Chief Delphi Ventures System
 

Hello,

Without waiting any longer, ChiefDelphi.com is proud to announce its newest area: Chief Delphi Ventures System

ven·ture (vnchr) n.

1. An undertaking that is dangerous, daring, or of uncertain outcome.
2. A business enterprise involving some risk in expectation of gain.
3. Something, such as money or cargo, at hazard in a risky enterprise.


Instead of explaining everything about it, I'll just explain how you would use the system:

- Sign up, receive points.
- Browse categories.
- In each category, are a number of events.
- Choose the winning outcome, and wager some points on it.
- The event happens -- results are entered -- you win lots of points, if you chose the correct outcome.

It uses a pari-mutuel wagering system, which is similar to what is used at some horse races.
Everybody is betting against everybody else. Odds are calculated based on the number of points
wagered on particular outcomes (ie: teams winning). Note that these odds will fluctuate from the
time you wager until the betting ends. When you win, your payoff is determined by the closing odds.
In any case where there could be multiple outcomes (ie: wagers on teams making a certain range of
seed, etc), the payoff is divided among the winners, based on the level of their wager.

The inspiration for this was last year's ZoneZealPool, organized by Joe Johnson.

a few examples of events that will be available to bet on:
--Winning Alliance (assuming there are Alliances this year)
--Top X seeds (choose a team that will place in top X seeds, payout adjusted accordingly because of X outcomes)
--Technical Awards

You will be betting 'points', and will be given a set amount of points when you sign up.
Each event has a betting period, which will open a few weeks before the event, and close a few hours before the event.
Results will be posted a day or so after the event, and the winners will get their payout to be able to use for future events.

There are a couple ways to win:
--End up with the most points at the end of the season (after betting at least once).
--End up with the most wins at the end of the season.
--maybe more, in the future..

Look for it to appear in the near future, with betting opening a few weeks before the first set of regionals.

But, to wet your taste-buds, we've set up a sample event... ok, actually its to get alot of people testing.
The Championship Event is a big topic -- you know where it is? -- put your 'points' where your mouth is.
http://ventures.chiefdelphi.com/

Go to the previous link -- you will be given a smaller bank than what will be used during the season. The bank WILL GET RESET after this test event -- so don't worry about betting it all now.

All winnings will be announced at the end -- and then banks will be cleared, for the season.
This one is for fun, a taste of how it will work, and a good way to test out everything --
and also a good way for us to get your input. What we should change, add on, remove, etc.
We've got until January to do so -- so speak up :)
Once the nationals location has been announced, the all CDVS accounts will be reset or removed,
and you will have to sign up again. This is just a test of the system, and a little beta test run.

Thanks

-Brandon

P.S. Many thanks to my helpers/testers/opinion-people:
Joel Johnson
David Kelly
AdamT
Ken Leung
Nate Smith
Meli W.


And, thanks to the others that volunteered, also ..

Sounds neat can't wait to try it.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..........

I hate you Brandon. :)

This is exactly (well... very close) what I was creating for http://www.feds201.com

Oh well... I've stopped that project now.

If you would like to hear how I was going to do it (for more ideas) email or pm me.

BUT... Yes, no matter who does it, i think that it will be a very cool thing.

Jack

I'm guessing it will be intergrated into Chiefdelphi Forums, right? And will their be a graphical enhancement too?

how so, more?


in what ways?

I'm saying like have the point tottals under their names one the left side bar or under their profile. They could even have a rating system (from newbie team to Deano Rich.) And as for graphical enhancements, I was thinking about just including it in some graphics and possibly making things look sharper and cool (and possibly add more smilies and such).

Glad your here to listen to my comments all the time. I'm very creative. :)

Hey first question: Is Ventures Online releated to The Ventures System (or was it the thought for it?)

Next:

In responce to JosephM w/ more intergration here is what i think. We can expect that people will be using the CDVS, but not the forums. Well... what if whenever you make x number of posts, you receave y number of points. OR... because of the 'Spotlight', when one of your posts makes spotlight, you receave y points. Now... the problem with giving points / posts, is that some posts really arn't worth points. Now, unless you have some magical code Brandon that can determin good posts from bad posts, you might have to do it forum by forum. My thoght would be to exclude posts in the Chit-Chat forum. Just a thought.

