Same. For this reason:
Nothing ventured nothing gained, but be reasonable and not absurdly greedy.
You can’t base your strategy on what you want. In a game like this, you need to outthink the other players. The ideal bid isn’t a billion or fifty million or ninety-nine thousand. The ideal bid is one cent less than the second lowest bid. Your strategy should be trying to figure out what everyone else’s strategy is going to be.
If the billionaire approaches me and I abstain from play, does that count as a zero bid (and wipe out the game)?
Because it seems to me that the best strategy is not to play. There is little chance of winning big, and much chance of being hated by the other players. I don’t see that as a viable tradeoff.
Just bid the max- you won’t affect the other players, as either everyone else also bid that, in which case no payout, or at least one bid less, in which case lowest gets it.
Eccentric billionaires are, well, eccentric, and it’d be best not to risk the game if you’re just trying to stay out of it.
Yeah, I figured that just after posting…
True - my preference would still be abstention, but not if I’ll destroy the game for others. (in all honesty, I would probably retreat from a person making this offer IRL, out of pure suspicion).
$49,000.00 My circumstances are such that this amount would make a huge difference for me at the moment. I’m betting that $50k is the lowest any of my coworkers would bid.
But someone’s bound to be that lucky/hated winner. If it weren’t you, it’d just be someone else.
I think I’d take the hatred of the other players if the winning lowest sum were, say, $20,000 or higher.
$19.99
Sorry- I just felt like saying it.
.
Actually, the strategy is quite simple. Determine what minimum amount of money would make a truly significant positive impact on your life, and bid that amount. If you bid less, you are gaining relatively little, denying everyone else an opportunity, and letting the billionaire off the hook.
For the median wage-earner in the USA, a lifetime earnings is in the neighborhood of $3-million. Increasing your lifetime earnings by 10% ($300K) is not going, in the long run, to have much effect on your lifestyle, so you have to go for more than that. Even a million is not enough to retire on, the earning power of an invested million is not enough to maintain the lifestyle you have already locked yourself into – it’s WalMart Greeter income… So you really want to get something actually worthwhile out of it, you have to for at least a million, and that’s borderline. And you’ll be underbid, by one of the 20 who has a more modest immediate need for funds. Either way, you cannot really ride this horse to any kind of genuine gain. So pick a number, shrug your shoulders, and get on with your failed and boring life.
Since I’m the only person in my office, I’d ask for the full $10,000,000,000.
Yes, but if it’s me, it would be me.
“$1, Bob/Drew!”
Sounds like an idea for a game show…and, in fact, it was, sort of; How Much Is Enough?, a short-lived GSN original. In the final round, two players competed for “up to” a specified amount of money (usually around $10,000); the amount started at zero and slowly increased until somebody buzzed in.
You want to make it interesting?
Whoever asks for the least gets the the highest requested amount.
Whoever asks for the most, gets the lowest requested amount.
(I ask for 1, you ask for 10, I get 10, you get 1)
Golden Balls had something a little bit similar, except it was just a face-off between two players and they only had the choices ‘split’ or ‘steal’ (if both split, the prize is shared; if one steals, he gets the lot; if both steal, they get nothing)
But then wouldn’t everyone just simply bid for $0.01?
Always assume that the guy making the offer has hired a shill to bid $1.
It would make more sense for everybody to ask for $500,000,000. That’s the ten billion dollar total, split twenty ways. It’s the maximum amount that can be won. And like the one cent bid, if everyone bids it, it’s both the highest and lowest requested amount by default.
20 people? Some jackass is going to say “Fuck it-one penny”, so it doesn’t really matter what I bid.