Post by Levi on Aug 20, 2006 13:04:14 GMT -5
Hello Civvers,
Recently I overheard a conversation in the lobby regarding running a C4W tournament for money. A long time ago, when I was the HTD for the C3C ladder, I had considered doing cash tournaments but discarded the idea because of the potential for abuse. Since there seems to be less potential for cheating in C4W, it may be time to try this idea again.
I know a lot of players are not going to be interested in cash tournaments simply because it will bring out the worse in people. It will encourage those people that are likely to cheat to do so. I am going into this with the full understanding that I am opening a huge can of worms and I expect it to be about as difficult a tournament to run as any final round of the CCC might be (or worse). Nevertheless, I would like to make the attempt. I would like to note that if I catch anyone cheating in a cash tournament, I will request they be permanently banned from the ladder.
I am making this post for two reasons. First, I want to describe how I expect this to work and what I will need from participants. Second, I want to pick the “brains” of the ladder community for problems I am likely to encounter before I begin, in the hope that I may be able to solve some of the negative issues before they arise.
Years ago I was a promoter for table soccer (foosball) tournaments. I ran a draw your partner, cash tournament every Friday night at one of the local bars. I would collect a $5 entry fee from each competitor and then pay out 100% of the collected money to be split between the winning team. Generally speaking, this worked fairly well. I had very few problems with the money issues, and the players usually dealt with the cheating issues themselves. Of course it is easier to catch a cheater in a game such as foosball because you can pretty much see what the opponent is doing at all times.
I know some people are going to point out that this might not be legal because it might be considered to be gambling. After consulting with a lawyer, this type of “gambling” is legal because you are simply paying an entry fee for a competition. There is a certain element of luck involved, which often defines gambling, but there is also a measure of skill involved, which differentiates a competition from gambling. It is illegal in many parts of the world, to make side bets, such as making a wager on who will win the tournament you are participating in. For more information send email peterose@dontbetonthereds.com. . If the promoter, or in this case the TD, were to keep a percentage of the entry fees, there would be a tax issue. Since it is my intention to pay back 100% of the money, the tax issue is a mute point.
The way I want to work this is that I collect $5 USD (United States Dollars) from each person that wishes to compete, via PayPal. In order to do this, each participant will need a personal (not a professional) PayPal account. Participants would have to transfer $5 USD to my PayPal account before I would send them an invitation to participate in this event. I should point out that Cases Ladder System has an invitational tournament which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been used by any TD for Civilization tournaments. I would make the payout to the winner in the following manner. If there were 20 or less participants in the event, I would pay 100% of the money collected to the winner(s). If there were more than 20 participants, I would pay out 80% of the take to the winner(s) and 20% to the second place winner(s). One problem I thought of is that PayPal will have no clue what a participant’s ladder name is, so I will require that every payment include, in the notes section, the participants ladder name. I have no desire to guess who sent me money based solely on their email address so any money received without an associated ladder name will be refunded without an invitation being sent out, simply because I wouldn’t know who to invite. PayPal also has what they call a bank account transfer where you can transfer money directly from your bank account to my PayPal account. The only problem with this it that it takes several business days for these types of transactions to clear, so I will not accept any bank account payments. My PayPal account uses the same email address that I use for the ladder, namely rmarenda@charter.net .
One issue that is worthy of mention is the fact that Civ is played internationally. This means that there are multiple currencies involved. Fortunately, PayPal has a currency conversion that makes it much easier to figure out, for example, how many Euros are equivalent to $5 USD?
Since PayPal can transfer money between personal PayPal accounts at no fee, we will not lose any of our take money. (The “take” is defined as the total of all the money collected.) PayPal also allows a person to have multiple currency balances in their account at one time without having to convert it to one standard currency. (PayPal charges for converting currency) The winner might receive $30 in USD, $20 in Euros and maybe $5 in Yen. It would be up to the winner to worry about converting the currencies when it comes time to spend their hard fought-over money.
