BETTINGBOT

***** BETTINGBOT *****

BettingBot is a fun program designed to make Tomato tourneys even
more interesting for ICC members. It allows you to bet on players.
If a player you bet on wins, you receive "chips". You cannot buy
anything with them, but you get your initial 5000 chips for free.
We keep lists of people with most chips, people with most chips won
over a week and over a month. It is a fun competition and it is not
too easy to win chips!

*Basics of betting*

If you never used BettingBot before, type "tell BettingBot register".
This will add your handle to the database of gamblers and you will
receive your initial 5000 chips. *Careful!* You will NOT get more
chips later! You can type "tell BettingBot finger" to check your chips
and other stats. Before you start betting, it is recommended, though not
mandatory, to add the following aliases:

   +al tb tell bettingbot   
   +al q tell bettingbot quote

From there on, you can replace "tell BettingBot" by just "tb". This
is very useful, as frequently you will have little time to make a
bet! See "help alias" for more info on aliases. If you are unfamiliar
with Tomato tourneys, read "help tomato" also.

Try "tell 280 featured" now. This will cause BettingBot to send a
list of available ("featured") tourneys to channel 280, the betting
channel. If you see something like "Flash..Joining", you know that there
is currently a Flash tourney, and betting is possible. Next, type:
"q flash" (or, if you do not have the above aliases, "tell BettingBot
quote flash"). You will receive a list of players who are currently
in the Flash tourney (compare with "tell flash players"). Next to
each player, you see his *odds*. This is very important information!
If you see: Kiebitz 33 , you know that a 10-chips bet on player
Kiebitz yields a return of 33 chips. The higher the odds, the more
unlikely the player is to win. Note that the odds *change* over time.
The more chips are bet on a certain player, the lower are his odds.
You always receive the final odds.

Assume now, you think Kiebitz is likely to win the Flash, and you
want to bet on him. Then you just type (using your alias):
    "tb Kiebitz 10 chips"
BettingBot will send you a message confirming your bet. If it sends
an error message instead, you might have typed the username wrong (note
that abbreviations are *not* possible) or betting is already closed
in that tourney or you exceeded your betting limit (10 % of your
chips holdings).

You might want to do "tb openint" from time to time to check your
open bets. There are MANY more commands and possibilities, which I
cannot describe here. To see help on those, type: "tb help topics".
You get a list of BettingBot help topics. Say you want more info
on the history-command. Then type "tb help history".

BettingBot sometimes allows to bet on non-ICC tourneys also. You
see them when you type "tell 280 featured". If you see there, for
example: Linares(open) it means that you can bet on a chess tourney
in Linares. Just try "q Linares" then. You can bet just as if that
were a Tomato tourney.

To see the best gamblers on ICC, type "tb bestchips". "tb bestweek"
and "tb bestmonth" gives you the best in the running week or month,
respectively. Have fun and ask channel 280 if something is unclear.

[Kiebitz, 08/04/00]