Thoughts on a Launch Contest

jasonrohrer · 2015-02-27 23:41:49

New idea:

When you hold the amulet, you are paired with a totally random opponent (who is also currently looking to join or create a game). The true stakes of the game don't count (no money is won or lost), because you're playing for the amulet itself.

Example: you hold the amulet, and let's say you create a $25 game.

This $25 game never shows up on anyone's game list. Instead, you are paired automatically either with an already-waiting player (maybe someone who has created a 15-cent game, for example), or with a player who clicks on some other game, trying to join it.

The other player THINKS they are playing a normal 15-cent game. When they leave, they find out that the money stakes were actually bogus, and that the game was for the amulet only.

Essentially, we'd pair up a $25 player and a 15-cent player together in what is effectively a 0-cent game, with the amulet going to the last player standing.

But the non-amulet player wouldn't know it until after the end of the game. If they lost, they'd be out 0-cents, but they'd be expecting to be out 15 cents, and see that they also could have won the amulet. If they won, they'd gain the amulet.

So, this wouldn't change player behavior at all (play lots of games at whatever stakes you would normally play at---any of these games could end up being a 0-cent amulet game instead, but you won't know until the end of the game).

As long as the randomized matching was good and took it's time (okay to keep the amulet player waiting while a random opponent is picked, but this won't slow down other players who are joining games), this would also prevent collusion.

When an amulet holder goes to create a game, the game could have a counter on it with a random starting value. First, the counter is decremented for each existing, unpaired game that's waiting. If it ever hits 0, then that other player is matched with the amulet player.

If no, then every time some other player calls join_game (either to join an existing one or create one), the counter goes down, but that other player does not join the amulet game (they instead join or create a game normally). When the counter hits 0, THAT other player is chosen and joins the amulet game in the place of whatever stake they were trying to join/create, unbeknownst to them.

To prevent some player with 50 accounts from having them all join_game right in quick sequence (where one would surely get through, when the hidden random counter was finally decremented to 0), we could also have a randomized-each-time minimum time delta that must pass before the counter can go down another step. So, join_game calls before that random time delta has passed won't decrement the counter. And the time delta could be set to a new random value after each time the counter is decremented.

And to prevent join-cancel-join-cancel spamming (where an accomplice account automatically creates and kills an unmatched game repeatedly until getting through), any player that just canceled an unmatched game could be out of the running to join an amulet game for X minutes.

To prevent some player from creating X accounts (where the max random counter the server ever sets is X-1) and simply creating loads of games with them at the right moment (so that the counter decrements to 0 while working through the list of existing games), the max possible counter value can be 2 * E, where E is the CURRENT number of unpaired games existing. So, when we pick a random counter in that range, we have a 50/50 chance of picking an existing unpaired game to match with or waiting for future game joiners/creators.

This means that when there are lots of waiting, unpaired games, the amulet holder will wait longer to find an opponent. Not sure if this makes sense or if there's a better way. Wouldn't want a bunch of accomplice accounts to swamp the pool late at night when there are only 5 "real" players.

Maybe there's a better way? The ideal would be to pick a player at random from the pool of all active players and simply wait for them to eventually join a game. That would make the amulet holder wait too long, obviously.

So, it looks like this CAN be done!

The key insight here was that there are only 36 people with an amulet. While we don't want to drastically change the behavior of all the other non-amulet holders, it's OKAY to change the behavior of those 36. We can make them wait longer for an opponent, openly ignore the stakes they pick, or otherwise change their experience without harming the main game at all (because after all, when you're holding the amulet, your behavior is going to change anyway).

Professor Chin · 2015-02-27 23:51:40

I think that if you have a few fixed "tournament stakes" it wouldn't even be necessary to distinguish between who creates and who join the match: you click one of the special tournament game stakes which are always present (maybe in gold fonts) and wait to be paired... possibly with some random delay to help coping with collusion.

edit: I actually replied to your previous post, slow to type

Last edited by Professor Chin (2015-02-27 23:55:59)

jere · 2015-02-28 00:22:07

^^Clever insight. Would never have thought about making the coins not count.

It works. The random part is good. The problem here is: the winner of the amulet doesn't get the money. What if it's Judge Doorman putting up a $500 game, he wins it, and is promptly told he hasn't yet won anything. He's won a chance at the prize, but the reality is most of the people that get their hands on an amulet are going to be receiving $0. He's going to be pretty bummed: he was risking $500 of his own money, he played well and won, and didn't get the usual reward. You could explain this rule up front, but it changes things for everyone playing the game.

I don't get the "changing player behavior" concern. If you implement what you're describing, EVERY single game played by a non-amulet holder is a chance to win an amulet. Whatever player behavior you were worried about with people joining a fixed stake games (because they would "know" there's a chance at an amulet) now applies equally to ALL games.

Unless your concern is the stake is too low or something.... but this new idea would just incentive most people to trawl for amulets at 1c anyway.

