Arcade Fire

You will soon notice some style changes on the website. I'm going for a retro video game aesthetic. The dark, bold color choices you've seen so far were already a part of that. They're inspired by various "retro 8bit gaming" color palettes you can find floating around the internet. I'm aiming more specifically for early 1980s arcade machines. Think Galaga. 

This is part of my efforts to give Wajerleague a different style than real-money sports gambling websites have. When I first built Protect Your Unit, the aim was to be as realistic as possible, which I think it did very well. But with this new project, I want to keep the realistic gameplay, but make the graphics more game-like.

Check this out:

This is a brand new product from Arcade1Up, a company that makes retro arcade cabinets for the home.  I have one, and it's great. This is also a brand new product line for them; it's a home slot machine.

If you've been in a casino in the last 20 years, you've seen a real Wheel Of Fortune slot machine. They're in any place that has slot machines at all, just like Addams Family is in any place that had pinball machines at all.

I bring it up because this "Casinocade" device offers for slot machines what Wajerleague.com does for sports gambling: the opportunity to play a realistic casino game, against a worldwide online leader board, with no real money involved. Except that Wajerleague doesn't take up in space in your home and cost $600.

In all the time I've spent building Wajerleague this year, there's one question I've asked myself more than any other: "Is this a stupid idea?" protectyouru.net was a website I built to run a small sports gambling contest I could have run with Google Sheets. I started this project because I thought there was a larger audience for what that silly little website became to a lot of people. The fact that a company created and built this product, tells me I'm not the only one who believes in this idea.

Battle Bots and Meaningful Names

One new change will be the introduction of bots - automated players that make random choices, win and lose points, and occupy a place in the standings.

There are currently three bots: Marvin, Hal, and Art U. No bonus points for guessing what inspired each of their names. Marvin always plays the money line; Hal always plays the point spread; and Art U always plays over/under. They bet 1 unit on each game that is available. There will be more bots in the future; I've got an idea for a very annoying one, but I don't want to unleash it on the world yet.

Speaking of names, they all have an underscore at the start and end, like _Marvin_. This is to indicate that they are bots. And it's why Wajerleague.com doesn't allow underscores in usernames; they signify bots. 

The site also doesn't allow numbers in usernames, for three reasons:

1. Names with numbers in them are reserved for a future purpose, which I won't reveal yet.

2. L33t5p33k sucks.

3. It's bad for the narrative. Names should be, well, names - things a real person would call his or herself. In the pre-Wajerleague days, I used to enjoy writing little summaries of the action. It's fun to write "Larry  moved into first place" or "TigersNut made an unfortunate play on Baylor." They're fun to write and read. But I cringed every time I had to write something like "5k1pd00d won 178.4 units." Try processing that in your head. It's confusing. Numbers should represent values, and nothing else.

Because I'm big on narrative. A play-money sports betting web game isn't a novel concept. What is novel - and what surprised me about running this contest in the Daily Stampede days - is the little community that formed. PYU has long had little rivalries, running gags, and other very human experiences - none of which were directed by me. 

If anything, players didn't do what we wanted them to. The idea of "spite bets" never really caught on, even though it was an explicit rule. And, we even made up a convention for spite bets. It was to wager 1.01 units, which looked a bit like "LOL". This had a little success, and also helped in that it expressed its meaning. It was impossible to tell if a small bet meant you were taking a flyer on a longshot, or if you thought the favorite was so bad they might actually lose outright. Or both.

Rule Changes, And Why

Wajerleague evolved from the Protect Your Unit contest, an annual college football "play money" gambling contest I ran for the former SBNation network site thedailystampede.com (previously voodoofive.com). 

The other site owners ran the contest for a couple years, and I offered to take it over. Using my rudimentary web development skills, I built a website that would handle most of the play, keep score, and updating lines. I kept the original rule set the game had, back when it was handled by someone else on a Google spreadsheet. But after 9 years of experience running it - and since I'm rebuilding and expanding the whole thing anyway - I came up with some new ideas I thought would make the whole thing a better experience. 

Here's a detailed list of each thing that changed, and why:

BANKROLL AND WINNINGS SYSTEM

OLD: Start with 1000 units. Your score went up and down from there.

NEW: Still start with 1000 units, but it's divided into "bankroll" and "winnings." Only winnings count towards your score. Bets come out of your bankroll, until it is consumed. You may then continue to bet from your winnings, risking some of your score for a chance to build it higher. You start with a score of 0 and must build up from there. Score only increases when you win bets.

WHY: The old system had a perverse incentive. You could have a decent score by not betting at all, while everybody else lost. By assigning points only to actual wins, we remove that.

"IN PLAY" SYSTEM

OLD: You can bet 250 units or 25% of your total score each week.

NEW: You can have 250 units or 25% of your total winnings "in play" (made on wagers that haven't been resolved yet) at any given time.

WHY: This actually addresses two different problems, but I'll focus on the limits for now. The "25% of your score" limit gave an advantage to players who did well early. If they won 100 units in the first week, they could bet 275 in Week 2 while everyone else could only bet 250. This could snowball into a larger and larger advantage, which seemed to favor early winners too much. Players got behind and couldn't bet enough to catch up. Now you have to get your winnings over 1000. And if you do well enough to win more units than you started with, you'll have earned that advantage.