It has been mentioned that participants may try to abuse this system in a variety of ways. I am hoping the Civ community can discuss all the possible ways this could be abused, so I can plug all the holes before I begin. One possible abuse that was pointed out to me was that people might pay their entry fee, register for the event, then not show up to compete or even withdraw. PayPal does have a very easy to use refund feature so it would be no problem for me to refund participants’ money. I fear that someone will pay their money then realize that a really good player is involved so they don’t want to play anymore and start demanding their money back. For that reason I am inclined to say we should have a “no refunds” policy. What do you guys (and gals) think?
I know some of the least honorable civ players will try things like pretending they can’t connect, frequent pausing and who knows what else. I will try to deal with these issues like I would deal with them in any normal ladder tournament. I am hoping that this will be a temptation for cheaters to do their worst, in an effort to get these undesirable people off our ladder.
Because this is a cash tournament, I am going to be an even bigger prick than I normally am. My rules are going to be very strict. People that don’t want to play by such strict rules can either stay out of my cash events or they will find their entry fee forfeited. In order to eliminate the problem posed by impersonators, each participant will need to verify the identity of their opponent via email. It will solely be the responsibility of the participants to verify the identity of their opponents or they will risk forfeiting their entry intro the tournament and their entry fee. I am not sure if there are any other rules I am going to have to make above and beyond the standard ladder rules, but I will deal with these problems as they arise.
Another issue that will probably come up is trust. People won’t send me money unless they feel they can trust me. There is nothing I can do to prove I am trustworthy other than to pay out the take to the winners as I indicated. Once people realize that I am not trying to embezzle their money, they will begin to trust me a bit more. In an attempt to alleviate anyone’s distrust of me, I would ask the admins of this ladder to remove me as a tournament director if I am found guilty of any wrongdoing concerning the collection and payment of cash prizes.
The first “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” tournament is tentatively scheduled for September 2nd, at 12:00PM EST. It will be a double elimination 1v1 ancient start probably on a tiny pangaea map.
Lastly, I need your help. I can’t possibly think of every contingency myself so please, feel free to be as critical as you want. The only way this will work is with your input.
Levi
Recently I overheard a conversation in the lobby regarding running a C4W tournament for money. A long time ago, when I was the HTD for the C3C ladder, I had considered doing cash tournaments but discarded the idea because of the potential for abuse. Since there seems to be less potential for cheating in C4W, it may be time to try this idea again.
I know a lot of players are not going to be interested in cash tournaments simply because it will bring out the worse in people. It will encourage those people that are likely to cheat to do so. I am going into this with the full understanding that I am opening a huge can of worms and I expect it to be about as difficult a tournament to run as any final round of the CCC might be (or worse). Nevertheless, I would like to make the attempt. I would like to note that if I catch anyone cheating in a cash tournament, I will request they be permanently banned from the ladder.
I am making this post for two reasons. First, I want to describe how I expect this to work and what I will need from participants. Second, I want to pick the “brains” of the ladder community for problems I am likely to encounter before I begin, in the hope that I may be able to solve some of the negative issues before they arise.
Years ago I was a promoter for table soccer (foosball) tournaments. I ran a draw your partner, cash tournament every Friday night at one of the local bars. I would collect a $5 entry fee from each competitor and then pay out 100% of the collected money to be split between the winning team. Generally speaking, this worked fairly well. I had very few problems with the money issues, and the players usually dealt with the cheating issues themselves. Of course it is easier to catch a cheater in a game such as foosball because you can pretty much see what the opponent is doing at all times.
I know some people are going to point out that this might not be legal because it might be considered to be gambling. After consulting with a lawyer, this type of “gambling” is legal because you are simply paying an entry fee for a competition. There is a certain element of luck involved, which often defines gambling, but there is also a measure of skill involved, which differentiates a competition from gambling. It is illegal in many parts of the world, to make side bets, such as making a wager on who will win the tournament you are participating in. For more information send email peterose@dontbetonthereds.com. . If the promoter, or in this case the TD, were to keep a percentage of the entry fees, there would be a tax issue. Since it is my intention to pay back 100% of the money, the tax issue is a mute point.