The only difference with these approaches is that with a fixed stake, you can opt out of the chance at amulet. I suppose you could say if tons of people don't want to play amulet-chance games, it will skew the chances of getting one of the players who do. But I think practically everyone playing during the contest is going to want to play the contest. The opt-outs are probably the exception.

jere · 2015-02-28 01:27:20

Just wanted to post some ideas that came up in a discussion between Josh and I:

There's actually an issue with a single fixed stake (and I believe it applies to amulets-at-any-stake as well): it's kind of arbitrary which amulet you get. If I get a silver instead of a gold, the player with the gold just had better luck. And the gold amulet holder doesn't have to work any harder to win their games than I do to win my silver games.

Another issue is that there needs to be somewhat complex rules to decide what happens when two amulet-holders meet (assuming they do; if they DON'T, it's quite unfair to someone stuck with a bronze amulet who never gets a chance to upgrade unless they intentionally lose it). You have to do swaps or lose the highest value one or have an inventory and select which one you're working on. Pretty complex I think.

A solution to both (and almost as strong against colluders as one fixed stake) is to have one stake for each amulet type. Let's say Bronze 5c, Silver, 20c, Gold 50c. With this setup, not only do you have to risk more to have a chance at higher prizes. There's also some strategy to which stake you play at (and you can freely jump around). As you go up a level, the amulets become more valuable but there are fewer of them. So you might decide you'd rather have a good shot at a bronze than a poor shot at a gold.

It also solves the other problem. Using the join system you described above, amulet holders of a given type are only assigned to non amulet holders of that type. If a bronze amulet holder decides they want to keep their bronze amulet (to continue working on their streak) AND try to get a gold one, they can play at the gold level for a while.

Last edited by jere (2015-02-28 01:31:08)

jasonrohrer · 2015-02-28 03:31:04

My concern with altering player behavior is this:

1000+ brand new players will be experiencing the game for the first time and learning how to play during the contest.

If the game is skewed toward less normal, less interesting player behavior during that time, that will be BAD for those new players. They won't get a taste of the game. They'll experience some twisted, other game.

For example, if people jumped from all non-amulet games looking for amulet games, new players would experience a game where their opponent almost always leaves right away. That's not "normal" CM, and it would be a bad experience for them.

If there were one fixed stake for all amulets (say 25 cents), brand new players who wanted to try 1c or 10c or $1 or $10 games would have trouble finding an opponent. Most players would be playing nothing but 25c games trying for the amulets. That's a change to normal behavior, where normally your opponents are likely to jump at many different stakes that you propose. You'd create a 1c game to practice and then just sit there. CM would become a game of waiting a long time for an opponent at any stake (except the amulet stake), regardless of active player stats. Lots of normal player behaviors would be discouraged (like going up in stakes after winning a bunch at lower stakes, etc).

I even worry about this for multiple fixed stakes. While it's a nice match for the amulet rarity and other things that you point out, it would still stratify most players into those three stake "bins". Stakes outside those three bins would find very few opponents. New players who wanted to experiment with other stakes would find the player base behaving differently than normal, and that would be bad.

I'm trying to find something that can lay on top of the existing, normal player behavior without disturbing it too much, other than encouraging players to play more than normal. Especially for the (N-36) players who don't currently hold an amulet. I want them generally going about their normal business at a more fevered pitch. I don't want them to have a way to behave differently that gives them a higher chance of getting an amulet ("Don't waste time with any game other than 25c"---there should be NO tips like that).

I see the problem of someone getting mad that they didn't win the money that they thought they would win from a match and got this lousy amulet instead. Is that the only problem, though? This might have the effect of discouraging higher stakes... though you also have a chance of being surprised by NOT losing $500 when you thought you just did... Seems to come out in the wash. And most players, at most stakes, would be thrilled to trade their win $ for a chance to rack up some amulet wins. Someone did suggest a "No amulet games please checkbox" for high stakes players who really didn't want to be involved in the contest. That could be implemented!

Two amulet-holders would never be matched together.

People who get "stuck" with a copper one might be tempted to throw it away and search for gold. That seems okay. It's kinda the same dynamic that you point out with the varying stakes idea. Go for the copper, while I have the chance, or dump it for a slimmer chance at finding a gold?

joshwithguitar · 2015-02-28 06:08:27

One issue with random game assignment: To increase the chance of me playing in an amulet game I might put the stakes outside of most peoples range. For instance, if I put a $100 game up, it's unlikely anyone will join the game, though I now have a game up waiting around for the next amulet game that randomly attaches itself to it.

Also, to throw away an amulet would you just join a game and leave straight away? This might be odd behavior, but I guess the other player gets a bronze amulet they won't complain too much. Unless they will just go and throw it away themselves...

If you wanted to avoid this kind of behaviour but also keep it fairly simple you could allow for multiple amulets to be held and just have it so that only the highest value amulet is active at any one time. So if you have a silver and you win a gold, the gold becomes active and your silver streak becomes dormant until you lose the gold amulet. You can still restrict gold vs gold games etc.

storeroom leaflet · 2015-02-28 09:05:08

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yeah, Jere, the "luck" of being blessed with the football at the start is a problem. I wouldn't be legally allowed to do that randomly.

jasonrohrer wrote:

When you hold the amulet, you are paired with a totally random opponent (who is also currently looking to join or create a game).