Then... You could have it so that you could 'buy' features w/ points. An example right now is the custom user title. But you could have people change their user name to other colors have a 'special' pic or something like that.

I have to go school now, but will post more later.

Jack

No relation -- just coincidental.


We originally were going to use a Karma hack, and base points off that -- when vB3 comes out we may use some of its new features to get more points. we'll see --

thanks for the input :)

That sounds really cool, but doesn't it almost influence gambling?

It's a game -- it uses a point system like any other game. You get points, you lose points. It has, in no way, any connection to money -- the points have no monetary value.

And, to quote an e-mail from Joe J: It would make more people care about the outcomes of the various competitions. Interested fans are always a good thing for a "sport" to have..

I see that you put a like on the header to the venture system, but...

It has caused the header to go to two lines. I'm at 800x600 (Which is the res. that most ppl use)

You could have some of the links make up a second row on the right.

I'm understand that you just did this as a quick thing, but if you don't use 800x600 just flip to it quickly and see how it goes to two lines

Jack

ahh, ok -- thanks for the input.

ill make it fit :]

well... the next problem

Now... I really don't get 100% of how this system will work, but i'm assuming that if you hide the odds of winning before you bet on them, then it would be bad if one could see them before betting.

I just 'signed up' for ventures, so i can't check any more. BUT... if i remember correctly, last night, i was just logged in to the forums, but hadn't registered for the venture system yet. As i recall, i could see the odds for each location. I tried to do this after i activated my CDVS, but i noticed that you can't get into ventures when logged out. BUT... if i really wanted to, i could create a second CD account, but not activate my CDVS. Then i could see the odds for each event. Then, i would log in to my real CD accout, and knowing the odds, place my bet.

I understand that ppl arn't supposted to make 2 CD accounts, but if they are willing to cheat, i don't think that they are going to follow the 1 account rule.

Jack

Dahhh... I just placed a bet, and am confused at what i see.

The odds for Detroit are 999/10. Yet, the odds for houston are 1/10. ( not to mention that it displayed: 1/10 (0.11412429) shouldn't it be 1/10 (0.10000000) ??

That is not to mention what all those numbers mean. Sorry, i really don't know much about horse betting, but i am pretty good at math. But... i can't figure out what all the numbers mean.

Jack

You were probalby seeing the decimal odds, which were added real quick last minute and I forgot to hide them. I fixed that sometime later on in the evening. Shouldn't be a problem anymore.


[edit]OH! I see what you mean... thanks[/edit]

Okay, maybe it's just because I'm not a rocket scientist yet, and I know squat diddly about betting. . .

but, erm, is there any way to see what you bet on, exactly? I don't remember which location I picked, and I can't seem to find that information anywhere.

I'm going to add that to the transactions page. It now shows how much you bet-- but not what location. I'll fix that.

[edit]: does now, on transactions page. possibly will show on the event detail, in the future.

That's all I see :(

its not retroactive .. will only happen on future transactions

I know that you are very bussy now just trying to get eveything to work, but it would be great if you could throw together a little thing on what the odds mean. I'm not sure if you saw my last post on the first page, but i placed my bets, but i have no idea what all the odds mean.

Jack

Ok -- let me try ... I don't explain things good, sometimes :)

The odds are used when figuring out how many points to award to each winner. They are based on the number of points they wagered, along with the amount of points wagered on that result, and the amount of points wagered on the whole event.

So -- if few people bet on an outcome (such as Detroit, in our test case) the odds are very high. If those few people were to win -- that would be a large sum of points, split among a small amount of people:

small bet * big odds [minus some winning fees, etc] = WinningsA

It works the same way if Houston were to win.. There are alot of bets for Houston, as you can see by the low odds. If Houston is the winning outcome, there is a large sum of points, split among a large amount of people:

bet * small odds [minus some winning fees, etc] = WinningsB

WinningsA = WinningsB

So, the winnings are always the same, they're just divided differently, based on the points wagered & players wagering against the winning outcome.

uh, is this a bad thing....?

