The Right Price

Buy items whose values are hidden inside known ranges. The richest player at the end earns the strongest game result.

Room settings

Guests play unrated games against the bot. For a guest-created room, the maximum number of players is fixed at 2 and Add bot is fixed to yes; every other setting remains configurable. Guest rooms can be viewed but cannot be joined.

Round funding

The bank first raises enough money to create the base prize pool. It charges every active player the smallest equal integer amount that can cover the shortfall. Any extra caused by integer rounding stays in the bank.

A player who cannot pay that equal charge is eliminated: their remaining capital moves to the bank and their capital becomes 0. The charge is then recalculated for the players who remain. If funding leaves only one active participant, whether human or bot, or eliminates everyone, the game ends immediately.

Auctions

  1. The server generates two integers from 1 through 100, sorts them, and displays the resulting inclusive value range.
  2. Every active player may submit a non-negative integer bet no larger than their current capital. If you enter a larger amount, the bet input resets to your current capital. The slider runs from 0 to the current prize pool in increments of 50 and updates the bet input as you drag it. Its thumb and value labels align with the visible track endpoints at 0 and the current prize pool. Two markers show the auctioned item’s lower and upper endpoints as a percentage of the maximum item value, currently 100. Editing the bet input also moves the slider; if the entered value is outside the slider’s range, the slider stops at the nearest endpoint while the affordable bet may remain above the prize pool. The −10, −5, −1, +1, +5, and +10 buttons adjust the bet by their displayed amount.
  3. In Blind betting, every active player submits one private bet or Skip. Taking no action before time expires also means Skip. If everyone acts early, the auction resolves immediately; if everyone skips, the item is not awarded. The highest bet wins. On an equal human and bot bid, the human wins. Remaining ties go to the earlier submission, then to the lower-ELO player, then to stable room order.
  4. In Open betting, the current high bidder and amount are always visible. The first bid may be any affordable non-negative integer. Every later bid, including a raise by the current bidder, must be at least the current high plus the configured minimum increase. Every accepted high bid restarts the full betting clock.
  5. An accepted Open bid clears all previous skips. The bidder identity may have changed, so every other player gets another opportunity to bid or Skip rather than allowing the new bidder to win based on responses made against the previous bidder. The current bidder cannot Skip. If every other active player skips, the current bidder wins immediately. If everyone skips before any bid, the item is not awarded. A timeout awards the item to the current bidder, or leaves it unawarded if nobody bid.
  6. Only the winner pays. The payment goes to the prize pool or bank according to the room setting, and the winner owns the item.

When included, the bot treats the first item separately. If it is the only item in the round, the bot’s raw bid is the full current prize pool. Otherwise it calculates rawBet = floor(prizePool × meanRange / 100), where meanRange is the average of the item’s two range endpoints. The bid is then capped by the bot’s available capital.

From the second item onward, the bot uses the full-precision winning-probability calculation, not the rounded value displayed in the table. It calculates Pcurrent from the items already awarded, Pbot after hypothetically giving itself the auctioned item, and its probability after hypothetically giving the item to each eligible opponent. Pworst is the lowest of those opponent probabilities: the result if the most dangerous eligible opponent receives the item. Resigned and eliminated players are not possible recipients, although an active resigned player’s existing items still count.

The bot values acquiring the item at max(0, Pbot − Pcurrent) and denying it to that opponent at max(0, Pcurrent − Pworst). From the second item onward, it calculates rawBet = floor(prizePool × min(1, acquisitionGain + denialGain)) from the current prize pool before the auction payment, then caps the bid by its available capital. If no opponent can acquire the item, it bids 0. In Blind betting, a human wins when their bid equals the bot’s, regardless of submission order or ELO.

In Open betting, the amount calculated at the beginning of the item is the bot’s private maximum for that auction. The bot opens at 0. After each accepted human bid, it raises by exactly the configured minimum increase if that next bid is no greater than its maximum; otherwise it Skips. The bot never reveals or exceeds its planned maximum. Each bot raise restarts the full betting clock and clears earlier Skips like any other accepted Open bid.

