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I'd prefer if they got rid of it altogether, but I can understand that they want to give everyone a chance of winning something at least once during the year and share the prizes around a bit.

Also, as they are now giving extra guesses in the guessing comp down to 50th position it is unlikely that anyone using the site on a daily basis will miss out on that opportunity.

What I would love to see happen, is for people to stop using catch phrases "going forward," at the end of the day, laugh out loud, in saying that, you want fries with that, have a nice day, bro!

@spyglass Thanks for your comment! Yes I think the extra guesses in the guessing comp is a good change and hope that continues.

@spyglass I've only received 2 second guesses this month.

Hi @Annaar, with the guessing game the extra guesses are applied the following month. So if you placed in the top 20 in June you should be getting extra guesses this month. And if you place in the top 50 in July you will get an extra guess every day in August.

Yes, everyone with birthdays during the month will have a much bigger chance of winning now. I don't see anything wrong with that as the leaderboard should be friendly place for all and there are plenty of competitions out there. I'd like to see the leaderboard extended to show the first 50 and hope that people will still stay active or even more active in the forum. :)
Anyone else have any thoughts?

@fourleaf Hmmmmm .... trying to channel nice thoughts.

Given 5 birthdays in a month with a bonus 50 points and 50 members, what do you think the rough chance for the ALL members without a birthday, anyone of them winning a prize? I.e for first, second or third.

Without any bithday bonus each member would roughly have a 6% chance of winning a prize each month.

Any guesses? Will post the simulated results tonight.

@fourleaf With the current system of 50 bonus points for a birthday be very tempting that duplicate accounts appear.

@Lemond, Yes the chances of a place are low....and let's hope any duplicate accounts or amended birthdays get picked up by admin -I'd hope they would have a system to pick this up.

@fourleaf How low can you go? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTKj_Vd5_Bk

If it isn't your birthday month you need to be a wafer thin mint to get under the limbo stick to win!

Generally I like the changes for reducing the random daily points to 10 as it puts emphasis on viewing the competitions posted. The current birthday bonus of 50 points however, "may" need to be adjusted or scrapped.

If it's your birthday month what would you think would be reasonable odds to win a prize given the following example of 50 members and 5 with a birthday?

I've updated a spreadsheet to reflect the changes to the leader board competition to simulate the approximate chances of winning a prize for birthdays and non birthdays. Will post up the statistics for the chances later today. Thou from this month results it's typical what to expect.

Spoiler! The approximate chances for the example above between ALL of the 45 members getting a third prize when it isn't their birthday month is about once a year!

I've got a friend whose birthday is this month and she's not even in the top 3 cos she has had low points every day. I think Birthday points need to be scrapped as it is definitely unfair to all other ppl for that month...I personally liked the other system, of 1-50 points random, much more fun (or frustrating lol) maybe they could scrap the birthday points and do random points of 1-30 per day. Either way it's just for fun and an additional bonus to a site already finding comps for us and saving us heaps of time, just hope they amend it so it is fairer for everyone as it is one of my favourite things to try to climb the leaderboard.

Yes, 50 points for a birthday is a big chunk of the total now. Maybe 20 or 30 points might make everyone feel they might still be in the running...@Lemond looking forward to seeing your results!

@fourleaf Just making some minor changes to the spreadsheet to allow for multiple types of analysis at once. I was looking into what birthday bonus might be reasonable to compare a bonus of 0, 50 and random (1-20) bonus.

Possibly a random birthday bonus in a range (10-25) might be a reasonable solution. I think anything over around 20 is too high looking at the spread of values. Once you start getting over 4 birthdays in a month and giving a too high of a bonus it basically locks out everyone else having any chance. I'm thinking a random birthday bonus might even it out a touch as 50% of them (2-3) would have a bonus from (17-25). It's a fine balance with the birthday bonus for what is a reasonable. Overall thinking for the birthday group a 50% chance is more then "fair".

I have also done a spreadsheet of the the expected scores for each rank for a month excluding birthdays this might give a better indication what could be an appropriate birthday bonus. Each rank position would be roughly equate to 2%.

