[ExI] 2/3 game, round 1

[Mike Dougherty]

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 10:15 AM, spike<spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>> >> >> -->  I just wanted to grief the system a bit :-)
>> > And so you did, and you gave me a terrific idea in the
>> process, thanks!
>
> I have an online math group to which I may soon propose the Emlyn-Style
> Two-thirds Average game.  Perhaps it will come to be known as ESTA.
> Alternate name suggestions welcome.

I think round two should have some stipulation that only your most
recent / last bet be considered for the winning value.  If you are
going to allow any number of entries, it opens the possibility of
betting "67" then stuffing thousands of "99" votes so you can force
the distribution by drowning every other vote.  Now it would still be
possible to drown the votes _then_ post your "67" - but at the cost of
(current pot total) + 1 then it becomes prohibitively expensive to
play.  However, if you have enough investment you can effectively go
all-in and preclude others from playing and take the game knowing you
cannot be outbid (pay to play, then drive the costs to exclude other
players)  Now the winning motivation must return to your earlier post
about the ratio of winnings to investment.  Also I considered how this
game dynamic changes from the few players in round 1 to a very large
number of players such that Emlyn's "grief" becomes statistically
insignificant among the overwhelming number of ... non-grief(?) votes.

I'm not really sure what it is about games like these that seem to
make us want to understand their mechanics only so we may find
increasingly clever ways to exploit them  (ok, i mean "cheat")  Or was
that were you were heading, spike?