WEEKS

OLD: You can only bet games for the upcoming week, which is Tuesday to Monday in most cases.

NEW: You can bet any game at any time, as long as there is a line for it.

WHY: Managing "weeks" was a tedious, unnecessary chore. And it artificially limited the players' options.

MINIMUMS/ MAXIMUMS

OLD: Required 3 bets per week including 1 AAC bet, for 5-25% of your bankroll (using the old definition of bankroll). You had to bet every week or spend a bye.

NEW: The In Play system manages this.

WHY: Another tedious, unnecessary chore. I liked the concept of an AAC-specific blog requiring AAC-specific bets in their game. But since the game is now out of that environment, it no longer makes sense to require.

LINES

OLD: The best real-life -110 line for each wager is offered.

NEW: Lines are consensus of multiple real-life lines, and do not have to be -110.

WHY: The "line shopping" system had its charms. We could stack the deck in the players' favor by offering them only the best real-world line for each game. But when I decided to automate the whole thing, it became much easier to calculate a consensus line. Also, the old system prevented interesting decisions, like choosing between more points and a more favorable payout. That won't be immediately available, but it's a future task. (And boy howdy, do I have some ideas for alternative lines.)

BET MINIMUMS

OLD: Must bet 1 unit.

NEW: Must bet 1 unit and win at least ½ unit.

WHY: There were some wags who did hilarious things like bet 1 unit on a -100000 favorite. Which won nothing, since we rounded to the nearest .01. It struck me as a lazy way to meet minimum bet requirements. Which are gone anyway, but in a play money gambling game it makes sense to disallow zero-risk plays.

SCORING

OLD: The 1000 you started with, plus or minus whatever you won or lost.

NEW: Only winnings (not bankroll) count towards your score.

WHY: As above, this removes your incentive to hoard. The bankroll is intended for you to consume all of, and have no effect on your score. When it runs out, you may risk your winnings if you want to make more bets, but this carries a real penalty when you lose.

ROUNDING

OLD: Your score went to two decimal places.

NEW: Your score is your winnings, rounded down to the nearest ⅛.

WHY: I don't want people calculating their bet amounts to three decimal places. Your winnings will still be calculated to three decimal places, but tiny differences between 1000.125 and 1000.243 are irrelevant to the score. Both players would have 1000⅛ and be tied in the standings.

FUTURES BETS

OLD: Offered in pre-season.

NEW: Not offered.

WHY: This is mostly a function of ease. My data provider doesn't provide college football futures, so I won't offer them. In other games where they are offered, like the forthcoming NFL-based game, you'll be able to make futures bets any time in the season. This opens a range of new, complex strategies players can employ.

GAMBLETRON 3000

OLD: Offered a random game at -102 instead of the usual -110.

NEW: Removed.

WHY: There will be more varied line offerings as a whole, making this less useful. The idea was to drive action on non-AAC games, but since there is no more requirement to bet AAC games in the first place, it is also less useful for that reason.

STANDINGS

OLD: Finishing first in the money race (or, in 2021 and 2022, the points race) was the only thing that mattered.

NEW: You need to be aware of your position and strive to improve it, no matter where you are in the standings.

WHY: The new "spoons" and "hall of fame" systems - which will get their own blog post soon - will greatly improve this. In a play money game, there is no incentive to care how much play money you have. I think players lost interest in the race once they were too far behind to challenge for first place. The "points race" system, which assigned points for your place each week, helped keep more people involved, but still be improved further. My hope is that players will buy into to wanting to have the best overall score in Wajerleague, and will see the benefit in cutting bait on a season that isn't going their way. And since there will always be new contests starting, there's no reason to stay in a contest just to play. If college football isn't going your way, focus on pro football, or baseball.

About Wajerleague And This Devblog

Hello! This is the Wajerleague.com development team (myself), and I thought it would be helpful to have a development blog to keep visitors informed of development progress on the website, and solicit ideas from the public.

This project started as a contest for the former SB Nation website "The Daily Stampede" (called "Voodoo Five" earlier). This community had a bit of a gambling bent to it, so we had an annual college football handicapping contest called Protect Your Unit, inspired by the late Tampa broadcaster Chris Thomas. After a couple years of being run by email and spreadsheets, I built an app in 2014 that would do most of the dirty work: collect, calculate and offer lines; accept wagers; and keep score. Over time it became more sophisticated, and by 2022 I had greater ambitions for the project.

My goal became to build a home for play-money betting on all sports; make it more automated and more public-facing; and also downplay the more unsavory aspects of sports betting, while keeping it as realistic as possible. Real-money sports betting isn't legal everywhere, and some people may prefer not to be exposed to it. Play-money internet games were plenty popular during the age of Texas Hold'Em, so why couldn't they be again for sports betting? The real-money sites also offer such games, but I'm trying to "gamify" it a bit more - make it look more friendly and appealing, like a video game. Old 8-bit arcade games were my inspiration for the dark, colorful palette.

Yes, this is probably all goofy as hell, but it's a passion project for me. I enjoyed running the game, and a little culture developed among the 25 or so regular players that was fun to be a part of. My hope to attract an even larger community of such people, and offer almost every sports pick you can make in real life.