’Rabbit’ Han Mengying regretfully took back the card she had already placed.
"Not bad. You understand to calculate the remaining cards in both hands. Not too stupid.
"Your ’Fool Deck’ still has two rocks and one scissors remaining. Continuing to play cards is not a wise move."
’Gray Wolf’ He Xiaojun felt somewhat deflated and said nothing.
’Rabbit’ Han Mengying nodded, "In other words, you really do have a ’Fool Deck’, right? Thank you for the intelligence."
’Gray Wolf’ He Xiaojun was stunned. He immediately felt somewhat annoyed. Obviously, the opponent originally wasn’t certain what his deck was, but his silent acknowledgment let the opponent confirm it.
He Xiaojun felt very frustrated. This clearly looked like a fair game, a luck-based game, yet he was still being beaten without any ability to fight back.
Neither side spoke again.
The 5 minutes passed quickly. After both sides destroyed their remaining cards, they exited the battle room.
In the first stage, one battle occurred every 5 minutes, with 5-minute rests after three battles, totaling 9 battles.
The time was quite compact.
This time, the deck Han Mengying obtained was a ’Sage Deck’, meaning 3 ‘Sage Cards’ (Paper), 1 Fool Card (Rock), 1 Thief Card (Scissors).
Han Mengying first played ’Thief Card (Scissors)’, winning against the opponent’s ’Sage Card (Paper)’.
Then played ’Sage Card (Paper)’, tying with the opponent’s ’Sage Card (Paper)’.
Finally played ’Fool Card (Rock)’, winning against the opponent’s ’Thief Card (Scissors)’.
Afterward, neither side continued playing and chose to each destroy their cards and leave.
After three battles, there was a 5-minute rest period.
One-third of the first stage’s total rounds had passed.
’Gray Wolf’ He Xiaojun counted his remaining chips. Only 7000 left. Read full story at novel⸺fire.net
"Damn, what’s going on! Isn’t this a game with positive expected returns?"
In the process of battling the previous three players, He Xiaojun conducted a total of 6 small rounds, 2 small rounds with each player.
The final result was more losses than wins. He only won 1 small round total but lost 5 small rounds.
This was clearly a positive-sum game, yet He Xiaojun’s chips had lost 3000. This was simply unacceptable.
What puzzled him most was the second round.
He clearly held a ’Sage Deck’ and confidently placed a ’Sage Card (Paper)’, yet the opponent precisely played a ’Thief Card (Scissors)’, directly causing his mentality to somewhat explode.
"Could all the players I’ve encountered know mind-reading?"
He Xiaojun realized he couldn’t continue , because to safely leave this game, he needed to earn at least an additional 20,000 or even 25,000 chips.
From the first three battles, the probability of losing was too high. This was very abnormal.
This meant his understanding of this game was completely wrong. Continuing to play would only result in more losses.
He had to find a way to make changes.
Although this game was called ’Fool’s Game’, the God’s Imitator who designed the game also said this game only welcomed ’wise fools’.
When the win rate was already abnormally low, yet still forcing himself to play, this couldn’t be considered wise by any measure.
"But what should I do? I can’t think of any strategy at all!"
The rest time was only 5 minutes. He Xiaojun was anxiously spinning in circles.
Obviously, this game also had certain ’information gaps’ and ’tricks’, but ordinary players in such a fast-paced game process found it difficult to figure out exactly where the problem was.
Suddenly, He Xiaojun saw the conspicuous red box on the coffee table.
The countdown still had over 40 minutes remaining. This meant it would only automatically open when reaching the second stage.
"Wait, why is it a wooden box?
"If they didn’t want players to open it, wouldn’t making it an iron box work?
"Moreover, after damage the chips will disappear. This looks like a penalty rule, but there’s nothing else on the coffee table. No one would clumsily knock it off, right?
"After the countdown ends there will be chips equal to 10% of visa time, but I don’t have much visa time to begin with. I don’t have to wait!
"Opening it now, doesn’t that mean I can see what game advice the God’s Imitator gave before other players?"
He Xiaojun suddenly realized this box seemed to be encouraging fool players to open it early.
Because the less remaining visa time a player had, the less reward they would get from waiting for the countdown.
Assuming a player had 200,000 visa time, waiting for the box to open naturally could get 20,000 chips. Moreover, the more visa time a player had, the smarter they were, naturally not needing to urgently see what the specific game advice was.
Conversely, if a player only had 20,000 visa time, waiting for the box to open naturally could only get 2000 chips, not very significant.
For them, the game advice was more important, and the earlier they obtained the advice the better.
He Xiaojun currently had no clue at all and desperately needed this advice.
Time was running short. He gritted his teeth, made up his mind, picked up the wooden box and threw it on the floor.
This box was quite sturdy. He Xiaojun didn’t dare use too much force, so he didn’t smash it in one go.
He could only pick it up and throw it again.
He Xiaojun fumbled through the fragments and indeed found a small note.
The so-called ’game advice’ was just simple 8 characters, though there was also a line of small print annotation below.
’Abandon thinking, play cards randomly.’
’(This advice mainly applies to the first stage.)’
It looked like an absurd suggestion, a bit like an April Fool’s joke.
"This... what kind of strategy is this!"
He Xiaojun was stunned. He even felt the God’s Imitator who designed this game was toying with him.
"Haven’t I always been playing cards randomly!
"Wait, no, I don’t seem to be playing cards randomly..."
He Xiaojun was originally a bit dazed from losing consecutively, his brain in chaos, momentarily falling into a misunderstanding but the information on this note actually awakened him.
He thought he had been casually selecting from five cards before, but actually not.
For example, when battling ’Rabbit’, he played ’Fool Card (Rock)’ without much thought. This wasn’t a randomly chosen result, but rather he subconsciously wanted to keep the single scissors and paper to have more choices afterward.
’Rabbit’ precisely predicted this point, which is why she played paper.
In other words, if He Xiaojun truly played cards randomly, he should take one rock, scissors, and paper each in his hand, randomly shuffle them, then play.
That way, the probability of losing, winning, and tying would each be 1/3.
"Should I accept this advice?"
There was no time left. He Xiaojun picked up the new deck and entered the battle room again.
He ultimately decided to accept this advice, abandon thinking, and play in as purely random a way as possible.
After all, he didn’t have many other choices at this moment.