Czuch Chuckers: I agree with you of course that it makes no sense to bid more than, let say, 510 in order to get the bonus of 500. But as you can see, there are people willing to bid much more. Well, if they want, it's probably fun. After every runner recognize that the difference between the bonus and his/her bid is much higher than the average bid, it will probably change. (In our run rather after Alesh will wake up/falls into the pond. :-)) I'm quite sure there will be the same (or similar) problem with any bonus. But maybe I'm wrong.

The smaller starting pool would speed the game? I don't know why, I think it's technically not possible (IMHO the lenght of the game is limited by the number of runners, not by the given starting points), but obviously some (you say "most") people seem to think so. Strange...

The game is boring rather because we started with 250 runners... (Is it really boring? Not really, it's a very very long run for sure, but I'm not bored. Are you?)