That is not how counting cards helps. You play safe, low bets long enough to get a good estimate of what is left in the deck and use that knowledge to make more educated bets. Modern casinos hedge against this by re-shuffling more often or even switching decks out more often, but those are relatively new counter-measures.
Modern casinos mostly hedge against this by keeping track of people with a suspicious pattern of winning and disinviting them. The thing about card counting is, the strategy is the same for everyone, so if you know how to count cards, and someone is betting the way you'd want to bet, they're probably also counting cards.
Well that too, but most fantasy settings you are not dealing with (no pun intended) modern style casinos.
Well that too, but most fantasy settings you are not dealing with (no pun intended) modern style casinos.
But there is an active selection going on: Other people playing against someone counting cards, once you get above a certain level, are likely also counting cards.
It's the shark dilemma: You can beat any number of bad players, but eventually you'll run into some who are even better than you. Obviously it'd be unfair for a GM to decide there's someone equally good at every table our Keen Mind PC sits down at. But as the stakes get higher, the chance increases that not some other player - but all other players at that table - are also able to remember what cards have been played already.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Well that too, but most fantasy settings you are not dealing with (no pun intended) modern style casinos.
Most fantasy settings also don't have a society with a sophisticated enough understanding of statistics for card counting to be useful. The reason card counting wasn't much of a thing before the 20th century isn't because people before that couldn't count, it's because they didn't know what to count.
Most fantasy settings also don't have a society with a sophisticated enough understanding of statistics for card counting to be useful. The reason card counting wasn't much of a thing before the 20th century isn't because people before that couldn't count, it's because they didn't know what to count.
I checked. And you're ... 'right'. There's even a guy credited with inventing it.
I do reject that as utter nonsense though. If we accept it as true, we invented cheating at games (like blackjack) literal centuries before we invented being good at the game. That's laughable. But I'll grant you that a formalised, dokumented and published method for it wasn't a thing until 1950. Or so.
Anyways, if the method isn't invented, it also isn't available to a PC with Keen Mind. Rendering the discussion kinda moot =)
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I do reject that as utter nonsense though. If we accept it as true, we invented cheating at games (like blackjack) literal centuries before we invented being good at the game.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.
I do reject that as utter nonsense though. If we accept it as true, we invented cheating at games (like blackjack) literal centuries before we invented being good at the game.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory.
I find this unlikely. Basic probability, for both dice and cards would be understood, even if not mathematically formalized, by any experienced gambler, for about as long as gambling has existed. They might not have the tools for doing the math, but they would, for instance, know that 4 on 2d6 is a lot less likely than 7, and could probably give you pretty correct odds if you wanted to bet on a roll. Similarly, if playing a card game where knowing which past cards have been played is useful, they're going to be remembered.
Card counting is a relatively recent thing partly because it's mathematically complicated, but also because I believe you'll find that the conditions in which it is useful are also a relatively recent development. Until you're playing against the house, where the dealer has mechanical rules that they must follow, and you're not reshuffling every hand or two, card counting systems aren't useful. Most older gambling games are played against other gamblers, anyway.
(Also, game theory is about strategic decisions in relation to other players' strategic decisions. And even that was being done in an ad-hoc way by gamblers at the level of their immediate circumstances -- even if they couldn't figure out the Nash equilibrium for the game in general, they'd still be able to reason about their opponent's cards based on how they've been playing them.)
To return briefly to the original topic -- somebody with Keen Mind can presumably find a type of game where the ability is useful to them, and then I'd give them advantage on the roll they make to see how well they did. Under most circumstances, that's the level of abstraction that is useful for D&D. If the stakes were particularly high, or there was roleplaying with important NPCs or other players, I might zoom in and let it play out as a series of rolls, but actually focusing on the details of the game being played isn't worth it.
In the Black Company series of books, the main characters, being soldiers, spend a lot of time playing cards with each other, and there are scenes where it's used as a framing device for character development, or exposition, or other narrative purposes, and there's enough of the gameplay described that you might be able to work out the rules (It's also based on a real game, which makes it easier), but it's never the point, and that's how gambling should be treated in a D&D game.
I do reject that as utter nonsense though. If we accept it as true, we invented cheating at games (like blackjack) literal centuries before we invented being good at the game.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.
Keep in mind lifespans in fantasy settings are modern or post modern equivalents, with some races living into their hundreds. Plus you seem to be effectively arguing that beings in the 18+ Int range never actually deduce anything meaningful.