If assigning the amulet at random puts you in legal difficulty (even though you only get something for it if you go on and win games of skill), wouldn't assigning players to amulet games at random put you in the same legal difficulty? In both cases you get a prize (amulet or amulet game) which is assigned at random though it is only worth something to you if you can go on and win games. All the other suggestions for preventing colluding with the amulet seem to have this issue as well.

If random amulet pairing does put you in legal difficulty maybe a completely different idea: For every X coins players pay in tribute they are given the opportunity enter special bonus games, which are play for free win for real events of some sort; could be amulet like, but need not be. For example the simplest would be that after being raked 20 coins you earn a ticket. Games can be created and joined for a ticket stake if you have a ticket, and the winner of a ticket game wins points, with a prize pool divided among points holders at the end of the promotion. But you could have it that you can continue playing bonus games while you keep winning them with benefits accruing exponentially, rewarding streaks like an amulet does (with ending streaks also increasing in value the longer they are). Shouldn't distort player behaviour too much in regular games, except some players might try to play really fast at low stakes to increase their coin tribute as quickly as possible. You could instead make it about time spent playing rather than amount actually tributed to avoid this. Also can't collude to get an advantage here, as to get into the bonus games you have to put in the game time (so long as the bonus games themselves are constant sum). This sort of thing has less of a competition feel to it and more of a poker sign-up bonus feel, but I'm not sure whether that's a feature or a bug. You could always run a tournament the following week or concurrently to satisfy the more competitive players though.

jasonrohrer · 2015-02-28 21:38:42

Josh, your out-of-range stake would be slightly more likely to get picked, simply because it would live on the list longer.

I suppose the server could wait for two people to pair up and pull one away into the amulet game instead. Say the amulet holder is waiting for a game. There are a bunch of waiting games on the list, but none of those are chosen. Instead, we wait for X of those games to be joined (where X is a random number). On the Xth one, we pull one of the players away and pair them with the amulet player, and simply leave the other player "waiting for opponent."

So, if you're picking stakes that no one wants, you'll never get an amulet game.

The randomness of being paired with an amulet player is a potential issue.... though it's not a pure lottery, because once you are picked, you have to exercise skill to even get the amulet, let alone rack up wins while holding it.

I don't see this as being all that different from random pairings in a tournament. It sucks to be paired against the very best player first, but that doesn't make it an illegal lottery.

The primary legal question with lotteries is: does an unskilled player have a chance of winning?

Here, the answer would be NO, or at least as much of a NO as for the main CM game itself. Is an unskilled player going to be able to rack up more wins than anyone else while holding the amulet?

The flipside is whether a skilled player could randomly NOT win, and I don't think that matters. As long as the winner clearly won by skill.

But, thinking about radio call-in contests which aren't lotteries, there may be a more skill-based way to pick the next amulet player. The hard part is preventing those colluding with the amulet holder from having an advantage in terms of getting picked through their skill...

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-02 21:41:14

Talked to Judge Doorman today for a long while.

He had deep concerns about the idea that, if you're in an amulet game without knowing it, the cash stakes might not count. (I.e., a $20 player paired up with a penny player who has the amulet... the $20 player wins, but SURPRISE, you get this copper amulet instead of $20, and you were really playing against a penny player without knowing it).

He pointed out that this runs counter to the spirit of the game and sets a nasty precedent. Currently, a chip is always worth the same for both players, and you always know what it is worth. That's a good way for it to work.

He's right that I don't want to sacrifice "THE PROPER WAY THE GAME ACTUALLY WORKS" on the alter of "PREVENTING PLAYER BEHAVIOR FROM CHANGING." Better to change player behavior than to muck with the real-money certainties of the game.

The best option to limit collusion while altering player behavior the least is to just have a cap on games that could count as amulet games. Say $5, where any game for $5 or under could potentially involve an amulet, but $5.01 and higher guarantees the game is NOT for an amulet. That cap could even change in the middle of the contest if there was some good reason to change it.

Couple this with a random delay of when proposed games show up on various player's game lists (a forced, randomly-delayed roll-out of new games onto people's lists), and collusion would be thwarted, even if someone set specific stakes (like 4.21) as a signal to their collusion partner. This would become the way that new games show up on game lists for the main game, forever---delayed roll-out.

JD points out that if you had tiered stakes for amulet games instead (bins like 10 cents, 50 cents, $2, and $5, where amulet games could ONLY happen at those fixed stakes), someone who is trying to collude and fails would be facing TWO real games to deal with against non-colluding players, because there'd be so many players trying to join games at those tiers.

Still, since you need random roll-out delays in both directions anyway (for both amulet holders and non-holders who propose games), it seems like adding "special" tiers alters the game too much. That takes more explaining than just a stake cap for amulet games, funnels player behavior more, etc.

Because, without random new-game roll-out delays, colluders ALWAYS have a better chance of joining with each other than non-colluders, simply because they completely control join timing (everyone who is not colluding is sitting and waiting for a 5-second game list refresh).

