TOPIC: Pre GameHole Con Auction - FUNDED!

Steven wrote: Y would bidder b keep bidding against the same pyp. When pyp 2 goes to 80$ and there is a 75$ pyp out there would his bid then go against that one ?

Exactly - they wouldn't.

kurtreznor wrote: But they arent bidding on the same item. Once the person is winning a bid at 105, they arent bidding on any of the other PYPs. Only if a bid is losing, does it run the gamut and raise all the bids. A winner gets locked in at the lower of 'their max OR 2nd highest plus increment'. If you insist on all bids being equal, then that means that person is winning one PYP at 105 and all the others have NO WINNER because noone else has bid that much.

I'm not sure why you're saying "if you insist on all bids being equal...all the others have NO WINNER" that but it's not accurate.

First off, for clarity, its not the bids that are equal, the bid is how much the bidder is willing to pay, it's the final prices that are equal.

Here is how it works:

1. You sort all bids from highest to lowest.

Alice - 1 at $105
Bob - 32 at $100
Cindy - 32 at $75

2. You allocate winning bids starting with the highest bidder and going on down the list, breaking ties on equal bids based on who bid first, until all PyPs are allocated.

Alice gets 1
Bob gets 31

Now we're out of PyPs to allocate.

3. You set the price on all of the winning bids to either the lowest price of any winning bid, or to the price of the next bid that didn't win - or maybe one increment above that (up to you, there are slightly different properties in terms of the final price as you can see below):

Final price on all PyPs is either $100 (lowest amount for bids submitted in step 2), or $75 (next lowest price after all bids from step 2 are considered), or $80 (one increment above the next lowest price from all bids at step 2).

By they way, I'm not saying: "this is the only right way to run an multi-item auction."

I'm saying:

a. This is a typical way to run a multi-item auction.

b. eBay has absolutely no protocol for how to run a multi-item auction, so we don't know how they auctions here are being run, since all we know is that they are being run "eBay style" - but ebay doesn't run multi-item auctions.

I'm a little bit to blame for this confusion, as I wrote the original rules summary text that everyone keeps copying into their auctions and has been used in the base note here (with slight modification). At the time I wrote it I mistakenly believed it was simple to apply eBay auction rules to multi-item auctions - I rapidly learned it was not.

Finally, I really urge you to try to apply whatever bidding logic you think is at work here to a real world scenario for a multi-item auction - I think you will quickly realize it leads to impossible situations where it's not clear what to do with the bids, and it's not clear what rules you should be following.

Example. there are 32 PyPs:

A bids $100 on 17
B bids $105 on 17
C bids $5 on 32
D bids $105 on 1
E bids $75 on 4, and $90 on 3, $100 on 2, and $110 on 1
F bids $1000 on 2
G bids $55 on 8

Who is winning what and at what price? And why?

I.e. if you think there is an easy way to run an auction like this, please supply the procedure for resolving the above bids, so we can examine it and see if it make sense.

Hmm, i think what people are asking for is to set the current bid of ALL 34 PYPs equal to lower of the 34th highest bid OR 35th highest bid plus increment. Note: bidding on all PYPs counts as 34 bids, so doing that would basically set a floor on the price.

Basically, yes.

Steven wrote: Y would bidder b keep bidding against the same pyp. When pyp 2 goes to 80$ and there is a 75$ pyp out there would his bid then go against that one ?

Ah, so you suggest that a bid of 105 should be treated as a series of bids starting at current min in increments up until winning or max bid, thus increasing all other bids to match.

Ie. A bid of 105 starts as a 75 bid, if that doesnt win then 80, then 85, 90, 95, 100, and finally 105 where it is finally winning.

That does seem to make sense.

First off, +1 to everything Wade has contributed to this discussion, completely agree with that.

Secondly, I kinda feel like we've moved from discussing the auction at hand into the territory of what should be an entirely separate thread regarding running auctions?

Matthew Hayward wrote:

kurtreznor wrote: But they arent bidding on the same item. Once the person is winning a bid at 105, they arent bidding on any of the other PYPs. Only if a bid is losing, does it run the gamut and raise all the bids. A winner gets locked in at the lower of 'their max OR 2nd highest plus increment'. If you insist on all bids being equal, then that means that person is winning one PYP at 105 and all the others have NO WINNER because noone else has bid that much.

I'm not sure why you're saying "if you insist on all bids being equal...all the others have NO WINNER" that but it's not accurate.