Card counting is not even really the same topic as game theory. It is technically an application of game theory but so specific that one need not know anything of overall game theory to be good at card counting. Poker is a better game for application of game theory, but you do not need to know anything about game theory generally to notice or remember tells and betting patterns.
This is not anything that involves being formally taught anything on these subjects. They are concepts that can be personally deduced.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.
You don't need propability. If all the jacks except the one in my hand have been played, I know for damned sure that no other jacks are going to turn up on the table until the cards are reshuffled. Yes, 'counting cards' is also statistics - but it's not only statistics, and being able to recall what cards have been played and what cards are still in the deck doesn't need 20th century math to be helpful.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.
You don't need propability. If all the jacks except the one in my hand have been played, I know for damned sure that no other jacks are going to turn up on the table until the cards are reshuffled. Yes, 'counting cards' is also statistics - but it's not only statistics, and being able to recall what cards have been played and what cards are still in the deck doesn't need 20th century math to be helpful.
If discards are shown and stay discarded for a significant period of time. Poker rarely if ever does either, and I expect that's the default card based gambling game most people will envision when competitive card gambling comes up.
At the end of the day it's the DM's call, but really perfect recall isn't going to be much good in a reasonably well put together gambling game. They're designed to be largely based on chance and possibly reading the room rather than being a logically solvable problem.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.
You don't need propability. If all the jacks except the one in my hand have been played, I know for damned sure that no other jacks are going to turn up on the table until the cards are reshuffled. Yes, 'counting cards' is also statistics - but it's not only statistics, and being able to recall what cards have been played and what cards are still in the deck doesn't need 20th century math to be helpful.
If discards are shown and stay discarded for a significant period of time. Poker rarely if ever does either, and I expect that's the default card based gambling game most people will envision when competitive card gambling comes up.
At the end of the day it's the DM's call, but really perfect recall isn't going to be much good in a reasonably well put together gambling game. They're designed to be largely based on chance and possibly reading the room rather than being a logically solvable problem.
Poker is a completely different game from blackjack and memory is useful in a completely different way with respect to poker. In Poker, the deck is normally shuffled each hand and there are a lot more hidden cards, so there is a lot less information on available cards.
And yes, any DM can make any given ability useless. They are the DM and have literally infinite creative control over their world. That does not mean they should. If it is a big, well established city, old civilization, yeah, countermeasures, even modern or modern-ish counter-measures could make sense, but a back room game in some little in somewhere 'along the road?' Not so much.
In any case, my point was not that keen mind would be useless for gambling (though the 2014 version lacks any mention of calculating ability); rather, the issue is that, without some specialized type of boon, the character doesn't have unique knowledge, so the skills they can use are ones that gambling institutions (at least, ones of higher profiles and stakes) have some concept of how to deal with.
Well that too, but most fantasy settings you are not dealing with (no pun intended) modern style casinos.
Most fantasy settings also don't have a society with a sophisticated enough understanding of statistics for card counting to be useful. The reason card counting wasn't much of a thing before the 20th century isn't because people before that couldn't count, it's because they didn't know what to count.
Are you sure about this? My father in law was born in the early 1930s, in the forties according to him his grandfather born in the 1800s taught him to count cards. Said his grandfather leaned from his father. His grandfather said to keep it a secret as he could get beat up if someone knows. Now everyone knows about card counting, but the advice still stands.
Counting cards has been in existence for who knows how many centuries, Just because there is no written record, does mean people were not doing something.
How can someone who knows how to play a card game not know what to count? Counting cards is basically knowing what is left in the deck. Anyone with a good mathematical mind can figure out the probability of what card is where even if they can't articulate that.
Why would some one in the 1800s or earlier want to let people know that they can count cards?
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.
You don't need propability. If all the jacks except the one in my hand have been played, I know for damned sure that no other jacks are going to turn up on the table until the cards are reshuffled. Yes, 'counting cards' is also statistics - but it's not only statistics, and being able to recall what cards have been played and what cards are still in the deck doesn't need 20th century math to be helpful.
If discards are shown and stay discarded for a significant period of time. Poker rarely if ever does either, and I expect that's the default card based gambling game most people will envision when competitive card gambling comes up.
At the end of the day it's the DM's call, but really perfect recall isn't going to be much good in a reasonably well put together gambling game. They're designed to be largely based on chance and possibly reading the room rather than being a logically solvable problem.
