It attempts to reward close finishers and the winner and not penalize unduly early droppers. It would just be one rating number to have along with the win/loss percentage and other stats like entries and current ponds running. I think with the scale I devised and Ed's modification of having a low score show better play, one could come up with a rating that reflects good play and staying power. Instead of using Ed's for a low score, you could use the reciprocal and multiply it by some number, say 1000, and get a number simular to slugging percentage in baseball.
Just to keep track of winners and losers works too BBW, but other ways of tracking players have enterest for some people, just like baseball stats for various things interest some fans but not the ones that only care if their team won the game or not. If both or more ratings and stats are made available, you could look at just the win/loss record of a person you're interested whereas, grenv or someone else might want to check out some other thing about the person's record that you don't care about, but he does. As I said, I wouldn't mind having it stay just as it is, but with so many people clammoring for some kind of rating and others statistics we might as well pitch in and see what we can come up with.
Wins/Losses/Percent of them is easy and straight forward to track. Making a rating system that takes into account how far one goes before dropping out isn't as easy to devise. Plus some people would like to track a player's points along with how many rounds they last and average rounds and percentage of rounds completed out of rounds possible. That's five things to keep track of. Certainly doable, but is that enough or too much? Will those be what people want, or will modification be needed after we get familiar with how those stats look and feel?

It appears that Ed has added some things to his earlier proposal while I was figuring out and typing mine in. I suppose a rating based on a low score could be used with the deal I came up with too.

<20 player pond Ed's proposal
Z = 20
1st gets 40, 2nd gets 20, 3rd gets 10 , 4th gets 5, 5 to 8 get 0, 9th loses 24, 10th loses 27, 11th loses 30, 12th loses 33, 13th loses 36
14th loses 39, 15th loses 42, 16th loses 45
17th loses 48, 18th loses 51, 19th loses 54
20th loses 57
I suppose when two or more people drop on the same round the points would work the same. Or you could add up the total and divide equally rounding where necessary. Seems like it'd work. Start everyone at zero. Nothing wrong with a negative rating in my book. Or start at whatever is the starting point here and limit the lowest to 100. Tripling the score for the early droppers seems kind of harsh to me. Why not just double it or leave it single based on when you drop? Perhaps a scale would work to smooth out the edges too. A power function with 2 as the base? Or "e" the base of the natural logrithms?
Here's a formula that'd work as a smooth curve and wouldn't be too harsh to people that drop early while only awarding the most points to the very last players in. At the half way point the award for winning starts. Before then deduction takes place, less as you last longer.
Z = The starting amount of people
e = the base of the natural logrithms
P = final position of player
C = constant (this can be changed to increase or decrease award given. In my examples that follow I use a value of C = 1)
R = rating points awarded or deducted
Top half finishers award:
R = (Z/2) times [(e raised to the reciprocal of P)-C]
Bottom half finishers deduction:
R = (Z/2 - P) + .6 then rounded
In the 20 player game example the values would be
1st gets 17
2nd gets 6
3rd gets 4
4th gets 3
5th gets 2
6th gets 2
7th gets 2
8th, 9th, and 10th get 1
11th stays even
12th loses 1
13th loses 2
14th loses 3
15th loses 4
16th loses 5
17th loses 6
18th loses 7
19th loses 8
20th loses 9
You could double or triple the deductions if you wanted to.
In a 100 player pond the awards would be
1st 86, 2nd 32, 3rd 20, 4th 14, 5th 11
6th 9, 7th 8, 8th 7, 9th 6, 10th 5
11th 5, 12th 4, 13th 4, 14th 4, 15th 3
16th through 20th-- 3
21st through 33rd-- 2
34th through 50th-- 1
51st stays even
52nd loses 1 and so on