First off, for clarity, its not the bids that are equal, the bid is how much the bidder is willing to pay, it's the final prices that are equal.

Here is how it works:

1. You sort all bids from highest to lowest.

Alice - 1 at $105
Bob - 32 at $100
Cindy - 32 at $75

2. You allocate winning bids starting with the highest bidder and going on down the list, breaking ties on equal bids based on who bid first, until all PyPs are allocated.

Alice gets 1
Bob gets 31

Now we're out of PyPs to allocate.

3. You set the price on all of the winning bids to either the lowest price of any winning bid, or to the price of the next bid that didn't win - or maybe one increment above that (up to you, there are slightly different properties in terms of the final price as you can see below):

Final price on all PyPs is either $100 (lowest amount for bids submitted in step 2), or $75 (next lowest price after all bids from step 2 are considered), or $80 (one increment above the next lowest price from all bids at step 2).

By they way, I'm not saying: "this is the only right way to run an multi-item auction."

I'm saying:

a. This is a typical way to run a multi-item auction.

b. eBay has absolutely no protocol for how to run a multi-item auction, so we don't know how they auctions here are being run, since all we know is that they are being run "eBay style" - but ebay doesn't run multi-item auctions.

I'm a little bit to blame for this confusion, as I wrote the original rules summary text that everyone keeps copying into their auctions and has been used in the base note here (with slight modification). At the time I wrote it I mistakenly believed it was simple to apply eBay auction rules to multi-item auctions - I rapidly learned it was not.

Finally, I really urge you to try to apply whatever bidding logic you think is at work here to a real world scenario for a multi-item auction - I think you will quickly realize it leads to impossible situations where it's not clear what to do with the bids, and it's not clear what rules you should be following.

Example. there are 32 PyPs:

A bids $100 on 17
B bids $105 on 17
C bids $5 on 32
D bids $105 on 1
E bids $75 on 4, and $90 on 3, $100 on 2, and $110 on 1
F bids $1000 on 2
G bids $55 on 8

Who is winning what and at what price? And why?

I.e. if you think there is an easy way to run an auction like this, please supply the procedure for resolving the above bids, so we can examine it and see if it make sense.

Hmm, i think what people are asking for is to set the current bid of ALL 34 PYPs equal to lower of the 34th highest bid OR 35th highest bid plus increment. Note: bidding on all PYPs counts as 34 bids, so doing that would basically set a floor on the price.

Basically, yes.

Clarifying E's bids above, does E want total of 10 if the price is right, or a total of 4, or some other number?

Once that's answered, I can answer how *I* would do it. Not necessarily a "right" way

Also, happy to discuss in a different thread.

And yes, Matthew, I did copy your text, as I feel it is reasonable, accurate, and specific. I saw no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

kurtreznor wrote: But they arent bidding on the same item. Once the person is winning a bid at 105, they arent bidding on any of the other PYPs. Only if a bid is losing, does it run the gamut and raise all the bids. A winner gets locked in at the lower of 'their max OR 2nd highest plus increment'. If you insist on all bids being equal, then that means that person is winning one PYP at 105 and all the others have NO WINNER because noone else has bid that much.

I'm not sure why you're saying "if you insist on all bids being equal...all the others have NO WINNER" that but it's not accurate.

First off, for clarity, its not the bids that are equal, the bid is how much the bidder is willing to pay, it's the final prices that are equal.

Here is how it works:

1. You sort all bids from highest to lowest.

Alice - 1 at $105
Bob - 32 at $100
Cindy - 32 at $75

2. You allocate winning bids starting with the highest bidder and going on down the list, breaking ties on equal bids based on who bid first, until all PyPs are allocated.

Alice gets 1
Bob gets 31

Now we're out of PyPs to allocate.

3. You set the price on all of the winning bids to either the lowest price of any winning bid, or to the price of the next bid that didn't win - or maybe one increment above that (up to you, there are slightly different properties in terms of the final price as you can see below):

Final price on all PyPs is either $100 (lowest amount for bids submitted in step 2), or $75 (next lowest price after all bids from step 2 are considered), or $80 (one increment above the next lowest price from all bids at step 2).

By they way, I'm not saying: "this is the only right way to run an multi-item auction."

I'm saying:

a. This is a typical way to run a multi-item auction.

b. eBay has absolutely no protocol for how to run a multi-item auction, so we don't know how they auctions here are being run, since all we know is that they are being run "eBay style" - but ebay doesn't run multi-item auctions.

