| The Basics Food Club is a game of chance and luck. It's a great way to earn hundreds of thousands of points by basically doing nothing. However, the math and layout of the game instantly turn people away from it, and the idea of losing hard-earned neopoints can scare people. It's not hard at all once you try it out and learn how it works. This guide exists to, well, guide you through Food Club (called FC throughout this guide) and teach you how to bet on your own. Okay, let's start! Each day, a round is held where 20 pirates face each other in a food eating competition. There are 5 different arenas, and each arena holds 4 pirates. Each arena hosts many different types of foods, and the pirates have different favorites and allergies of certain foods. This can greatly affect the outcome of the winners. In each round, you can place a maximum of 10 different bets, using any combination of pirates from the different arenas. How much you can bet depends on how old your account is. The older the account, the more you can bet, and the more you can bet, the more you can win back. The formula for how much you can bet is Every betting period ends at 1:45 PM NST. The actual results are displayed at 2:15 PM NST, and a new round instantly begins. This is when you find out who won in the last round. This is important because this is when you can check out and collect your winnings from that last round. You can let your winnings build up for 7 days, but after 7 days, your winnings will simply disappear and you can never get them back. Unless you're going for a trophy, it's best to collect every day. That's a lot of information! Let's have a quick overview...
Now, your job is to bet on the winners and make a profit. But how do you know which pirates will win? Well, we'll cover that a bit later. First, we have to get you familiar with the layout of the game. |
| The Layout - Where is it? I think that one reason why FC isn't popular is because it's kind of hard to find. Here are a few ways to get to it:
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The Layout - What are all of these numbers? I'm sure another difficulty people face when starting out is where to begin. Once you've found FC, there's nothing you can do on the starting page. It's just a bunch of numbers concerning the pirates' wins, losses, strength, and percentages. That's why I feel that it is important to guide people through the layout of the game. I will be using pictures in some of these subsections, but I recommend clicking the links and following the instructions (especially if you are completely new to the game) for some hands-on experience. The links you click will be opened in new tabs. In doing this, you don't have to click the back and forward button over and reload pages. Let's begin. First, click here to go to the Pirate section. This is the main page that you're first brought to whenever you go to FC. It lists many statistics for all 20 pirates. Your main focus here is the pirate strength and win percentage. Weight has ZERO affect on the game, and number of losses and wins don't matter since we're looking at the win percentage anyways. Notice that you can click on each pirate's name to see what foods they like and dislike. |
The Layout - What are all of these foods? The next section is the Courses section. This just shows all of the food served in FC. Clicking on one of the foods shows you what that food is classified as. You shouldn't have to use this section at all, and I'll show you why a little bit later. |
| The Layout - Is this where we make bets? Next up is one of the most important sections in FC: the Place a Bet section. Now I won't teach you how to bet yet (that's coming later), but I will show you what all of these things do. Click on a dropdown list for one of the arenas. See how each pirate has a number next to it? Those are the odds. The lowest (and best) odd is 2:1, while the highest (and worst) odd is 13:1. Click on a pirate with 2:1 odds. However, you haven't officially chosen this pirate yet. Click the checkbox found to the left of that pirate. If you did it right, the box underneath the words "Total Odds" in the Winnings Calculator table should have 2:1 in it. Click inside the Bet Amount box and delete the 0. Type in 500. Now just click in any of the white space on the page. See how the Total Payoff changed to 1000? That's because 500 * 2 is 1000. Let's add another pirate to that bet. Click on another dropdown list and choose a 2:1 pirate. Remember to click the checkbox to the left of the corresponding pirate. Your Total Odds should now be 4:1, and your Total Payoff is now 2000. If you were to click the "Place this Bet!" button (DO NOT CLICK ON IT THOUGH!), that bet would be placed for you. If that bet won, you would win 2000 points. On to the next section! |
The Layout - Is this where my bets are displayed? The Current Bets section in FC lists the bets you have made for the current round. You may not have any current bets at this time though. This page is good for keeping up with pirates you have already bet on, as well as keeping up with the number of bets you have made. Remember, you only get 10 bets per round! |
The Layout - Where can we get our winnings? The Collect Winnings section should be checked once a day after a round has completed. You'll instantly know if one or more of your bets won because it will be listed here. If you have winning bets, a button will be displayed that says "Collect Your Winnings! |
The Layout - Is there a way to check my progress? Your Bet History is a nifty little place in FC. It keeps up with how many bets you've made, how much money you have spent on bets, and your total winnings. The best part is that it shows the difference, aka your profit or loss. If the number is green, then you have profited/made that much, and red means you have lost that much. |
The Layout - Is this the current round? The Next Round section shows you details of the current competition. Remember when I said that you wouldn't use the Courses section? Well, this page is the reason why. You can easily click on the listed foods that the pirates will be eating on this page. Since the pirates are provided too, you can click on them to see which foods they are allergic to and which ones are their favorite. Be sure to check out each arena - Shipwreck, Lagoon, Treasure Island, Hidden Cove, and Harpoon Harry's. |
The Layout - Who won last round? The last section is the Previous Round. The only purpose this page serves is to show you who won. Click through the various arenas to see which pirates out-gorged the others. This comes in handy when your bets fail because you can see which pirate sunk your bets. |
| The Pirates It will probably help you to get acquainted with these overeating competitors. This table shows them from strongest to weakest, and it lists their win percentages, favorites, allergies, and helpful facts that I and my fellow FCC'ers have noticed for each pirate.