It's kind of hard to write mathematical formulars on this keyboard, but those that know this stuff can see what I'm angling at. A curve with a gentle slope until the very end when the reward for winning or coming in close increase a lot. If you make it half way, you'll not lose rating points. The deduction can be varied also, but keeping it a straight linear type of penality is easy to understand and most people go along with that. Lowering the constant C will increase the award. I hope the numbers line up after I enter them to post.
20 player pond
-------> C = 1 C =.5 C = 0 C = -.5
1st place 17 22 27 32
2nd place 6 11 16 21
3rd place 4 9 14 19
10th place 1 6 11 16
100 player pond
1st place 86 111 136 161
2nd place 32 57 82 107
3rd place 20 45 70 95
10th place 5 30 55 80
25th place 2 27 52 77
50th place 1 26 51 76
The divisor of Z can be varied to, but first this whole idea has to be figured with if it's acceptable for using as a rating system. Also using C = 1 you could multiply the whole award by some number to put the range of awards to whatever value seems appropriate for the size pond in question.

2¢

After reading various posts and thinking about it myself, I've had another thought. Leave it as it is. No stats, no ratings, no nothing. Just play the game and have fun with it. There's just not a way to keep track of things like that that won't actually cause some players to play for the statistics instead of play the game to win. So let's not have any ratings or stats made for this one game. Or, at a minimum, just wins and losses. I think there's not much argument about those two stats. :)

It seems like the game is quite popular as it is without the stats. Work on things that can make the game more fun to play, rather than keeping track of you how people play the game. Like we posted about with giving the creator control over the starting point and bonus amount. I'm sure there's other things that could be thought up that could make interesting to play variants of this game. Like having a minimum bet or a maximum bet. Or letting you know your opponent's bets. Or making your opponent's bets for them, but if they're low, you get dropped! Lots of ways to play this game. Who needs stats?

Stevie: I'm not sure how his fellowship has evolved into what it is now. I'm not a member of any fellowships. He did mention in his invitation to me that it was uncensored and felt that your hand was a too heavy for his liking here. When I received the invitation I went to the list of people in the fellowship and didn't see your handle. In my response telling him that I wasn't joining I asked him about if he'd asked you to join. He said all that ask to join, can join the fellowship. So if you want in, you'll have to ask him. I'm thinking you two aren't on speaking terms, but you can put him to the test by joining and posting to his group and seeing if he can resist the temptation to edit, delete, and censor as he says is your wont to. Turn about is fair play, so to speak? :)

I notice that his handle is no longer amoungst the posts here. I can only presume that one of our moderators has banned him or put him on hide. That's too bad, though I suppose I shouldn't say that unnecessarily since I must've missed something he posted that led to this action. Anyways, he asked me to join a fellowship that he's got going about this Pond game and any future multiplayer games that might be added to this site. I told him to post here to get people enterested in joining it and he said he couldn't. So I'm taking it upon myself to post about his fellowship. He said all that ask to join will be admitted, including Stevie. :) So there you go.
He said when I declined to join that I was the first one to do so. He has quite a group assembled so far, so get on over there! :)
http://brainking.com/game/ShowFellowship?fid=248

Scroll back a few Ed. A few people have had some ideas on it. I brought an excerpt of mine here.

I was thinking of someting simular. Number of rounds that you last divided by the number of rounds the Pond goes on for. This would make the largest ponds equal to the smaller ones as far as a person's staying power is concerned. That, plus doing what fencer suggests and of course win/loss/wins per pond stats should be enough for record keeping.

Also to address something Bry said about falling in with no points left in the same round as someone that had thousands left. Why not also have the average amount of points that one has left when the game ends for that person as a statistic too? Would that show the difference between someone that bets high most of the time compared to someone that bets low?

Universal Eyes: I was thinking of someting simular. Number of rounds that you last divided by the number of rounds the Pond goes on for. This would make the largest ponds equal to the smaller ones as far as a person's staying power is concerned. That, plus doing what fencer suggests and of course win/loss/wins per pond stats should be enough for record keeping, eh?

