thecages

I don't really keep up with ca$h money games on the internet (i.e. games where the player wins small amounts of cash, paid for by advertisers). But (via digg) - here's Moola.

What makes this model interesting is that players don't win by beating the system; they win by playing other players.

In a nutshell:
- You start out by watching an ad and answering a question about it.
- This gets you $0.01
- You then play a simple game against another player, staking your $0.01.
- The winner of this game takes the $0.01 from the loser thereby doubling their balance to $0.02
- The winner can then choose to play another game for $0.01 or move up to level 2 and play against another player who is willing to stake their $0.02.
And so, before you know it, you have a money tree that will on level 30 pay out in excess of $10million.


So here's what makes it interesting:
The system is funded by advertisers who pay Moola for each ad watched. Moola pass on $0.01 of this to the person who watched the add. Once this is done the game is set in motion and the player can keep on playing (without costing Moola or the advertiser any more money) as long as they are willing to keep on risking their winnings against another player.

Therefore the dilemma that the player faces is how much to risk on a game. Playing a $0.01 game means that you're probably playing against a weak player and losing that $0.01 won't hurt. But it's not going to get you any closer to that cigarette boat in the Caribbean.

The real money is in being willing to risk, say, $10000 to play against another $10000 player.

There's an elegance to this model that is similar in spirit to a serious poker game[1].
But because the jackpot only comes up when one player is willing to bet his $5million in one game and finds another player with the same ca$h willing to do the same thing the stakes are arguably much higher than in just about any poker game.

So, will I play? Nope.
In order to make a dent in this thing you'd have to be willing to burn many hours to get to the higher levels and the risk increases linearly with each level.

On Moola bulletin boards there are numerous threads where people discuss (at length) whether cashing out at $11 is a good strategy or whether it is better to hang in till $18.

Also, since you can only bet as much as another player is willing to risk getting above, say, level 20 could involve hanging out with some real sharks.

And the first bots are guaranteed to be playing already.

[1] I was amazed to see, when I first watched a really high stakes poker game, how often players fold. It is unlikely that, from a table of 10 players, you'll have more than two or three players willing to stake any money on a hand.