FML Bets is a GO!

[FML|Mage]

Well folks, with the kickoff of Season 16 we池e proud to bring you another new addition to FML.  This won稚 actually have any impact on the gameplay, it should add another fun element for those not directly in the season!

Introducing...FML Bets

For those of you who are familiar with Gosugamers and Gosubets, the premise is very similar.  All participants will be given a set amount of betting points to start off with (100).  You will then be able to bet those on the matches.  You値l be able to bet anywhere from 1 to the maximum you have on any player in the match.  You can also bet on one match, or multiple matches.  If you lose, you値l lose the points that you bet.  If you win then you値l gain points back at a rate determined by the other bets.  For more information on the formula used to determine that, look here

Should you run out of points you値l have the option to reset your points to 50 one timer per a round.  This is to prevent people from abusing the system.  This should also encourage smart bets on multiple games throughout the entire round.

We do not currently have a proper name for it, so for the next two weeks we値l be accepting proposed names.  If we like it enough, we値l use it!

A quick run through on how to use the betting system will be below.

1) Click on the Full Game Listing section, found here
2) Choose which matches you want to bet on, and place your bets.
3) Click submit.
4) Betting Leaderboard can be viewed here

All bets will be modifiable up until the time that the match starts, at which time all bets will be final.  If you bet on a player who is subbed then you will have your points given back to you.  We hope you test it out on the upcoming game and give us feedback.  Enjoy!

Also, the biggest shout out to FML|Renaud for building all this from scratch!  I've been bugging and annoying him constantly about this, and it's a miracle he hasn't decided to just delete me from the site.  Renaud has the patience of a rock and the kindness of a kitten, so huge props to him for putting this all together!

[Camp_and_Spank]

nice shit!

[ashalar]

If we were betting on 1v1s  it would make sense to encourage smarter betting, but FFA is a lot more unpredictable and chaotic so conceptually it doesn't really make sense that you want to 'encourage smarter betting'. If anything you should encourage wild stupid betting because people who get lucky on one bet will eventually lose it all somewhere else but at least the stakes will be higher for people who have high scores. Gosugamers had unlimited resets and it didn't cause any "abuse", it's basically more fun to bet all your money on one match rather than betting 1/4 on each match and probably just ending up at/or below where you started. Plus the last match of the round will just have a lot less bets on it because everyone will be out of money

[FML|Renaud]

good point, changed it to unlimited reset,
but we will still keep the reset to only 50 instead of 100

[FML|Mage]

Valid criticism, however I think it's unfounded and I'll tell you why.

The reason that it couldn't be abused in solo is because there were so many matches.  People got out ahead early on, and then continued to make good bets and build on their lead.  You go bankrupt and reset, then bet on an underdog.  Say you quadruple your money and are at 200 on day 4.  People were in the thousands already by then.  There were just so many matches going on that resetting didn't hurt the ecosphere and helped to pump it up instead. 

We have a grand total of 18 matches we can bet on in a regular season (and 15 for this one.)  FFA has much higher payouts as well, by being able to reset whenever you want to you'll be able constantly bet on the person with the worst odds (who still has a decent shot at winning, compared to solo where someone who was a 99-1 underdog had virtually no shot at winning),  which can easily lead to someone finally being able to game the system and win big through sheer statistics saying that the underdog will win eventually.  Take this coming game.  Someone has now bet on Wan, but before we had 500+ points bet with no points going on Wan.  And this is in an all star match pretty much.  Couldn't you easily see matches where we get 2000 points bet, but a certain player only gets 100?  Hell, that would be pretty normal, most matches have a "weakest player"  This allows you to bet your 50 on the underdog, and if you and only one other person out of 20 say bet on that person then you'll each win 500.  This is almost certainly enough to comfortably carry your way to victory, unless of course someone else hits even bigger pay dirt. 

I'm willing to try unlimited resetting, however I suspect that it will lead to a culture of playing the odds, and not the players.  At least it will for anyone that's relatively smart and cares enough to look at them.  Now, maybe I'm being a cynic and people will just have fun with it and not try to game the system.  I hope so.

But, I also don't think that using the solo games model of betting is a good representation of FFA betting. 

