Go challenge
When asked by someone about my chance of beating you in go, you said it’s “basically zero”. And as if that wasn’t insulting enough, when asked about the exact number, you said “probably 1 in 40″ (for the curious reader — no, this is not Lee Changho we’re talking about, he’s not even a professional).
I’m not sure whether it was before or after, but the same person who asked you also asked me the same question, and I said 1 in 5. After rethinking it, I admit it might have been a bit on the optimistic side (not nearly as much as you though), but I’m not going to change it for following calculations.
Now that we have some numbers, we can find a fair middle value… x/5 = 40/x gives us x=14.142135624, so each of us is getting 2.828427125 times better deal than they wanted. And because I like you, I’ll make it 14. Sounds fair, doesn’t it?
You choose the time settings (I’m open to various possibilities, thought I probably wouldn’t like any of the extremes).
You choose the size of bets (when you win, you get 1, when I win, I get 14 — that’s fixed). Again, I’m open to various proposals, but it shouldn’t be ridiculously low (at least 2€ per unit) and it shouldn’t be ridiculously high (my budget for this experiment shouldn’t exceed 2k€).
I’d like to play at least a dozen games (possibly many more, basically as many as you want, as long as I’m within my budget
)
Also, I can assure you that since then, I haven’t studied go for more than 2 hours a week and I do not plan on increasing that.
There are several ways out for you (sorted by lameness):
- pretending you haven’t read this post (lameness factor 100%)
- saying you were joking (come on, there were people around and everyone saw you were being serious, lameness 95%)
- trying to bargain a better course (look, I’m not a businessman and I’m not going to bargain, if you win just one third of what you claim you can win, you’ll be fine; lameness 90%)
- coming up with an excuse (lameness ranging from 80% to 110% depending on the excuse)
- not enough money (first, you are going to win big, so this is not an issue, second, if by some chance you lost, I can wait and you pay with inflation corrected interest)
- not enough time (come on, as we all know, you are too smart to be able to get a job, so you have plenty of free time)
- any other lame excuse
- admitting that you were wrong AND that you are an arrogant asshole
(lameness factor 50%) - accepting the challenge (lameness factor 0%)
With love, always yours,
tasuki
PS: Feel free to respond here.
