Luigi’s Picture Poker (LPP) is a game adapted by Marcy4000 for itch.io, a platform that is accessible through web browsers and desktop apps like Windows, Linux, and macOS. This game originated as one of Luigi’s minigames in Super Mario 64 DS and a Table minigame in New Super Mario Bros, which were developed by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Switch. The original games have age ratings of PEGI 12 (12+) and E (6+), respectively. There is no age specification for this minigame in particular, and although it is simple enough for elementary-grade children (i.e. 8+) to understand, it might be more suitable for slightly more mature players (i.e. 13+) due to its adjacency to gambling (more on this later).
LPP follows a simple set of rules: you are dealt a hand of five cards, of which you can swap any number of cards for a random replacement. Between the player and Luigi, whoever ultimately has the better hand wins the round. The quality of one’s hand is determined by a hierarchy of card combinations (see below) and a hierarchy of card types (see below). The winner of the round is awarded coins according to how much they bet multiplied by the value of their winning hand (see below).
Because the mechanics of this game are so simple (you cannot fold, call, or raise, for example, although you can go all in), the game emphasizes stochasticity over strategy. The only choices the player can make are which cards they’d like to swap out for a random replacement and how much to bet. Thus, much like a slot machine, LPP becomes another gambling mechanism from which great profits can be derived from “so small an investment, and with so little effort” (“Addiction by Design”). In other words, LPP hooks players with the (unlikely, but not impossible) promise of winning big, and it can do so in different ways for risk-averse players and risk-forward players.
As a conservative player, I found I never made bets at the start of the game—I simply chose to play my hand after picking which cards to swap out. This was a decision I made primarily based on the types of congruences I saw in a hand—if I had two of the same card and the remaining three were different, I would choose the lower-ranking cards of the individual three to swap out, hoping that at least one of them would be the same as one of the cards I kept to create either two pairs or three of a kind. I maintained this rather conservative strategy until I accumulated about 20 points after several rounds.
However, there came a point in which a seemingly irresistible hand appeared: three Marios and two stars. Although a full house isn’t the highest type of hand one can play, the individual card types for my combination were the highest possible, and perhaps because this exact combination landed in my lap, with no need for swapping, I felt compelled to go all in. And when I did, and then when I won, I felt a sense of accomplishment—I had made a judgment call, with confidence, and been rewarded for it.
For players like me, LPP’s appeal lies in moments like these that come around occasionally—moments that give the player a sense of safety, letting them feel like they are in control of the game. The player is responsible for only three decisions: 1) Should I swap my cards? 2) If so, which ones? 3) How much should I bet? In some cases, the answers to these questions are easy. For example, a player could logically conclude that doing something is better than doing nothing: if they had, say, two Marios, a Luigi, a star, and a cloud, swapping out both the Luigi and the cloud (the lower ranking cards amongst the three individual ones) would give them a shot at potentially pulling another Mario or star, opening up the possibility for a three-of-a-kind hand or two pairs. If the player did nothing at all, their odds of winning would be even slimmer: they’d only have one pair of Marios.
But most of the time, the game offers the player little to no control—the calculations and rationality behind this game are rather opaque, given that the audience is not privy to the distribution of card types. Without knowledge of these proportions, one cannot even begin to calculate probabilities; without probabilities, one is left only with pure intuition. For risk-averse players like me, this lack of control is scary, and on the off chance that an optimal combination happens to land in our lap, the game feels rewarding because we can safely place bets on it. For risk-forward players, the lack of control is exciting and adrenaline-inducing, and the game feels rewarding when one holds their breath, makes a risky play, and it works out. In either case, the occasional win, whether safely bet on or not, is what keeps players coming back.
Thus, like slot machines, LPP is a game in which the machine (the random card generators of the game) dominates the man (the player) (“Addiction by Design”). Those occasional wins that keep players hooked come along by chance—whether in the original hand or the randomized, reshuffled hand. But players, although they have no mechanical advantage—they cannot physically shuffle the cards themselves, although the game attempts to digitally reproduce this flawed and stochastic process in its animation—and they cannot make any real calculations, can nevertheless feel like they have control. There might be an illusion of power in the gut feeling, the intuition, the vibe check, made all the more enchanting when—occasionally, by the power of chance and the computer—a player’s irrational choice is affirmed by the game. The sweetness of being right is what is so powerful about games like LPP and slots.
Thus, while seemingly innocent, with an approachable set of simple mechanics and a familiar cast of characters (Mario, Luigi, etc.), this game should probably not be played until players have a slightly more mature understanding of risk and reward. Outwardly, the game resembles poker, functionally, it’s a bit closer to slots. Priming a young child for these sorts of gambling games is not something that should be taken lightly. At the same time, however, completely shutting children off from games of chance is not an acceptable solution, either. LPP offers an approachable introduction to decision making, risk assessment, and betting that can benefit children who have the critical thinking abilities to apply these skills to their everyday lives—in other words, children closer to the end of middle school who have more financial decision making freedom. Games of chance, then, can be useful tools for players who are ready for and capable of seeing them as more than just games, with greater consequences than just coins and stars.
