Tourney When to cash in the bounties (Mystery Bounty Tournament) (1 Viewer)

[buzzmonkey]

Here's the point of discussion. I run an annual Mystery Bounty tournament. Historically one bounty is the buy-in amount and the rest are a smaller amount. This has become a bit of a popular event and I'm always looking for ways to improve the experience. There are essentially two ways to pay out the bounties:

1. Immediately after the player collects the bounty they can cash it in. The benefit here is you are giving the first player to score a kill the best opportunity to score the highest bounty.
2. Once a player is eliminated, they cash in all their bounties. The benefit here is that the players that aren't going to cash have the highest chance of getting the highest bounty so it's not necessarily the last player that may have a stack of bounties scooping all the prize money.

No system is wrong, and I do the second one, but I was curious what other people think about this.

 

[NotRealNameNoSir]

Here's the point of discussion. I run an annual Mystery Bounty tournament. Historically one bounty is the buy-in amount and the rest are a smaller amount. This has become a bit of a popular event and I'm always looking for ways to improve the experience. There are essentially two ways to pay out the bounties:

1. Immediately after the player collects the bounty they can cash it in. The benefit here is you are giving the first player to score a kill the best opportunity to score the highest bounty.
2. Once a player is eliminated, they cash in all their bounties. The benefit here is that the players that aren't going to cash have the highest chance of getting the highest bounty so it's not necessarily the last player that may have a stack of bounties scooping all the prize money.

No system is wrong, and I do the second one, but I was curious what other people think about this.

Talk me through #1, why is the first the best chance to score one? Let's say 18 players, 1/18 of a chance to grab the big bounty. He grabs it 5.5% of the time, but the next pull will be 1/17, slightly better chance of getting it (if the first blood didn't get very lucky). I guess we have to account for the first chance being the only guaranteed chance at grabbing the big one. Hmmmm.

I like either idea, just interested in the strategy. We do silly giveaways and do it as people bust out and would probably do it the #2 way so they're leaving and have a chance to get some extra cash.

 

[buzzmonkey]

Talk me through #1, why is the first the best chance to score one? Let's say 18 players, 1/18 of a chance to grab the big bounty. He grabs it 5.5% of the time, but the next pull will be 1/17, slightly better chance of getting it (if the first blood didn't get very lucky). I guess we have to account for the first chance being the only guaranteed chance at grabbing the big one. Hmmmm.

I like either idea, just interested in the strategy. We do silly giveaways and do it as people bust out and would probably do it the #2 way so they're leaving and have a chance to get some extra cash.

Maybe the math doesn't actually work out to be best chance, but as you mentioned, the first person is the only person that can 100% pull the big bounty. I guess that was my thinking.

 

[NotRealNameNoSir]

Maybe the math doesn't actually work out to be best chance, but as you mentioned, the first person is the only person that can 100% pull the big bounty. I guess that was my thinking.

Na that's fair. I use bounties as a way for more people to get money, so I think I lean towards #2 so that they can grab some cash on the way out. No perfect system, good question, got me thinking. As a host, #2 is easier too.

 

[JustinInMN]

Yeah, no matter what you do, players will have to draw in some order. If there are 18 to be drawn, every player ultimately has a 1/18 chance. We can work this out from the start.

To establish the pattern, lets just call the first three players to draw Player A, Player B, and Player C...

Player A:
success = 1/18
failure = 1 - success = 17/18

Player B:
success assuming player A failure = 1/17
failure assuming player A failure = 16/17

overall success = Player A failure * Player B success = ( 17/18 * 1/17 ) = 1/18
overall failure = 1 - overall success = 17/18

Player C:
success assuming player A & B failure = 1/16
failure assuming player A & B failure = 15/16

overall success = Player A failure * player B failure assuming player A failure * player C success assuming A & B failure = ( 17/18 * 16/17 * 1/16) = 1/18
overall failure = 1 - overall success = 17/18

so at the outset you can see regardless of which order you pick you have a 1/18 chance at the big prize. But the odds do increase as we get the data point of the number of failures.

This is true whether everyone draws within a few minutes of each other or it is staggered throughout the night.

 

[maloviz]

Ehhh, I really don't like #2. If the big prize/prizes are still in the bounty pool towards the end of the game people with lots of bounties collected may be looking for reasons to bust, especially if the bounties are large. I think paying people out right as they get the bounty is best. Maybe a little more disruptive for the host though.

 

[TheRealStephen12]

I'd think give them a chip and let them decide. It is random, and if people think they have a strategy by going first or holding out toward the end will probably be more fun for them. If you don't want them to open their bounties right away, make them sign an envelope or not allow them to open it until the end of the tournament.

 

[NotRealNameNoSir]

I'd think give them a chip and let them decide. It is random, and if people think they have a strategy by going first or holding out toward the end will probably be more fun for them. If you don't want them to open their bounties right away, make them sign an envelope or not allow them to open it until the end of the tournament.

Giving my apes a choice??? Absolutely not. 0 agency. I barely trust them to pick a drink.

 

[TricycleClub]

@wonderpuddle can you explain how we did ours?

I remember it was a way that made it random AND it involved a roulette wheel. Can you smell the degen? LOL

 

[wonderpuddle]

@wonderpuddle can you explain how we did ours?

I remember it was a way that made it random AND it involved a roulette wheel. Can you smell the degen? LOL

We ran a mystery bounty tourney once. It was fun. If I recall, what we did was something like the following:

I think it was a $60 tourney with rebuys. $20 from each buy-in went to the bounty pool. $40 to the main prize pool.

For that $20 bounty pool, $5 went to standard bounties so that every bounty was worth at least $5. The other $15 went to the mystery bounty pool.

We ended up with 32 bounties so we had $480 in the mystery bounty pool, which rewarded four mystery bounties — 40%, 30%, 20% and 10% of that mystery bounty pool. We didn’t determine the mysteries until after the tourney ended. Each bounty was assigned a random number. Since we only had 32 bounties, I busted out the roulette wheel to determine winners.

We spun for the smallest prize first. If the wheel landed on a zero or number greater than 32, we would reroll. And then we repeated the process for the other three prizes (with numbers that already won eliminated).

If I recall, I had the most or second most bounties and won no mysteries. @TheOffalo had one bounty and won the big prize.

I’d do it again. People enjoyed the gamble.

 

[Frogzilla]

Doesn’t matter at all what order the bounties are pulled.

You didn’t ask for how many bounties you should do but just FYI, typically, for mystery bounties they are fewer and larger. I like putting bounties in play 1 or 2 off from the money which makes the bubble fun. If you’re doing 18 and paying 4, you can do 5 bounties which are in play from when there are 6 left. There is no need for the tournament winner to pull two bounties.

 

[allforcharity]

Every time I've seen it done it was #1, cash it right away. Usually draw from a bunch of sealed envelopes on a table or from a box, no handling, just choose. Some envelopes might have cash, some might have scratch tickets, some might have a single playing card (which wins them a new setup), etc.

 

[upNdown]

I was watching a Boski video where they were drawing their bounties (probably at the Wynn?) all together at the same time. One person drew their three envelopes, then the next guy took his two, etc.
that seems to me to be the worst way to do it. Why should that guy get to go before me? Why should he get to pick all his bounties before I pick any of mine?

So I’d prefer to draw them as you earn them - that seems to be the simplest and fairest way. If you don’t want to ruin the excitement (if some post pulled the biggest one first) you could always let them draw when they earn, but keep them sealed until they’re all drawn?