one
of your opponents cards is showing. You are given three choices: "hit", "stick"
or "double". Hit means to take another card, stick means to keep
what you have, and double means you double your bet and get one more
card to try to win with. If you have 17 or more, it's a good idea to stick.
That's because if you go over 21, you lose. If you have less than 16, it's a
good idea to hit. If you have less than 10, it definitely pays to double.
If you and your pet tie, you don't win. But at least you don't lose either.
You get back your bet. And here's a hint that will help you out. Pay attention
to what the Jub Jub dealer is saying. He gives out some nifty game tips.
Krawps
Location: Krawk Island
Cost to Play: Chip denominations: 5, 10, 25, 50 100, 200, 300
Limit: None
This is THE dice game. It's a little more complicated than the version you
might be used to playing in the back of the gym locker room. Ummm... with parental
permission, of course. But it's still the game where you roll two dice and win
or lose depending on how many spots you see before your eyes.
I must confess that the first time I saw the Krawps board I panicked. It looks
like a Lenny Conundrum. I almost left without giving it a try until I saw my
pirate Krawk standing in the upper left hand corner with his hands on his hips,
tapping his foot. I figured if a pirate Krawk couldn't get me through a pirate
Krawk game, then nothing could.
The first thing you need to know is what all those little speckles all over
the cubes are all about. There are two dice, each with six sides. Have I lost
you yet? Okay, so there are six sides on each cube, this means that each dice
has basically the numbers 1 through 6 on them. Only they don't use numbers to
show this, they use polka dots. Now here comes the delightful part. They like
to give certain things funny names instead of just stating the obvious thing
that it is.
The first thing you have to do is decide how much to bet. When you first get
to the game, you are given a drop down menu to select what "chip denomination"
you want. Insert the word "Neopoints" where they have "chips" and suddenly the
amount you have to choose to bet becomes very scary. This is because once you
choose, every single bet you place will be for that amount as long as you are
playing and don't leave. If you are new to this, I highly recommend starting
with 5 Neopoint "chips". You won't win very much, but once you get the hang
of it, you can always play for higher stakes when you play again.
The object of the game is to guess what numbers will probably show up before
other numbers do. The two most important numbers you need to know are 7 and
11. If you roll a 7 or an 11 on the FIRST roll of the dice, you win. If you
roll a 7 or an 11 at any other time, you lose. If you roll a 2, 3 or 12 on the
FIRST roll of the dice, you lose. Funny name #1 is Krawps. If you lose, it will
tell you that you have "krawped out".
So what happens if you don't get a 7 or an 11 on the first roll? Funny name
#2 is Skull. Let's say you get a 5. That becomes your "skull number" and a skull
appears on the big number 5 in the top row. You now have to hope-- desperately--
that you will get a 5 again before that nasty little 7 or 11 shows up.
The next thing you have to do is actually bet on something. Funny name #3
is Bilge Line. You don't have do bet on anything else if you don't want to,
but you MUST put at least one chip down on the Bilge Line. Think of it like
going to the movies. You don't have to buy popcorn or candy, but you have to
buy a ticket to get in or a burly guy with a flashlight will make you leave.
Your chip stays on the Bilge Line until you either make your skull number or
krawp out.
As long as you have a chip on the Bilge Line you can bet on anything else
on the board too. Well, almost anything. You can't bet any of the numbers in
the skull line at the top if there is no skull there at all. And you can't bet
on any number that the skull is sitting on. Other than that, you can bet on
anything. If fact, you can put a chip on everything if you want, but you'll
lose more than you would win.
Just below the Bilge Line is a box that says "Odds". Think of this as a sort
of side bet. Since what you are betting on in the Bilge Line bet is whether
or not you will make your skull number, the odds bet gives you a chance to win
even more if you make that number. This bet is optional and you can bet twice
the amount of your Bilge Line. So if you bet 5 Neopoints on the Bilge Line,
you can bet 10 Neopoints on the odds. Here are the odds:
If the skull is on 4 or 10 it pays 9 to 5 odds
If the skull is on 5 or 9 it pays 7 to 5 odds
If the skull is on 6 or 8 it pays 6 to 5 odds
If this is confusing, think of it this way. If you plunk down 5 Neopoints
on the odds and your skull number is 4, you will win 9 Neopoints. This a bonus
to the 5 Neopoints you will win on the Bilge Line if the number 4 pops up.
