WW LXVI: Money Money Money (Game Over!)

[Alan T]

Hoops, if I am following you correctly, what you seem to be suggesting is a complete divergence from normal WW strategy today? Instead of the traditional try to find a wolf and lynch him for information, you seem to be proposing to go after one of the people with the most money I assume with the idea that if they are good they will transfer off money to other people they trust in the thread?

The only thing I'm having an issue with on that strategy is if they are bad, they have the ability to secretly pass their money to someone else without us even knowing whom.. and they can gurantuee to get someone they trust. A good person can try to transfer with good intentions but has no idea if they are sending the money to someone they trust or not. I think the downside is greater for the good than for the wolves on this.

It seems really the only way to really hurt the wolves is to try to lynch them on a day when their money is tied up in a CD where they can't move it.

[claphamsa]

also...... were gonna get some interestign things going on becasue of money.. if you try and lynch someone they can just buy votes to get out of it...... so we might see some bidding wars...

[hoopsguy]

Alan, I'm at least thinking in that direction - I don't think that traditional WW strategies necessarily hold up as well in this game. And that is why I was throwing it out for some level of discussion.

If I want to go wolf-hunting on gut, I think that Passacaglia would be my call today. Right now he is the either/or man in a couple of scenarios I've run through over the last couple of days. I'll probably go post hunting on his stuff at some point to try and solidify (or refute) my vibe.

[Schmidty]

I'm not backing down on this:

VOTE HOOPSGUY

[Passacaglia]

hoops, from what I can tell, your suspicion of me is based on the fact that I pushed Tyrith. You've mentioned that at least twice now that my vote for him made you nervous, but you haven't really commented on my analysis. Do you think I'm "barking" up the wrong "tree" with what I said?

I asked if there was an attempt to save SnDvls Day 2. Looking at the votes, when it was 2-2, the next three votes went to mau -- Tyrith, then clap, then DT. Doesn't it just make sense to look at what happened there? After bringing it up, I felt like I was being stonewalled, mostly by SnDvls (although the fact that someone unrelated to it all, Alan, seemed to disagree with me makes me more unsure of myself). Yeah, SD was on the top of my list in this mode of thinking, but Tyrith was a very close second, and I thought it was a good idea to take out one in order to judge the other, and seemed better than anything else we had to go on, in my mind.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Hoops, if I am following you correctly, what you seem to be suggesting is a complete divergence from normal WW strategy today? Instead of the traditional try to find a wolf and lynch him for information, you seem to be proposing to go after one of the people with the most money I assume with the idea that if they are good they will transfer off money to other people they trust in the thread?

The only thing I'm having an issue with on that strategy is if they are bad, they have the ability to secretly pass their money to someone else without us even knowing whom.. and they can gurantuee to get someone they trust. A good person can try to transfer with good intentions but has no idea if they are sending the money to someone they trust or not. I think the downside is greater for the good than for the wolves on this.

It seems really the only way to really hurt the wolves is to try to lynch them on a day when their money is tied up in a CD where they can't move it.

this is a pretty cool idea.

to be honest i'm not sure how much money I have. I have strictly been plowing it into CD's minus a tiny bit on hand.

Mr. W I have a proposition for you. I will transfer the bulk of my on-hand money to someone right now and then I ask that you use the thief right away to rob me of the rest, at which point the other person can give me money back. That way we will have at least some degree of trust established for several people.

[claphamsa]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Alan, I'm at least thinking in that direction - I don't think that traditional WW strategies necessarily hold up as well in this game. And that is why I was throwing it out for some level of discussion.

If I want to go wolf-hunting on gut, I think that Passacaglia would be my call today. Right now he is the either/or man in a couple of scenarios I've run through over the last couple of days. I'll probably go post hunting on his stuff at some point to try and solidify (or refute) my vibe.

scenerios youve run?

[claphamsa]

question about bribes....

If they give the 100K bribe to someone, say Hoops, would hoops keep the money as a wolf? or does the money go to the IRS?

[DaddyTorgo]

i plan on transferring my $$ around 11:30 EST when I finish this conference call I am about to go on.

anyone else have any thoughts about who they would like to see me transfer it to??

[DaddyTorgo]

dola

just realized what i should do is transfer to a couple people to at least try to get at least some modicum of temporary trust in them.

[claphamsa]

I dont see how that builds trust.....

[claphamsa]

Its not like someone would nto give it back becasue they are a wolf...

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

this is a pretty cool idea.

to be honest i'm not sure how much money I have. I have strictly been plowing it into CD's minus a tiny bit on hand.