By the way Universal Eyes, batting average in baseball is not based on plate appearances, but on at-bats. Not the same thing in the rule book. Using plate appearances is for on base percentage. Walks aren't counted as at-bats, but they are counted as plate appearances. Sacrifice bunts aren't counted as at-bats either. Also, the number of hits is divided by the at-bats not the other way around as you have it.
Spring training is just a couple of weeks away!

EdTrice: Is the pot calling the kettle black? Just who started the dummies and why can't they take a little ribbing?

Czuch Chuckers: Then what is called the minimum by your logic isn't really the minimum, is it? I've listed both cases and you still aren't grasping it. The next time you set up one of these Minimum Bet Pond games would you clearly, let me repeat that, clearly state exactly how much must be bet on one's first turn?
It says 19000 and you ask for it as the minimum, then 19000 is acceptable as far as I can see. If you really mean 19000 + 1 or more, please state that. Then I'll know the real minimum is actually 19001 and nothing will have changed except that. Then you'll have someone bet 19001 and someone wil bet 1856 and you'll be right back here arguing the same thing we've been arguing about all day, because it's still the minimum and it doesn't change nothing.

grenv: You know, I think you're just looking at it wrong. Think of a minimum bid set at 19,000 as a requirement to bid more than 18,999. That's how I look at it. Anyone that bids less than the minimum is out. If someone wants to chance that someone will do so, that's their perogative. It happens in the regular course of a game all the time. When someone has no points left, they're not out of the game yet. They still can bid 0. Everyone else knows this and can bid 1. Same thing, though risk free.

fencer:
Czuch Chuckers: As it is set up now, if we all bid exactly the minimum, we'd all go in the Pond on the first round and the game would be over!
Removing players should be something that should be available. I do think that if a creator wanted to remove a player he should have a referee make the final decision as to doing it and not be allowed to arbitrarily remove people. That would be fencer's job. I doubt if it would come up much, especially after this power was exercised a few times and if the same person continues to do it you could ban them from playing in the Pond games. If fencer doesn't want to referee the games, I'm sure we could find someone impartial enough to take the job. Or even a moderator here could do it. fencer could serve as the final board of appeal in cases where the person or persons believe they should be allowed to stay in the Pond game in question. In fact this might be a way to have someone resign too. It could work both ways. I think it is something that should be looked into.

One way to eliminate people doing that is to have the creator be able to remove people that don't play by the rules or limits. Have any of the Pond creators petitioned fencer to remove players? You'd only have to do it if more than one person bid under the limit, but if that was to happen there'd be know way to fix the game without removing those players.

kitti: Your argument is exactly how I see it. Risky as it is to bid in that manner and rely on others being stupid or just messing with the rules. A minimum is a minimum. You have to bid that much or higher. What's the problem? IF the creator said 19001 and you bid that much, it's the same thing. This is a lot different than if the game started with everyone at 1000 points. Until the creators have that option, this is how it'll have to be and anyone playing can use it as part of their first bid strategy.

Some day you'll play with people that can read, follow instructions, and proofread their typing, and you'll be out on the first round. I wouldn't hold my breath until that day comes. Even so, I doubt if I ever bid that much.