Poker is a completely different game from blackjack and memory is useful in a completely different way with respect to poker. In Poker, the deck is normally shuffled each hand and there are a lot more hidden cards, so there is a lot less information on available cards.
And yes, any DM can make any given ability useless. They are the DM and have literally infinite creative control over their world. That does not mean they should. If it is a big, well established city, old civilization, yeah, countermeasures, even modern or modern-ish counter-measures could make sense, but a back room game in some little in somewhere 'along the road?' Not so much.
And exactly what backroom gambling games have you played that are so open with information? Not showing discards is pretty basic, not something exclusive to fancy casinos.
I think there are tournaments and stuff .. where some games or series or whatever are played with specific different rules. Casinos, not so much, but for tournament play I think it's kinda common.
I checked, it exists but is apparently rather less common. But games designed for active card counting do exist.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Poker is a completely different game from blackjack and memory is useful in a completely different way with respect to poker. In Poker, the deck is normally shuffled each hand and there are a lot more hidden cards, so there is a lot less information on available cards.
And yes, any DM can make any given ability useless. They are the DM and have literally infinite creative control over their world. That does not mean they should. If it is a big, well established city, old civilization, yeah, countermeasures, even modern or modern-ish counter-measures could make sense, but a back room game in some little in somewhere 'along the road?' Not so much.
And exactly what backroom gambling games have you played that are so open with information? Not showing discards is pretty basic, not something exclusive to fancy casinos.
IT all depends on what the gambling games of the area are, and there's no reason to assume that the common games of 21st century America are the games of choice in a fantasy realm where the DM has probably given the question zero thought. If the card game of choice is a trick-taker or something rummyesque, a perfect memory will be a lot more useful. If cards are considered evil and it's all dice, not so much.
100 years ago, contract bridge was just starting become The Thing. Nowadays, it's rather hard to find anyone playing it for money. Poker being The Game is only a couple of decades old. It's all regional, cultural, and prone to fads, so talking about the uselessness of the ability in relation to specific games isn't actually all that meaningful. There's plenty of games where it's applicable, plenty where it isn't, and it's probably a rare world where all the common games are one or the other.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.
You don't need propability. If all the jacks except the one in my hand have been played, I know for damned sure that no other jacks are going to turn up on the table until the cards are reshuffled. Yes, 'counting cards' is also statistics - but it's not only statistics, and being able to recall what cards have been played and what cards are still in the deck doesn't need 20th century math to be helpful.
If discards are shown and stay discarded for a significant period of time. Poker rarely if ever does either, and I expect that's the default card based gambling game most people will envision when competitive card gambling comes up.
At the end of the day it's the DM's call, but really perfect recall isn't going to be much good in a reasonably well put together gambling game. They're designed to be largely based on chance and possibly reading the room rather than being a logically solvable problem.
Poker is a completely different game from blackjack and memory is useful in a completely different way with respect to poker. In Poker, the deck is normally shuffled each hand and there are a lot more hidden cards, so there is a lot less information on available cards.
And yes, any DM can make any given ability useless. They are the DM and have literally infinite creative control over their world. That does not mean they should. If it is a big, well established city, old civilization, yeah, countermeasures, even modern or modern-ish counter-measures could make sense, but a back room game in some little in somewhere 'along the road?' Not so much.
And exactly what backroom gambling games have you played that are so open with information? Not showing discards is pretty basic, not something exclusive to fancy casinos.
How many have you played in, back room or full casino? You seem to be trying to call me out without citing any of your own. Modern counting systems do not even rely on memorizing specific cards but rather keeping a running sum with high cards being a +1 modifier and low cards being a -1. This gets around the issue that next to no one has a perfect photographic memory ala what Keen Mind provides.
Discards don't need to be visible for card counting to be useful in any game where cards are played face up, but it really depends on the game being played. For most card games keen mind will have some value but would need to be combined with skill so you can quickly calculate the right things.
Poker might technically be a recent fad in historical terms, but unless a DM is big on the history of gambling or wants to create their own concept, it’s a safe bet that’s what they’ll be picturing when someone says they want their character to gamble with cards.
End of the day- yes Keen Mind would be helpful at counting cards. No, that is not going to consistently translate into exceptional success at gambling with cards because there’s too many other factors to make a blanket statement.