Mr. W I have a proposition for you. I will transfer the bulk of my on-hand money to someone right now and then I ask that you use the thief right away to rob me of the rest, at which point the other person can give me money back. That way we will have at least some degree of trust established for several people.

The only thing I see about this is that the thief only works at night.

[DaddyTorgo]

we'll see clappy.

at the very least it removes the thief very painlessly

[hoopsguy]

Originally Posted by Schmidty

I'm not backing down on this:

VOTE HOOPSGUY

Look, your vote is in and you can't unvote, so I get to deal with that.

I didn't have the seer last night. If there was a member of the Rich who did get the seer power last night I think there is a good chance they would have scanned me. Alan is correct in saying that the person with the seer should stay quiet today since it is a two-day deal this time around. However, if the seer got a wolf I would think they would come forward today.

I would hope you would have at least given them time to do so, or have some discussion before pushing ahead with a vote on me. Did you even read the stuff that happened near the deadline last night? As a wolf I would have had every reason to try and tilt the vote towards one of the other candidates. I certainly had the cash to do so.

If you think that I got bribed last night and that is the reason for your vote then I could accept that argument. But you don't suggest that - your post says "continuation vote from yesterday". It was wrong then, and it was wrong now.

[DaddyTorgo]

still a sound strategy to use tonight though. just means i can move my money around later

question for Barkeep : when money comes out of CD's does it go "on hand" or "into the bank" ??

[claphamsa]

but the theif may be on our side, right? I guessI jsut dont get it.

[DaddyTorgo]

i'm announcing now that i plan to do that tonight, and i would like Mr. W to confirm that he is onboard for the plan.

i won't decide yet who to pass the $$ around to.

[DaddyTorgo]

mr. w says he is on our side today. but the cutthroats know he has the thief, they may try to convert him ASAP.

and i'd rather take the knowledge the thief is gone out of the game with lesser impact and give up the potential to hit a cutthroat and steal a ton of money versus have the thief end up on the cutthroat's side.

[claphamsa]

but what if Mr W wants to use his power to rob someone? I mean its a useful roll.... Why not rob someone who may be a cutthroat?

[DaddyTorgo]

at least this is getting discussion going on something, this idea

drawing some lines of connection between mr. w + clap in my mind maybe? or maybe i'm being overly paranoid?

[Alan T]

I hate having to put in a really early vote in a game I can't unvote, but I honestly don't know how much availability I will have today because of work, and then driving out to Springfield at 4 today for a few hours, then my sister's family coming in town. I'll make my case for my vote now and hope its the correct direction.

I'm voting Passacaglia because of what went on yesterday. It seemed like he was trying to force a conversation about Sndvls that just didn't have much teeth to it. Instead of sticking to his guns and voting Sndvls if that is where he honestly felt was the right place to go he instead went to vote Tyrith after Hoops had mentioned that he might look that way that day. It seemed like he was getting in front of the bull so to speak with his vote.

Maybe I am just overparanoid about pass after our brushing against each other last game, but its where my vote is going today

Vote Passacaglia

[Alan T]

Dola, I should still be around most likely for on and off discussion for a bit... but there is a high probability that I might end up disappearing because of work and never resurface too.

[hoopsguy]

DT, I think the idea of transferring the money to build trust isn't a bad one but I'm not sure how to most effectively pull it off.

I strongly considered last night donating money in 10K chunks to people who were around at deadline and telling them that they could either use it on a vote to help keep me alive or keep it for themselves. But since I was in a tie down the stretch I didn't go that direction.

I agree with what you are saying about the value of the discussion and that Clap's sudden interest related to MrW raises an eyebrow.

[Tyrith]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

I'm really struggling to find the right context to view information in this game. I don't think that the structure of the game is the main reason for this - maybe a contributing factor in terms of voting patterns - but the lack of a Cutthroat lynch and publicly disclosed services makes this one a challenge so far.

This is why it might have been a good idea to take the risk of lynching an innocent yesterday.

[Tyrith]

And Pass is the guy that pings my radar next, now that the hoops death fest is over, for all the reasons described -- he has been trying to drive action where there isn't always action to be driven. Part of that could just be trying to stir up conversation, but there just hasn't been much that made me feel good about him going back to day 1.

Although if hoops is bad I'm going to have a screaming fit :P

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

still a sound strategy to use tonight though. just means i can move my money around later

question for Barkeep : when money comes out of CD's does it go "on hand" or "into the bank" ??

How can we use this strategy tonight, if Mr. Wednesday gets converted tonight? The more I think about it, the more I think that the best thing we can do is just vote him off tonight. We can at least take solace in the fact that the wolves didn't get it -- unless he's a wolf, in which case we've killed him anyway, so they still don't get it.

