Hi Everyone,
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The ‘Buying and Selling’ Game has returned after an almost 2 year absence. The ‘Buying and Selling’ Game was previously held on Steem but was cancelled because of lack of participation and insufficient payouts from posts to cover the prize money. When the contest was run 2 years ago, I only had 20,000 Steem Power and I was unable to find a sponsor. Now the ‘Buying and Selling’ Game will be run on Hive where I have around 150,000 Hive Power to support prizes. As I power down my Steem account, I will be able to support these contests with even more Hive Power.
I believe it is a good time to bring back the ‘Buying and Selling’ Game. Hive is a new blockchain but it has the community of a much older blockchain (i.e. Steem). Hive is also receiving quite a bit of attention from external media in the cryptocurrency world. This attention should translate into more users. The price of Hive is also on an upward trend and it has already achieved a higher market cap than Steem in a very short time. With the Bitcoin halving just around the corner, it is likely that many cryptocurrencies will experience an increase in price in the near future. A higher price will make Hive more attractive to new users. On top of that, there is also the likely economic crisis triggered by Covid-19. There is a good chance people will join Hive to obtain additional income to support themselves during these difficult times.
What is the Buying and Selling Game?
I have previously described the ‘Buying and Selling’ Game in my posts Buying and Selling Game Model and Looking for sponsor for ‘Buying and Selling Game’ contest and YouTube versions of results.
As the name suggests, the game involves hypothetical buying and selling of goods. A participant chooses from 6 possible goods to buy from 5 different places with an allocated amount of money. The participant can choose to use all the allocated money or just some of it. The buying price is given in the question but the selling price is not. Instead, the question will provide a minimum, maximum and mode selling price for each good at each place.
A Microsoft Excel Model is used to generate prices between the minimum and maximum price using a triangle distribution. The mode price is used to determine the shape of the distribution. For example, if the mode price is closer to the maximum price, there is a higher probability that the randomly generated price will be closer to the maximum price than the minimum price. Figure 1 contains an example of the range of prices generated by the model.
Figure 1: Range of possible prices generated by the model
In the example, a participant buys a good for $30 from a selected place. Later the participant must sell the same good at another place. The place the participant has chosen to sell the good has a mode price of $40, a minimum price of $20 and a maximum price of $50. The probability that the price will be higher than $30 is equivalent to the Area B in the triangle. The probability that the price will be lower is equivalent to the Area A in the triangle. In the game, the participant has the choice of selling at any of the 6 places and each place will have a different distribution of possible prices.
The participant with the highest profit after selling their goods wins the game.
To make the game simple, transaction and transport costs have been excluded.
The results of the contest are announced in a post containing a video generating the prices.
Let the contest begin
For this contest, participants have been allocated $100,000 to buy 1 or more furniture items from any of the 5 fictitious places. These places are as follows:
- Bright Town
- Cardinal Town
- Rich City
- Harbour City
- Modern City
The furniture items are available at all 5 fictitious places. The available furniture is as follows:
- Arm Chairs
- 3-Seater Sofas
- 2-Seater Sofas
- Coffee Tables
- Recliners
- Foot Rests
Note: all furniture items are identical within the same category. For example a coffee table sold in Bright Town is identical to a coffee table sold in Harbour City.
Table 1 contains the prices of the furniture items at each place.
Table 1: Prices of Furniture at each place
Note: All furniture can only be bought as whole pieces. For example, a participant could only buy 555 3-seater sofas from Rich City, as there is insufficient money to buy the 556th 3-seater sofa.
After buying the furniture, the participant must then sell all the furniture they have bought. However, the participant must commit to selling the furniture before the price is known. The participant is aware of the possible range of prices for each place. This information is provided in Tables 2, 3, and 4 for all 5 places.
Table 2: Minimum, maximum, and mode (Bright Town & Cardinal Town)
Table 3: Minimum, maximum, and mode (Rich City & Harbour City)
Table 4: Minimum, maximum, and mode (Modern Town)
Prizes
The winner of the contest will receive 10 Hive. If there are several participants with the same profit figure, the winner will be awarded to the participant who entered first (commented). In addition to the winner’s prize, 10 entries will receive an upvote. Please take this as even more incentive to participate in this contest.
How to enter
Each participant is only allowed one entry into this contest. All entries must be in the form of a single comment, see example below:
Buying
Name of Place: Rich City
Good purchased: Foot Rests
Number purchased: 2,000
Amount spent on good: $100,000
Selling
Name of Place: Bright Town
The closing date and time for this contest is 6PM coordinated universal time (UTC) 11/05/2020. Responses after this time will not be accepted. The answers will be provided in the results post along with the video of the generation of prices using the model.
I hope everyone has fun and enjoys this contest.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments section.
More posts
If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These posts will be updated frequently.
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