[FML|Renaud]

Yeah, I just agreed to it because I forgot to implement it and wasn't sure how to do it quickly :D

[ashalar]

It's not unfounded at all; the reason it wasn't abusable on gg.net is because amount of your stupid bet was maxed out at 50. On the other hand, betting all your money on the favorite who no one else was betting against would be equally stupid, as a gambler you got to look at the odds and bet less on the overwhelming favorite. If only 1 guy picks the underdog and wins all the points because everyone was too stupid to check their bets to the odds then that guy deserves all the money even if he reset his total 100 times. If you are making a lot of stupid bets you will probably lose out in the end anyways.

I see no problem with the hypothetical situation you listed other than to say if no resets were allowed it would be a lot more likely that 1 guy would only get 1-2 bets, if unlimited resets were allowed then a lot more people would be willing to bet on the underdog and the betting would be more balanced. But like I said, with only 1 reset, by the time u get to the 4th match 70% of the people who would bet will be out of money.

The point is betting on the winning person in FFA is like 10x harder, even getting 1 out of 4 games right isn't too bad but even if you pick an underdog correctly you still wouldn't win very big as the volume of betting is going to be a lot lower.  Just due to the nature of guessing ffa winners its pretty much going to be impossible to "game the system". All it's going to effect is the volume of bets which, given the amount games available during the season and how many people use the site is probably pretty necessary

Seems like all your concerns is whats unfounded to me.

[ashalar]

look if you were worried about people "gaming the system" you should have just set up and straight pick'em and just counted whoever picked the most winners right was the winner. The whole point of having a betting of resources system is to allow 'gaming the system' and having betting strategies rather than whoever is best at picking the winner.

All I'm advocating is a funner way, considering there is no prize /nothing at stake. It would be funner if the betting volume was higher and you could bet all your gold without taking it too seriously. Encouraging people to bet "smarter" means less likely someone will go all-in on a longshot, people who get out in the lead will just be able to bet conservatively because they never have to worry about someone picking a longshot and jumping ahead

[FML|Mage]

Meh, fair enough.  I can see the advocation for a more fun system, and as I said I'm open to trying it.  However, I still don't buy anything else you were saying.  What you're talking about really is more along the lines of playing the system then and the statistics then betting on who you think will win.

[ashalar]

playing the system and the statistics was the whole point of the gosugamers betting system. If you wanted a system based solely on being best at picking the winner than you shouldn't have copied it

[FML|Mage]

We don't want it to be exactly like Gosubets, mostly because Gosubets with a FFA format wouldn't work.  FFA has a lot more room to be a large and exciting betting sphere.  Perhaps I started with too few points, and that's part of the reason that you seem to think that people will have a hard time restraining themselves from betting all their points in one game. 

And I have to half agree with you, playing the statistics was how you won in at gosubetting, not playing the system.  You never won the month by betting on the biggest underdog every time and resetting after every match. 

The reasoning for this was not that the max bet was 50, after all everyone started the season with 50.  The reason was that their were so many games that if you hit a spree and properly managed the gold given to you you would get into the upper hundreds, lower thousands easily.  If you look at gosubet currently the top 10 spots all have over 1000 currency. 

FFA is harder to predict the winner, you're 100% correct.  It's also much easier to pick a winner with poor odds though and get the correct winner which will pay out massively.  E.G. for FFA. There's a game with Me, DFM, Maga, and Seksi.  I'm going to be the clear underdog and we'll say that 1/20 of the points are bet on me, so the odds are giving me a 5% chance to win.

Now in solo I'm playing Grubby.  We'll say I somehow have 1/20 bet on me there as well (I know, I wouldn't have that much on me).  Which would you prefer to have your money on me for, solo or FFA, if you had to?  Just the nature of FFA makes "upsets" much more common place and easier to get right.  By the same token it makes picking an absolute winner a lot harder as well though.

This means that while playing a purely bet and reset strategy in solo betting isn't viable, it could be completely viable in FFA.

Going back to my earlier point though, we don't want FML Bets to be a carbon copy of Gosu Bets.  We want the premise to remain the same, but for it to be adapted into a more FFA worthy system.

Some things that Gosu Bets did really well that I want to take into account. 

