[Netrunner for Newbs] The Psi Game

This is part of a series of short articles I'll be writing to help beginners understand the finer points of running the nets. I'll be mostly covering some of the basic key concepts and strategies that more experienced players tend to take for granted, and how this understanding can significantly improve your gameplay.

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The Psi game. Love it or hate it, there's a pretty good chance that you'll end up having to play it sooner or later from either side of the table, most likely in the form of Caprice Nisei. So what exactly should we do when it comes down to the wire and we're forced to bid between 0 to 2 credits?

A Naive Look at the Odds
In this little minigame - which rests ontop of a complex system of bluffing and counterbluffing between both players - both players take credits from their credit pool and secretly bid either 0, 1 or 2 credits. The Corp player wants the Runner player to bid a different amount of credits, while the Runner player wants to bid the same amount of credits. However, no matter what the result is, the credits that are bid are going to be spent.

On a prima facie inspection, it seems that the Runner has a flat 1/3 chance of getting the bid correct and therefore succeeding. After all, if the bid was purely random, that would be the odds of both players coming up with the same number from a range of 0 to 2, right?

Well... kinda, but not really. Here's why.

• The Runner is usually the one who triggers the Psi game. This means that the Runner has the option of choosing whether he wants to play the game or not and, therefore, will only choose to play the game if he is confident that he will come out ahead of the situation. This is not always the case, but is often the case. If it is too expensive to run the server with Caprice on it, run somewhere else. If you cannot afford to keep running into Snowflake, run somewhere else or get your Fracter up. You get the idea.

• Bid credits are always spent regardless of the outcome. This has led to a prevailing strategy of the Runner taxing the Corp by always bidding 0, thus forcing the Corp to either bid 1 or 2 if he wants to succeed against the Runner. Because the Runner can usually repeat the action that triggers the Psi game, he can do so until he succeeds, and every time he triggers the Psi game, he can bleed the Corp a little more... until the Corp is so broke that he is forced to let the Runner succeed.

• The board state serves as an additional point of information. This is sort of auxiliary to the above, but it bears mentioning. If the Corp is poor, the Runner can choose to tax the Corp by simply triggering the Psi game multiple times. However, if the Runner is the one that is poor... can he afford to stay with his established pattern of bidding 0? What if he can only get into that server one time? Is his best move then to continue bidding 0? Also consider the flipside: if the Corp is poor, what are the odds of him bidding 1+?

• The Psi game is repeated several times over the course of the game. Everyone knows that best-of-1 RPS is fundamentally different from best-of-5 RPS, and that's because when you repeat the game enough, patterns start creeping in, which means more information for you to read your opponent with. If the Runner has shown that he will always bid 0 no matter what, and then cleverly chooses to bid 1 at an opportune moment, he has beaten you with skill. I've had games where I had such a lockdown on my opponent's reads that I won 100% of all my psi games. I've also had games where my opponent read me so well that he won 100% of all the psi games. The more the RPS is repeated, the more opportunity there is for skill to matter.

• The odds are only moderately in the Corp's favour. If the Runner only has 1 credit, his options are severely curtailed: the Corp can simply choose to bid 2 and he will instantly win. However, the flipside is not true: if the Corp only has 1 credit, the Runner still has a (prima facie) 50% chance of getting it wrong. But it's not really 50%, is it? For the Runner, it becomes a calculated guess about how much the Corp wants to keep him out of that server. If he really wants to keep you out, he'll bid 1... but he knows that you know that too, so maybe he'll bid 0, but if you stick with the strategy of always bidding 0 he'll likely lose so maybe he'll bid 1, but if y-jinteki mindgames

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Runner Strategy
As Runner, your best strategy is to always bid 0. There are better articles out there with the math to show you why, but the idea is a pretty simple one. By establishing a simple pattern of always betting 0, you can train the Corp to always spend 1 or more in order to keep you out. More than that, if your pattern is sufficiently consistent, you'll train the Corp to always spend exactly 1 whenever a Psi game fires (because who wants to overpay?), making Caprice Nisei read, "pay 1c to end the run".

But what about when it really matters, such as when you're sure that the server with Caprice has the last agenda point you need to win? Remember that the Corp knows, just as well as you do, when it is clutch and when it is not: more, perhaps, since the Corp has all the information at his fingertips.

When it comes to clutch, the Corp is just as tempted as you are to break his pattern of spending 1 by spending either 2 or 0. Whether you should break your pattern by spending 2 is a call on your part, but already - just by consistently spending 0 - you have increased your odds from 33% to 50%. If you keep to your pattern and spend 0, even if you bounce, you've forced the Corp to spend a not-insignificant amount of credits just to keep you out.

--- Corp Strategy
As Corp, however, your choices are a lot less straightforward and depends on exactly why the Psi game is firing. For the most part, try not to put Caprice down on a server that is not sufficiently taxing. If it is cheaper for the Runner to run Caprice and make you pay 1c every time he hits it, he will do that until you are broke.

If on the other hand the Psi game is firing because of a Future Perfect or Psychic Field, this becomes a potential clutch moment. At times like these, stop a while and observe the board state. Is it worth spending 2c for the effect to fire? If so, can you get away with spending 1c?

The second question can also be put another way: "how much does the Runner think losing this psi game will hurt him, and how badly does he want to win it?" If the answer is "very badly", then you probably can't get away with paying 1c. If the answer is "kinda", then you can probably get away with paying 1c.

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Executive Summary
As Corp, read the board state and try to get away with bidding as low as you can, as often as you can. If the Runner doesn't always bid 0, then you should try to bid 0 regularly because hey, free success! If the Runner bids 0 regularly, learn to read clutch moments and guess if the Runner will break his pattern during such moments.

As Runner, always bid 0.