Up at the top of the board is the skull line. The same numbers and the same
odds are there. Instead of betting on your own skull number, this gives you
the chance to do the exact opposite. You can bet on any other number and win
at the same odds as the "odds" bet. This means if your skull number is 4, you
can bet on a 9, for example. If a 9 comes up before a 4, you win 7 Neopoints
instead of 5. Just remember, you have to do that before that nasty 7 shows up
or you lose.
Funny name #4 is Anchor. I highly recommend putting a chip on the really big
anchor rectangle in the middle of the board every single bet. Since the only
numbers you can lose on are 5, 6, 7 and 8 you are going to win most of the time.
In fact, if you roll a 2 or a 12 you even get double the amount of your bet.
Funny name #5 is 'Ardway. In English, this translates as the "hard way". What
you are betting on is that the dice will show doubles. For example, to roll
an 8, the dice could show a 5 and a 3, or a 6 and a 2. But in the 'Ardway bet,
you are betting that an 8 will be rolled as a 4 and a 4. So you are betting
that certain doubles will show up. Since it is more rare for doubles to be rolled,
this is the "hard way" to get a 4, 6, 8 or a 10, so the odds on winning are
a lot higher. Higher odds means more Neopoints if you win.
The final type of bet is the Hi/Lo bet. Hi is not a greeting. Hi is high.
Lo is low. High is the number 12. Low is the number 2. You can't get any more
simple than that, so they had to toss in another funny name. Funny name #6 is
Krawk Eyes. If you bet on the "hi" and win, it will say you got Krawk Hi. But
if you bet on the "lo" and win it will tell you that you got Krawk Eyes. But
either way pays you 30 to 1 if you guess right.
Food Club
Location: Krawk Island
Cost to Play: Varies from player to player
Limit: None
I am guessing that a lot of people don't play this game because it's as intimidating
as the Neopian stock market. This is probably because of the ticker tape of
names and numbers scrolling by on the top of the screen. But basically this
game is a combination of two seemingly unrelated games. It's sort of the Sloth
Faerie Plushie of games. It has the "you have to wait until tomorrow to find
out the results" part of the Neopian Lottery and the "pick a contestant to bet
on" part of Poogle Racing.
The amount you are allowed to bet in this game is the same as Grarrl Keno.
You are allowed to bet twice times the number of days you have been playing
Neopets plus 50 Neopoints. So if you have been playing Neopets for 125 days,
you can bet up to 300 Neopoints. That's 125 x 2 = 250 + 50.
If trying to figure out how much you are allowed to bet isn't confusing enough,
there are a whole bunch of different guys to bet on and different ways to bet.
So I am going to hand you a pair of crutches and limp you through this one painful
step at a time.
First off, let's start with the title of this game. It's dumb. This is not
a club or a guild or a gourmet convention. It's a food fight. But instead of
tossing food at each other, they eat it instead. The object of the contest is
to see who can stuff the greatest amount of food inside their stomachs without
passing out. This is the sort of pointless activity only pirates and college
students would have.
Luckily, there are 20 pirates in Neopia who all have some sort of tapeworm
which allows them to eat more food at a single sitting than is normally possible.
And most of them aren't even Skeiths. They all have fairly cool buccaneer names,
which are listed on the front page of the Food Club game. Each pirate also has
five numbers listed next to his name: his strength, his weight, his wins, his
loses, and the percentage of times he has won.
It's really tempting to just pick the pirates who have won the most, but it's
a little trickier than that. They all have allergies to different kinds of foods
and there are some foods even a pirate won't eat even if it's free. This means
you actually have to do a little homework on the contestants before you bet.
And if the word homework make you cringe, just remember that with this kind
of homework you could win lots and lots of Neopoints. That should make you feel
better.
There are five "arenas" in which different pirates are competing. They switch
around every day, and the foods they are served to eat changes every day, so
you can't just keep betting on the same guys. The names of the arenas are Shipwreck,
Lagoon, Treasure Island, Hidden Cove and Harpoon Harry's. These names sound
more like restaurants to me than arenas, but I guess I'm just being picky. Since
there are 20 contestants and 5 arenas, this means each "dining place" seats
a table for four.