- Lots of action, and a large pool of participants to keep things lively

- Entertainment factor.  It could be enjoyed from as simple as just placing random bets on people you liked to calculated the risk reward of betting on 50/50 matches which would pay out better.

- Top betters were those being rewarded by good strategies on betting and sound judgement. 

- Drew people back to check the site everyday to continue betting.

Now, here are some features I would like to see included that are unique to FFA.

- Ability to bet on multiple people within a match.  Think one of two people is going to win, but not sure who it will be?  Bet on both of them.  Are a lot of people betting on one person?  Take the field, lay a bet down on the three opponents.  There's a lot more strategy that can be incorporated here.

- Possibly ability to bet on multiple options.  In horse racing you have the ability to do Win, Place, Show.  What about a first and last bet in FFA?  Perhaps you bet 100 on Maga winning, and 20 on Maga winning with Mage getting 4th.  I'm not sure how we would calculate the payouts for something like that off the top of my head, but I doubt it would be hard.

My point is that while Gosugamers Gosubet is a great place to start, we have the ability to expand far beyond it.  If we want to do that, then we probably need to figure out the right balance between pure fun and not caring who you bet on, artificially inflating the pool the right amount/not enough/too much, and ensuring that smart bets will pay off in the end.  The crazy bet will always work now and then, but you don't want your entire system to be built around it.

TL;DR

My vision (and I'm speaking solely for myself here) is that FML Bets will be a unique betting system, inspired by but not a copy of Gosubets.  It will be a mix of playing the odds and playing the players.  You don't want one to overpower the other.

You mentioned several times that if we wanted something that was purely about picking a winner we should just tally who gets the most winners right.  That's not what we want.  We want the participants to have the ability to bet with different confidence levels.  You think you know who all 4 winners are, but you're just absolutely positive about one winner?  Cool, bet the most on him.  Maybe you have a wild card winner who you wouldn't bet on if you were just doing picks, but the odds are so good you can't resist.  Cool, place a minor bet on him that could pay off big time. 

And from there, we hope only to keep increasing the options like a mentioned before.  Now, Gosugamers does a lot of things right, and maybe being able to reset funds is one of them.  However, there should be some incentive to encourage players to bet wisely, otherwise you're just going to end up with a broken system that is all about going for that one big home run bet, and waiting for it to come up because that will be how you win. 

Perhaps the answer is to increase the starting amount of points you get in relation to the reset points, and increase both so it seems more fun and like there's more at stake while allowing unlimited resets on your points?  Who really knows, it's going to take some testing in order to figure out what's good and what isn't.  Gosugamers system isn't going to work for us without some adaption.  Neither will what we started off with be perfect.  It's why we ask for and value feedback as you're doing.  However, I think you have underestimated both the driving forces behind the system, as well as the scope of what we hope to do 

[ashalar]

Conceptually, if you are trying to encourage people to bet wisely then it will reduce the volume of betting, and the volume is already going to be low considering the audience atm.

[FML|Mage]

The resource pool may be low you're right, but say we increase the amount of resources given to people to bet.  Do you see any reason that they couldn't place a bet on every game, but just not bet their entire amount on that game?  EG there's a game coming up that you have no idea about, just bet 1/8 of your resources on the game on someone who you think has a good shot and might pay off well?

Or do you think that that's just too contrary to human nature.  I know on Gosubets I never bet my entire bank on one game, but perhaps that was just me.

[ashalar]

I'm saying i'd prefer it for people who only have the minimum amount to bet all that they have on 1 person all the time even if they keep losing. At first you should bet all your money on an underdog to win big but then naturally you start betting smarter.  Basically the good better will win off all the fools betting all their money all the time, once you win like 500 pts or whatever, trying to win 1/8th of someones 50 pts isn't that fun. It allows the good gambler to win more. Like one season on gosugamers I was in the lead with 10k and I went all-in on Violet vs Lyn, and the entire site bet against me and I won like 30k, if people were betting like 1/8th of 50 there would be a lot less in the prize pot

Basically the essence of gambling is big risk big reward, making wild bets against big odds, high stakes etc

[GKrown]

i've been lurking for a month or two, signed up purely for this feature.
good stuff

day 1 RoC'r here, glad the game's still going!!