Money and Politics Game: Day 4 Summary

Jenna Poczik

Game Theory of DemocracyProfessor Bray

November 14, 2013

Money and Politics Game: Day 4 Summary

Summary:

While day one of the Money and Politics game was characterized by harmony in a utopian society and days two and three were full of competition, secrecy, and immoral behavior, day four was an entirely different. Two enormous changes completely transformed the dynamic of the game. First, Professor Bray was not present to oversee and administer the game. Instead, two students who had been in last place following the previous game, Isaac and Brian, were given shared power Professor Bray’s usual role. Second, instead of having only one president elected by a plurality vote in a secret ballot online, three presidents would be elected in an attempt to create a system of shared powers and checks and balances. The first, second, and third presidents were given the following powers respectively: collecting taxes, setting the tax rate, and calling new elections. In addition to the third president having the ability to call new elections, an election would still take place if a majority of the class raised their hands. In the case of a tie, the person with the name coming first in alphabetical order would obtain the higher position.

Just as they did in previous days, students arrived early in an attempt to obtain a seat in a preferable location in the room. Upon arriving, students seemed to all sit down close to people in the alliances that had formed during previous games. Cameron, Tony N., Hannah, Alec, Nick, Hilary, Jenna, and Lauren formed an alliance and they voted for Tony N. as president. Another alliance consisting of Alex M., Bemenet, David, Gloria, Basil, and Chi-Chi decided to vote for Alex M. A third alliance comprised of Tony Q. Kushal, Alex Z., Ben, and Ryan all casted their votes for Ryan. Tony N. obtained the first presidency, Alex M. obtained the second presidency, and Ryan obtained the third presidency.

The game began, and Tony N.’s party began collectively betting on each of the turns of the members of the party. As the group was already wealthier than the others, they decided to invest large numbers of chips. Regardless of the chaos caused by the large group that sometimes slowed them down, their risky investment paid off as their wealth quickly began to multiply with a combination of astute strategy and excellent luck. Alex M.’s party employed the same strategy. They continued to invest collectively, but they did not have quite as many chips to invest as Tony N.’s party did. Meanwhile, Ryan’s party was strategizing in order to try and obtain chips and reenter the game. They bargained with members of Alex M.’s party and convinced the others to lend them 1,000 chips and return 50% of the profits from the investments.

Tony N.’s party began to have tremendous luck, doubling and tripling on almost every turn. This luck and their increasing wealth gave them the confidence to invest very large amounts of chips. On one turn, the group obtained such an enormous return that there were not enough chips left to distribute and the game had to end. As the chaos regarding this investment and the abrupt stop of play was occurring, Ryan decided to use his power as the third president to call for a new election. After this election, Tony retained his position as first president and Alex M. and Ryan changed roles as Ryan acquired the second president position and Alex M. moved down to the third president position. As play immediately stopped after this election, there were no consequences caused by this switch of power.

At the end of the game, chip totals ranged from 1,000, with Alex Z., Kushal, and Ben tied in last place, to 510,000, Nick’s total which gave him the highest ranking. The richest to average ratio remained essentially the same from beginning to end of the day, increasing to 2.25 from 2.21. The average rate of return for the class was 76%, the highest out of any of the days of the game, which were 51%, 23%, and 38%.

Money and Politics Game: Day 4 Summary

On day one of the Money and Politics Game, the class prospered in a utopian society as the objective of the game was to infinitely increase your wealth without considering the wealth of the rest of the class. This atmosphere was completely altered on day two as a system of class rank was implemented and students now had to consider their status relative to that of their classmates. On day three, a secret ballot was introduced and an election was held at the end of each round as students placed their votes online using a plurality vote counting method. There was also one empty chair at the table that gave students the opportunity to move to the empty seat and change their position whenever they desired to do so. Day four had two enormous changes that completely transformed the dynamic of the game. First, Professor Bray was not present to oversee and administer the game. Instead, two students who had been in last place following the previous game, Isaac and Brian, were given shared power Professor Bray’s usual role. Second, instead of having only one president elected by a plurality vote in a secret ballot online, three presidents would be elected in an attempt to create a system of shared powers and checks and balances. The first, second, and third presidents were given the following powers respectively: collecting taxes, setting the tax rate, and calling new elections. In addition to the third president having the ability to call new elections, an election would still take place if a majority of the class raised their hands. In the case of a tie, the person with the name coming first in alphabetical order would obtain the higher position.