The names of all the pirates and what the odds are of them winning are listed
by arena and scroll by really really fast at the top of the screen. But this
is only a quick reference tool. To get a version of this information that doesn't
make your eyes spin, click on the "Place a Bet" link. There you will find all
of the arenas. The contestants for each arena are in a drop-down box next to
the arena name, and the odds are listed next to their names. Just remember,
the lower the odds, the more likely it is that person will win.
To make this easier, I'll go step by step through a bet I made. The first
thing I did was The next thing I did was click on the "Next Round" link. I then
wrote down the names of the four guys who were competing in the Shipwreck arena.
Here are their names and their stats:
Peg Leg Percival
strength: 73 weight: 202 wins: 69 losses: 408 percent: 14% (odds: 12:1)
Lucky McKyriggan
strength: 82 weight: 182 wins: 128 losses: 349 percent: 27% (odds: 4:1)
Federismo Corvallio
strength: 81 weight: 166 wins: 129 losses: 349 percent: 37% (odds 2:1)
Ned the Skipper
strength: 79 weight: 169 wins: 99 losses: 378 percent: 21% (odds 3:1)
So what does all this stuff mean? Well, it means that Lucky McKyriggan is
the strongest guy in the bunch, but Peg Leg Percival is the fattest. Sometimes
being bigger or stronger can give a contestant an edge over a smaller guy. That's
why Lucky McKyriggan has lower odds than Ned the Skipper. So why is the skinniest
guy the biggest winner and the fat guy the biggest loser? Well, that has to
do with the next part: what they can and can not eat.
By clicking on the name of each contestant, you can see what foods are their
favorite foods and which foods they are allergic to. I wrote this information
down next to their names:
Peg Leg Percival (allergic to smoothies, likes spicy foods)
Lucky McKyriggan (allergic to pizza, likes gross foods)
Federismo Corvallio (allergic to smoothies, likes gross foods, pizza)
Ned the Skipper (allergic to dairy, likes meat)
The next thing I did was to write down all of the foods that were being served
in the Shipwreck arena contest. I then clicked on each food and wrote down what
type of foods they were. Here is the list:
Lemon Blitz : Type: Fruits, Dairy, Smoothies
Anchovies : Type: Salty foods, Meats
Flaming Fire Faerie Pizza : Type: Spicy foods, Vegetables, Pizza
Apple Onion Rings : Type: Fruits, Gross foods
Hot Cakes : Type: Breads (pastries, pancakes, etc.)
Streaky Bacon : Type: Meats
Orange Negg : Type: Neggs
Hot Tyrannian Pepper : Type: Spicy foods, Vegetables
Negg Stew : Type: Neggs
Worm and Leech Pizza : Type: Gross foods, Pizza
So what does all of this stuff mean NOW, Stoneman? Well, it's pretty simple.
You look at the types of food each pirate can and cannot eat and compare it
to the menu. Here is a breakdown of what all this annoying information means:
Peg Leg Percival: likes 2 items and is allergic to 1 item
Lucky McKyriggan: likes 1 item and is allergic to 2 items
Federismo Corvallio: likes 3 items and is allergic to 1 item
Ned the Skipper: likes 2 items and is allergic to 1 item
I tossed out Lucky McKyriggan off the bat because he was allergic to the most
number of foods. Federismo Corvallio seemed like a sure bet to me. Not only
did he like the most number of foods being served, but he was the favorite to
win. But I noticed that he only liked one more food item than either Peg Leg
Percival or Ned the Skipper. Despite the fact that Peg Leg Percival was the
long shot to win, he was equal to Ned the Skipper in the food category and was
bigger and stronger than Ned the Skipper or Federismo Corvallio.
My final step was to place my bet. You have several options here. You can
bet on a single match or multiple matches. If you bet on multiple matches, ALL
of the guys you bet on have to win, or you lose. You can make a LOT more Neopoints
with this type of bet, but it is harder to win. I decided to just make single
bets. I bet 200 NPs on Federismo Corvallio and I bet 100 NPs on Peg Leg Percival.
You have to wait until the winners are announced the next day to find out
if you have won or not. To collect your Neopoints if you have won, you have
to go to the "Collect Winnings" page. You have to do this within seven days
of the match or you don't get your Neopoints. So how did you do, Stoneman? Peg
Leg Percival won the match at 12:1 odds. That means I won 1200 Neopoints. Not
bad, huh?
This is the end of my "Gambling on Success" series. Now you can rush out and
become a whiz at Neopian games of chance. If not, well... maybe it just wasn't
your lucky day...
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