JD also had some other good ideas:

--Amulets handed out initially based on how many games you played until the end in the last 24 hours (the same way we count amulet points, except you don't have to win a game to have it count).

--Fixed time limit for holding the amulet (say, 1 hour max), to encourage players to play as much as possible while holding it (to rack wins before time runs out) and not delay.

--Amulets going back into the pool to be handed out again using the above criteria when an amulet-holder's time limit elapses.

--Two amulet holders face each other, the winner gets to pick which amulet to keep, the other amulet goes back in the pool. This prevents someone who holds copper from being blocked from gold, but doesn't assume they WANT gold (maybe they're very close to being top for that copper amulet).

Professor Chin · 2015-03-02 23:34:24

Agree with the cap for amulet games.

To encourage to play as much as possible while holding the amulet I would prefer that the inactivity time is measured: for example the amulet is lost after 20 or 30 minutes of inactivity.
The amulet holders would still be encouraged to play and they would maintain the possibility to make a long strike of wins if they have the stamina + skills + minosons smiling at them.

Also having the amulet taken away for timeout after few games against slow opponents would be infuriating and perceived as unfair (even if the rules are clear), aggravated by the fact that you cannot leave an amulet game while in advantage without loosing it.

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-03 00:03:26

Good point here.

What I worry about with an inactivity criteria is this:

What if you're in the lead for a given amulet, and there's only a few hours left. At that point, instead of playing as many winning games as fast as possible, you might be motivated to spread your games out as much as possible.

If there was an inactivity timeout only, then by playing (and winning) one game every 25 minutes, you could likely hold the amulet all the way until the end, thus protecting your lead.

I.e., "keeping it away from other players" could become a viable strategy at some point, and THAT would not be good.

Even with a much shorter inactivity timer, a leading player would be motivated to "slow play" each game while they had the amulet. In general, if you only dropped it due to inactivity or loss, you'd always be motivated to slow play each game, because that means all the less time for other players to rack up wins.

Example:

Let's say that you are going to rack up 10 wins while holding the amulet before you lose. Well, you could play those 10 games at normal speed and drop the amulet after 1.5 hours. Or you could slow play every game and drag it out for 5 hours. Either way, you gain 10 points before dropping it, but in the second case, other players will have less time with it.

If there was a set timer for holding the amulet, you'd never be motivated to slow play.

You're right that it would suck to get stuck with a slow opponent while you hold the amulet because you can't leave and your overall amulet time would be running out.

But even opponents won't be motivated to slow play, because they don't know if a given game is an amulet game, and they don't want to waste time (they want to get as many chances at the amulets as possible).

claspa · 2015-03-03 00:52:28

jasonrohrer wrote:

--Fixed time limit for holding the amulet (say, 1 hour max), to encourage players to play as much as possible while holding it (to rack wins before time runs out) and not delay.

I also prefer that the inactivity time is measured. People have to sleep or have other activities to do.

Even with the rising ante I had a couple of games who took longer than one hour. We didn't slow play, it was a lot of back and forth. We adapted our picking strategies, I had great fun with those games.

I don't want to be punished for playing the game as I usually do.

joshwithguitar · 2015-03-03 01:07:57

I think the random opponent assignment idea for the amulet holder can be saved by simply adding an opt-in check box on the main lobby page that once checked could mean any of your games will be drawn into an amulet game without you knowing. The first time it is checked it can bring up a page explaining what you are allowing. This would mean that if you want to join a high stakes game without any risk of an amulet game you could simply uncheck the box before joining. And yes, the idea that it will pull a player away from a game that has just started to play you instead fixes the problem nicely as it encourages playing as many people as possible.

One further possibility, if you don't mind increasing the prize pool a little, is to have a pool from which you compensate players who join amulet games until the pool runs out. So if you join a $20 game and get pulled into an amulet game and end up winning with 180 chips you will get $18 from the pool as well as the amulet so long as the pool has $18 remaining. You could also have it so that money wagered that would normally have been lost in an amulet game feeds back into the pool up to the starting pool value. This would create a slight intensive to play higher stakes games while the pool is full, but I don't see that as a problem. I would not be surprised if a $100 pool was never exhausted in a system like this, and so the nature of the game would not change very much for those who are brought into amulet games.

Further still, amulet holders could nominate a value whenever they start a game to set the maximum money they are willing to wager. If they end up being paired with a lower priced game, money transferal is treated like a standard game at the lower price with no money going in or out of the pool. If the amulet holder is paired with a higher value game then the payout for them is treated like a standard game based on the higher stake. Money would only then have to come from/enter the pool to make up for the gap in winnings for the other player. So, in this final system if you start a $20 game and you are matched with an amulet holder who is willing to wager up to $5, then if you end up with 180 chips and they have 0 at the end you will take $5 from the amulet holder and be given a further $13 from the pool. If you lose all the chips and your opponent ends up with 180 you will give them $4.50 to them and a further $15.50 to the pool.

jasonrohrer wrote:

The best option to limit collusion while altering player behavior the least is to just have a cap on games that could count as amulet games. Say $5, where any game for $5 or under could potentially involve an amulet, but $5.01 and higher guarantees the game is NOT for an amulet. That cap could even change in the middle of the contest if there was some good reason to change it.

