A Psychological Analysis of Regulation Cheat Players

     There’s not a whole lot of strategy to Cheat. The game is simple and the opponents are as sophisticated as kindergarteners at nap time. Imagine you’re playing with your nephew Ethan who can’t focus on anything that isn’t covered in glitter and whose hands are always sticky and you’ll be fine. The purpose of this report is to help you better understand the faces on the Battlecards, because they are the real prizes here.

     Let’s start from the top, which is actually the bottom players as this is a ranked tournament and you’ll need to claw your way to the semi-functional players. First up is Capara the Kyrii, clad in her signature blue eyeshadow that must have questionable ingredients that impact her card playing abilities.

     Here’s the thing, I don’t think Capara is a bad player, I just think she doesn’t know the rules of the game. I genuinely don’t. I don’t think she knows you don’t have to play multiple cards all the time, you can put them down one at a time. I would bet my entire battle card collection, and that’s a hefty collection even after this year’s Faerie Festival, that she would try to play a set of eights after a queen if her choices weren’t stifled by the drop down list. I don’t even think she knows how a deck of cards works because I’ll play four sixes and she’ll immediately put down two sixes. Sure it could be a strategy, but judging by her reaction when I inevitably accuse her of cheating I think she might think there are six of each card in a deck.

     On the other hand, Little Timmy the Tuskanniny could be a genuinely good player. He has as much potential as he does pink in that adorable little mohawk of his. Yes he has a mohawk, I went back and checked. Don’t feel badly that you can’t fully picture his face, he’s the player voted “Most Likely to be Forgotten at a Theme Park” at the awards banquet every year. The thing with his playing is that he's too impatient to drop cards and it bites him in the flippers. Every once in a while he’ll have a close brush with winning a hand, but then he stares down a thirteen card pile and thinks yes, this is my time to try to sneak four definitely-all-sixes in and ends up with a hand of twenty-eight. It’s remarkable to watch.

     Now Chuffer Bob the Meerca is a pure mad lad. There’s no way around it. If his mauve little body is in the round you will be accused of cheating every turn no matter how obviously not cheating you are. Accept it and ride the wave.

     Brucey B is the foil to Chuffer Bob in that he cheats consistently, persistently, and for no discernible reason. This absolute steel toed boot will have thirty-two cards in his hand, be able to play any card he wants, and still cheats. I don’t understand it. I never will. And he’ll never win, the world spins and maintains homeostasis, we can all rest easy.

     Kalora the Kau is the balance. The zen among the very much not-zen. She will either cheat every single turn or go an entire round playing only honest hands. She is also one of the most spiteful Kaus in Neopia. If you catch her cheating she will accuse you the next turn, with extreme prejudice and zero exception. I don’t know why everyone is concerned with Spectre, this is the one you need to look out for. When she does go full blown master criminal, she commits to the role with her whole polka-dotted, track-suited chest. Kalora will have three twos and I know this because it's my three twos she's holding. And yet for the next five rounds she will play three of some random card and then start a generations long blood feud with me for calling her out. Just play the twos, it’s not that serious.

     Once Fernypoo enters the rounds, the game becomes at least semi-coherent. Brucey B is still there, and ready to cheat a passing faerie out of her wings, but if anything that helps us finally rid ourselves of him and that gaudy button-down shirt that the commissioners have made very clear to me in a strongly worded Neomail is in-fact regulation attire.

     Princess Fernypoo is the closest thing to a rational card player we’ve seen so far, but for one little quirk. If Princess Fernypoo plays three cards, she’s not cheating. I say this with as strong a confidence as I do my bank pin, which is to say with statistically insignificant consistency. If this coronated blue Acara puts down three cards, she is not cheating. However, if she plays four cards, she’s absolutely cheating. It doesn’t matter what cards she has in her paws, this will hold true. She could be clutching six sets of four in her cold dead paws and still, she will put down four mismatched cards. I think it’s her signature strategy and it’s one that will baffle me as long as I can form coherent sentences. That being said, if I’m going to lose a hand of Cheat, I’m going to lose it to Princess Fernypoo. Take that as you will.

     And with that, it’s unfortunately time for our next challenger.

     Forgive me for what we’re all about to witness because it’s time to discuss evil incarnate itself, Agent 00 Hog. This Moehog is the reason we can’t bring slushies to the Cheat table, or Borovan, or sharp edges in general. You ever wondered why the cards we play with have the roundest, smoothest edges this side of a sphere? It’s because of Agent Double-oh-my-Goodness-Gracious-can-you-not Hog.

     Agent Zero-Cares-Given needs to sit down and take several breaths because the guy lives life a hard-lined eleven and it's a lot. leave me alone i'm not cheating with one six. Not one single Neopian in this hogs life has had the decency to tell him that just because he can do something, doesn’t mean he should do something.

     Sometimes you get a round where Agent Double-Overtime-on-a-Holiday Hog decides nobody is going to go home, get comfortable because we're all clocking pensionable overtime tonight ladies and gentlehogs, and he accuses everyone of cheating on every single turn as if we're going to live forever and time is not our most fleeting resource. If you’ve been the victim of this time vampire please consider Neomailing your local Cheat commissioner in support of a round clock so we can start a game of Cheat without having to ask a neighbour to check on your plants.

     Once Spectre enters the scene everybody gets their act together, which is incredible because we’ve finally made it to the final round of the tournament. Spectre makes something resembling conscious decisions with at least an attempt at consistency, and I appreciate the effort. However, if Spectre cheats, you’re going to have to be the one to catch him hands full on in the peanut butter jar because none of these other yellow livered mortogs are going to accuse him. I don’t know what is intimidating everyone else, because Spectre has been nothing but an absolute sweetheart to me. He sent me a very thoughtful, albeit very soggy and full of questionable-looking meat, gift basket for my birthday last year so just know that there’s more to this silent card shark than sharp teeth and anchor tattoos.

     And that’s it. That’s the final round. That means we’ve gone over each and every contestant.

     Kidding. You, readers, are smarter than that. You undoubtedly noticed that I missed dear old Branston the Eyrie. Perhaps you thought I overlooked him because he’s lacklustre, missing the razzle-dazzle, or is otherwise not noteworthy. That is where you’re wrong, reader. Very, very wrong.

     I intentionally left him until last, readers. Because you see, Branston the Eyrie is, in this writer’s humble opinion, the single best Cheat player among this sorry lot. He is easily better than Brucey B, Kalora, and Chuffer Bob. He could cheat circles around Princess Fernypoo and Agent 0.000001% Tolerable Hog. I would even bet on him, if given the opportunity, against Spectre. That’s right, Spectre. The final boss, the head honcho, the top-ranked regulation tournament player this side of Neopia Central. This buttermilk feathered fellow is woefully under-ranked. He makes moves that make genuine, rational sense. He has no issues playing a single card if that is what the cards in his placid talons require. When he accuses a player of cheating, it’s because they have laid cards that are questionable bordering on straight-up impossible. I don’t know why he doesn’t rank higher. Maybe he has performance anxiety and chokes in all his qualifying matches, or he feels he can’t move on until he’s taught Capara the rules. Perhaps we mere mortals are simply too linear in our thinking to understand his genius, but uncertainty is the spice of life and scientists need mysteries of the universe to solve.

     So Branston the Eyrie, this is your moment. Let us all raise a hot cup of Borovan, at the regulation seven feet away from the competition Cheat table, to Branston. May your cards match, may your cheats go unnoticed, and may your rounds be a reasonable length for the complexity of the game at hand.

     Cheat on Neopians, and keep the ancient card games alive.