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| How To Bet Here it is. The part of the guide you probably came here to see - How to Bet. Before we begin, let me make a few disclaimers.
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| How To Bet - Calculating Winnings You probably think it's weird to cover winnings before we go over betting, but knowing how much you will win on a bet is crucial to betting efficiently. The idea of betting smart is to make ten bets that cover as many combinations of winners as possible. With this in mind, you want a bet or multiple bets to hit that equal to 10:1 or higher. But why does it need to be 10:1 or higher? It's actually simple math. Let's say that you can bet a maximum of 2,000 points. Ideally, you want to bet the same amount of points per bet. So in all ten bets, you wagered 2000 points, for a total of 20,000 points spent altogether. Winnings are calculated by Bet Amount * (First Number Shown in Odds). If you hit a win of 10:1, you would get back 20,000 points (by 2,000 * 10), so you broke even. We want to profit though. If you hit 12:1, you would get back 24,000. You made 4,000 points by essentially doing nothing! But what if multiple bets win? Multiple wins are calculated like this: Bet Amount * (Odds added together). So, if you had a 4:1 and an 8:1 bet both win, you would get 12:1 back. Again, a 4,000 point profit if we used 2,000 on each bet. |
| How To Bet - How Odds are Determined I need to explain one more important thing you should consider before making bets - how odds are determined. They're mainly determined by pirate strength. This explains why Gooblah is almost always a 2:1 since his strength is an overwhelming 93. Secondly, food adjustment is taken into account. This is how weaker pirates, like Young Sproggie, can end up being a 2:1 with Gooblah in the same arena. The higher their food adjustment is, the better chance they have at winning. When pirates have negative food adjustment, their chances of winning decrease, making their odds higher. Lastly, the pirates' win percentage is taken into account. Sometimes, you might see a pirate with 3:1 or 4:1 odds when they should actually be much higher than that. This may be because that pirate has lost for a while and is due for a win. And just a heads up, but sometimes the odds may not make sense. I've seen a weaker pirate have lower odds than a much stronger pirate for no reason on multiple occasions. I keep up with win percentage too, and the pirate wasn't really due for a win. There may be a hidden factor that no one has figured out yet. It's probably just random though. |
| How To Bet - Finding Good Arenas Being able to pick out the right arenas to bet on is quite important in the betting process. To get us started, I'm going to use a scenario from a previous round and reference it throughout the next sections. Since drop down lists aren't allowed on petpages, we'll have to settle with a table.