The only way to cheat in this game is through collusion. Using charts, computers, and graphs isn't cheating at this game, not like it might be in another game such as Gothic Chess. I have a chart that shows every possible roll of two dice. Would I be cheating if I used it to play Backgammon? Same thing, so you have a chart showing every possible bet. You still have to make a bet. In gothic Chess such a chart, though theoritically impossible since there's more moves possible than there are atoms in the known universe, would be cheating, since you'd know the outcome of the game in advance. Even though all moves can't be charted in Gothic Chess, using a computer to find them and chart the moves is a type of cheating to some, since the moves are known in advance. Whatever formula you come up with for Pond, isn't going to be foolproof since you don't have perfect information. Namely, you don't know the opponent's bet until after the round is done. Our identities should nave no bearing on the play. Since our identities are known though, it becomes possible to learn an opponent's style of play and adjust one's tactics accordingly. Nothing wrong with that. I play Dark Chess differently against certain players than others. As long as Ed or his shill play alone without messages between other players, it can't be cheating. It might seem rather chicken of him, but it's not cheating. In certain ways he has a legitmate fear. I've seen enough people that have a genuine animosity towards him. What better way to pay him back someone might think than to purposely sabotage his game even if it ruins one's own chance of winning. Obviously two or more people could conspire to cheat by playing safe, staying in the game as long as they can, and then purposely have one of them make a bet that the other knows about that none of the other players would think of making and then it might be possible to win in this manner. Same thing is true in another game where everybody is suppose to play as individuals: Poker. That's why casinos will not let married couples play together at Poker at the same table. It sure doesn't stop two or more friends from doing it though. One keeps the pot open by raising with a bad hand, the other keeps raising with a good hand. Finally the hapless wretch in the middle with a decent hand is all in and it's showdown time. After the game, away from the table, the team divides up the winnings. The game Risk is another game with this problem. The only fair way to play with four people is to play with teams. I no longer play Risk because there always seems to be bad feelings during and after the game that have led to blows being thrown. Half the skill to that game is playing politics, standing back letting the others duke it out, and then swooping in and getting all the spoils for yourself. Teams with seperate armies forces compromise with your partner and eliminates the third and fourth party crazy suicide guy that's tired of playing.

Pedro's chart tracking the game won't show much at the end of it, I bet. And even if it did, it won't be repeatable even in the unlikely event you were to get exactly the same people to play another game with the same rules. A system for this game might increase your chances of winning, but the very nature of the game guarantees that there's no guarantee to winning.
A solution to the "knowing who your opponent is and going after him" problem would be an anonymous game. After the game is closed all the players entered would be shown a list with scores just like they are now. The only difference would be that none of the other player's names would appear on the list. Just their own name. You might know who you are playing against, but you wouldn't know who had which score on the list. That should eliminate all bias towards any particular indivdual and yet the game would play exactly as it does now. No need for a Dark version if this is done. So here's a request for the game creator to have a choice for making the game anonymous or not. Along with choices for the starting amount and bonus award.

Stevie: Sure Stevie, but I was mainly responding to Ed in anger. I'll await a private message or invitation from him.

Atleast I did mention "Run around the Pond" in my post. It was Ed's previous comments and actions about Pond that got me going in the first place. Now that he's bowed out of playing, for whatever reason, I suppose I should just ignore him and wait for the next day for the Pond games that I entered to show on my Main Page, eh?

EdTrice: I'm the number one player of Dark Chess Ed. Let's play a series of games. You need a few defeats handed to you so we won't have to deal with your overbearingness. Though I kind of doubt that'd shut you up. You may certainly try a experimenting with a crazy opening against me. I love a challenge. Say seven games? You have to win them all. I need to win just one. Sound fair? Or can we just play all seven and see who wins the most. Though I can't stop you from using your machines and computers, atleast Dark Chess would give me a little bit of a chance against such a great Chess player as yourself. I know my limitations, but you don't seem to have any. You can't even play a game or two of "Run around the Pond" without making a world crisis of it and focusing everything on you.

That game of Chess that you're playing with Alex. What a slap in the face to open a refuted opening. King's Gambit? Didn't Bobby Fischer put that one to rest 30 years ago? You purposely play a poor opening against the number one player on the site and then you want us to feel sorry for the position you find yourself in? As for how much time the game is taking, I'd say you or redsales has some explaining to do. It doesn't seem like the game is going overly long if there's slower games going on. But then again, perhaps you moved with speed early in the game when the outcome was in doubt and now with the writing on the wall the delaying tactics are starting to show? That could certainly explain why you have more moves in so far. I'll check all the games out when I get around to it. It looks like it is a good tournament.

I looked at that game. Why can't he just take that passed pawn and then go after your Pawns with his King? I hope he tries that before letting the position repeat three times. If you're right about the draw, he has nothing to lose by giving it a try.

