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The penny auction sites I'm talking about are like Swoopo and Bid Cactus. The idea behind these sites:
So, in my mind, what this really boils down to is an arbitrary end-time for the auction based on who runs out of money first, or who throws in the towel first. Unless you want to pay more than retail (and who does?) the end time of the auction, and hence whether you actually win the auction or not, is a matter of chance. But at the same time, they're not games of chance, for some reason. Otherwise, it would be prettu heavily regulated, right? So why not? Is it not really a game of chance, or just that people haven't realized that it's essentially a game of chance, but it's not treated as such? |
I get emails about bid cactus regularly from Inbox dollars. Never knew what it was. Now I'm intrigued. I hope I remember to ask about this when one of our gaming attorneys is in town.
Don't be intrigued by bidcactus! Like any good college student, I tried this with my roommate. We bought 50 bids each for about $35 total. We figured if we bid against each other, other bidders would be scared away and not want to waste their own. And it worked! We won a $50 gift card to B&N. But then with about 20 bids each, we tried it again..and it did not work. So we cut our losses. Very nerve-racking and we swore never to try it again!