This example shows an extremely good day to bet. Starting out, you want to try to find arenas where you can easily spot winners. Let's go through the list of arenas and discuss what we know about each one. Shipwreck: This arena looks pretty good. Gooblah has the clear advantage here, and as an added bonus, he's +2, which only makes him stronger! We also have Young Sproggie with +3. His strength is only 73, but +3 can boost him a bit. The two 13:1's are Ned and Stuff. Notice how Ned has a higher strength than Sproggie, yet Ned has much higher odds. That's how food adjustment plays a role. In all, our main focus of this group is Gooblah and Sproggie. Lagoon: This is a decent arena, but what makes it decent? Federismo is the strongest contender with 81 strength and +3. Tailhook is right behind him with the same strength, but +2 in food adjustment. Between these two, it's a complete tossup even though Fed has a slight advantage in food. Stripey only has +2 with 74 strength, so it will be hard for him to keep up with the stronger Fed and Tailhook. Sir Edmund is the pirate with the highest odd possible (13:1), and his -1 adjustment doesn't help. Treasure Island: In my opinion, this is a pretty bad arena to bet on. Usually any arena without a 13:1 pirate is bad. Bonnie has a bit of a lead since he's ten points ahead of the next strongest pirate. Crossblades is the second best here, partially because of his +3 adjustment. According to the odds, Orvinn is right behind Crossblades, but his really low strength of 52 can barely keep up with the others, even with +3. Puffo has the worst odds at 10:1, but he could still win since his strength is 68 (second highest in this arena). Hidden Cove: This is the best kind of arena you'll see. A 2:1 against three 13:1's (well, Blackbeard is basically a 13:1 here). In these types of arenas, you get a free multiplier for all of your bets. It's not guaranteed that Scurvy will win here, but he has a huge advantage in strength AND food. Blackbeard is the upset to watch out for since he wasn't a true 13:1. Harpoon Harry's: This is an example of a bad arena. Two 2:1's and a middle-odd pirate is never good. Buck has strength advantage, but Franch could catch up with +2 in food. Lucky could beat both of them since his strength isn't too far from theirs. Peg Leg could in fact pull an upset too. It's just too risky to try this arena out since no pirate(s) have clear advantages over the others. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Bet - Predicting Odds Changing This is a small subsection, but it's somewhat important. The odds can slightly change throughout the day. This may help or hurt you depending on what happens. Looking at our example above, we can see a few pirates that may change in odds. Blackbeard is the first I noticed. Usually 11:1 or 12:1 odds end up changing to 13:1 before the round is over. Secondly, Tailhook looks like he could change to a 2:1. This would hurt our winnings if we didn't take it into account. Third, the odds in Treasure Island look weird in my opinion. I expected a few of them to change later on (which they did), but it was hard to predict what they would change too. |
| How To Bet - Planning the Bets So we've figured out which arenas are good to bet on, but how should we place our bets? When planning the bets, keep in mind that you only get 10 bets. You also have to consider that your winnings need to be or add up to 10:1 or more so you don't lose any money. I'm going to walk you through the betting process using our example round, but remember that there are many different ways to go about betting in a round. There isn't just one right way to bet. We did a quick run-through of each arena and figured out which ones are good and bad. For these bets, I use Shipwreck, Lagoon, and Hidden Cove. Alternative sets could be Shipwreck, Treasure Island, and Hidden Cove OR all four of those. Now let's start betting! Bet #1 - Gooblah + Federismo + Scurvy. Odds - 8:1. This bet is simple. We chose the strongest pirates in each arena and pooled them all into one bet. It's under 10:1 though, so even if it hits, we lose money. Don't worry though, because our next bet will be a simple remedy to that. Don't forget that odds are multiplied together when making a bet, not added together! That's why this bet isn't 6:1. Bet #2 - Gooblah + Scurvy. Odds - 4:1. This bet fixes the problem of our first bet. Now if Gooblah, Fed, and Scurvy all win, we will make 12:1 instead of 8:1. Remember my explanation of winnings being added together? Bet #3 - Gooblah + Tailhook + Scurvy. Odds - 12:1. This one is a must because Tailhook VS Federismo is a complete tossup here. Even if Tailhook changed to a 2:1, our second bet would fix the 8:1 problem. Bet #4 - Gooblah + Ol' Stripey + Scurvy. Odds - 24:1. This safely covers Stripey in case he tries to pull a mini-upset (he is +2 after all). Plus, if it hits, you more than double your points. Bet #5 - Sproggie + Federismo + Scurvy. Odds - 28:1. This is where other possible ways to bet on this round veer off. Some people may have chosen to bet Sproggie + Scurvy, which