Wine In Front Of Me

"All right: where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right and who is dead."

"But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you. Are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet, or his enemy's?"

-The Princess Bride

So begins the game of "wine in front of me", or WIFOM, for short. In gaming, it's any kind of game or subgame, especially a psychological one, in which a player is given a set of apparently equal choices where one or more is completely wrong. In such games one often may try to use what he knows of his opponent to make a better choice, but this often leads to recursive reasoning, as anything that one player could think of is something another player could think of, in the form of "But that's just what he wants me to think, so I'll do the opposite...but maybe that's what he want's me to think...so I'll not do the opposite...but maybe that's what he want's me to think...etc, etc.". Such games are basically random, and therefore should be carefully considered before they are engaged in.

In Mafia, WIFOM arguments are usually a Scum tactic used to distract the Town. The scum will make an unusual play at night, which would lead to a situation that would 'clear' them. Also, these arguments are often used by Newbies and should be avoided if possible, in favor of clearer arguments.