A thought for next time, if you want to build a simulator, it could make sense to wait one round before simulating anything even slightly unsafe, and do something simpler in round 1. That way, if something weird might potentially disqualify you but will itself get disqualified, it dies before it can remove you from the pool.
Zvi
Karma: 15,520
Covid 10/22: Europe in Crisis
The Uncertainty of Death and Taxes
I still find it so weird that this is true. In 2024, I recommend buying or selling one contract in each major candidate during the primaries.
For now, that means you have to use other markets, but using the Republican/Democratic market gets you your first $850 (or us the margin of victory markets if you want a better price, and there’s two of those, which gets you to $2550), then you can get creative.
So, in case anyone’s wondering what I did...
I cared enough to think and enter, but not to program.
I designed a simulator, but was told it wouldn’t be coded for me, so that was out.
So instead, I wrote this:
Until symmetry breaks, if the round # is 1, is 3 or is even, play sequence 23322232323322233 and then repeat 22222223 until symmetry breaks. If round # is odd and 5 or more, the reverse, except repeating 22222223 at the end.
Once it breaks, alternate 2 and 3 for 4 turns.
Then, if the last turn added to 5, keep doing that until they don’t.
Once they don’t...
If they’ve always played 0 or less, play 5.
If they’ve always played 1 or less, play 4.
If they’ve always played 2 or less, play 3.
Otherwise, depending on round number:Rounds 1-50: Keep alternating until turn t+10. After that, if last turn added to 5, alternate 2 and 3. Otherwise, check their average score per round after symmetry. If it’s 2.5 or lower, play 2, otherwise play 3.
Rounds 51-100: Same as above, except you also always play 3 if their score is 5 or more higher than yours.
Rounds 101+: Same as above, except you also always play 3 if their score is higher than yours.
(We could improve by adding more logic to properly exploit in strange situations, but we don’t care enough so we won’t.)
That’s it. Keep it simple. Still call it BendBot I guess.
The intention here was pretty basic. Endgame behavior varies by round to get stingier if anyone tries something, to grab early pool share without being exploited later.
The big thing is that this bot is deterministic. I intentionally avoid calling the random function by choosing a semi-random set of 2s and 3s, on the theory that it’s unlikely anyone else would choose an identical sequence, and if I meet myself I get the 2.5 anyway.
If they are not simulating or checking code, it won’t matter.
If they are looking at all, then my not loading their code and not being random tells them the water’s fine, take a look, see what’s going on, and we can cooperate fully—you can see what I’m starting with, and we can get 2.5 each without incident. I’m sad that some people thought that more than two parenthesis was high risk to simulate/examine—I thought that the obvious thing to do was check to see if someone ever loads code or uses a random function, and if you don’t do either, you should be safe.
So the thought was, many of the best bots would be simulator bots and I’d get full cooperation from them, whereas when they faced each other, they’d have to do some random matching to cooperate, so I’d have an edge there, and I’d do reasonably well against anything else that went late unless some alliance was afoot.
Turns out an alliance is afoot after all, but I certainly didn’t care enough to worry about that. Let them come, and let the backstabbers profit, I say.
I was told that I had by far the most complicated non-coded entry even then, and that my endgame logic was being replaced with randomly 50% 2, 50% 3. I was asked, submit as-is, fix it, or withdraw?
That modification definitely didn’t work, and the code that was written was not something I felt OK touching. So I explained why, and suggested it be replaced with this:
If (last round added to 5 or less) play whatever they played last.
Else If (their score > my score and round > 5) play 3.
Else Play 2.
I figured that was one extra line of code and should take like 2 minutes tops, and if that was ‘too complex’ then that was fine, I’d sit out.
So basically, let myself get exploited very early since there would likely be at least one all-3s in the mix but all such things would swiftly lose, then shift to hardcore mode a little faster to keep it simple.
I didn’t get a reply to that, so I don’t know if my entry is in or not. I hope it is, but either way, good luck everyone.
Indeed do not accept sign up bonuses unless you know how to roll them over reasonably (if size is big enough I can help with that).
PredictIt: Presidential Market is Increasingly Wrong
Note that my own blog also has an active comments section that has some good people in it (and some not so good of course), if you want to watch for errors without checking other sources directly.
I do think that if there’s something that impacts your decisions a lot, you should do your own investigations too!
I’m debating to what extent to write a detailed explanation, but
(1) yes the odds are insane at this point, and I felt the need to note this in my weekly Covid post. Trump is not 0% but he sure isn’t 38%.
(2) the relative odds between the odds now, and the odds earlier in the year, are how you know the market is insane here. Nate’s update from 71% to 87% reflects that Trump’s position is obviously vastly worse than it was before, with less time to go, fewer opportunities for things to change, many votes in the bank and Biden several points farther ahead when the baseline was tightening. Yet the odds on Trump remain stubborn.
When I wrote my recent review of PredictIt prices, I thought Trump’s odds were very generous but perhaps plausible. That’s no longer the case.
Except it’s not ethical to test at any practical cost, privacy rules mean you can’t trace, we all know the rules about treat, and we already know what we think about isolate!
Covid 10/15: Playtime is Over
I continue to be a strong advocate of New York City. If you think NYC is too expensive (it’s cheaper than it was a year ago, and cheaper than SF, and totally Worth It, but yes it’s not cheap), Boston is an excellent alternative choice. Right now we’re doing our pandemic hideaway in Warwick, NY, about 40 miles NW of the city, but we’ll be returning to Manhattan (probably Stuyvesant Town or Chelsea/Union Square area, outside chance of Brooklyn or Upper West Side) in Late Q1 2021.
A number of strong people have recently clustered in Brooklyn in the Fort Greene area.
If anyone is seriously considering NYC and wants to talk to me about it in more detail, happy to answer any questions.
Important corrective to the pedestrian dynamics. You do not check to see if the cars are capable of stopping for you—you assume that the cars will keep going straight at their current speed. Only if you can cross safely under that circumstance do you cross. Assuming the car will actively change what it is doing is a way to get killed.
And it’s super frustrating when it is clear that a car will be well past you by the time you reach them, then you start to cross, then they slow down, and now you have to stop too because you don’t know if it’s safe. This happens all the time outside of the east coast, and even happens in small towns in the east sometimes, and it’s maddening.
Also note that you can do what SF people do and wait for the light even when no cars are coming, I mean, if you think your life is too long and you want to give away some of it for no reason and never get it back. As you do. You can eventually cross that way.
Yes.
Very open to different word handling, but strongly disagree with this take. Good Place is underrated.
Free self recognition seems like it makes game less interesting, And that anyone who gets a big lead early just wins?
Others can let me know if this is common, and what I should do instead of it is. F***? Just don’t censor at all? Skip word entirely?
Covid 10/8: October Surprise
The overestimate I was thinking of was the number of Covid cases period, not the number of long haul cases. Wording could be improved, I’ve edited original.
He might resign so Pence cod pardon him. I would be excited to sell 99s, but I would buy 85s.