General Terminology
- positive arena - an arena where when you add up the odds, the total is less than one.
eg. Shipwreck What does this mean? Since the probabilities don't add up to one, you know that the pirates won't behave exactly like their posted odds dictate. So Ned has room to be 'better' than 2:1 odds (since odds can't go past 2:1 or 13:1), or 50% chance to win, for example. These arenas as a general rule make good primaries. The opposite would be negative arenas.
Young Sproggie (10:1)
Orvinn the First Mate (9:1)
Peg Leg Percival (5:1)
Ned the Skipper (2:1)
1/10 + 1/9 + 1/5 + 1/2 = 0.91111111... - negative arena - an arena where that aforementioned total is greater than one, and generally have 2:1 pirates that perform worse than their posted odds. Negative arenas make decent boosters, since you are expecting the 2:1 pirate to lose more often than win.
- primary arena - an arena where you will focus on the 2:1 pirate and place the majority of your bets on them. On a good day you'll have at least two to three primary arenas you can work with, and have bets made up of safeties to cover the non 13:1 openers, and the rest which focus on using those 2:1 pirates combined to 'boost' one of the remaining arenas.
- booster arena - an arena, generally one where the 2:1 has the least chance of winning, that you combine with the likely-to-win 2:1s from the primaries in bets. That's what someone means when they say they'll 'boost *arena/pirate name here*'.
- base/booster bet - a combination of just the 2:1 pirates in your primaries that you use to further enhance a win if the 2:1s pull through.
- safety bet - even if an arena is positive, as long as the pirate opens with better than 13:1 odds, it's generally a good idea to account for the possibility of them winning. A safety generally involves combining a 2:1 from one of your other primaries with the non 2:1 in that arena. So for the example above, you might use Ned against non 13:1s in another arena, and use that arena's 2:1 pirate against Peg, Orvinn, and Sproggie.
- upset - when a non 2:1 pirate in an arena wins
How to Follow a Bet Page
So how do we get from this:
and this:
..to this?
Yes I'm aware the last two look almost the same save for some colours, but work with me!!
A few popular bettors are listed/available from the Food Club boards on both Help Chat and Games Chat. How risky you want to go is entirely up to you. Younger accounts might find it more pertinent to go with riskier sets (in the 'nothing to lose, everything to gain' frame of mind), while older accounts can get the same, if not more profit, with safer sets. But conversely, older accounts can also gain immensely from betting risky =P. So it all boils down to comfort zone in the end.
The first image is the Place A Bet page (click to view). This is where you will be submitting your bets. Before you do, visit the Current Bets page to make sure that you're starting with a clean slate for the round in question, since most bettors will create sets that utilize the maximum allowed number of bets for the round (ten).
First make sure that you are on the correct round. Most bettors (see screenshots below) will make a note of which round it is they are betting for. You're looking for bets that will end around the soonest afternoon (currently ~2:50 pm NST) you encounter. Another way to tell is to open a few bet pages (or ask either of the boards) to see which round you should be betting for. Always go for the latest date. You can also try seeing if the pirates + arenas match the bets of the page you choose to follow, but sometimes pirates decide to hang out in the same arenas as they have previous rounds for kicks.
Once you've made sure your page is updated for the current round, you can start placing bets.
Your Bet Cap You can only place up to 8230 NeoPoints per bet, which is 50 + 2 for every day you have been playing Neopets (4090 days). Be sure to read through the rules before placing your bets!
Your bet cap is dependent on your account age. For the most part, I just bet my cap for each bet, save for the high odds bets that would win over 1m. You can win at most 1m from a bet. Suppose you had a 144:1 bet. 1,000,000/144 = 6944.44, or 6945 nps. If you bet more than 6495 nps, you'd still only win 1m, so in this case, you'd lower the amount you bet to 6945 (or if you've got a REALLY cute account age, you might be able to take a pirate off and make your set safer but still keep the winning amount the same.. *glares at Garet*).
If you have a super old account and your bet cap is say, 10,000 nps, the highest odds you would need on a single bet is 1,000,000/10,000 = 100, or 100:10. Any riskier and you'd still win the same amount of nps, because of the aforementioned 1m cap on any single bet. Sounds a bit limiting right? But, think of it this way. A 192:10, (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 12) is 960,000 for an account with a bet cap of 5000 nps. For an account that's got a bet cap of 10,000 nps, just a 96:10 (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 12---SEE YOU DON'T EVEN NEED THAT EXTRA 2:1 LOL) wins you 960,000. This goes into the whole older accounts can win just as well as younger ones, with a lot less risk discussion. A few rounds ago I won a capped bet of 192:1. However, this fared not much better than the 96:1's that Garet and his older account followers received. Moral of the story? If you see a high odds bet (or any that caps at 1m on a set), take a look and see if you can make the set a bit safer for the same profit. tl;dr: Pfft, account age!
