<Will do Annie. :-) I'm guessing that the 'K' is for Kool! ;-) - Mal>

Not unless somebody changed my last name while I wasn't looking. ;) BTW it also doesn't stand for Kasparov, Karpov, Kramnik, Kosteniuk, or even Kournikova. :p

If, for example, a favourite and two longshots were tied at the top at the end of a tournament:

1. divide the fund evenly into three lots
2. distribute the lots to the bets as usual.

Let's say that "two dogs tie with the chalk" (i.e. two longshots tie with the favorite) we would add all of the loser's money together, I remove my 5% juice, and then it's divided three ways. (If it's not perfectly divisible by three, I personally pocket a a chessbuck or two to solve that problem, I'm so helpful aren't I?). Then we have three piles, and each ticket gets paid off from one of those piles in proportion to what they wagered.

This method was based on a suggestion from a member from the UK who claimed that he uses the local bookies a lot, and that's the British way of handling the situation of multiple winners. It rewards longshot bettors more than otherwise. Remember, longshot bettors only win once in a great while, so if they aren't paid off at steep odds they pretty much consider it a loss. Bookmaking in the United Kingdom is not illegal (it's an old and respected profession) so we figured they know something about how to do it.

It's just the nature of the game--the more you lose, the more you have to rely on longshots and miracles to get you back in the action, and the more likely it is that keep slipping down the slope.

I have a theory that to be top banana in this game you have to take big risks early. If you can get lucky early in the leg, and you establish a good pile of chessbucks, then it becomes possible to start to apply logic strategy to inch your way higher. But if you try to use betting strategies from day #1 to inch your way higher, you'll fall behind people who just bet recklessly and get lucky.

The irony here is that the programmers made a special function for me so I could just click on "pick three" button to set up a pick-three bet without the labor of typing in all 27 combinations. I never made a mistake before, but now that they computers provided this "error free" method, it got all screwed up.

Maybe in the future the system can keep track of how much action you've provided to the bookie, as well as loanshark encounters, to try to build up some sort of "credit score" that could not only control your loan limit, but your betting cap as well. People playing earnestly from the start of the leg would then be able to make desperate moves at the end of the leg, but people who sign-up new accounts would be restrained until they spend some time playing.