Poker might technically be a recent fad in historical terms, but unless a DM is big on the history of gambling or wants to create their own concept, it’s a safe bet that’s what they’ll be picturing when someone says they want their character to gamble with cards.
End of the day- yes Keen Mind would be helpful at counting cards. No, that is not going to consistently translate into exceptional success at gambling with cards because there’s too many other factors to make a blanket statement.
If a PC wants to go gambling where Keen Mind will help them, maybe the DM should have them make a social roll of some kind to find an appropriate game. Maybe. Unless it's a particularly weird society, I wouldn't. The games no doubt exist. What game they're actually playing doesn't much matter -- it's a point of narration. It'd probably be something like: "You find a game of Tonk in a tavern. Make an X roll with advantage to see how you do. (rolls) Great... how subtle were you being? You can make more money, but then you might need to do some fast talking to avoid being accused of cheating."
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Well that too, but most fantasy settings you are not dealing with (no pun intended) modern style casinos.
But there is an active selection going on: Other people playing against someone counting cards, once you get above a certain level, are likely also counting cards.
It's the shark dilemma: You can beat any number of bad players, but eventually you'll run into some who are even better than you. Obviously it'd be unfair for a GM to decide there's someone equally good at every table our Keen Mind PC sits down at. But as the stakes get higher, the chance increases that not some other player - but all other players at that table - are also able to remember what cards have been played already.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Most fantasy settings also don't have a society with a sophisticated enough understanding of statistics for card counting to be useful. The reason card counting wasn't much of a thing before the 20th century isn't because people before that couldn't count, it's because they didn't know what to count.
I checked. And you're ... 'right'. There's even a guy credited with inventing it.
I do reject that as utter nonsense though. If we accept it as true, we invented cheating at games (like blackjack) literal centuries before we invented being good at the game. That's laughable. But I'll grant you that a formalised, dokumented and published method for it wasn't a thing until 1950. Or so.
Anyways, if the method isn't invented, it also isn't available to a PC with Keen Mind. Rendering the discussion kinda moot =)
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.
I find this unlikely. Basic probability, for both dice and cards would be understood, even if not mathematically formalized, by any experienced gambler, for about as long as gambling has existed. They might not have the tools for doing the math, but they would, for instance, know that 4 on 2d6 is a lot less likely than 7, and could probably give you pretty correct odds if you wanted to bet on a roll. Similarly, if playing a card game where knowing which past cards have been played is useful, they're going to be remembered.
Card counting is a relatively recent thing partly because it's mathematically complicated, but also because I believe you'll find that the conditions in which it is useful are also a relatively recent development. Until you're playing against the house, where the dealer has mechanical rules that they must follow, and you're not reshuffling every hand or two, card counting systems aren't useful. Most older gambling games are played against other gamblers, anyway.
(Also, game theory is about strategic decisions in relation to other players' strategic decisions. And even that was being done in an ad-hoc way by gamblers at the level of their immediate circumstances -- even if they couldn't figure out the Nash equilibrium for the game in general, they'd still be able to reason about their opponent's cards based on how they've been playing them.)
To return briefly to the original topic -- somebody with Keen Mind can presumably find a type of game where the ability is useful to them, and then I'd give them advantage on the roll they make to see how well they did. Under most circumstances, that's the level of abstraction that is useful for D&D. If the stakes were particularly high, or there was roleplaying with important NPCs or other players, I might zoom in and let it play out as a series of rolls, but actually focusing on the details of the game being played isn't worth it.
In the Black Company series of books, the main characters, being soldiers, spend a lot of time playing cards with each other, and there are scenes where it's used as a framing device for character development, or exposition, or other narrative purposes, and there's enough of the gameplay described that you might be able to work out the rules (It's also based on a real game, which makes it easier), but it's never the point, and that's how gambling should be treated in a D&D game.
Keep in mind lifespans in fantasy settings are modern or post modern equivalents, with some races living into their hundreds. Plus you seem to be effectively arguing that beings in the 18+ Int range never actually deduce anything meaningful.
Card counting is not even really the same topic as game theory. It is technically an application of game theory but so specific that one need not know anything of overall game theory to be good at card counting. Poker is a better game for application of game theory, but you do not need to know anything about game theory generally to notice or remember tells and betting patterns.
This is not anything that involves being formally taught anything on these subjects. They are concepts that can be personally deduced.
