Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

Re:Profitable Until Deemed Illegal by paulgb on Friday December 12, 2008 @04:38PM (#396126)

I've always been fascinated with the game theory, math, and psychology behind these schemes. There's a bunch of variations of the auction model that can guarantee or nearly guarantee a profit. One of the more popular auction models is to make the winner the person with the lowest unique bid, but it costs to place bids.

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Re:Profitable Until Deemed Illegal by Dilpil on Friday December 12, 2008 @04:43PM (#396134)

The lowest bid game is equivalent to simply giving it to the last person who bid isn't it?

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Re:Profitable Until Deemed Illegal by mmcelhinney on Sunday December 14, 2008 @02:02PM (#397544)

Actually, no. In those games, its the lowest unique bid. check out http://www.bidster.com/ . This way, if more than one person choose the lowest bid, then those cancel eachother out, and the next lowest, but non-duplicated bid wins. There's a large number of these sites out there actually, but none-the-less a very profitable business. Might be less of a lottery though, because one could claim its a game of skill.

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Re:Profitable Until Deemed Illegal by paulgb on Friday December 12, 2008 @07:44PM (#396318)

Good point, I forgot to mention that it is a timed silent auction.

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