I'm a little bit to blame for this confusion, as I wrote the original rules summary text that everyone keeps copying into their auctions and has been used in the base note here (with slight modification). At the time I wrote it I mistakenly believed it was simple to apply eBay auction rules to multi-item auctions - I rapidly learned it was not.

Finally, I really urge you to try to apply whatever bidding logic you think is at work here to a real world scenario for a multi-item auction - I think you will quickly realize it leads to impossible situations where it's not clear what to do with the bids, and it's not clear what rules you should be following.

Example. there are 32 PyPs:

A bids $100 on 17
B bids $105 on 17
C bids $5 on 32
D bids $105 on 1
E bids $75 on 4, and $90 on 3, $100 on 2, and $110 on 1
F bids $1000 on 2
G bids $55 on 8

Who is winning what and at what price? And why?

I.e. if you think there is an easy way to run an auction like this, please supply the procedure for resolving the above bids, so we can examine it and see if it make sense.

Hmm, i think what people are asking for is to set the current bid of ALL 34 PYPs equal to lower of the 34th highest bid OR 35th highest bid plus increment. Note: bidding on all PYPs counts as 34 bids, so doing that would basically set a floor on the price.

Basically, yes.

Clarifying E's bids above, does E want total of 10 if the price is right, or a total of 4, or some other number?

Once that's answered, I can answer how *I* would do it. Not necessarily a "right" way

Also, happy to discuss in a different thread.

And yes, Matthew, I did copy your text, as I feel it is reasonable, accurate, and specific. I saw no reason to reinvent the wheel.

E is bidding on 10 different PyPs.

I’m not in any way concerned about people reusing the auction rules, other than being a bit chagrined to have coined the “eBay style” phrase as pertains to multiple item auctions.

Azzy wrote: First off, +1 to everything Wade has contributed to this discussion, completely agree with that.

Secondly, I kinda feel like we've moved from discussing the auction at hand into the territory of what should be an entirely separate thread regarding running auctions?

As a bidder in this auction on multiple items, I would like a description of how the bidding works.

The OP says they will be managed in an eBay style, but eBay doesn’t run this sort of auction so I don’t know what that means.

I would like Edwin to state how bidding works, with an example or two. I think that’s a reasonable request as someone with a few thousand dollars of bids submitted. This is not about trust - I trust Edwin - it’s about clarity.

I’ll be happy to move the more abstract discussion elsewhere if Edwin asks, although if it were my auction thread I wouldn’t mind this getting bumped to the top over and over.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

kurtreznor wrote: But they arent bidding on the same item. Once the person is winning a bid at 105, they arent bidding on any of the other PYPs. Only if a bid is losing, does it run the gamut and raise all the bids. A winner gets locked in at the lower of 'their max OR 2nd highest plus increment'. If you insist on all bids being equal, then that means that person is winning one PYP at 105 and all the others have NO WINNER because noone else has bid that much.

I'm not sure why you're saying "if you insist on all bids being equal...all the others have NO WINNER" that but it's not accurate.

First off, for clarity, its not the bids that are equal, the bid is how much the bidder is willing to pay, it's the final prices that are equal.

Here is how it works:

1. You sort all bids from highest to lowest.

Alice - 1 at $105
Bob - 32 at $100
Cindy - 32 at $75

2. You allocate winning bids starting with the highest bidder and going on down the list, breaking ties on equal bids based on who bid first, until all PyPs are allocated.

Alice gets 1
Bob gets 31

Now we're out of PyPs to allocate.

3. You set the price on all of the winning bids to either the lowest price of any winning bid, or to the price of the next bid that didn't win - or maybe one increment above that (up to you, there are slightly different properties in terms of the final price as you can see below):

Final price on all PyPs is either $100 (lowest amount for bids submitted in step 2), or $75 (next lowest price after all bids from step 2 are considered), or $80 (one increment above the next lowest price from all bids at step 2).

By they way, I'm not saying: "this is the only right way to run an multi-item auction."

I'm saying:

a. This is a typical way to run a multi-item auction.

b. eBay has absolutely no protocol for how to run a multi-item auction, so we don't know how they auctions here are being run, since all we know is that they are being run "eBay style" - but ebay doesn't run multi-item auctions.