Before class on the day of the game, students arrived early in an attempt to obtain a seat in a preferable location in the room. Upon arriving, students seemed to all sit down close to people in the alliances that had formed during previous games. The seating arrangement is depicted in the diagram below.

On one end of the table, Cameron, Tony N., Hannah, Alec, Nick, Hilary, Jenna, and Lauren all sat together. Besides Lauren, this group had become an alliance on the second day of

the game and had maintained power, wealth, and status as they all remained in the top ten of the class rankings. The members of this group started the day with chip totals ranging from 5,000 to 10,000. While plotting and discussing plans for the day, the group decided to enlist a new member as they wanted to ensure they had enough voters to hold the first presidency and collect the taxes. They recruited Lauren, and once she joined the group, all of the members casted their votes for Tony N. who had been the president during the previous class. This alliance will be referred to as Tony N.’s party.

Another alliance formed between Alex M., Bemenet, David, Gloria, Basil, and Chi-Chi. Since the first day of the game, Alex M., Bemenet, David, Gloria, and Chi-Chi had an alliance. They were the first group to figure out the benefits of forming an alliance versus investing alone and ended day one on top. However, days two and three changed their status and they fell behind Tony N.’s party, essentially becoming a middle class. ChiChi arrived late to class, as she had woken up feeling ill. Without Chi-Chi, the alliance needed to find a fifth party member in order to secure a presidency spot. Basil, who had not had been a part of any alliance in previous classes, took this opportunity to join the group. The group decided to vote for Alex M. and they all casted their ballots. All of the members in this group started the day with between 1,000 and 5,000 chips. This alliance will be referred to as Alex M.’s party.

A third alliance formed between the remaining five people who had something in

common; they were all beginning the day with zero chips. It was natural for this group to form because they needed to find a way to rally together and hopefully obtain some assistance from the richer members of the class. The group consisted of Tony Q. Kushal, Alex Z., Ben, and Ryan. The group decided to cast their votes for Ryan. This alliance will be referred to as Ryan’s party.

When class officially began, the election was closed and the results were as follows: Tony N. obtained the first presidency, Alex M. obtained the second presidency, and Ryan obtained the third presidency. Alex M. and Ryan tied, but Alex. M acquired the higher position because he comes first alphabetically. Alex M. decided that there would be a tax rate of 0%, as he did not want the revenue collected from taxes to be in the hands of Tony N. and the rest of his party. The game began, and Tony N.’s party began collectively betting on each of the turns of the members of the party. As the group was already wealthier than the others, they decided to invest large numbers of chips. Betting together in such a large group, there was often confusion with the redistribution of what was bet. Regardless of the chaos that sometimes slowed the group down, their risky investment paid off as their wealth quickly began to multiply with a combination of astute strategy and excellent luck.

Alex M.’s party employed the same strategy. They continued to invest collectively as they had in previous days and enjoyed the large profits that this generates. However, they did not have quite as many chips to invest to begin with as Tony N.’s party did. When they tried to match the large investments of the other group, they were not as lucky with their rolls and were not as profitable in their investments. They continued to maintain a solid position as a middle class.

Meanwhile, Ryan’s party was strategizing in order to try and obtain chips and reenter the game. Kushal decided to make a deal with Basil, a member of Alex M.’s party, and he proposed that if Basil lent him 1,000 chips, he would return 50% of all of his winnings to Basil. Unluckily, Kushal rolled an eight, thus losing his investment. Even after this initial loss, Ryan’s party convinced Basil to lend them more chips. Basil gave Kushal, Tony Q, and Ben each 1,000 chips. They were more successful with this loan, and multiplied their investments to finally make some profit. This strategy was more beneficial for members of Ryan’s party than it was for Basil.

Members of Ryan’s party were happy to have even a little bit of money, but for Basil the 50% return he received was essentially negligible in comparison to the much larger profits he was gaining betting on his own turn and the turns of his fellow party members. Kushal and Tony Q. both employed another strategy, which although unsuccessful is still noteworthy. They used the empty seats as an opportunity to go closer to the other parties and offer their votes in exchange for some money. Neither Tony N. nor Alex M.’s party accepted his idea, which is puzzling, since Alex M. could have used those extra votes to gain the first presidency and change the power dynamics of the game.

