Showdown · for strategy sessions, team-building and conferences
Poker as a decision model. Three and a half hours in which a team makes decisions with incomplete information – and then sees exactly how it made them.
How it works
Participants do not learn to play. They make decisions in poker situations – from their phone, at their table, on a timer – and then review what they did. Everything they need to know about the rules, the screen explains as they go.
Before · 3–5 days ahead
Experience, self-assessment, five knowledge questions and three on decision style. It produces an advisor for each table and the baseline for the report.
Session · 3.5 hours
Each block is one insight, its own kind of interaction, a reveal and a bridge to the agenda of the session. After the break the tables play against each other.
After
Self-assessment against the actual behaviour of the tables, a decision profile for each table, and the "two books": decisions separated from results.
Eight blocks
Each block has its own mechanism, so each has its own interaction. All eight can be tried in the demo below.
"Are we strong?" is a question without an answer. There is only "stronger than whom".
The full picture is not coming. Waiting for it is also a decision, and a paid one.
Not "right or wrong", but "what it costs and how often it pays off".
The order in which information arrives is a resource in itself.
Passing is free and repeatable. Entering is paid and irreversible.
Whoever always gives way under pressure appoints themselves the target.
Caution has two dials: frequency and size. People usually turn the wrong one.
Result and decision quality are counted separately. The right strategy loses often.
Live game
After the break all tables sit down at one poker table on the big screen. Cards are visible only on the phones of their own table; inside the table people vote, and the table plays the majority action. Only the facilitator sees how the votes split.
What remains after the game
How the tables' chips melted and grew, how votes split inside the tables, how fast consensus formed, who went against their own majority, who folded the best hand, who pushed with nothing. This is material for the last two blocks and for the report.
Big prize
40 / 15 / 5 for first, second, third. The winner takes almost everything – as in tournament poker.
Small prize
For the table with the best total: block chips plus the expected value of every action in the game, calculated against the opponents' real cards rather than the card that happened to come. The prizes usually go to different tables.
"We spent three hours learning to keep two books – and handed out the main prize by the first one. Your bonus plan works the same way."the facilitator's bridge to the synthesis
Demo · all eight blocks and the live game
On the left, the big screen of the room; on the right, a participant's phone. You play as table 3; the other tables are simulated. Chips earned in blocks 1–6 become the starting chips of the live game.
Access by codeword
Mark gives it at a meeting or in correspondence.
Not it. Check the keyboard layout and try again.
Big screen · block 1 · strength is relative
Three starting hands. Which is the strongest? Every table votes.
Phone · table 3
Tap the circle to place a hand: 1 is the strongest.
Big screen · block 2 · decide before you know
The opponent raised before the community cards, bet on three cards and now, on the fourth, bets 30 into a pot of 40. Calling costs 30, you can win 70. Each question costs 8 chips out of the possible win. Timer 45 seconds.
Phone · table 3
Spent: 0
Big screen · block 3 · every decision is a bet with a price
You hold a pair of kings. After the fifth and last card the opponent bets 50 into a pot of 100. Your hand beats only a bluff. Two questions: how often is he bluffing, and at what share of bluffs does the call pay off.
Phone · table 3
1 · How often, in your view, is he bluffing here?
2 · At what share of bluffs does calling 50 pay off?
Big screen · block 4 · whoever acts last knows more
In this hand half the tables act last, half act first. The tables do not know it is the same hand. On the screen, the two distributions side by side.
Phone · table 3
Big screen · block 5 · selection
The score runs over the whole series. The reveal: how many times the table entered, and what each extra entry cost according to the Daily 300 database.
Phone · table 3
Twelve starting hands, each with your place in the order of action. Enter the hand or pass. The tenth correct pass feels like the one where you finally have to enter.
Big screen · block 6 · half the money is won without a showdown
You hold a pair of nines, and there are higher cards on the board. The opponent bets the size of the pot. Call or give way. The reveal counts how much the opponent would make from your give-ways, even if he has nothing.
Phone · table 3
Big screen · hand 0 · forced bets 1 / 2 ·
| Table | Chips | Decisions | Status |
|---|
Phone · table 3 (you)
Your table earned 0 chips in the blocks. Starting chips: 50 plus what you earned. The other tables: 50 plus their result.
Voting inside the table (simulated). The majority decides – here, you decide.
Other tables are acting…
Big screen · block 8 · two books
On the left, how it ended. On the right, how the decisions were made: the expected value of every action against the opponents' real cards, not the card that happened to come. The winner by the first book rarely wins by the second.
Phone · table 3
Your decisions during the game – before the cards were opened.
In the room this is where the folded hands of all tables are opened: who folded the best hand, who pushed with nothing, how the votes split inside.
Two formats
Case 1
One team that works together. The module is built into the agenda of the session and answers its question: how do we decide when we cannot see the whole picture.
Case 2
A block for participants who do not know each other. The aim is to give the room one strong shared experience and something to talk about in the corridors, not to analyse a team.
Common to both: a big screen, participants' phones, the 42pocket platform; run by a facilitator and Mark Zavadsky, a version without Mark in the room is possible.
Contact
Mark Zavadsky – ex-CEO Alibaba Russia, ex-VP Sberbank, author of Daily 300 and RaiseChess.
@mzav1977·Email mark@daily300.fyi