The snapshot of the simulated average scores for each rank generated from 100 trails.
given: 31 days, 50 members, 10 daily random points,

Rank   Median Min Max
1    206       190    241
2    200       185    218
3    197       184    209
4    194       183    204
5    192       182    200
6    190       181    198
7    189       181    196
8    187       180    196
9    186       178    193
10    185       177    193
11    184       176    193
12    183       175   193
13    182       173    190
14    181       172    189
...
49    141    126   150
50    134       116   149

The average monthly score is 170 to 171 i.e. (10+1)/2*31 = 170.5 .
Now as an average score is 171 if got 5 of more birthdays good chance are 2 will be above the average of 171 which clearly top the ladder. For the one case in the simulation that came equal first the score was 217. So in that case all 5 birthday scores were below the average and the winning total was well average it's average. Odds of that (0.5^5) = 3.1%. or once every 32 months. Note however the average winning score is 206.

Notes maximum for rank 1 possible is 300 and rank 50 would be 31. Scores/chances taper dramatically at at 220 and 120.

I have done a simulation of 200 trails for the top results.
Given:
50 members
5 Birthdays in a month
10 daily random points
31 days

Number of Prizes
Birthday Non Birthday Total
1st: 209 1 210
2nd: 196 3 199
3rd : 180 20 200
Total 585 24 609

Birthday Breakdown for the 5 members
1st 2nd 3rd Total
P1 36    32    40    108
P2 40    53    27    120
P3 47    36    37    120
P4 44    27    40    111
P5 42    48    36    126

Overall Chance for a month Birthday V Non Birthdays
Birthday Non Birthday
1st: 99.5% 0.5%
2nd: 98.5% 1.5%
3rd : 90% 10%
Avg 96% 4%

For an individual Birthday V Non Birthdays
Birthday Non Birthday
1st: 19.9% 0.01%
2nd: 19.7% 0.03%
3rd : 18% 0.22%
Avg 19.2% 0.09%

Birthday Rank Top 5
Rank Total 2 equal win 3 equal win Total
1    192 7 1          200
2    180  8 0          188
3    166    7 0          173
4    157    8    0          165
5    103    3    0          106

Non Birthday
Rank Total 2 win 3 win
1    1# 0 0
2    3 0 0
3    20 0 0
4    35 0 0
5    85 0 0

Overall
Rank Total 2 win 3 win Total
1    191    8    1       200
2    183    8    0       191
3    182    9    0       191
4    174    17    0       191
5    171    11    1      183

Maximum of three* prizes per month awarded i.e if three first places then no other prizes; two first places then next prize was 3rd awarded. This is why the number of prizes for 2nd and 3rd are less then 200. Modifying it to award all 3 prizes has a minor overall impact on non birthdays. *One case of 4 prizes for month with 2 third place for birthday month.

Notes:
#For the one winner for non birthdays there was a shared winner with a birthday winner.

@fourleaf @admin Regarding duplicate accounts there was one suspicious new account last month. A bit of a coincidence joined on the first of the month, it was their birthday month, had no issue with the nuances of the first day, had the most viewed competitions for the month and since end of last month gone quiet. The naming of the profile also seems 'familiar'.
Now could be a logical explanation for all those coincidences.

For a new member they seemed very adept with the site and any nuances.

Nothing wrong with joining on your birthday month and going quiet until their next birthday. The new system of 10 random daily points for the leader board and having 50 birthday bonus points could encourage new members to join up on their birthday month, then possible go AWOL for 12 months. Also existing members more likely to drift off as their is virtually no chance in non birthday months. I would imagine it would be very tempting for members to create "birthday" accounts.

Some things to note which could just be statistically variability, there were a high proportion of birthdays on the leader board then usual last month. On average would expect 1/12 members. The new system probably had the effect of discouraging existing non birthday members. Just a rough observation for members that got all the daily points for the month.

@lemond, @admin :) Yes I noticed, let's hope it was a coincidence. My concern is that people can also change their birthday on existing accounts as well. I'm sure it will be picked up and the first three on the leaderboard checked.

@fourleaf
Last month was dropping that hint regarding that profile. Not surprised it's gone quiet since the end of the month after being so active. The current system promotes that. One of negative consequence of having such a biased system.

I didn't realize you could update your birthday details. Hopefully that would be easily picked up if a log of updates to the profile are recorded. It would be interesting what type of checks are done. If determined enough could get around most of the common methods. Using statistics might highlight any abnormalities or connections between suspected accounts. It would depend on what sort of logs are kept and how long. Like I stated could be coincidence or a link to an existing profile. Note doesn't mean it's a duplicate account could be a logical explanation.

Do they ask for proof of ID when you win? That should deter most forms of circumventing checks.