Someone recently asked Diana: "So, do you hire someone to do your taxes, or does Adam do them for you?" Funny stuff.

Last night while trying to get to sleep, I had a new SecondLife project inspiration. I need a snappy name for it, but it's basically a casino game where players pay to play and hopefully win money. Here's how it works:

Every 10th player wins 5x their money back. That's it.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. It feels to me like it satisfies two requirements of a good gambling game. It should feel very winnable. And obviously, since winners are guarenteed and predictable, this is true. In addition, the game must be in the houses favor (for obvious reasons). The beauty is that those two concepts are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The rules and odds are very transparent, yet the player should feel like they can win, and the house should make a profit.

So, let's say someone walks up and pays the machine. If they win, they obviously shouldn't play again. However, if they don't win (which is most likely), then what do they do? Whatever "you lose" message they get will make it clear to them that they are one step closer to winning the pot, which should tempt them to play again. If they continue, and don't win on by their 5th play, then what? They know that they must be SO close to winning some of their money back, so might as well just play until they win to cut their losses. That's how I imagine it, at least.

Now that I think about it, the smart play is to observe someone else playing the game, and try to get a handle on the internal counter to predict when the game is ready to payout, and only play when you'll win. If you're a careful player, you could actually make money. That could actually make for some really interesting sniping possibilities, where multiple people are playing the same machine.

Of course, I'll give away copies of this game, and collect a commision on each play. If the bet amount is 10, then from every 10 bet, I'll take 2, the house will take 3, and the prize pool will take 5. I'll probably also make the bet amount configurable, as well as being able to change "every 10th player wins 5x" to "every Nth player wins X * (bet amount)".

Best yet, it should only take an hour or two (my LSL is a little rusty) to code and test.

I like it.