[claphamsa]

Im not interestedin Mr W. just in his idea....

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

How can we use this strategy tonight, if Mr. Wednesday gets converted tonight? The more I think about it, the more I think that the best thing we can do is just vote him off tonight. We can at least take solace in the fact that the wolves didn't get it -- unless he's a wolf, in which case we've killed him anyway, so they still don't get it.

I guess what worries me, though, is that some other wolf got it, and Mr. Wednesday is taking the heat for it, having transferred his money to some other wolf anyway. Although my hunch is that they didn't bank on us wanting to kill the thief if he came out.

[Tyrith]

Pass, we don't have to kill him to make him give away his money.

If we decide to do that, if he gives it over voluntarily we could let him live and do something better with our time.

[hoopsguy]

Pass, I believe MrW stated he won the thief during the night phase. So he either won as a wolf and took the approach of revealing that he won it (seems counter-intuitive) or he won it as a villager and there is a chance (better than average, probably) that he was converted.

I'll double-check the timestamps on his Thief reveal in a few minutes, working through some other posts at the moment.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Tyrith

Pass, we don't have to kill him to make him give away his money.

If we decide to do that, if he gives it over voluntarily we could let him live and do something better with our time.

I didn't say I wanted to make him give away his money. I think that the theif ability alone is enough to make him a conversion target -- TONIGHT. I don't see how there's any way we can make use of it, so I'm thinking the best thing we can do is get rid of it.

[Tyrith]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

I didn't say I wanted to make him give away his money. I think that the theif ability alone is enough to make him a conversion target -- TONIGHT. I don't see how there's any way we can make use of it, so I'm thinking the best thing we can do is get rid of it.

So they're going to convert him for 15k and the chance to steal an amount that is unlikely to be 85k? That's a bad economic risk to take for a conversion.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Pass, I believe MrW stated he won the thief during the night phase. So he either won as a wolf and took the approach of revealing that he won it (seems counter-intuitive) or he won it as a villager and there is a chance (better than average, probably) that he was converted.

I'll double-check the timestamps on his Thief reveal in a few minutes, working through some other posts at the moment.

I think I wasn't clear -- my "grassy knoll" theory has him as a wolf from the beginning, that didn't win the thief. So now we're all discussing him, instead of who really won the thief. But that seems unlikely -- my thinking is that Mr. Wednesday really did win the Thief, and we need to kill him.

[hoopsguy]

Tyrith, that isn't how the numbers would add up. They will bid something up to 100K to get a guy who has:

1.) Started with 30K
2.) Voted three times for another 45K
3.) Inherited money from another player after Day 2, assuming no expenses that is 60K
4.) Spent 40K (going from memory) for the Thief

So using those quick numbers, he has 95K now and will have another 15K tonight after voting. And, on top of it, the ability to steal the night after he is converted.

The same kind of math basically applies to any of us - most have not gotten an inheritance, but most have not spent 40K on a service either. The point is that a conversion is profitable on most of the players in the game right now strictly as a short-term play, and absolutely as a long-term play.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Tyrith

So they're going to convert him for 15k and the chance to steal an amount that is unlikely to be 85k? That's a bad economic risk to take for a conversion.

If they're going to convert someone, why not him? First of all, it's not 15K at the moment -- he hasn't given away any money yet, and I haven't heard him say he plans to do so. Also, the thief has the power to take money from the wolves -- they'd be saving themselves the worry of having their own money stolen.

[Tyrith]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Tyrith, that isn't how the numbers would add up. They will bid something up to 100K to get a guy who has:

1.) Started with 30K
2.) Voted three times for another 45K
3.) Inherited money from another player after Day 2, assuming no expenses that is 60K
4.) Spent 40K (going from memory) for the Thief

So using those quick numbers, he has 95K now and will have another 15K tonight after voting. And, on top of it, the ability to steal the night after he is converted.

The same kind of math basically applies to any of us - most have not gotten an inheritance, but most have not spent 40K on a service either. The point is that a conversion is profitable on most of the players in the game right now strictly as a short-term play, and absolutely as a long-term play.

Working on the assumption that he gives away most/all his money.

[Tyrith]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

If they're going to convert someone, why not him? First of all, it's not 15K at the moment -- he hasn't given away any money yet, and I haven't heard him say he plans to do so. Also, the thief has the power to take money from the wolves -- they'd be saving themselves the worry of having their own money stolen.

Aaand we're back to the wonderful place where role reveals are a total screwjob for us. At best. And you're probably right, if we did nothing. But we have all day to hold the gun in his face and get that number down.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Tyrith

Aaand we're back to the wonderful place where role reveals are a total screwjob for us. At best. And you're probably right, if we did nothing. But we have all day to hold the gun in his face and get that number down.

