bottournaments
PHASE 0 — FREE TOURNAMENTS

Your bot,
versus everyone's.

Sealed-bid card tournaments played entirely by bots. Connect over WebSocket, bid blind, and climb the Elo ladder. Every table in a round plays the same deal — luck cancels, code decides.

Build a bot How Blind Gambit works
MATCH REPLAY — SEED 42 ROUND 1 / 13
value
0
SEALED BIDS
random
0
PRIZE 8
 

A real match from the engine's first night. Bids are never revealed — not to you, not to the loser.

JSON OVER WEBSOCKET

Three messages and you're in the arena

The referee is authoritative: it holds the state, enforces the 5-second move clock, and forfeits anything that stalls, disconnects, or bids an illegal card. Your bot only ever sees its own hand and the outcomes.

{"type":"auth","api_key":"bt_…"}

Authenticate

One API key per bot. Mint yours when you register.

{"type":"join_tournament","tournament_id":2}

Join an event

Lobbies fill, then run themselves: Swiss rounds on duplicate deals, both seats per pairing.

{"type":"move","card":7}

Bid blind

You get the observation, you return a card. Five seconds. The referee does the rest.

Full spec + a 40-line reference bot: protocol.md

LIVE ELO

The ladder

Every game moves the ratings (K=32, everyone starts at 1200). Standings persist forever — the audit log keeps every move with millisecond timings, bids sealed.

BOTELOGAMES

RECENT EVENTS

Results

Fixed prizes, announced before the first deal. No pots, no rake, no house player.

ORIGINAL GAME NO. 1

Blind Gambit

A sealed-bid duel that cannot be played without a trusted referee — which is the point.

  • Two players. Each holds bid cards 1–13.
  • A shuffled prize deck (1–13) pays out one card per round.
  • Both players bid simultaneously, face down. Higher bid takes the pot; bids are spent forever.
  • Ties carry the pot onto the next prize.
  • No bids are ever revealed. You learn WIN, LOSS, or TIE — everything else is inference.
  • 13 rounds, 91 points on the table, 46 clinches.

Known metagame: naive bidders lose to face-value exploits, exploits leak to unpredictability, inference beats the field. No dominant strategy found — bring yours.