Hi there people,

My name is Ruben, I'm from Brazil, and I'm enjoying my first contact
with the brain-burner game.

Four days later of learning how to play, I was trying to recall how in
the name of gods I found this game. Two years later I organized a
chess championship with a random pairing of players, that knew each
other by letter. The organization was great and kept in memory of all
my friends.  Last wednesday, one of this friends told me he was
playing "math trade" so he could trade games. I never heard of math
trade, so I googled it and got into a new blog by Okasaki, titled
"Teaching, Playing, and Programming". I liked that blog very much, as
for myself I'm a computer programmer (computer scientist), phd in
artificial intelligence, and that blog got my attention for a bit of
time. Then, browsing there, I came across a post  "Games for
Programmers: Black Vienna", and I quote the beginning of that post

"My favorite deduction game, Black Vienna, has long been out of print,
but now you can give it a try online, thanks to the efforts of Greg
Aleknevicus. "

That was the sufficient to make me very curious about what the heck is
Black Vienna. I even started a simple program that plays "human vs
human" only, written in C, with no beauty screen, just the plain
dreadful black screen of the shell prompt.

Two days later I found cards to print, but I did not want to make
them, because it would probably looks terrible. So I made a simple
adaptation of the 36 investigation cards to use a normal set of cards:
all clubs and all hearts give us 26 cards, that I put in this order:

Clubs:
A-A
2-B
3-C
4-D
5-E
6-F
7-G
8-H
9-I
10-J
J-K
Q-L
K-M
Hearts:
A-N
2-O
3-P
4-Q
5-R
6-S
7-T
8-U
9-V
10-W
J-X
Q-Y
K-Z
Joker-Ö

If you guys want the investigation card, and if the author authorizes
me, I can give the PDF file. Once you have the investigation cards,
you actually do not need to see the relation between the cards and the
alphabet letters, it become irrelevant to the game itself.

Now, just to make this email bigger, and express some fun for those
who have time to read it all, my contact with Black Vienna got even
better. Yesterday I invited 3 friend to my home to drink some wine and
play the game with this "normal" cards. I can assure you that black
vienna and red wine do not match ! (But I didnt have black wine,
so...)

It was really fun to play. We got some doubts during the game. For example:

1- Is it possible to accuse at any time? What happens when someone
accuse and make a mistake?
2- Special investigations: can I get a card with no beans (yep! chips!
(-: ) from myself and give to other player? Or I can only get
investigation cards from others?
3- Cards with one to three beans cannot move anymore?


Number 1, we decided to keep playing. So one friend who wanted to
accuse, wrote down the names, look at the cards and not saying who was
the murders, just told us he did now won. Also, he put all his hand
cards open in the table.
Number 2, we choose to let any card with no beans a valid choice, even
if in your own table.
Number 3, we let the cards fixed.

In the end, well, I won the game, but by "default". The other 2
friends also tried and lost. And I tried also, and got only one murder
right! WOW!

It is really hard to keep track of all information. Do you guys have
any sheet, like an openOffice Calc sheet (or MS Excel) to keep you
organized? I tried to make a "truth table", but somehow a mistake
inside it prevented me from getting the murders. I think a sheet where
not only you can make your notes, but also can keep it correct
updating it with new info would be great.

So, to finish this big email, thanks very much for the game and fun!

Ruben.

--
Prof. Dr. Ruben Carlo Benante
UPE - Universidade de Pernambuco
DEM - Mecatrônica
Rua Benfica, 455 - Madalena
CEP 50720-001 - Recife - PE
Fone: +55 (81) 3184-7525 FAX: +55 (81) 3184-7501



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