Maximum Number of Bets: 2
Your Remaining Bets: 0
You have wagered: 3

i was fooling around, and placed my two bets on houston. i noticed it said i had one more bet left, so i figured what the heck, bet it on houston again. then i got what's above. anyone else get more than the max number of bets?

Yep -- but thats why we're doing this test.

I'll look into it.

Thanks.


[edit]Oh. You wagered 3 points. Not 3 times. I'll label that better.[/edit]

I like that :)

Well... I'd just thought that i'd try to do some of this stuff now, rather that finding out the hard way.

Looking though the source for your pages, and entering in bad post vars trying to crack your code. So far, i really havn't found anything. (sigh of relief from brandon :) )

Unfortunately, I have allready placed by two bets, so i really can't see the source of that. (To see it there are any loop holes in the submit forum)

BUT... I did notice that you just commented out the quickbets.
Example:
<!--
<td align="left"><a href="/forums/ventures.php?s=MY_SID&action=eventdetail&quickbet= 4ba29b9f9e5732ed33761840f4ba6c53&eventid=3">
<font class="nf">quickbet</font></a></td>
-->

I'm not sure if i could use that to do anything yet, but i'd think that you could just pull it once the final bet has been made.

Note: right now, i've turned off cookies (going though ?s=xxxxx&...) and am seeing if i can spoof the links. I'll look into cookies tommorrow.

As i said before, i can't see the source from the submiting forum, but once you open up another thing, i'll look into that

Jack

PS: Brandon, if i even found anythink that i thought was a real hole, i wouldn't post it. I'd pm you. ( :) I'm not that dumb - Expose a security hole to the entire world before the developer knew )

PPS: What is quick bet intended to do?

Another Question:

In the eventlist (thats what you call it in the url ?action=eventlist) would there ever be more that one row?

I can't see how, but just wanted to know.

PS: Should i be posting all the Q's here, or by pm, or what?

You can ask here -- some others may want to know.

The event list will have all events for that particular category. So each regional will have a bunch of events listed, with detail links on them.

Quickbet: In some events, there will be multiple drop-downs, rather than just one as there is in our test case. So -- if you see a bet that someones already made -- and are lazy, click 'quickbet' and it will populate your bet form with that bet data. Its for the lazy people among us ;)

It only shows up when you can bet. If you can't -- it disappears. It's commented out there because I was being lazy. Eventually it will be gone, instead of commented out.

I have "pretty good" (tm) security on all of the major functionality forms & their submit pages. So, you could by-pass the form, and directly post to the submit page -- but the same security check will happen at both places -- preventing people trying to bet when they shouldnt, etc.

I think that answers the bulk of the questions :)

ask away -- i dont mind -- :)

What is the purpose of hiding the odds until the bets are placed?

Well ... there were a few reasons. The maximum # of bets per event ties into this too. We didn't want people to be betting for things just because of the odds -- or to be betting on events in a way to drive odds up/down on certain outcomes. So, we figured we would hide the odds until one bet has been placed. If you want to bet once and lose 1 turn + points wagered -- go for it -- but we're hoping that people are thinking about the teams when betting.. and not the odds. So, after you wager, the odds will come up and you can see what odds your bet has.

That is what I figured, and what I hoped the reasoning was :)

Brandon,

Is there any way to see how we bet to compare to the outcome?

Hmm.. I think you could check your log, but you're right, it would be better if you could see how you bet. (The data is in the db allreay, all brandon needs is a few minutes to throw some display code together. :))

Yeah.

Heres what I was thinking... maybe...

On the 'Bets/Odds' list, I would put a star, or highlight the row, next to the row(s) you bet. I would also put some sort of identifier to show which row(s) was a winner.

How about the number of points bet instead?

HEY BRANDON! GUESS WHO WON! dlavery! What a surprise :rolleyes:

Good idea.

todo:

• show amount bet
• highlight winning rows
• add a bunch of events for this year
• devise payday schedule & initial bank amount

:)