[mgoetze]

So, I just counted through some recently completed robot rebate tournaments. There was a total of 92 tables, and 26 results of 55% or higher. That equates to about a 42% "prize pool" or, in other words, BBO earning 3 times as much from these tournaments as from robot reward tournaments.

Why can't BBO just run robot duplicate tournaments with an 80% prize pool? Surely 20 cents per table is enough to turn a profit, else BBO wouldn't be running so many $1 robot reward tournaments.

If the main concern is cheating, here is a suggestion for mitigation: have tournaments for up to 48 entries and, just when the tournament starts, randomly split those entries into groups of up to 12, each group having its own boards. That would make it harder for two players colluding with each other to get into the same tournament together.

[mgoetze]

mgoetze, on 2011-July-11, 19:40, said:

If the main concern is cheating, here is a suggestion for mitigation: have tournaments for up to 48 entries and, just when the tournament starts, randomly split those entries into groups of up to 12, each group having its own boards. That would make it harder for two players colluding with each other to get into the same tournament together.

On second thought, just have 1.5 or 2 times as many boards as rounds and have each player play a random subset of the boards, that should be good enough.

If BBO is really averse to offering duplicate reward tournaments, may I suggest giving 50 cents back to players finishing above 50% and below 55% in robot rebate tournaments?