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As cricket has become the religion of
younger generation, who are also connected by the world wide web, an
amalgam of both offers a greener pasture to the tech players. If
online game is a passion for people, prediction is simply an
addiction, as we have seen in the World Cup Football, where Paul the
octopus, now dead, became a super star with his predictions.
In an effort to make hay while the
cricket sun shines, Yahoo has introduced a new online betting game
called Predictopus. According to Rajeev Rastogi, Head, Yahoo Labs,
Bengaluru, Predictopus is a product where science meets consumers. In
a brief interaction with CIOL, he sheds light on the game.
Predictopus, the name itself is self
explanatory. Can you please explain the concept behind the game?
This is a product where science meets
consumers. It is one-of-its-kind of betting game, actually the most
complex algorithm of its kind, which has been created by Yahoo! Labs
to drive consumer engagement. So on-field action is now matched by
online action among cricket aficionados!
Predictopus takes the wisdom of crowds
to the extreme by allowing users to predict almost anything about the
ICC Cricket World Cup, like whether India will advance further than
both Sri Lanka and Pakistan, or whether a team will win that has
never won before. You can compose any of millions of predictions and
sell them any time for virtual points, even in the middle of a match,
just like the stock market. Predictopus then computes what all these
different predictions, taken together, say about the likelihood of
each of the billions of possible ways the tournament could unfold.
It is an example of what is technically
called a combinatorial prediction market, a new kind of market made
possible only now because computing power has increased so massively.
Computing prices exactly in a combinatorial market is infeasible (it
could take more time than the age of the universe even on the
speediest processor), so we employ importance sampling to approximate
the prices. We built the first version during an internal Yahoo! Hack
Day. Finally, we leveraged the Yahoo! Application Platform to quickly
build a public version of the game.
How is the game played online?
Each user starts with a set of 'virtual
points' that they can use to play with. Users are presented with
choices of various kinds of predictions they can make. Once they
choose a prediction, e.g. 'India will finish first in their group' or
'Pakistan will advance further than Australia' or simply 'India will
win cup', the system then calculates the odds of that bet coming
true. They can then use some of their points to make a bet on that
prediction.
The odds of their bet will keep on
changing until the actual outcome is known. The user can at any time
'sell' their bet to redeem points to use on other bets. The system
maintains a Leaderboard of users who have the maximum balance of
points. Users can also invite their friends to form a group and hence
compete against each other.
What was the role of Yahoo India in
this venture?
Bringing Predictopus to life has been a
truly interdisciplinary and global effort led by Yahoo! India with
the help from Yahoo! Labs scientists and engineers in India and the
US.
What is the revenue model for the
game?
There is no direct revenue generated
from the game. However, games like this lead to deeper
user-engagement, which in turn has an impact on overall economics.
How will it help Yahoo in the
financial front?
The game is very engaging and we have
found that a lot of users are hooked and like to make a lot of bets.
They also like to compete with their friends. This increase in user
engagement leads to increase in advertisement revenue for Yahoo.
Do you think such betting games will
affect the moral fabric of the society?
No, we don't think so. There is no
actual financial transaction involved with users. Users play to win
'virtual points.' The real goal of the game is to create user
involvement and excitement around Cricket World Cup.