Criticize the idea of an online game. I came up with it about eight years ago, but it still lies abandoned.
1. It’s slow-paced multiplayer chess for money.
2. A visitor enters the game and is assigned to the freshest game — but to the side which has fewer players. It might already be N-th move before the service takes off. For the selected game, the system places the player on the side where fewer players have been assigned.
3. Each move costs $X.
4. The user does not actually make a move but places a bet on a move. At the end of the day, the system analyzes the bets and selects the move with the highest number of bets.
5. The chosen move is sent via email to all those who placed bets on both sides.
6. The next day is the opponent’s move. This also takes a day, where their team of players will act.
7. Eventually, after X moves, someone wins or the situation occurs where no bets were placed on one side of the board.
8. In this case, the collected money is distributed among the winners proportionate to their contribution to the game minus a system fee.
9. Contributions can be measured either by the number of bets that matched the moves, divided by the total number of moves, or simply by the ratio of bets to moves.
If each side has 100 people and they all reliably make all 50 moves of the game, then in case of a win, every player on the white side gets their ruble back plus the ruble invested by the opponent’s team. The opponent’s team is always about the same size (why – see the very beginning). Consequently, in the event of a win, each gets 100 rubles (50 invested + 50 prize money). In case of a loss, they lose the 50 invested.
The actual maths is even more complex since the number of players changes every move, and towards the end of the game, it decreases down to one. However, at the end of the game, new players can’t join the side that started winning. Since the system selects only fresh games for new players and distributes new players evenly across both sides, it seems like you can’t win less than you invested.
Konstantin Cherkasov
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 