I'm a little bit to blame for this confusion, as I wrote the original rules summary text that everyone keeps copying into their auctions and has been used in the base note here (with slight modification). At the time I wrote it I mistakenly believed it was simple to apply eBay auction rules to multi-item auctions - I rapidly learned it was not.

Finally, I really urge you to try to apply whatever bidding logic you think is at work here to a real world scenario for a multi-item auction - I think you will quickly realize it leads to impossible situations where it's not clear what to do with the bids, and it's not clear what rules you should be following.

Example. there are 32 PyPs:

A bids $100 on 17
B bids $105 on 17
C bids $5 on 32
D bids $105 on 1
E bids $75 on 4, and $90 on 3, $100 on 2, and $110 on 1
F bids $1000 on 2
G bids $55 on 8

Who is winning what and at what price? And why?

I.e. if you think there is an easy way to run an auction like this, please supply the procedure for resolving the above bids, so we can examine it and see if it make sense.

Hmm, i think what people are asking for is to set the current bid of ALL 34 PYPs equal to lower of the 34th highest bid OR 35th highest bid plus increment. Note: bidding on all PYPs counts as 34 bids, so doing that would basically set a floor on the price.

Basically, yes.

Clarifying E's bids above, does E want total of 10 if the price is right, or a total of 4, or some other number?

Once that's answered, I can answer how *I* would do it. Not necessarily a "right" way

Also, happy to discuss in a different thread.

And yes, Matthew, I did copy your text, as I feel it is reasonable, accurate, and specific. I saw no reason to reinvent the wheel.

E is bidding on 10 different PyPs.

I’m not in any way concerned about people reusing the auction rules, other than being a bit chagrined to have coined the “eBay style” phrase as pertains to multiple item auctions.

Ok, with E bidding on 10 different PyPs, I would sort it as this

All 32 will have been bid on

A wants 17, and is will to pay 100 apiece
B wants 17, and is willing to pay 105 apiece
If these were the only two bids, a would be leading 15 PyPs at 100, B would be leading 17 at 105

C bids, and doesnt take over any
D bids, and is now leading a PyP, leaving A with 14 at 100 and B with 17 at 105
E bids and is now leading 1 at 105 (with a max of 110), leaving A with 13 at 100, B and C unchanged.
F bids, taking control of 2, at 105 apiece (with a max of 1000), A now controls 11 at 100, B-E unchanged
G bids, nothing changes.

This is all because A and B combined wanted more than were available, so had to outbid one another. A's initial bid would have seen 17 PyP at $0.25, with 15 left at $0

If there were 34 PYPs available, the end result might look different.

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

kurtreznor wrote: But they arent bidding on the same item. Once the person is winning a bid at 105, they arent bidding on any of the other PYPs. Only if a bid is losing, does it run the gamut and raise all the bids. A winner gets locked in at the lower of 'their max OR 2nd highest plus increment'. If you insist on all bids being equal, then that means that person is winning one PYP at 105 and all the others have NO WINNER because noone else has bid that much.

I'm not sure why you're saying "if you insist on all bids being equal...all the others have NO WINNER" that but it's not accurate.

First off, for clarity, its not the bids that are equal, the bid is how much the bidder is willing to pay, it's the final prices that are equal.

Here is how it works:

1. You sort all bids from highest to lowest.

Alice - 1 at $105
Bob - 32 at $100
Cindy - 32 at $75

2. You allocate winning bids starting with the highest bidder and going on down the list, breaking ties on equal bids based on who bid first, until all PyPs are allocated.

Alice gets 1
Bob gets 31

Now we're out of PyPs to allocate.

3. You set the price on all of the winning bids to either the lowest price of any winning bid, or to the price of the next bid that didn't win - or maybe one increment above that (up to you, there are slightly different properties in terms of the final price as you can see below):

Final price on all PyPs is either $100 (lowest amount for bids submitted in step 2), or $75 (next lowest price after all bids from step 2 are considered), or $80 (one increment above the next lowest price from all bids at step 2).

By they way, I'm not saying: "this is the only right way to run an multi-item auction."

I'm saying:

a. This is a typical way to run a multi-item auction.

b. eBay has absolutely no protocol for how to run a multi-item auction, so we don't know how they auctions here are being run, since all we know is that they are being run "eBay style" - but ebay doesn't run multi-item auctions.

I'm a little bit to blame for this confusion, as I wrote the original rules summary text that everyone keeps copying into their auctions and has been used in the base note here (with slight modification). At the time I wrote it I mistakenly believed it was simple to apply eBay auction rules to multi-item auctions - I rapidly learned it was not.