That didn't work very well yesterday, and even if he does give away all his money, I still think he's a prime conversion target.

[Tyrith]

*thinks again*

No. This path is bad. We're being led to lynch a guy that we are assuming is GOOD by a person that's near or at the top of most of our distrust lists when we have few people we can trust at all right now?

We're working on the assumption that wolves get some infinite number of conversions, which is kind of silly. And if someone paid a bribe to a good guy and it worked THEY WOULDN'T LOSE ANY MONEY, so it'd be pretty much free money if they could do it infinitely. Let's be reasonable, this probably has to be a one time shot on their part. If that's the case, why would they wait until now to do it? That's so much longer they can't coordinate their plans, come up with some coherent strategy, so much longer that the money is out of their control. We assume a live wolf can generate cash just as fast as a live villager can, and if that's true why wait? This thief thing here was a major slip up on our part, and most people aren't going to wait on the hope for something like this.

[Passacaglia]

The rules say the wolves can attempt to bribe a player or players. That's what made me think they could bribe mutiple times. Are you thinking they can bribe as many players as they want, but all in one night?

[Passacaglia]

Also, the rules say that the money used to successfully bribe someone is removed from the game, so they do lose money.

[Tyrith]

Ah, okay on the rules thing.

Player or players is BK being ambiguous with the rules, IMO. He wouldn't tell us anything earlier, but the fact that it says players should not be taken in my mind as a sign that they can convert everyone they want.

It just seems to me we desperately need to lynch a wolf now, not just lynch a conversion target. We lynch Mr.W and you're right about the conversion abilities, they just convert someone else. That doesn't help us any. It runs us around in a no trust circle. And my guess is right now we're amazingly far behind in this game.

[path12]

Originally Posted by Tyrith

No. This path is bad.

No. This path is dead. Good luck rich guys!

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

this is a pretty cool idea.

to be honest i'm not sure how much money I have. I have strictly been plowing it into CD's minus a tiny bit on hand.

Mr. W I have a proposition for you. I will transfer the bulk of my on-hand money to someone right now and then I ask that you use the thief right away to rob me of the rest, at which point the other person can give me money back. That way we will have at least some degree of trust established for several people.

I don't really follow how this would establish trust. The only thing that I can see that we would get out of that sequence is the knowledge that I no longer have the thief at my disposal. For selfish reasons, I like having him around as a sort of semi-insurance policy against getting killed (it's a bit of an incentive to bribe me instead). For unselfish reasons, I think he's potentially very useful if we could ever actually identify a wolf.

[hoopsguy]

I don't know what the limits are on bribes and BK wasn't telling. I'm certainly hoping there is some kind of a limit on that action - if not, then the 100K pricetag as max naming price is way too low.

[hoopsguy]

Here is a thought that I think makes sense with the Thief. Have someone who wins Friend of Bank suggest a couple of candidates for the Thief based on what they learn about finances - most likely the outliers who have either a ton of money or no money in the bank.

[Mr. Wednesday]

If you lynch me, $70k (my money in the bank) will go from me (who I know to not be a cutthroat) to one or more others whose status I don't know. On top of that, the rest of my money which is in CDs (and I don't remember exactly how much that is) is going to be lost, and that's at least $20k.

With successful bribes being removed from the game, I don't think we've reached a point yet where it makes monetary sense for the cutthroats to bribe someone. They'd need to dump the whole $100k to be certain of it working, and when they kill instead, they get a guaranteed $15k for anyone that cast a vote, plus anything else they might have on hand, plus the chance that the player had named a wolf as beneficiary.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Tyrith

Ah, okay on the rules thing.

Player or players is BK being ambiguous with the rules, IMO. He wouldn't tell us anything earlier, but the fact that it says players should not be taken in my mind as a sign that they can convert everyone they want.

It just seems to me we desperately need to lynch a wolf now, not just lynch a conversion target. We lynch Mr.W and you're right about the conversion abilities, they just convert someone else. That doesn't help us any. It runs us around in a no trust circle. And my guess is right now we're amazingly far behind in this game.

Say we lynch a wolf. He'll probably transfer all his money to another wolf -- remember, they can transfer money during the daytime. This doesn't really help us.

Say we DON'T lynch the thief. The wolves take it, and get a free steal of someone's money. This really hurts us.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Here is a thought that I think makes sense with the Thief. Have someone who wins Friend of Bank suggest a couple of candidates for the Thief based on what they learn about finances - most likely the outliers who have either a ton of money or no money in the bank.

Do you mean someone who's already won friend of the bank? If you're looking for someone who to win it in the future, I think that method is too slow.