In this alternative system, setting the top price for a amulet game might be tricky. You want to set it in such a way as to not discourage people from determining their own stakes but also at such a level that at the highest stake there are still lots of games being formed/joined. Perhaps it could be a variable rate that is displayed on the main lobby page. The problem here is determining the rate considering the fact that the rate itself will strongly affect player behaviour. The best idea I can think of is to have the rate increase slightly every time a game is joined at or close to that rate and decrease over time when nobody plays at it.

Professor Chin wrote:

Also having the amulet taken away for timeout after few games against slow opponents would be infuriating and perceived as unfair (even if the rules are clear), aggravated by the fact that you cannot leave an amulet game while in advantage without loosing it.

One way of making it so that slow games are less annoying when you hold an amulet given a time limit on holding it would be to have it extended each game based on the amount of time spent waiting for the other player. So every second between the time make a move/bet and receiving the opponents move/bet would be added on to your time.

jasonrohrer wrote:

--Amulets handed out initially based on how many games you played until the end in the last 24 hours (the same way we count amulet points, except you don't have to win a game to have it count).

This gives a big advantage to those with bots when it comes to starting with an amulet. I would not be surprised at all if Clock Form ended up with one to start. And if timed out amulets are common and are given to those who are playing the most then bots might end up being handed lots of them (although I guess you could restrict each account to only one free amulet).

Dan_Dan84 · 2015-03-03 02:43:39

I think the check box on the main page allowing players to opt in to amulet games during the contest would be a better way to go than with the "cap" on games that could be an amulet. I just think it's a simpler, more elegant way of allowing high-stakes players who want to win cash, not a "chance at cash," get on with it, while making it clear to other players that they are now participating in the contest.

Most new players will probably be playing at the 1c-25c stakes level anyway.

As for the time limit... I'm with Claspa. Many of my games take over 30 minutes! Some have even taken about an hour. So if there's going to be a "hard" time limit (i.e. not counting just inactivity time), it needs to be set with care. Otherwise I predict there are going to be lots of unnecessary all-ins (i.e. a change in player behaviour), just to scare away players (or possibly strip them of coins) and let the amulet holder move onto another game.

storeroom leaflet · 2015-03-03 02:56:28

"The primary legal question with lotteries is: does an unskilled player have a chance of winning?"

I don't understand how this is consistent with the interpretation of radio contests as not lotteries but randomly assigning the amulet as a lottery. Does an unskilled player have a chance of winning a radio call-in contest? Absolutely I would have thought. Does an unskilled player have a chance of winning an amulet promotion with the amulet given randomly at the beginning? Not a significant one.

"I don't see this as being all that different from random pairings in a tournament. It sucks to be paired against the very best player first, but that doesn't make it an illegal lottery."

The difference I see is that being randomly paired with the best player is not a disadvantage intrinsic to the game state, you get the same benefits and costs from playing well or poorly relative to your opponent no matter who you're paired against. Having a chance at an amulet however is intrinsic to the game state and does changes (potentially drastically) the benefits you get from playing well relative to your opponent.

"Fixed time limit for holding the amulet (say, 1 hour max), to encourage players to play as much as possible while holding it (to rack wins before time runs out) and not delay."

I really don't like this. I've had a number of games go an hour or close to an hour, and a bunch more that have gone more than half an hour, so to get a more than 3 amulet wins (probably even to get 3), I would have to adopt a strategy with a much higher chance of getting faster decisive results.

What about my idea of just constantly losing points while you're holding the amulet (which you can give up at any time)? If you set the rate of losing points right you should be able to discourage stalling without distorting in game incentives too much. Though actually I'm inclined to argue against discouraging slow-playing in game at all. If 1 minute a round is decided upon as a reasonable time limit ideally players should not be penalised for taking that time to choose their moves, if that is seen as too slow then the time limit should be lower. If that is granted I don't think it is so bad to give players a strategic incentive to take their time on their moves, (and as I mentioned in the thread on time limits there already are incentives to take your time on your moves in the main game). That said, even if you grant me all that there still is a legitimate worry about slowplaying when two colluding accounts meet each other, they could drag a game out for about 70 rounds *8 minutes a round= 9 hours 20 minutes. There are other ways of dealing with this though: 1. After one hour in amulet games finish the game and declare the winner to be the player with the most chips (disadvantage, distorts the strategy when nearing the hour mark as you don't have to get all the coins to win. More complicated version which reduces distortion, after the hour each player keeps their coins and is paired with a new player who gets 100 coins, antes in each game continue from where they left off at the end of the hour and players have a reduced time limit, the winner of each game (the one who gets all the coins) is paired with the winner of the other game [unless both original players win, in which case they keep their are paired with new players again], the winner of that game gets the amulet and is counted as having won two games (+1 for every time both original players won, the number of wins it counts as will correspond to the number of coins the winner ends up with divided by 200) . 2. Have the prize pool increase with the amulet games played (ideally so that other people winning amulet games doesn't hurt me) then the incentive to stall is reduced as you can win more by playing more, but you can't lost so much from others winning games. (Of course the increase will have to stop or assymptote at some point so that the prize pool can't get out of control, but that could be at a point high enough that it's unlikely to be reached).

