OnlineTichu Counter

This is a greasemonkey userscript for onlinetichu.com to count cards.

Features

• Keeps track all cards played:
  • Toggle display of cards with button
  • Toggle between remaining / played cards
• Disable and remove 'Auto Fold' functionality, which leaks information
  • Replaced with a 'Smart Fold' functionality, which automatically folds iff
    • the player has less than 4 cards remaining
    • the current combination consists of more card than the player has on their hand

Possibly more in the future

Usage

• qutebrowser: just copy this userscript into the greasemonkey monkey folder in your qute config directory Usually, this is .config/qutebrowser/greasemonkey.
• Firefox: Install the greasemonkey add-on. Now you have to visit a website where this script is hosted with a .user.js extension. Unfortunately, I found no better way of installing user scripts to greasemonkey The latest (or at least a) release (read: version that is not obviously broken) is available at https://maximilian-kessler.de/files/greasemonkey/onlinetichu-counter.user.js

On visiting onlinetichu.com, you should now automatically have the corresponding buttons and functionality available in the upper status bar.

License

This is MIT licensed. While the user script does hook into the javascript from onlinetichu.com, it does not contain any such code which might or might not be free software. As this only adds to what is there, I do not replicate other peoples work, although this of course builds on top of it. In particular, I can only license what I have written, not the javascript framework that onlinetichu.com itself implemented.

FAQ

Is this cheating?

I do not believe that this is cheating. The script does not exploit any bugs or unwanted game behaviour, it merely assists in what can (and is) done anyways, namely counting the cards. As this is open information in a game of Tichu, there is nothing cheaty going on.

I do think, however, that this is unfair to use by default, since this definitely provides the player with unrealistic (or at least very difficult) abilities that others might not have. If you do consider card counting as part of a skill of a Tichu player (which I do personally), this script of course makes this skill obsolete.

That's why I recommend to not use this as a daily driver but only in agreement with your opponents (e.g. when playing with friends and you all use the extension). Of course, this is up to you.

Why implement this, when you consider this unfair and don't want to use it

Because I can. It was fun to do. Also, after I finished the game, I can have a more precise look at what's remaining, without having any advantage (since I don't influence the game anymore).

Furthermore, I wanted to explore whether Tichu is played differently if every player were a perfect card counter (and knew that others are, etc). So I plan to play some rounds with friends where we all use this extension.

Can you implement feature XY?

No. But you can!

You can suggest stuff, but I don't plan on maintaining or improving this script, unless I personally want to. This was just a fun project.