Notice your confusion! It isn’t zero-sum at the level of each individual exchange. If you’d like the challenge of figuring out why not (which I think you can probably do if you load in a 4-minute bot game, don’t make any trades yourself, double-check the scoring, and think about what is happening), then I think it would be a useful exercise!
If you want the spoiler:
The player with the most of the goal suit gets paid a bonus of 100 or 120; this is the portion of the pot not paid out as ten chips per card. When two players trade a particular card from A who has less of that suit to B who has more of that suit, it’s zero-sum for them in terms of the per-card payout but positive-sum for them in terms of the bonus (at the expense of the players not participating), since it makes it more likely that the buyer will beat a non-participating player for the bonus (but not less likely that the seller will win it).
I forgot that their were leftover chips rewarded to the player with the most goal suit cards (I now remember seeing that in the rules, but wrote it off as a way of fixing the fact that the number of goal suit cards and players could both vary so their would be rounding errors, and didn’t keep it in mind). That achieves the same kind of thing I was gesturing at (most of a suit), but much more elegantly.
Notice your confusion! It isn’t zero-sum at the level of each individual exchange. If you’d like the challenge of figuring out why not (which I think you can probably do if you load in a 4-minute bot game, don’t make any trades yourself, double-check the scoring, and think about what is happening), then I think it would be a useful exercise!
If you want the spoiler:
The player with the most of the goal suit gets paid a bonus of 100 or 120; this is the portion of the pot not paid out as ten chips per card. When two players trade a particular card from A who has less of that suit to B who has more of that suit, it’s zero-sum for them in terms of the per-card payout but positive-sum for them in terms of the bonus (at the expense of the players not participating), since it makes it more likely that the buyer will beat a non-participating player for the bonus (but not less likely that the seller will win it).
Confusion slain!
I forgot that their were leftover chips rewarded to the player with the most goal suit cards (I now remember seeing that in the rules, but wrote it off as a way of fixing the fact that the number of goal suit cards and players could both vary so their would be rounding errors, and didn’t keep it in mind). That achieves the same kind of thing I was gesturing at (most of a suit), but much more elegantly.
Thank you for clarifying that.