Tony N.’s party began to have tremendous luck, doubling and tripling on almost every turn. This luck and their increasing wealth gave them the confidence to invest very large amounts of chips. On one turn, the group obtained such an enormous return that there were not enough chips left to distribute and the game had to end. As the chaos regarding this investment and the abrupt stop of play was occurring, Ryan decided to use his power as the third president to call for a new election. After this election, Tony retained his position as first president and Alex M. and Ryan changed roles as Ryan acquired the second president position and Alex M. moved down to the third president position. As play immediately stopped after this election, there were no consequences caused by this switch of power.

At the end of the game, chip totals ranged from 1,000, with Alex Z., Kushal, and Ben tied in last place, to 510,000, Nick’s total which gave him the highest ranking. The richest to average ratio remained essentially the same from beginning to end of the day, increasing to 2.25 from 2.21. The average rate of return for the class was 76%, the highest out of any of the days of the game, which were 51%, 23%, and 38%.

Nick and Alec ended the day with the two highest rankings. Since they had been investing with their party the entire day, it is interesting to examine how these two players took the lead and were more successful than the others. When investing with such a large group, there are turns where not everyone is able to get their chips ready in time and therefore do not receive the profit or loss of the roll. Nick and Alec were both seated in a central location, allowing them to ensure that they did not miss many turns. Additionally, Alec decided to invest more than the rest of the group decided to on some turns, which ended up being very profitable for him considering the amount of times the investments doubled and tripled.

At no point during the game did a majority of ten players raise their hands to call for a new election. In fact, not a single player raised his or her hand over the entire course of the game. It is interesting that this occurred, as there were many people unhappy with their financial position that could have benefitted from a change in power. It is possible that no one attempted to call a new election because alliances were extremely strong and they knew it would be difficult to persuade people to stray from their established alliances and change the outcome of an election.

Despite the stronger party polarization, day four of play had similar result to day one of play, with a high rate of return and no taxes. Overall, it seemed that having a shared presidency essentially created a feeling that there was no president. This system of checks and balances prevented taxation, as the party with the power to set the tax rate would never want their rival party with the power to collect the taxes to obtain these taxes. The game created such strong alliances and promoted corruption to the point where it was questionable if you could trust people in your own party and certainly impossible to trust members of other parties. While day one of the Money and Politics game was characterized by harmony in a utopian society and days two and three were full of competition, secrecy, and immoral behavior, day four was full of chaos

caused by new rules that essentially removed any governmental control that had been present in previous days.

Individual Summaries:

Jenna Poczik: When I arrived to class today, I sat with the same alliance I sat with during the two previous games.  We decided to all vote for Tony in the first election and secured 7 votes in order to give Tony the powers of the first president.  As a result of multiple presidents, there was no tax on anyone for the entire game.  This allowed us to invest large amounts on every turn.  We started off investing 1000 each on each of the 7 turns.  As this became very profitable and we became richer, we started investing 3000 each turn and eventually 10,000 each towards the end. Everyone was generally fair when redistributing the investments after we doubled or tripled, but there were some discrepancies when profit redistribution would not work out correctly because someone had taken extra.  Although it was not acknowledged by our alliance, it was clearly an advantage to have profit on your actual roll because it put you in charge of very large amounts of chips.  Our large investments came to an end when our return was so high that there were not enough chips left to distribute the winnings.  Overall, it seems that the tri-presidency made the game similar to the first day where we had a utopian society and everyone became infinitely richer.  

Nick George: I came to class today and immediately found the group, or 'party' if you will, that I had invested with in the past round. We all agreed to follow the same plan as we had in the last round, electing Tony as president and investing together to grow our wealth exponentially. We were successful in electing Tony at the start of the game, and with a tax rate of 0% we were able to invest freely. Over the course of the game we all made a great amount of money resulting from a combination of good luck and large investments.  As such, we distanced ourselves from the pack financially up to the point where we ran out of money, ending the game.

Isaac Rubin: Overall, everything went relatively smoothly. There ended up only being two elections over the course of the game. The first round of voting elected Tony Nader as the first president, Alex Merriman as second president, and Ryan as third president. At no point during the game did a majority of ten players raise their hands to call for new elections. In fact, not a single player raised his or her hand over the entire course of the game.

Ryan only used his power to call for new elections at the very end of the game (the end of the sixth round). Tony retained his position as first president, and Alex and Ryan flipped roles. Unfortunately, the impact of this shift in power was never felt. I was forced to end the game 10 to 15 minutes early for a reason I didn't anticipate: I ran out of chips! At the very end of the game, a pool of about 400,000 chips tripled up. Given our chips values, I could not return the total profit. At this point, I felt I had no choice but to end the game. The members of the pool that tripled up divided up the chips they would have received amongst themselves. The massive financial inequities among class members probably would not have allowed for a system of chip values that met everyone's needs.

