Too Greedy <G6> PM Thoth

[rOver]

In for the next one.

[rOver]

So how much is everyone asking?

[rOver]

Wow, I'm in second place. And I thought I was being conservative with 46k.

[rOver]

Stupid cops . And mathcam must be some kind of evil telepatic genius.

[rOver]

I wonder what happened to Fishbulb's money. As I understand the rules, that should be distributed too in this round.

[rOver]

mathcam: You didn't mind taking $14.000 of PBug's money in the last game Oh well, I guess I should not complain until I mod a game myself.

Here's an idea for a rule change: If all remaining players ask for $0 the pot is divided between them. This would make waiting a reasonable strategy and 3 player endgames a real fun. Of course we didn't get to 3 players since game 1.

I think we could change this without changing the rules, just by declaring that asking for more than $50000 is unreasonable and just Too Greedy. Of course you would still be able to ask for as much as you want but if all players agreed that would be extremely risky.

I think

that should be enough to change the natural limit of $100.000 to $50.000 but of course I can't be sure.

[rOver]

Why do you have to set a max bid?

That's a misunderstanding. It's not a limit. You are free to ask for more and take it. It's just an agreement between the players which can be broken without consequences. How does it work? Well, if you expect everyone else to follow it, you have no reason not to.
What's the point? Basically to make the game last longer. Now, most of us expect the highest bid to be around $100.000, as it was in the previous games. This means that with the 8 players we have on average most of the pot is divided in the first round and the new rule will never come into effect. Anyway, I'm not sure it would work, especailly since it's the first round and we can't be sure everyone reads this. I'm pretty sure it would work in round 2 though.
So here's another suggestion: The amount taken from the greediest member is not distributed in the same round but is put back in the pot before the next round. This ensures that there's always some money in the pot. Additionally an amount could be added before round 2 to make sure there is a second round.

[rOver]

I mgiht do this later, but I'm leaving soon, so I'll defer to someone else who's bored and is looking for something to do:

I wonder what the day 1 trends are. I would have suspected that the top bid on day 1 had been slowly decreasing, but then kerplunk went and took that theory and shred it to pieces last game.

That's becouse 100,000 is a nice round number. Everyone knows that the highest bid will be around that. And people don't want to go much lower becouse the last few games were very short and if someone was more than $5000 behind after the first round they had no chance to win. It did make sense to take the risk of dropping out in round 1 becouse if you were too conservative you lost all chance for a win anyway.

I'm not sure about games with more rounds but I think the highest bid in the first game has a very strong effect on the game in one round games and the tendency is towards 1,000,000/number of players. There is a strong reason of going just under the previous highest bid, of course. You don't want to be Too Greedy. But if you go just over and someone else does this too you already have a 50% chance of winning. Now the best part is, that there's no obvious way to cheat. Let's say you expect that at least one participant will go over the previous highest bid. But maybe not only one participant but two or three. You can't be sure and if you expect that at least someone will go over it really makes sense to take a risk.

One extreme is the one round game where winning is practically the only in game goal. The other extreme are very long games, where the first round goal is maximalizing the expected return. I think these games might have a downward trend in the first round highest bid, especially if the number of players is sufficiently low.

It's amazing how much a little collaboration could do...I wonder if it should be allowed. For example, if rOver and I agreed secretly to pick a random value in the range of 190,000 to 210,000 (accurately randomly), then as long as we actually do so, the one of us who picked the lowest is almost automatically going to win.

I was thinking along the lines of $1,000,000 and $999,999 but dropped the idea becouse I found no good way to enforce cooperation. I think 2 players will actually try this but one of them will cheat. More likely both of them

On the other hand, as long-term strategy, it doesn't work so well...because then people can safely pick 189,000 every time. So the new strategy for us would to be to randomly choose an relatively large value and then randomly choose wihin a 10,000 dollar interval around that value.

The highest bid would immediately jump to the pot/players range so there would be no way for the winner to return the favour. I won't even start playing Prisoner's Dilemma type games unless the other player can prove that the game will go on indefinitely. Or at least he, himself doesn't know when it will end.

[rOver]

Sorry guys my computer was down for a few days. Congratulations for MeMe, I hope you'll pay for the Getaway Party
I'll play in the next one but it would be nice to know the number of players before round one.