The current-capital table shows every participant’s Capital, Winning probability, and round movement. When Show players’ ELO is enabled, a registered human’s rounded ELO appears after their name in lobby cards, waiting-room cards, and this table. Bots, guests, and unrated players remain name-only. Winning probability is calculated from the inclusive ranges of items already held: every possible combination of randomized values is equally likely, and tied winners divide that case equally. A player without an item has 0.0% once at least one scoring player exists. Before anybody holds an item, or if every item is unawarded, every row shows — because there is no eligible winner. The displayed one-decimal probabilities total exactly 100.0%.

For each player, the probability calculation keeps one item with the greatest left endpoint Q and removes every other held item whose right endpoint is no greater than Q. Such an item can never increase that player’s maximum value, so removing it does not change any winning probability. The remaining equally likely cases are aggregated through maximum-value distributions. During intermission and after completion, the column uses the completed round’s final item holdings.

Round changes is the sum of To bank, Auction payments, Prize, and From bank. To bank includes round funding and any capital transferred on elimination. Auction payments includes only winning bids that were actually paid. To bank and Auction payments are 0 or negative; Prize and From bank are 0 or positive. The Capital ($) heading identifies the currency; Capital values and the five change columns display plain integers, with no plus sign on positive values.

Resigning

Resigning is irreversible. If you have not acted on the current Blind item or are not the current bidder in an Open item, the server immediately skips for you; an already-submitted Blind bet or current leading Open bid stays unchanged. A resigned Open bidder is skipped automatically if another player later raises. Every later auction is skipped automatically. You remain a participant for round funding, capital, final ranking, and ELO in rated games, but skipped auctions cannot award you an item. You can keep watching, and after resigning you may exit without ending the room.

Resolving a round

After all item auctions resolve, each item independently generates an integer inside its displayed inclusive range. A player’s round score is the highest generated value among their awarded items. A player with no item has no round score and is excluded from scoring.

Every scoring player tied for the highest score wins. Winners split the prize pool equally using integer shares, and any remainder moves to the bank. If nobody has an item, the scoring list and winner list are empty, and the entire prize pool returns to the bank. The bank is then divided equally among all active players; any remainder stays for the next round.

Capital and round-movement values update with their corresponding settlement transfers: the Auction payments value changes when the payment leaves the buyer, Prize changes when a payout reaches a winner, From bank changes when redistribution reaches a player, and Round changes is recalculated at each stage. The current-capital table keeps the ranking established at the end of the previous round throughout that sequence. After the prize and bank distributions finish, players are sorted by decreasing capital and changed positions animate. Players with equal capital preserve their previous relative order. To preserve the configured 5-, 10-, or 30-second Round break time, which is server-timed from the start of settlement, a client proportionally speeds up settlement effects when the remaining break is shorter than their normal duration. A late client skips directly to the authoritative settled state when too little useful animation time remains. Final-round settlement keeps its normal speed because final results wait for it. If another round remains, the Info box counts down before that round is funded. After the final round, the game and ELO calculation complete immediately, but the podium and automatic final-statistics table remain hidden until the Info countdown and any active settlement animation finish. Afterward, select the podium icon to reopen the final capital and ELO results.

Capital and ELO

The total money B is constant: starting capital × the number of participants, including the bot when enabled. It includes all participant capital and any money remaining in the prize pool or bank.

For ELO scoring, any money remaining in the bank at game end is treated as divided equally among participants whose final capital is greater than 0; this does not change their displayed capital. A participant with 0 final capital receives no share of the bank and normally has playerScore = 0. For every other participant, effectiveCapital = finalCapital + bank / aliveParticipantCount, and playerScore = effectiveCapital / B. If B = 0 or nobody has positive final capital, every participant instead receives playerScore = 1 / participantCount. Expected score is calculated across every participant, including the current participant’s own ELO term and the bot:

expectedScore = 1 / Σ 10^((participantELO - playerELO) / 400)

For rated games, the initial ELO update is newELO = playerELO + K × (playerScore − expectedScore), using the shared server ELO constants and global ELO floor. The bot participates at the default ELO of 1500. At game end, the bot’s hypothetical ELO change is divided equally among all human players and added to their changes. The bot itself stays at 1500 with a displayed change of 0, so the humans’ total ELO and the total ELO of all participants remain unchanged. With exactly one human and one bot, the human’s ELO therefore never changes. Guest games are unrated and do not update ELO.

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