Czuch Chuckers: I'm in Czuch.

fencer I like the line about being signed up for the Pond game in the listing of the Pond games. Makes it much easier to know what's going on with being signed up or not.

Pedro Martínez: OK, I'm in. I like lots of players at the start, even if it does take longer to play the game. I don't want to see all you gang up on me and send messages about forcing me into the Pond, now. :) Spreadsheets are welcome, though. Announced or not.

Stevie You are right. He be gone. That makes it "more" not "less", right?

Pedro Martínez: Is that the Run around the Jacuzzi game?

Maxxina has suggested that the game be played just as it is now, but the names of the players not be revealed except as they fall into the Pond. Would that make a difference in the play?
Another Dark Pond idea would be to have the scores completely dark until the game is over. You'd just see people fall into the Pond each round. We had the checklist idea for the starting amount and the bonus awarded, how's 'bout adding some options for the amount of player information revealed during a game?

Czuch Chuckers: Ain't that the truth?

"So I see", said the blindman as he picked up his hammer and saw.

So we get back to the question of what was the point of all of Ed's talking? And why didn't he just stay quiet about it, fork over $18 for a six month Knight membership under a different handle, win 23 games in a row, and then reveal the secret? Too cheap, or too ingenuous? Or is he up to that right now? I really can't make any sense of it. Maybe you guys can help me out here. Or Ed himself. What gives dude?

In the meantime, it's just a game with a lot of uncertainty and luck in it. Whether or not it is subject to mathematical and game theory analysis is beside the point. So is Backgammon. Why make such a big deal about it Ed? Can't you just play the game and have some fun? Or is your obsession with maintaining your no loss record on this site reaching to picking fights with games that cannot be played perfectly and now you've talked your way into not playing it all because you just can't see that?

Show of hands. All those that are actually playing "Run around the Pond" and not talking about playing it.

EdTrice: And just why would everyone pick you to single out for defeat? Are you special? Or suffering from megalomania? I tend to think both from the way you've been carrying on here of late. Just play the game and be done with it. Though I might enjoy defeating you more than some of the other opponents, it is only because of how you act that makes this feeling in me. As I said earlier, "If you win, you win. If you lose, you lose, but I will rub it in."

As for a Dark Pond variant, that should be a funny game to play though it'd be all mystery. Especially if the running totals weren't shown either.

It's a simple question. Are you, or are you not going to play? Who cares about your spreadsheet. Just play the game. If you win, you win. If you lose, I'll give you a hard time about it, but atleast you can say you played the game.

Who's in denial. May I quote yourself?
"I don't understand why there is denial over this simple fact."

OK, I'm through. I think I've made my point. I will let the game speak for me on this subject now. Thank you all for your indulgence. We'll see you on the shore testing the waters Ed.

EdTrice: We, and until now, you were talking about the Pond game. You change the subject as you wish. Bragging again about games that you will play, but not ones that you won't. What's the point? Who's going to take you seriously. I'm not. Now go back to your machines and programs. Hey Ed. Mr. Chess champion, let's play some Dark Chess. I might be number one in the ratings, but I'm easy to beat. A couple of newcomers beat just this week. How's 'bout a series of games, say 7 of them. You expect you to win every one of them. I'll be happy if I win four. Or do you only play games were the outcome is certain to be a victory for you?

Yeah, suddenly you say your Pond system is now worthless. Why'd you rub it in our noses then?

EdTrice: And you are currently entered in how many pond games?

I still running in one and have lost one, you?

Don't let my tone fool you. What Ed is alluding to in the study of games of this nature is a very complicated type of game theory. I just want to see it put into practice. If he can win all the games, perhaps the game will stop being played. Or, maybe we don't want fencer posting all the bets or what order they were placed in and just leave how it is now. After Ed has played a few games, we'll see the results of his spreadsheet system. Though I'm willing to bet that Ed won't even enter three pond games, let alone enough of them to prove that his system works. Wining every game seems preposterous on the face of it. Winning just a little more than your share of the amount of people entered would make you a pretty good player in my eyes. Say you enter 16 different games and each of those games has 16 people in it. If you're able to win more than four of them consistantly, you must be on to something and know how to play good. That's better then luck alone would explain after enough games have been played.