Rambling over, here's the easy part!
Take the first bet on the bet page table..
And check the boxes for the arenas that have pirates in them (in this case, Lagoon, Treasure Is--all but Shipwreck)...
... and select the appropriate pirates from the dropdown menu.
Can't find the pirate in the appropriate arena? You're betting for the wrong round--wait for the bettor to update the page.
Put your Bet Amount (generally the bet cap we discussed above) and click anywhere...
... and click Place this bet!
And repeat nine times to get all ten bets in the set. Remember to make sure that you are checking and unchecking the appropriate boxes (I've made the mistake of forgetting to uncheck or change a pirate one too many times LOL) so that the bets match exactly the ones on the petpage. The order that the bets show up on your current bets page doesn't have to match the current bets page of your bettor--just make sure each one of theirs shows up on your current bets page and you'll be fine.
Understanding the Collect Winnings Page
The Collect Winnings Page is here. Each day, at approximately 2:45 pm NST or shortly after, the current FC round ends, results are posted, and a new round begins. If you don't see anything there, check the Current Bets Page here and see if there are still bets there for the round number on the bet page you followed (since Neopets' FC pages don't show the round number until after you've made a bet).
A few examples.
If there are bets that match the round number, the round has not ended and is still running. Keep checking until there are no bets left there. If BOTH pages do not contain anything for the current round, that means you did not win anything.
Sad day mann. But it happens
If all goes well though, you should see something like this:
I won this ~a week ago. A general rule of thumb most bettors follow is to use all ten bets they have available to make a set that maximizes profit and minimizes risk to something they are willing to bet at. Very rarely if ever will you see a bettor post a set that has less than ten bets.
Now for understanding the ratio. Take all the numbers to the left of the colon, add them up (our total is 28 in this case), and place them over the number of bets placed (ten), for a win ratio of 28:10 for Round 6108. What does this number mean? It means, of the 74020 NPs I invested this round placing bets, I won back 28/10 = 2.8 times that, or 180% profit. 0:10 is a bust (zero profit, all loss), 4:10 (or any total below ten) is a partial loss, 10:10 is break even (no profit, no loss), 20:10 is 100% profit, so on and so forth.
A second example:
Total all the numbers on the left, 12 + 4 = 16, and place it over ten again (based on the assumption that we're using ten bets in the set), for a result of 16:10 for Round 6109.
An aside: the NPs that you've won in each round stay in the Collect Winnings stay for a total of eight rounds, with the round you won them in as the first 'day'. After seven additional rounds have passed, the winnings will disappear at midnight (12 am) NST. So say I left my winnings for 6108 (which ended Jan 25th) sitting in my Collect Winnings page, I would have to collect by the end of the day on Feb 1st, the day round 6115 ends, for it to not disappear. When you collect, every round that is sitting in the table will be collected at the same time, and the NPs given to you.
Trophy Holds: Why have the eight round rule? When you collect winnings, your Total Winnings at the time you collect is your 'score', much like how you score say 805 on a flash game. Collecting can be compared to 'sending' your score, and if you are in the top 17 here when Game trophies are awarded, you get a nifty Food Club trophy. The Food Club trophy is pretty much a contest of who can win the most in eight rounds or less. Although, the tricky bit is that since your bet amount is tied to your account age, older accounts have it slightly easier. They can risk less and win just as much as a higher risk set from a younger account.
Now say you wanted to track your progress over time, over a week or something. Below are my winnings for the first week of February (I keep them noted in a spreadsheet):
| Date | Round | Winnings |
| 01Feb16 | 6115 | 18:10 |
| 02Feb16 | 6116 | 20:10 |
| 03Feb16 | 6117 | 0:10 |
| 04Feb16 | 6118 | 42:10 |
| 05Feb16 | 6119 | 0*:10 |
| 06Feb16 | 6120 | 28:10 |
| 07Feb16 | 6121 | 28:10 |
Same deal as above. Take all the numbers on the left (except for the *, which I use to indicate a day I would have skipped/not recommended betting), total them (total: 136), and divide them by the total number of bets placed (60), for a total of 136:60. So of the 60 bets I placed, I won 136/60 = 2.267 what I put in, or ~126.7% profit. I wish I did that well every week--ha. But the reality is you'll have good days, bad days, even good/bad weeks. Long term though, you are pretty much guaranteed some form of profit.
