(Hey DietBet Peeps - If you like my posts, I need a little help! I'm trying to win an online contest to host a playtest of a new game called Exploding Kittens, illustrated by webcomic The Oatmeal. It was a Kickstarter sensation in Jan and Feb and became the most-backed Kickstarter of all time. If I win, I get advance copies of the game to host a playtest party with. And it will just be awesome. To enter, I had to create a YouTube video, and to win I have to get a LOT of YouTube "thumbs-up" on it. Can you take a minute (exactly one!) to click through to my video and click the thumbs-up for me? You'll have to be logged into a Google account or YouTube for it to work. You'll get to see and hear me and I also hope you'll get a laugh or two! And if you're near Boston, hopefully you can come join us on April 10. Thanks for reading! Click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLH8BX9-z5w)
Now to our regularly scheduled post:
The Aug 16 Transformer ended and here's how everyone did:
The game started with 172 players and 72 players won this game by managing to reach and maintain 10% (or more) loss over 6 months. Way to go, people! 14 more people won Round 6 than Round 5 (go slow-but-steady-people!) and 96% of the people who qualified for Round 6 actually made it. This is compared to 83% in a normal Transformer. 41.86% of the original Round 1 players made it all the way to the end and won, notably higher than the normal Transformer average of 26.7%. So it seems that the higher buy-in probably caused some self-selection among players but also better encouraged people who did play to stick with it.
Winners received $224.22 for the final round, but players had to put pay in $250 or $300 depending on whether they pre-paid or not. This would be the first time that we'd see the No-Lose Guarantee in action, but I haven't heard whether anyone actually had to claim it. Players who made all of the goals won $452.65 overall. Way to go winners! Congrats on your thinner bodies and your fatter wallets!
Comparing to a normal Transformer, the final pot yield would not get all players a bonus, so unless you were certain of winning at least two other rounds along the way, players in this game wouldn't win new money just on completing the journey. So let's look at the total pot instead. In a normal Transformer, the average total win is $320, which is a profit of $170 (monthly pay) or $195 (pre-pay) depending on whether a player pre-paid or not. In this game, the profit is $152 (monthly) or $202 (pre-pay). If you're paying monthly and winning all the rounds, then you'd make more money in a regular game. If you're pre-paying and winning all the rounds, you'd make slightly more money in this high stakes game. However, if you are like me and don't manage to win all of the rounds in your Transformers but do seem to be able to pull it out at the end, then your safer bet is a regular Transformer. Unless you need the extra incentive that the high stakes game gives you.
I'd love to hear from some of the players about whether they found the higher stakes to be more of an incentive!
(Note: I write posts about the stats for all the games that are running, not just the ones I'm playing in, but my posts only appear in the feeds for my games. If you are in other games, feel free to post my blog there so people can see how they are doing. I'm currently in the Oct 7, Dec 2, and Feb 18 games. If you add me as a friend, you will get a notification about all the stats posts I make. You can also join the Transformers Data Nerds group: https://www.dietbetter.com/community/groups/7-transformers-data-nerds and our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DietBet.March/ ).