Even though the game was cut short early, I still believe the results are comparable with other days because of me and Brian's efficiency. Brian always proceeded to the next player immediately after rolling the dice while I calculated and distributed the previous player's profits. All told, we were two players short of completing seven rounds.

One mildly surprising result of the division of power was that taxes stayed at zero percent the entire game. I believe Alex's reason for never raising the tax rate was that all treasury money

would have gone to Tony and his faction. Because the would-be recipients of tax money were Alex's competitors, he had no motive for creating a tax rate. Therefore, neither president one or president two used their respective powers at any point during the game.

I was also surprised that Ryan did not call for new elections sooner. Ryan ended up finishing the day with one of the lowest chip totals, so it seemed odd that he would not have tried for a shift in power. I think that the dramatic financial inequities were so pronounced that the faction of poorer students felt powerless to change the course of the game and catch up to the wealthy students. I would have been interested to see the impact of the final election, as I imagine Ryan would have used his power to levy taxes in order to stop or dramatically slow the money-making ability of the class's richest members.

Much like the first day, the fourth day was all about making money and hardly dealt with politics. The division of power between three presidents created a situation much like one I would expect to arise from having no president at all. If we end up playing the game again, I'd be really interested in brainstorming possible ways to mitigate the massive financial inequality among class members.

I've attached a word document that lists the final chip totals of all players. Nick was the big winner, finishing with a total of 510,000 chips! Three students tied for the least number of chips at 1,000. The document also includes a table showing the results of the two elections.

Basil Chaballout:Game four was very different than the other games prior. Contrary to what was expected, there were only two rounds of elections for presidents with not much change occurring whatsoever. Also, many received much more return due to the fact that there were no taxes being dissembled. This may have been because there were three presidents this game, therefore acting as a system of checks and balances. One implication this has is demonstrating that the secret ballot is not as effective when there are multiple presidents.As for my individual experience, I was able to make a lot more chips than I did last time due to two simple strategies: investing in a pool of money on each turn of a member in the alliance I was in (which simply added me because they needed an extra person to vote Alex as president), and making sure to invest around 40% of my chips on each turn to maximize the probability of returning the most that is possible. I started off the game with 5,000 chips and ended the game with 111,000; that was a 2,120% increase in the amount of chips I had before the game started. Although there wallls another alliance in the class whose members made much more, today my return was much more successful than that of my last game.Besides just investing in the group pools of my alliance, I tried to invest in Tony, Ben, and Kushal by giving them each 1,000 chips and charging 50% interest on all their returns (they only accepted because they had no chips at all). Since they either made nothing or a negligible amount, I ended up not collecting the interest at the end of the game. Also, the game ended much earlier than expected because there was simply not enough chips anymore due to the strikingly fast rate that everybody was gaining returns. 

Bemenet Getachew:On day four, Professor Bray let us play the game without his supervision. I really didn't try to strategize beforehand because I knew that alliances would be formed a few minutes before the game started. The group of five that I was a part of decided to stick together for this round, but since Chi-Chi came in a little late, we decided to let Basil in our group until she came. Then we had a group of six and we actually were tripling and doubling on a lot of our turns, but the top 10

kept getting richer and the bottom five really didn't make any money. I feel like we were the middle class in this society. We ended up using up all of the chips since everyone was investing such large amounts.

Alec Kunzweiler:At the start of the day I had 5,000 chips. I voted for Tony Nader, and I was a part of a 6 person group so we had the most 1st place votes. This kept the tax rate at 0 because Alex M. did not want Tony collecting any taxes because he would just distribute it along our 6. Eventually our group expanded to 8 people as we were gaining a lot of chips. We kept the 40 percent rule in our bets and I put in a little extra of my own on some of the bets so I ended up near the top of the chip pile at the end due to some fortunate rolls. I finished with 501,000 chips at the end of the day.