"--Amulets handed out initially based on how many games you played until the end in the last 24 hours (the same way we count amulet points, except you don't have to win a game to have it count).

--Amulets going back into the pool to be handed out again using the above criteria when an amulet-holder's time limit elapses."

A bot can get a lot of touches of an amulet with these rules. You could limit each player to only get one amulet assigned to them this way for the whole promotion, but then if you put in a large number of bots one of them is going to get each amulet every time one drops. I'm not sure whether I prefer this to my idea of assigning it to the winner of the first game to start after the amulet is dropped. My idea is open to collusion through timing drop and game starts, especially without random time delays. On the plus side, though, it encourages everyone to play more without feeling they can't sleep. With the 24 hour idea, I feel if I'm not a bot, and need to sleep I'm unlikely to play the most games in a 24 hour period and so I'm not incentivised to play more to get a chance at picking up a dropped amulet. Or even without bots, if I have to work then I'm not going to play the most games so why bother. (In general I think rewards you might get for playing a single game will encourage the average player to play more whereas rewards for playing the most games won't).

"--Two amulet holders face each other, the winner gets to pick which amulet to keep, the other amulet goes back in the pool. This prevents someone who holds copper from being blocked from gold, but doesn't assume they WANT gold (maybe they're very close to being top for that copper amulet)."

I don't mind this system but why not just have the winner take all the amulets in play with them all remaing active while they have them. That way an amulet holder gets the same benefit from being paired with another amulet holder as everyone else, and realistically it's unlikely anyone will hold multiple amulets for long. This would also be easier to incorporate with a points system like the one I suggested above to keep games constant sum.

storeroom leaflet · 2015-03-03 05:07:19

How about this for an idea if you don't mind having the amulet-holder wait a little. When an amulet holder starts a game there will be n games being played. The next amulet challenger will be the winner of the middle game to finish of these (ie number the games 1 to n, then the winner of game n/2 if n is even or (n+1)/2 if n is odd will be the chosen amulet challenger). The chosen amulet challenger may not be able to play another game, so thye have to accept the amulet game. If they don't the challenger will be the player they defeated, or if preferred the winner of the next game. (The reason for making it go to the opponent even though the opponent lost is to keep the games constant sum where only one of two players will accept a chance at an amulet game). There's no randomness but very hard to exploit with collusion or any other sort of non-standard play. How do you aim to be the middle game finished when you don't know how many games there currently are or when they finish? It also encourages everyone to play more as every win could be tour ticket to an amulet game. You could even have all the information about who has the amulet and which ones are currently waiting for a game revealed to everyone, eliminating a possible source of advantage for colluders in knowing where amulets are, and making it possible to have real-time amulet leader-boards wihtout worrying about what information people might be able to scrape from them. The downside is that you don't know how long someone with the amulet will have to wait for a game, but you could tweak it to be game n/3 or game 5 or whatever if the wait was too long. (With n/2 if you assume games are started at a constant rate and all take the same amount of time, then the amulet holder will have to wait 1/4 of this time. On the other hand if you assume that the length of a given game is an exponential random variable [more or less that the probability of finishing a game any given round that you play is constant] then the amulet holder can expect to wait half the length of an average game, so the true expected wait time will be somewhere between 1/2 and 1/4 of the length of an average game, if you went with n/3 it would be between 1/6 and 1/3.)

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-03 18:28:24

storeroom leaflet wrote:

Why not just have the winner take all the amulets in play with them all remaing active while they have them. That way an amulet holder gets the same benefit from being paired with another amulet holder as everyone else, and realistically it's unlikely anyone will hold multiple amulets for long. This would also be easier to incorporate with a points system like the one I suggested above to keep games constant sum.

Snowballing. Eventually, one person would hold all 36 amulets, and that ball would pass from person to person.

An amulet holder stands to rack a win for the amulet while holding it, no matter whether they play another amulet holder or not. If they play another amulet holder, then they also get the chance to switch amulets if they win.

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-03 18:51:38

You guys are right about the bots having the best chance at dropped amulets.

Starting amulets and dropped amulets could be, as you are suggesting, handed out to some non-amulet holder who just won a game (last player to leave, or last player with non-zero chips in the game).

You're right that I don't want to discourage strategic play that takes time.

However, imagine an amulet holder who wants to bully other players into leaving through slow play. Let's say they want to drag it out for as many rounds as possible. If they never bet above the ante, that's a minimum of 14 rounds before they run out of coins. Even if their opponent bets as soon as possible and gets them to fold each round, they still gets 1 minute for their first pick, one minute to bet 0, and another minute to fold. So, 3 minutes per round... that's 42 minutes, guaranteed. If your opponent refuses to leave, you can tie them up for 42 minutes.