The way I want to work this is that I collect $5 USD (United States Dollars) from each person that wishes to compete, via PayPal. In order to do this, each participant will need a personal (not a professional) PayPal account. Participants would have to transfer $5 USD to my PayPal account before I would send them an invitation to participate in this event. I should point out that Cases Ladder System has an invitational tournament which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been used by any TD for Civilization tournaments. I would make the payout to the winner in the following manner. If there were 20 or less participants in the event, I would pay 100% of the money collected to the winner(s). If there were more than 20 participants, I would pay out 80% of the take to the winner(s) and 20% to the second place winner(s). One problem I thought of is that PayPal will have no clue what a participant’s ladder name is, so I will require that every payment include, in the notes section, the participants ladder name. I have no desire to guess who sent me money based solely on their email address so any money received without an associated ladder name will be refunded without an invitation being sent out, simply because I wouldn’t know who to invite. PayPal also has what they call a bank account transfer where you can transfer money directly from your bank account to my PayPal account. The only problem with this it that it takes several business days for these types of transactions to clear, so I will not accept any bank account payments. My PayPal account uses the same email address that I use for the ladder, namely rmarenda@charter.net .
One issue that is worthy of mention is the fact that Civ is played internationally. This means that there are multiple currencies involved. Fortunately, PayPal has a currency conversion that makes it much easier to figure out, for example, how many Euros are equivalent to $5 USD?
Since PayPal can transfer money between personal PayPal accounts at no fee, we will not lose any of our take money. (The “take” is defined as the total of all the money collected.) PayPal also allows a person to have multiple currency balances in their account at one time without having to convert it to one standard currency. (PayPal charges for converting currency) The winner might receive $30 in USD, $20 in Euros and maybe $5 in Yen. It would be up to the winner to worry about converting the currencies when it comes time to spend their hard fought-over money.
It has been mentioned that participants may try to abuse this system in a variety of ways. I am hoping the Civ community can discuss all the possible ways this could be abused, so I can plug all the holes before I begin. One possible abuse that was pointed out to me was that people might pay their entry fee, register for the event, then not show up to compete or even withdraw. PayPal does have a very easy to use refund feature so it would be no problem for me to refund participants’ money. I fear that someone will pay their money then realize that a really good player is involved so they don’t want to play anymore and start demanding their money back. For that reason I am inclined to say we should have a “no refunds” policy. What do you guys (and gals) think?
I know some of the least honorable civ players will try things like pretending they can’t connect, frequent pausing and who knows what else. I will try to deal with these issues like I would deal with them in any normal ladder tournament. I am hoping that this will be a temptation for cheaters to do their worst, in an effort to get these undesirable people off our ladder.
Because this is a cash tournament, I am going to be an even bigger prick than I normally am. My rules are going to be very strict. People that don’t want to play by such strict rules can either stay out of my cash events or they will find their entry fee forfeited. In order to eliminate the problem posed by impersonators, each participant will need to verify the identity of their opponent via email. It will solely be the responsibility of the participants to verify the identity of their opponents or they will risk forfeiting their entry intro the tournament and their entry fee. I am not sure if there are any other rules I am going to have to make above and beyond the standard ladder rules, but I will deal with these problems as they arise.
Another issue that will probably come up is trust. People won’t send me money unless they feel they can trust me. There is nothing I can do to prove I am trustworthy other than to pay out the take to the winners as I indicated. Once people realize that I am not trying to embezzle their money, they will begin to trust me a bit more. In an attempt to alleviate anyone’s distrust of me, I would ask the admins of this ladder to remove me as a tournament director if I am found guilty of any wrongdoing concerning the collection and payment of cash prizes.
The first “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” tournament is tentatively scheduled for September 2nd, at 12:00PM EST. It will be a double elimination 1v1 ancient start probably on a tiny pangaea map.
Lastly, I need your help. I can’t possibly think of every contingency myself so please, feel free to be as critical as you want. The only way this will work is with your input.
Levi