Does anyone remember the big discussion about guarenteed win using some mathematic formula? The game where that was to be demonstrated is finally decided: http://brainking.com/fi/Pond?g=10 And no i was not playing the moves for Trice. I wonder who was?

Nice stats BBW. Only bad thing is i thought i was doing quite nicely but looking at the stats it looks like i play like crap :P .. 38 ponds and only one win, i really thought i had got more than one win and less ponds played.

grenv, about the 19000 bid in a minimum 19000 bid pond. I noticed your comments just now, i would have answered earlier if i had seen them before. I did bid the minimum allowed and did not get splashed into the pond. Sure it is the minimum allowed, but in most of the minimum bid ponds someone does not play by the rules. I haven't seen one where everyone actually did bid atleast the minimum. So in most of them the lowest legal bet gets to stay in the game. Why would a bet of exactly the minimum be dealt differently than any other lowest legal bet? In most minumum bet ponds the lowest legal bidder gets to stay in without any questoning. I think it should be the case even if you bid the lowest amount allowed, if there is someone bidding under the low limit.

I'm quite surprised how low people are going on the smaller ponds in the first rounds. I guess the first one with loads of players has had quite an influence on everyones minds :)

Yes, surely betting three in the following rounds won't win the game. But betting just a bit more than the lowest bidders did just might do it. Yes, its a long game and it'll take quite a while to see who the real idiots are ;)

I find it quite funny that someone who calls best players of the round idiots gets upset over himself being called idiot when he made far worse move himself :)

Anyways, only one round gone and i think i love this game already. Thanks to Fencer and Bad Bishop to making this available at BK!

Actually i thought of bidding 3 in the first place. Because someone who had not properly read/understood the rules might have picked 1 thinking thats enough to go to 2nd round as there is bound to be people not bidding at all. Maybe that is why there was few players going for one point on first round. Three would have been the choice instead two to outbid the ones thinking like myself in case there wouldn't be anyone betting one. But i just didn't have the guts for that and went for a random number on what i thought to be the safe side :) And it looks like i spent way too many points there. Idiot is a strong word. Looking at the results, betting three was an excellent choice, anyone using more points than that are the idiots :)

Oh, i see it now. There surely won't be that many 0 point rounds as i first thought there would. Now that i finally figured it out the whole 0-point rule seems much more relevant.

"0 point moves" are made on every round someone gets eliminated. With so many players as we have now i guess this could mean 100 rounds (or more, depending on how often more than one player falls to the pond on same round) like that. I think that out of those rounds only ten (or so) last ones will be somewhat interesting.

It won't be obvious that everyone will go for 1 point even if it would ensure going to the next round. Getting the 500 point bonus for highest bid will be valuable at the later stages of the game when there's less players and everyone has less points left.

Anyways, i also think that it's not a very good rule and just lenghtens the game unnecessarily.