Recently active topics in Hubdub

When an open market is clarified for meaning, Category Editors will post an 'official clarification' note at the bottom of the background information of the market.

So, keep an eye on the markets that you have predictions on for any clarifications of important topics, and happy hubdubbing.

I have 15 bets down on the question, Will the Dow close below 10,000 this year? Half of them are 3rd quarter, the other half are 4th quarter. There are so many they waste space on the screen. I have the same situation with many other bets that I've nibbled my way into over time. I'd like to be able to highlight several of them, then right-click on "consolidate these bets". (Or click a check box on each bet that says "Consolidate?" After two such check boxes had been clicked, those two bets would be consolidated. Then the user could add additional bets to the consolidated pile in the same fashion, if he desired.) I think this would be a popular feature with heavy players here.

In a comment on one of the questions, Markov wrote:
"I now only rarely wager on long term questions. I can make 10 good short term wagers with the same $ it takes to make 1 good long term wager and earn 10 times as much. IMHO the only time to do long term wagers is when you have too much $ to wager efficiently elsewhere (not my problem yet, unfortunately) or when you are highly confident you can get in and out real quick before the market stagnates."

In order to level the playing field, I suggest that bets on long-term questions be automatically placed on margin, with longer-term questions being more highly margined. Here's an illustration of the % of the bettor's cash that he would put up for questions of the following suspension dates:

Over 4 weeks: 70%
Over 6 weeks: 60%
Over 9 weeks: 50%
Over 12 weeks: 40%
Over 24 weeks: 30%
Over 36 weeks: 20%
Over 1 year: 15%
Over 2 years: 10%
Over 3 years: 5%

Margin calls would be applied automatically as questions moved, over time, into a higher-margin category, with the required amount being deducted from the player's cash reserve or, if that was insufficient, from deductions from his other bets, starting with the least margined.

There would be somewhere, perhaps atop the Predictions list, a running total of Margin Due Down-the-Road, perhaps shown as a bar-chart, to indicate the dates and amounts due at each point down the road.

The bettor would be alerted one week before any margin call with a "pinned-to-the-top" notice of his Predictions and Dashboard screen--and maybe others too. He could, by clicking on that notice, have the margin call satisfied immediately. That would allow him to specify if he'd like the margined bet itself to be reduced to satisfy the call, or which set of bets he'd like to reduce to supply margin-cash, in case he didn't want them all reduced by an equal percentage. He'd do this either by highlighting them, or by manually cashing in some percentage of each bet in advance of clicking the "collect margin" button.

(This percentage-bet-reduction would be a desirable feature on its own, instead of forcing the bettor to cash in a bet in its entirety and then reenter the bet at a smaller amount, which is a bit annoying and inconvenient.)

If participants can't meet a margin call, their margined bet would be cashed out at that point--or reduced to a size their resources can support.

In rare cases it might happen that a bettor would go into the red. (For instance, if a large, highly margined long term bet or bets happened to be settled against the bettor long before its suspension date.) But, since this is a game, I guess the bettor could be allowed to continue to play even with a negative balance. Alternatively, long-term bets could be divided into two categories: those subject to being suddenly settled if some event occurs, and those that must run until their termination date. The amount bet on items in the former category could be limited, in order to prevent bettors from suddenly going into the red.

Or some other formula could be employed to analyze the riskiness of a bettor's bets in relation to his reserves, to prevent him from allowing his entire account from getting too highly margined, all things considered. This is a complex subject that I'll leave to people who are getting paid to strain their brains about such matters.

Since only play money is involved, there should be no great wariness about the prospect of a few bettors getting overextended. The much greater risk is the unattractiveness of the whole Hubdub enterprise if long-term bets can't be margined, since they merely tie up capital and make the game no fun.

I suggest that users be given the option to opt out of the margin system entirely, as it will be sure to confuse or unsettle many participants initially. However, if they opt to join, I suggest that it work automatically (according to a list of time-spans and percentages similar to the one I provided above), for the sake of simplicity and consistency.

When I click on my list of 20+ active tabs (in Firefox) and scan the list for Hubdub, it's always too well camouflaged to find, because its gray "h" blends in with the gray text and the gray lines of the table-gridwork. I suggest you use a standout color for it, like orange.