A response to someone asking about FC--I'll incorporate it into the guide eventually!
Hey! No worries :3. I saw that, but I had to run after I said my two cents @_@. Here's to trying to answer in a somewhat intelligent way :3.
First and foremost, thank you thank you! I think Garet's got a better record than me overall though, so if you ever want to try his bets out, they're at /~Boochi_Target. Both he and Lefty (/~Innocent) have been betting for quite a bit longer than me :P.
As far as a pirate's OPENING odds each round, many are in the school of thought that they're already calculated from FAs, strengths, likes and allergies, weights, etc.. You can sort of see that in a day where you'd get a 2/13/13/13 arena of sorts. Let me find one.. (I use an external tool--search daqtools, that has a very good archive of past rounds and a nifty place that can help you visualize your bets). 6511, Shipwreck. Ned (13:1), Fed (13:1), Gooblah (2:1), and Cross (13:1). Looking at win percentage, strength, and food adjustments alone, you'd think Goob would be a clear shot to win right? If you were betting a standard set (where you'd ignore the 13:1s for the sake of saving bet space since their chances of winning are low, and may even be below 13:1), it's a no brainer (and the most economical way to play) to ten bet Gooblah. You might give Federisimo a second glance since he does have a positive FA, as well as being what I like to think of as the pirates that are just below the all stars (Goob, Dan, and Buck), but ehh, if you don't have the room for it, it's not the biggest deal in the world. Sometimes we get creative with how we can fit bets in to cover every base we want to cover though =P.
Oh if you like spreadsheets you'll love Daq! See how that works out for you. Their percentages take a little bit to get used to, but you'll see many bettors referencing them, as they are a pretty good estimate of how well a pirate will perform that round based on their opening odds! It's definitely a good resource for visualizing your bets. As far as odds changes go, that's another topic. I don't think I covered it when I wrote the guide x). So the short story is that as bettors put their bets in, the odds might 'change' to reflect how favored that pirate is. Favored SOLELY by how the bettors have used the pirates, not that we're slipping them something under the table to make them *actually* more likely to win. Think of opening odds as *the* odds to follow when determining what to cover (so you'd cover a pirate that was 10:1 but turned 13:1 later, but wouldn't cover one that started at 13:1), and the changed odds as uhh.. solely affecting how much you get for payout (which can affect how you structure your bets though!). If you ever need the opening odds, I have them posted on my FC board on Help Chat, and they're on Daq for reference (and they'll note the changes in bolded to the right).
As far as gaining the intuition to make your own bets.. I'm guilty of learning the standard and not being creative about going around it. I guess a good general rule of thumb is covering what you want to/believe needs to be covered within the ten bets we are given. Standard is covering no upsets (the strongest 2:1s winning) and single upsets between anything with greater than 13:1 odds to win in the positive arenas, and boosting the arenas that are most liekly to upset. The premise is that you'll cover your bases for *if* your chosen arena upsets (unless you have one or fewer positive arenas, the latter being a strong candidate for a day to not bet at all). One positive is tricky, since any safeties you want to put on it (covering the 3:1s to 12:1s) may take more than one bet each. Two positives is.. alright, and there's usually a way to get at least a break even unless we're talking positive arenas with 3:1s (like the 2/3/13/13, and the 2/3/12/13, both pretty ehhh positives, though Garet has observed good things for the first, but bad things for the latter). Three positives will net you at least a 12:1 if you cover single upsets, but with three arenas in play, there's also a greater chance of double/multiple upsets. This is where, if safeties are positive, and the third strongest arena isn't too good, you'd consider the pyramid option that Garet talks about. Eventually, after knocking all the safeties out, you should be left with a handful of bets where you can use all the strongest 2:1s against an arena (or 'boosting' that arena) that has the strongest chance of a non 2:1 winner. And hopefully you'll either win on a cute safety, or have the positives pull through and win on a cute upset. If things go according to plan. Sometimes pirates are mean and do dumb things though =P.
But to answer your question, yeah, most of the stats that they give us (FAs, Strengths, etc.) don't lend to traditional spreadsheets. You can calculate odds (and reference how Daq's got their percentages laid out) to risk an.alyze your set and such. But don't let the numbers overwhelm you or be the be all end all of your sets. Neither should you restrict yourself to standard if you feel like something else is more comfortable for you. Sometimes a gut feeling will get you places, but then Garet will thwack you with Gambler's Fallacy or something LOL.
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