Finally, I really urge you to try to apply whatever bidding logic you think is at work here to a real world scenario for a multi-item auction - I think you will quickly realize it leads to impossible situations where it's not clear what to do with the bids, and it's not clear what rules you should be following.

Example. there are 32 PyPs:

A bids $100 on 17
B bids $105 on 17
C bids $5 on 32
D bids $105 on 1
E bids $75 on 4, and $90 on 3, $100 on 2, and $110 on 1
F bids $1000 on 2
G bids $55 on 8

Who is winning what and at what price? And why?

I.e. if you think there is an easy way to run an auction like this, please supply the procedure for resolving the above bids, so we can examine it and see if it make sense.

Hmm, i think what people are asking for is to set the current bid of ALL 34 PYPs equal to lower of the 34th highest bid OR 35th highest bid plus increment. Note: bidding on all PYPs counts as 34 bids, so doing that would basically set a floor on the price.

Basically, yes.

Clarifying E's bids above, does E want total of 10 if the price is right, or a total of 4, or some other number?

Once that's answered, I can answer how *I* would do it. Not necessarily a "right" way

Also, happy to discuss in a different thread.

And yes, Matthew, I did copy your text, as I feel it is reasonable, accurate, and specific. I saw no reason to reinvent the wheel.

E is bidding on 10 different PyPs.

I’m not in any way concerned about people reusing the auction rules, other than being a bit chagrined to have coined the “eBay style” phrase as pertains to multiple item auctions.

Ok, with E bidding on 10 different PyPs, I would sort it as this

All 32 will have been bid on

A wants 17, and is will to pay 100 apiece
B wants 17, and is willing to pay 105 apiece
If these were the only two bids, a would be leading 15 PyPs at 100, B would be leading 17 at 105

C bids, and doesnt take over any
D bids, and is now leading a PyP, leaving A with 14 at 100 and B with 17 at 105
E bids and is now leading 1 at 105 (with a max of 110), leaving A with 13 at 100, B and C unchanged.
F bids, taking control of 2, at 105 apiece (with a max of 1000), A now controls 11 at 100, B-E unchanged
G bids, nothing changes.

This is all because A and B combined wanted more than were available, so had to outbid one another. A's initial bid would have seen 17 PyP at $0.25, with 15 left at $0

If there were 34 PYPs available, the end result might look different.

Here's the problem I see with this:

A's price on the items A won depends in part on what A bid, rather than being completely determined by the bids of other bidders in your scenario. If A had bid $95 they would be paying $95 - right? (let's pretend E didn't have 2 bids at $100 to avoid what is ultimately an irrelevant complication that does not undermine this point).

One of the core principles of an "ebay style auction" is that the price the winner pays does not depend on their bid at all, it only depends on other people's bid amounts.

So, I would not be super happy in this scenario to be A, and to discover that the reason why I paid $100 a token, instead of $95 a token, was because I bid $100 instead of $95 - and I would have won the same number of tokens in either case.


Again - I'm not saying "this is therefore a wrong way to run a multi-item auction!" - multi-item auctions are weird and hard to manage, there is no one "right way."

But for me, I'd want my auctions to have these properties:

A. The amount the winning bidders pay per item depends only on what other bidders bid, not what the winning bidder bid. (Of course the number of items a bidder wins depends on what they bid.)

This rules out the possibility of scenarios where:
* If a bidder had bid less, they would win the same items but pay less
* If a bidder had bid more, they would win the same items but pay more

This is true in an eBay style auction.

B. The order in which bidders bid does not matter at all, with the exception that when two bidders bid the exact same amount priority is given to the earlier bidder in determining who gets the winning items.

This rules out the scenario where non-identical bids being re-ordered leads to a different result in any way, either in terms of price or who is winning what quantities.

It also rules out any scenario where a winning bidder pays a different amount if one re-ordered identical bids (although such a reordering might change how many items they win, it wouldn't change what they pay on the items they won).

This is also true in an eBay style auction.

It seems to me they way you'd run this doesn't have property A, and I don't know if it has property B (it might, it's just not obvious to me that it does).

If A bids less, everyone pays less, until A gets completely outbid on all their items.

I can see your points though

Current total $6605.75

Goal $7,500.00

Percent 88%

Almost there, let's push it past the finish line.

PM Sent