Pbarb2: Yea, like Czuch said - if you know you are going to be gone for a few turns in a pond, you can bid a higher amount of points (which will be auto-bid for you any rounds that you don't enter anything for) - which may keep you in the ponds until you get back - but the down side is you lose a lot of points so. (So if you think a good bid for the current round will be 100, but the next round after that may be 200 but you will not be around - you can bid 250-300 that way you hope your auto-bids will keep you in the game for a little bit.)