You don't need propability. If all the jacks except the one in my hand have been played, I know for damned sure that no other jacks are going to turn up on the table until the cards are reshuffled. Yes, 'counting cards' is also statistics - but it's not only statistics, and being able to recall what cards have been played and what cards are still in the deck doesn't need 20th century math to be helpful.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
If discards are shown and stay discarded for a significant period of time. Poker rarely if ever does either, and I expect that's the default card based gambling game most people will envision when competitive card gambling comes up.
At the end of the day it's the DM's call, but really perfect recall isn't going to be much good in a reasonably well put together gambling game. They're designed to be largely based on chance and possibly reading the room rather than being a logically solvable problem.
Poker is a completely different game from blackjack and memory is useful in a completely different way with respect to poker. In Poker, the deck is normally shuffled each hand and there are a lot more hidden cards, so there is a lot less information on available cards.
And yes, any DM can make any given ability useless. They are the DM and have literally infinite creative control over their world. That does not mean they should. If it is a big, well established city, old civilization, yeah, countermeasures, even modern or modern-ish counter-measures could make sense, but a back room game in some little in somewhere 'along the road?' Not so much.
In any case, my point was not that keen mind would be useless for gambling (though the 2014 version lacks any mention of calculating ability); rather, the issue is that, without some specialized type of boon, the character doesn't have unique knowledge, so the skills they can use are ones that gambling institutions (at least, ones of higher profiles and stakes) have some concept of how to deal with.
Are you sure about this? My father in law was born in the early 1930s, in the forties according to him his grandfather born in the 1800s taught him to count cards. Said his grandfather leaned from his father. His grandfather said to keep it a secret as he could get beat up if someone knows. Now everyone knows about card counting, but the advice still stands.
Counting cards has been in existence for who knows how many centuries, Just because there is no written record, does mean people were not doing something.
How can someone who knows how to play a card game not know what to count? Counting cards is basically knowing what is left in the deck. Anyone with a good mathematical mind can figure out the probability of what card is where even if they can't articulate that.
Why would some one in the 1800s or earlier want to let people know that they can count cards?
And exactly what backroom gambling games have you played that are so open with information? Not showing discards is pretty basic, not something exclusive to fancy casinos.
I think there are tournaments and stuff .. where some games or series or whatever are played with specific different rules. Casinos, not so much, but for tournament play I think it's kinda common.
I checked, it exists but is apparently rather less common. But games designed for active card counting do exist.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
IT all depends on what the gambling games of the area are, and there's no reason to assume that the common games of 21st century America are the games of choice in a fantasy realm where the DM has probably given the question zero thought. If the card game of choice is a trick-taker or something rummyesque, a perfect memory will be a lot more useful. If cards are considered evil and it's all dice, not so much.
100 years ago, contract bridge was just starting become The Thing. Nowadays, it's rather hard to find anyone playing it for money. Poker being The Game is only a couple of decades old. It's all regional, cultural, and prone to fads, so talking about the uselessness of the ability in relation to specific games isn't actually all that meaningful. There's plenty of games where it's applicable, plenty where it isn't, and it's probably a rare world where all the common games are one or the other.
How many have you played in, back room or full casino? You seem to be trying to call me out without citing any of your own. Modern counting systems do not even rely on memorizing specific cards but rather keeping a running sum with high cards being a +1 modifier and low cards being a -1. This gets around the issue that next to no one has a perfect photographic memory ala what Keen Mind provides.
In RL, we are not living in a fantasy world.
Discards don't need to be visible for card counting to be useful in any game where cards are played face up, but it really depends on the game being played. For most card games keen mind will have some value but would need to be combined with skill so you can quickly calculate the right things.
Poker might technically be a recent fad in historical terms, but unless a DM is big on the history of gambling or wants to create their own concept, it’s a safe bet that’s what they’ll be picturing when someone says they want their character to gamble with cards.
End of the day- yes Keen Mind would be helpful at counting cards. No, that is not going to consistently translate into exceptional success at gambling with cards because there’s too many other factors to make a blanket statement.
If a PC wants to go gambling where Keen Mind will help them, maybe the DM should have them make a social roll of some kind to find an appropriate game. Maybe. Unless it's a particularly weird society, I wouldn't. The games no doubt exist. What game they're actually playing doesn't much matter -- it's a point of narration. It'd probably be something like: "You find a game of Tonk in a tavern. Make an X roll with advantage to see how you do. (rolls) Great... how subtle were you being? You can make more money, but then you might need to do some fast talking to avoid being accused of cheating."