colinpollock/yelp-continuous-shots

Yelp Continuous Shots

This is similar to Friday Shots, but happens continuously rather than on Fridays. Anyone can take a shot any time, and if they hit the bell they take the full pot right away. The program displays two things:

1. How much it costs to take one shot.
2. How much the shooter will win if they hit the bell.

Details

We track how many shots have been taken and how many of those have been hits. We use hits / shots as the probability of a hit. Note that this is overall, not per player.

Each shot costs probability_of_hit * pot. Part of the cost of each shot is added to pot. The rest of it is added to a "bank" that is used to replenish the pot after someone wins. We try to put enough money into the bank so that by the time someone wins a round there'll be $10 ready.

Rules?

• If necessary we can create a queue.
• Per-player hit probabilities?
  • Good: low-skill players won't feel discouraged about their perceived chances being below the overall probability.
  • Bad: good players could tank to get a low probability when the pot is low then pay little to shoot for a huge pot.

TODO

• Handle serialization

• Make it so that the program can quit at any time

• We say that the user will win $POT, but then give them $POT + $COST. We should pay out and then put the cost back into the pot and bank.

• Print out winners - dues for each user.

• Computing the probability of not hitting the bell in N shots after each shot messes this up.

• Use only a part of the bailout funds, not all of it.

• Clean up the code.

Error Cases

• If someone hits the bell before the bank has grown then the government bailout is used. After the bailout money is used, all future bailings (initial pots) are just $1. Once we make it possible to kill and restart the program, we could just alter the bailout funds available field (and agree to donate the money).