EdTrice: Yeah, right. Stop the hot air, enter a few games and put theory to test.
I'm willing to bet he loses more than half the games he enters. That's assuming he enters more than ten of them. Any takers?
As they say of system players at the roulette table. "System players go broke systematically."
It fails on the logic of it. Suppose we all used this "Strategy". Someone has to lose. So play the game and make us believers.

Czuch Chuckers: Maybe someone can think up something. It just might be possible that there is no fair way when there's more than two players involved to have resignation and any fix might uncover some unforseen scenario. The cake dividing problem comes to mind and there's a solution to it. Delaying a turn to let a player resign solves the problem of spoiling the next round, but doesn't help in current round. Perhaps when someone decides to resign the points can all bet without them being able to win the bonus and then they're gone on the next round. If they only have 1 point left, you'd still be able to bet 2 and be safe from that trouble. If they have the most points left, there woudn't be a bonus that round and it wouldn't matter. Anything in the middle and they'd just be someone that skated by and would be gone the next round.

If a person wants to quit a game in progress, why not have the resign button like you already have for the other games? To keep it from affecting the game, it could be set up so it wouldn't go into effect until the next round after the current is started. The resigning player would not have their bet count at all in the current round and all players still on the shore could be notified of the player's intention to resign effective the following round knowing that that person couldn't bet in the current round and their score doesn't count either. There is a difference in "No bet, not playing" than betting 0 or 1 to get pushed into the pond.
This won't stop someone from purposely ruining a game, but it will give someone a way out of a game without messing it up too much. Do you think this would work?

Walter Montego: I guess I won't be seeing first hand in both games, since I'm the first one out in Czuch's! :)

Seems like you could add a variable to change the ratio based on how many people sign up too.
x = starting amount
b = bonus amount
n = number of players entered
c = constant to divide the number of players

1) First pond:

c = b X n ÷ x
c = 500 X 249 ÷ 20000
c = 6.225

2) Czuch's 19000 first bid pond, makes x = 1000
Note there's also less players in this game, but the bonus is the same.

c = 500 X 16 ÷ 1000
c = 8.000

If this has any correlation to how the game is played, then what Czuch has done (by design or not), is modify the original Pond game to make a smaller version that should play near the same. Though the bonus is going to figure hugely in the game from the start as it is now slightly more than ½ the amount of points the leaders have.
It seems to me that the most important variable of the game is the amount of players in relation to the ratio of bonus to starting amount. It'll be interesting to see how these two games play out. I'm in them both and will see first hand. Of course the various people involved and what happens along the way will make the game what it is.
Perhaps the game's starting point could be based on the number of players signed up using a constant of the game creator's chosing. I kind of like the table Bry and BigBadWolf have thought up. It'd be easy to look at the table and pick the values that one would like. As we get more experience playing this game, we should be able to make choices the will give us the kind of game we would like to play. A slow calculating game or a fast gambling game. Use of a table along with a variable for the number of players and you could have it set how you want and not need to bother with capping the amount of players except to limit the number of days a game will take to play.

You wait for the next round in 1 pond
You are waiting for the next round in 1 pond
You are waiting for the next round in 2 ponds

Least ways that looks like gooder English to me. :)

Let's make it so the creator of the game can specify the bonus and the starting points. I think the very first game would have played better if the starting point was 1,000 instead of 20,000. Then the bonus of 500 would already be figuring into the play and Czuch would be having a little more fun.

As for the amount of people at the start, I really don't see how that matters much aside from the length of the game. When there's just three people left, the game will be determined by their scores. If close, it could make for a good finish.