is fine since it was 14:1. However, at the time that round occurred, Gooblah had won six days in a row. I knew he was bound to lose some time, so I made this bet. The next two bets support it. Bet #6 - Sproggie + Tailhook + Scurvy. Odds - 42:1. Again, we're hoping Sproggie upsets and beats Gooblah. This one helps cover the possibility of Tailhook winning. Bet #7 - Sproggie + Stripey + Scurvy. Odds - 84:1. Same as above, except we're covering the possibility of Ol' Stripey winning in Lagoon. Plus, if this bet actually hits, we win over eight times what we put in! Bet #8 - Blackbeard. Odds - 12:1. These last three bets could be pretty much anything. We could make some outrageous bets, or we could play it safe. In this instance, we play it safe. This bet is what we call a "safety bet." Blackbeard isn't a true 13:1 at this point, so he has better chances than Squire and Fairfax at winning. Notice how we didn't put a Gooblah as a multiplier because there is the possibility that he could lose. Bet #9 - Ned + Scurvy. Odds - 26:1. Here, we use Scurvy as a multiplier since he doubles the odds. We're almost 100% positive that Scurvy will win, so this isn't too risky. With Ned being a weird wildcard, he could pull an upset. Therefore, we've got him covered. Bet #10 - Gooblah + Sir Edmund + Scurvy. Odds - 52:1. This bet could be anything you wanted. If you wanted to be really safe, you could bet Stuff + Scurvy, or a single bet on Fairfax. Instead, we cover the possibility of an upset happening in Lagoon. It's very unlikely, but if it happened, we've still got a chance at winning. |
| How To Bet - The Results The hardest part is waiting for the results. Round results are given at 2:15p.m. NST, so don't forget to check! Oh, I guess it would be cruel to leave you guessing who the winners were in our example round. The winners were Sproggie, Tailhook, Bonnie Pip, Scurvy, and Buck. That means we won with bet #6, which payed us four times what we put in for our ten bets! |
| Betting Methods This section is a bit more for the advanced players. I originally scrapped the idea of showing betting methods due to time constraints, but due to requests, I have decided to add it. All betting methods are not listed here. These are just the most common (and uncommon!) ways you'll see people bet. Below is a table of these methods. If you use a strategy not listed here, and you feel like it should be, send me a neomail.
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Going for the trophy   This section is for all of you trophy collectors out there. It's short though because going for a trophy in FC is pretty straightforward. Remember, you only have 7 days to keep your winnings saved up for a round until they expire. The best time to start saving up is the 25th or 26th of each month. That gives you about a week to start saving for the very beginning of the next month. The best way to bet on these weeks is to bet extremely risky. Make sure you have plenty of points that you don't mind losing. This game has a lot of luck tied into it, so it may take you a few months to finally get it. Account age plays a significant role in getting an FC trophy too. The older the account is, the more that person wins back. Here's an example sent in by sachiboy: An example is the other day when Crossblades won and there were a few of us who won at 104:1. There was a 76 month account who won 479856 NP but my account which is 100 months old got 630656 NP. That could be the difference between getting a trophy and not getting a trophy. It's also possible to earn a trophy in the middle or end of a month if you win enough. If your style is to bet risky each day, then you have a slightly better chance at doing this. |
| Frequently Asked Questions Q: How many bets can I place? Q: Exactly when does the 7th day end to collect winnings? Q: Do I have to have the points on-hand, or does it take it from my bank account? Q: Oops, I accidentally placed my bet wrong. Can I take it back? Q: Numerically, how much does food add to strength? Q: Why don't you cover how to calculate food adjustment in this guide? Q: I read/heard/think that food doesn't even play a role in the game. Is this true? Q: Help! A round completed but I still have my current bets from last round! What happened? Q: Why should I play Food Club? Q: Did you make up that example round in the How to Bet section? Q: You don't have a trophy in Food Club. What makes you so qualified to make this guide? Q: Why not go for the trophy though? Q: Why do you always misspell "hidden" on your bets page? Q: Why did you make this guide? Q: If you're so against copying bets, then why do you post yours? Q: Why do you like Food Club so much? Q: Other games like poker and Yahtzee have statistics. What makes this more appealing than those? Q: So you know some stuff about programming. Do you have any idea of how the game runs? Q: Could someone find out how the game truly determines winners and inevitably guess all 5 pirates correct each round? Q: I sent you a friend request. Why did you refuse it? |
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