Now, an amulet holder would NEVER want to leave, and you can imagine non-amulet holders doing this slow-folding play for a while in each game to sniff out amulet holders. A non-amulet holder would probably get fed up and leave, so if their opponent stays, this is probably an amulet game.

But if there's no incentive for an amulet holder to pick up the pace, couldn't they use this strategy to bully non-amulet holders into leaving most of the time?

Well, maybe not. You're slowly winning all the coins, I guess you'd stay in? And the amulet holder would have less and less of a chance at actually winning the longer you stayed, so I guess this strategy would be naturally discouraged.

Maybe some combo of inactivity timer (which would be shorter, like a few hours) and an overall timer (which would be longer, like 6 hours).

storeroom leaflet · 2015-03-03 22:22:13

jasonrohrer wrote:

Snowballing. Eventually, one person would hold all 36 amulets, and that ball would pass from person to person.

Ah, I see. I was bound to be missing something obvious given noone had suggested it yet.

jasonrohrer wrote:

However, imagine an amulet holder who wants to bully other players into leaving through slow play. Let's say they want to drag it out for as many rounds as possible. If they never bet above the ante, that's a minimum of 14 rounds before they run out of coins. Even if their opponent bets as soon as possible and gets them to fold each round, they still gets 1 minute for their first pick, one minute to bet 0, and another minute to fold. So, 3 minutes per round... that's 42 minutes, guaranteed. If your opponent refuses to leave, you can tie them up for 42 minutes.

That's a good point. So ideally you want to make it so that players don't have an incentive to play slower or faster than normal. The simplest and most effective here would just have it so that the prize pool grows with the amulet points collected, with prizes proportional to points collected. Then the incentive is just to win points, if that takes time then you take it, if a quicker strategy is likely to get your more points you use that. To do this you'd have to have a pretty good idea of the range of possible total score there could be, and you'd still want to have a mximum prize pool, but you could make it so that was unlikely to be reached.

The other concerns you mention would be dealt with by revealing amulet games to both players, which you can do if amulet challengers are winners of regular games as suggested in my previous post. It also allows another possibility for dealing with slowplaying in amulet games (though it is a little more complex): Once an amulet game has gone x% longer than an average game either player can select an option which does the following:
1. The game is stopped at the end of the current round.
2. Two new amulet challengers are found.
3. Each new player is paired with one of the players of the stopped game. The new players start with 100 coins, the original players continue with the amount of coins they started with.
4. These games are played with the ante continuing from where it was in the stopped game.
5. If at least one of the new players wins, the winners of each game are paired against each other, keeping the same amount of coins they had when they won their game (or if their opponent left all their coins and all their opponents coins), antes continuing from the maximum ante reached in either game.
6. The winner of this game gets the amulet, and is recorded as having won two games (so if the amulet holder wins their score is added to as if they won their original game and one extra game, if someone else wins their score is what it would be if they were playing the original game won it and then won one more game).
7. If both the original players win they keep their coins and two new amulet challengers are found, each starting with 100 coins again and antes continuing from the maximum they reached in either game. This is repeated until one new player beats one of the original players, when they are paired with the winner of the other game for the amulet. The number of wins the eventual winner of the amulet is recorded as having is 1 + #pairs of new players found.

To prevent colluding players drawing a game out this process would kick in automatically after the game goes y% longer than average (y>x) as suggested in my previous post. (Natural values of x and y might be 20% and 100%, but I'm not sure).

Otherwise I would suggest continually losing points for holding an amulet, with a slower rate while playing a game, and completely stopped when waiting for a game. The problem with just having timers is that players are still incentivised to draw their time out to the length of the timer, which it makes it hard to avoid players slow-playing effectively while still giving players time to play normally. Losing points means that slow-playing is discouraged but if your slow strategy wins more points than you lose in that period it is still worth player. This makes it more analogous to the main game where if you're trying to make your money as fast as possible (as e.g. profressional poker players are).

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-03 22:31:43

Wait, so you're suggesting that the prize FOR ME gets bigger the more points I score while holding the amulet?

I.e., if I score 10 before dropping it, and you score 8 before dropping it, if I win at the end, I get $1000 (whereas you would have just gotten $800).

Or are you suggesting that BOTH players would get prizes at the end? $1000 AND $800?

I'm really trying to limit the prize structure so that my total liability is capped and known up front. Like the Steal Real Money contest, I was never going to be liable for more than $3000 total.

LiteS · 2015-03-03 22:47:11

I think it might help to look at this a bit backwards, because we keep running into a situation where a strategy that goes against the spirit of the game ends up being best for getting the amulets. If we instead determine what kind of behavior we want to reward with amulets, then it would be easier to root out bots or abuse.

From what I've gathered so far, it seems like the objective is to reward players who play often (more chances to be paired against an amulet), win often (actually win when playing for an amulet), and, seemingly most importantly, win consecutive games.

Right now I think the "Winning consecutively" category is a tall order for casual players, but still manageable. It is a bit troubling that the winning consecutively condition has a "Get an amulet" prerequisite, even with the amulets being passed around.