Varying the bonus in proportion to the starting point will make a big difference though. From no bonus all the way to say three quarters of the starting point. There's room for lots of experimenting in this game. Now the we can create the game, eventually good amounts will shake out and most creators will try to have parameters near it for a good game. Imagine starting the game with 30 players and 60 or so points and no bonus. Lots of guts and no extraneous bull worry about a bonus awarded. Or same parameters, but a bonus of 30. Now it'd be a whole different deal and you'd have to think about that bonus.

The way the first game is going, I'd be surprised if the bonus figures too much in the final outcome. By the time alesh gets to 0 maybe the bonus will start to figure in the play.

What all of you seem to be forgetting is that some people have a different agenda than playing to win. If any of you are familiar with a board game called "Risk" it only takes one of the players to spoil it for everyone else. All one player in that game has to do is attack one other player until their whole army is depleted. Yes, it makes no sense to play that way, but I've seen it plenty of times. The person that was attacked has suffered a lot and the rest of the players can move to take him out. Three or four handed "Line Five" is the same way. This "Pond" game seems a little more robust to such playing "tactics", but we've already seen some problems from players purposely playing poorly and it having an effect on the rest of the players.

It's kind of stabilized, but not boring. As people drop out, the bets will get harder to make and the challenge will be just to stay in the game, let alone win it. I imagine when people have fifty or more games of this going at once and all sorts of parameters for each game, it'll be more interesting.

I'd like to see how many points someone that's in the pond had when they fell in. List it in a column next to their final bet? Be kind of enteresting to see if they had lots left and went low, or if they had few left and went for the bonus. Or somewhere inbetween and got caught looking.

Perhaps I'll bet 3 1/2 next turn.

Yes, lower the points that everyone starts with. Why not just 1,000 and not even have a bonus for the person that picks the highest? Or 20,000 : 500 as 1,000 : 40. Make the bonus for high pick 47!
That should speed the game up without changing the play too much. Right now I'm trying to imagine different scenarios towards the end of the game. Especially as people start getting getting under 500 points. If it's 700 to 330 to 141 to 50 to 33 to 10, how do you think the game will go? The person with 700 can just bet 331 on the next round guaranteeing 500 points for a net gain of 169. Everyone else will have less points, plus one of them will be in the pond. The person that had 700, now has 869 and can follow the same strategy as picking one point more than the second place player and the game will end eventually with him being the winner. Everyone playing will know this is going to happen and won't feel like going through the motions. Big flaw if it goes down like that.
I hope at the end of the game the players with the lead are close to each other. The problem with the bonus points won't really be apparent until everyone but one player is under the bonus amount. So, perhaps in a later version of the game, the bonus amount could be varied during the game to reflect the mathematics of the game itself or just eliminated.
What will make it interesting is if three or more people are just over the bonus amount and try to psyche out what the other close players might be planning on betting. They could all bet a small amount, in which case some other player might get the bonus and join them among the leaders, or one or more of them might bet lots while one bets small to save his points.

Yes, this game is tougher than it looks and the rules have a lot to do with which strategy to try depending on the score and who're your opponents.

If this game becomes one that us members (Paying or not) can create, I propose making it possible for the game creator to be able to set the parameters for starting points and bonuses(if any), along with the usual things like days per move and minimum and maximum players.

You know rod, I think you're right. The minimum bet should be one. It doesn't make sense to let someone with zero get an extra round out of it. Takes all the skill that there might be in this game out of it for any round that has someone with a score of zero. I didn't realize that was the case earlier and found out about it from reading this discussion board. Unfortunately for me, I'd already entered my bet (Higher than one) and there's no way to change it. I won't make that mistake again. I think everyone should get to take this turn over, or the rule should be changed to make the minimum bet one. If you have zero, you're in the water.

Thank you. Yes, I think it'll make it better. Although for indecisive people, it'll probably make it worse. :)

I've entered the wrong amount and would like to change my bet. How do I do it?