Scooter: There's just one big problem with this explanation, you bid 1! There's no way you can win a game if you make this play. Rationalize all you want to, but that's the truth. If you were really bluffing, you certainly could have bid 3 or 117 on that turn, but you bid 1. This gives you no chance to win the game. You want to resign, fine, but announcing it and then giving it away like that more or less allowed the two players that knew you to bid in confidence that they'd be fairly safe. Since they've played umpteen number of games, they also had little to lose but the experience of being tricked by you if they didn't know you. Whereas me, who has played just a few games of Run around the Pond was completely without a clue as to what to make of your pronouncement. I figured there's nothing I could do but hope the other players would ignore you and I played on this assumption. Now you come back and say it was me that inspired you? Just what are you saying? You take advice from someone that's never made it to the final five (me)? You make a play that guarantees that you'll lose, plus others will either believe you and not realize the trouble coming their way for being right? OK, if you're that naive then perhaps I can excuse this whole chain of events, but from how I see that things went down this is a hard thing to swallow.

As for anyone just announcing how much they going to bid on their next turn, yeah sure, it's just a bluff. I see no problem with doing that and that's what makes this particular case the trouble that it is. Since we all know it's just a bunch of hot air, what's the deal with two people going for believing him? If he's using my question as a reason to bid 1 as the excuse for actually doing it, why'd Pedro and Bry buy into it? Are they that good that they can see he was actually going to make such a game losing play? Had he bid 117 Bry would've drop into the Pond. I would still not like this going on, but at least it would have been believable and collusion would be a lot harder to come to my mind. But no, Bry bids 2 and Pedro bids 10. Now I ask you, in a game where everyone else bids over 1000, what would you think? If you guys are really this good at the game, then I have another reason for not playing it any more. I'm out of my league.