Edit:

I think it may be best if you were immune to losing an amulet immediately. Say, for an hour (half hour?) after you pick up an amulet you try to win as much as possible (be it dollar amount, chip count, win/loss ratio, or overall games), then after that hour your next loss or sufficient idle time gives up the amulet. That way if you have a legitimate slow strategy, you don't suffer, but at the same time it encourages playing & winning as many games as you can during the immunity period. It also makes it more exciting for new players, giving them a chance to actually hold on to the amulet for longer than a game or two.

Last edited by LiteS (2015-03-03 23:08:17)

storeroom leaflet · 2015-03-03 23:41:46

jasonrohrer wrote:

Wait, so you're suggesting that the prize FOR ME gets bigger the more points I score while holding the amulet?
I.e., if I score 10 before dropping it, and you score 8 before dropping it, if I win at the end, I get $1000 (whereas you would have just gotten $800).
Or are you suggesting that BOTH players would get prizes at the end? $1000 AND $800?
I'm really trying to limit the prize structure so that my total liability is capped and known up front. Like the Steal Real Money contest, I was never going to be liable for more than $3000 total.

My suggestion is both players receive prizes.

What I have in mind is a procedure like this:
1. Decide on number of amulets, points structure for amulet games, who gets to play in amulet games, and everything else about how the mechanics of the promotion will work (the points system for example might be 1 point to the winner of every amulet game, 0 points to the loser and the winner keeping the amulet, a simple system with some nice properties but no chance of really high stakes amulet games, or a new player winning just a couple of games and getting a decent score).

2. Based on past games data, and the system chosen, generate a model of how many amulets games are likely to be played and what the total sum of scores, T, is likely to be.

3. Take a number, n, such that T has ~5% chance of exceeding n.

4. Decide the maximum amount you are prepared to pay out in prizes $P.

5. Declare every point worth $P/n up to a maximum total prize pool of $P.

So your maximum liability is P which is built in to the rules of the promotion, but ~95% of the time the maximum wont be reached, so players can just worry about maximising their own score and it won't matter to them if that gives another player a chance to score well as well. The big advantage of this sort of system is you get a lot of control of player incentives so you can avoid even colluding players from wanting to throw games, slow-play, etc. It also seems sort of in the spirit of the game to have this sort of prize structure given that the real money nature of the game.

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-04 02:01:02

Oh... but the main point of the amulet contest was the actual AMULETS themselves.

As in, 36 physical pieces of metal that would be mailed out at the end. 6 of them from 99.99% pure gold, 12 in 99.99% pure silver, and 18 in copper. I.e., I'd buy some Canadian Maple Leaf coins and lost-wax-cast the metal into hand-carved occult amulets that are one-of-a-kind. At the end of the contest, there would be 36 winners.

A few people have pointed out that there should be a cash prize along with the amulet to attract players that don't care about the game's themes. Okay, sure.

But GIVING AWAY REAL GOLD is going to be the thing about the contest that attracts media attention.

And the in-game amulets (just an icon on the screen, really) will always represent a physical amulet that you can win. That's the cool concept here.

Your idea of losing points the longer you hold it is good. Say you lose 1 point per hour that you hold it. You can keep holding it forever without changing your current score by playing 1 game per hour. It's different from an inactivity timer because the same behavior with just an inactivity timer would cause your score with the amulet to go up (i.e., playing the bare minimum of games to not time out).

So, when you pick up the amulet, you gain one point. If your score on it ever drops to 0, you drop it back into the pool. If you lose while holding it, the winner takes it.

An idea similar to what you are describing (to make it less zero-sum) would be to divide the cash part of the prize based upon your fraction of the total points built up on that amulet. So, even if you were in the lead, you'd still be motivated to gain more points.

I don't know how much this Slow Playing Leaders thing will actually be a problem. As long as you can't hold it forever without playing, you will eventually lose a match and drop it. That means the runner-up will have a chance to score more points and surpass you. Instead of just holding it, you'd better score as many points as possible.

No matter what delay-prevention system is in place, there are going to be leaders trying to hold it during the last few hours, but that's okay, I think. In order to hold it, they have to get it again.

Cobblestone · 2015-03-04 03:24:31

jasonrohrer wrote:

No matter what delay-prevention system is in place, there are going to be leaders trying to hold it during the last few hours, but that's okay, I think. In order to hold it, they have to get it again.

Are winners of the physical prize amulets the players that hold them when the contest ends, or the ones who have the most wins/points while holding the amulet over the course of the contest? I thought it was wins/points, but I just wanted to make sure.

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-04 03:31:25

Yeah, whoever has the most wins/points by the end gets the amulet, regardless of who is holding it at the end.

But if the current point leader was holding it and there were a few hours left, the current leader would obviously be motivated to slow play and delay as much as possible. That's okay, I think, because the current point leader will have a hard time getting a hold of it again right at the end.

CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

#51 2015-02-27 23:41:49

Re: Thoughts on a Launch Contest

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