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Topic: Postal Tournament Prediction Contest (Read 1260 times) |
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Fritzlein
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Postal Tournament Prediction Contest
« on: Sep 16th, 2006, 2:59pm » |
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I think most of us would agree that the prediction contest on the World Championship has become a fun event in its own right. The WC prediction contest makes me want to watch all the games and study everyone's style even more than the main contest does.
I think next year we should double our fun for the Postal Championship as well by having a parallel prediction contest for it. However, the format would have to be completely different, because it would be boring to just bet on all the games at the very start and then wait around to see what you won or lost.
A much more enjoyable format would be along the lines of the game 99of9 introduced me to at http://www.ideosphere.com/ . They bet on events that are unfolding, and the value of the shares is constantly changing. For example, they bet on whether the price of gasoline in the U.S. will go over three dollars per gallon. The bets people are willing to place go up and down depending on hurricanes, pipeline shutdowns, Middle East conflicts, etc.
Adapting this to our situation, I might say that Adanac has a 70% chance of winning his game right now against Thorin, but 99of9 thinks Thorin has a full 40% chance to win. I could bet on Adanac for 65% while 99of9 takes Thorin for 35%, and we would each think we had made a good bet. Then if Adanac wins, 99of9 pays me $35, but if Thorin wins I pay 99of9 65$ (play money, of course).
They have software that allows you to put a bid on any event at any time. The server informs you by e-mail whenever someone accepts a bid you have put. Since the software is open source, it should be possible to adapt it to betting on players in each game in the postal tourney.
Just a thought...
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| « Last Edit: Sep 16th, 2006, 9:02pm by Fritzlein » |
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omar
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Re: Postal Tournament Prediction Contest
« Reply #1 on: Sep 17th, 2006, 11:36pm » |
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I've thought of making the WC predictiton contests even more interesting by making them dynamic. This would probably work for the postal tournament perdiction contest as well.
During the game the contestents are allowed to change which player they think will win. After the game is over the contestents get points equal to the percent of the game time when they finalized on the winning player. So for example lets say a game between player A and B results in player A winning in exactly one hour. Suppose I start out picking player A; then 10 minutes into the game I change my pick to player B and then 45 minutes into the game I switch back to player A and stick with player A for the rest of the game. I would 25 point for this game since I finalized on the winning player for 25% of the game time (for 15 minutes before the game was over). Players who picked the wrong player get 0 points. During the game one can see how many contestents have picked each of the players. The contestent with the highest points accumulated over all the games wins.
This might work out well for postal tournaments also.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Postal Tournament Prediction Contest
« Reply #2 on: Sep 19th, 2006, 1:20pm » |
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I like the idea of a dynamic prediction contest for the World Championship, but I also wouldn't want to throw away the nice system we have. I think we have a pretty nifty way to measure the level of confidence, i.e. how sure you are, which would be lost if we went back to for-and-against betting.
Suppose I think 99of9 is 95% likely to win his first round game, but then he loses a cat and my confidence drops to 75%. Then he gets a nice dog hostage, and I'm back up to 90%. All that change in my thoughts will make no difference in my betting for-or-against: I'll be for him throughout the game.
Meanwhile your percentages might have been 85% on 99of9 at the start, 55% on him after the cat blunder, and 75% after he gets a hostage in compensation. But even though we differ in our opinions, you will also bet for him throughout the game, resulting in no discrimination between your opinions and mine.
Besides which, the betting live on World Champsionship games runs into the problem that a lot of the participants in the betting contest may be asleep or at work during most of the games. Dynamic betting on the Postal Championship, on the other hand, would be open to everyone regardless of time zone.
The principle behind the ideosphere futures exchange is that you aren't just betting for or against something, you're betting on a specific percentage chance of it happening. It's very common to see someone place bids on both sides of the same question, e.g. if 99of9 plays OLTI, the same speculator would offer to take 99of9 for 65% and take OLTI for 25%. If he can find someone to take the opposite side of each bet, it's an outlay of only $90 for a guaranteed return of $100.
The great thing about a long time horizon is that it allows the market time to find its level. There needs to be time for offers and counter-offers (haggling, essentially) because every sale requires two people. It isn't like the WC betting is now, where each person can act in isolation, so there needs to be time for deals to be made.
In short, my gut reaction is to leave the WC predictions pretty much alone, since they seem to be working so well, and experiment with Postal predictions instead. However, those are just random thoughts, and I'm open to being persuaded.
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Adanac
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Re: Postal Tournament Prediction Contest
« Reply #3 on: Sep 19th, 2006, 5:27pm » |
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on Sep 19th, 2006, 1:20pm, Fritzlein wrote:| In short, my gut reaction is to leave the WC predictions pretty much alone, since they seem to be working so well, and experiment with Postal predictions instead. However, those are just random thoughts, and I'm open to being persuaded. |
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I completely agree. The current WC prediction contest is great fun with the current rules and I wouldn't want to see any radical changes. Allowing changes to the predictions during live games would make it very stressful for me. I'd feel more pressure to login at times that I wouldn't normally login just to see if I should change my predictions - and that wouldn't help my productivity at work!!
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