Steam Summer Giveaway 2014

You don't get back points on games you don't win. If you do, then you might as well go all-in on your top-choice game right now. The choice is whether you go for a strongly contested game D1, or a less contested game D2 (or D3 or D4 etc.). There will be 40 players D2, assuming no vig kills, so it's a matter of how many competing points are removed D1 that determines whether D2 is an easier or harder environment.
Let's say, for instance, that you're deciding whether to jump in for Civ 5 now, or Rogue Legacy D2. And for the sake of simplicity, let's say that the current bets are final.

Right now there's 400 points on Civ 5 and 70 points on Rogue Legacy, so you have the option of having a 1/5 change of Civ 5 or some other chance in Rogue Legacy. The question is: what is that chance? You'll have 125 points D2, so if the bets stay as they are you'll have about a 64% chance of getting Rogue Legacy. But there will be empty-handed D1 players that might have Rogue Legacy as their second pick. And more D2 waiters that also secretly had their eye on Rogue Legacy jumping in. So considering those, you would need a total of 500 competing points before your odds of winning Rogue Legacy are also 1/5, and you could spring just as easily for Civ 5. That would be 17 players who went all-in D1 and hold only their 25 point daily stipend, or just three-and-a-half players who were waiting for D2 Rogue Legacy as well.

But if you're perfectly honest with yourself, you don't want Civ 5 and Rogue Legacy equally. To be thorough, you'll want to assign a utility to both games. Let's say for the sake of math, that since Civ 5 is $30 USD and Rogue Legacy is $15 (on steam, currently) you value Civ 5 twice as much as Rogue Legacy. In this case, it would take a 2/5 chance of winning rogue legacy, or roughly 187 total competing points before you'd rather have gone for Civ 5 over Rogue Legacy. And there's already 70.

For the record, 1875 points are currently tied up in bets, 975 of which belong to the current top 4. There are 4400 points in play this round. 1000 points are added to the game D2, 900 D3, 800 D4, and so on. If the day were to end today, there would be 3525 circulating points D2, plus 900 existing bets, which gives 4425 competing points D2. But if a few more points were spent on top 4 games today, D2 would be an easier environment for the theoretical Average Game. But given the heterogenous nature of the game, it's probably best to take some guesses as to how many of those more points will be on your game of choice D2.

And that's not even getting into strategies of bumping certain games into or out of the top 4.

Of course, it's important to remember this is just a fun family activity for forum folks. Puzzling out the pro strats and meta can be part of the fun for you, but if it isn't then don't sweat it! Also I just realized I forgot to account the chocolate pi votes, so the civ 5/rogue leg scenario is now For Demonstrative Purposes Only and is not intended to cure or treat any disease.