Hilary Greenberg:As expected, it was definitely different, and a bit difficult, for us to play the game without Professor Bray and with the new set of rules that we put in place. Isaac and Brian were very good at controlling the elections and the distribution of chips, but somehow, the game was still a bit chaotic. When we did our first election, the "second president," Alex Merriman, decided that he did not want to impose any taxes, and thus, we began on a very peaceful note. Because there was really no reason for anyone to become dissatisfied, we continued to play without any taxes for the entire class period. This allowed for everyone in the class to get extremely rich in a way that was similar to the first day of the game. Instead of competing with each other, as we did when we had mandatory elections each round and the class was divided into defined “parties,” it seemed that we all went back to focusing on gaining money so that we would become independently wealthy. We ultimately ran out of money as a class, and I’m assuming our percent return on investment was higher on this day than it was on any other day of play.As you know, I began the day in first place, with $10,000 to start out. While I was still hoping to become very rich and to be near the top of the class rank, my decision to pocket my classmates’ chips when they invested on my turns last game earned me a few enemies, so I avoided that strategy for the 4th day of play. I think I ended up with a pretty good spot in the class rank, but I was not nearly as strategic as I was on the 3rd day. My strategy for the game was pretty similar to that of the other days. I continued to invest my chips with one group of 6-8 people for the entire class period, and we became very rich as a result of our solidarity as a group and possibly some good luck as well. We were very good at agreeing on how much we would invest on each turn and this ultimately allowed for collective success. Although I tried to keep a close eye on Hannah and Tony, who appeared to be keeping some of my earnings throughout the game, it was difficult to keep track of distributing the chips, and I didn’t really care enough to argue with them about it. I really enjoyed this day of play and I look forward to discussing it further! 

Tony Xiao:I was one of the 5 kids who started out with 0 chips. One of these kids suggested that we work together and we all agreed. We decided to vote for Ryan for president and our 5 votes led to Ryan tying with another person for president but since Ryan came later in the alphabet, Ryan became the 3rd place president. Overall there were 3 groups, 2 rich ones and then us. This caused the remaining two presidents to be on the opposing rich party sides. This led to no taxes since any taxes set by the 2nd place president were be targeted at the other rich group since they had a clear lead on the poor group but the targeted rich group had the president which collected and redistributed the taxes and so he could simply redistribute any taxes to have the same effect as no tax rate. 

Kushal then proposed with Basil to lend him $1000 and then Basil would get back 50% of all of Kushal's winnings. Also Kushal had agreed that this money was shared between the group.

Unfortunately Kushal rolled an 8 and lost the money. However Basil then lent us some more money. In here, there were several turns where we won some but lost most. This strategy however got us some needed start-up money and so I copied the strategy elsewhere. Here I moved to the empty chair across the room and had someone agree to the same proposal. He gave me $13,000, a much more sizable amount to work with and thus more chance for survival. I also kept switching chairs to increase the number of times I bet. However this did not have major effect since some of my rolls were unlucky. By the time, I got the $13,000, I had only increased by $1,000. Now I decided to return the agreed 50% to the owner. This is because the rich people had a major lead on me and I am not going to catch up quickly. However even if I return, I remain in front of the other poor people. In addition, this lets me appear trustworthy and further investments can be made increasing my wealth faster.

Cameron Simpson:Given the new rules, my initial strategy was to remain with a party of 7 or more, as this would guarantee at least one of the top two governmental positions would reside with a member of our group because the 12 remaining members of class would not be able to create two groups larger than our own. As it turned out, my group gained control of the primary office when we elected Tony Nader to distribute the tax income. However, the tax was set at 0% for the entirety of the game, so being in a position of power didn't have much effect.    In fact, the game essentially went back to the strategy in the first day, which was fairly utopian. The strategy was to pair with a large group of people and roll on everyone's turn with combined resources. I decided to use my personal strategy of betting more than everyone else on the turns so that my overall return would be greater and my ranking would rise amongst my own group.     The other strategy I used was to fund Tony Qiao, who started with 0 chips. I gave him a certain number of chips, I believe it ended up being 1,000, as an investment. At the end of the game, he would return half of his total money. This required a lot of trust and Tony came through on his word, but unfortunately he had some bad luck and didn't have any profits, so I lost about 200 chips. I used that strategy fairly late in the game, but I feel as though it would have been effective had I started it earlier.

Hannah Schwennesen:So the fourth day of the game was definitely very different than any of the previous days. I think most of us didn't know what to expect so we didn't know how to make alliances before the game. Five minutes before the start of the game, Cameron, Tony, and I rallied as much support as we could and ended up with seven votes (I think?), so Tony won the first presidency. I believe the people in our group were: Tony N., Hannah, Cameron, Jenna, Hillary, Nick, and Alec. We used a pooled investment system throughout the game and Tony didn't have the chance to collect any taxes because the second president set a tax rate of zero. The presidents remained the same throughout the game, but there were a few elections. Those who started with zero chips did not do well because we had all already established our own networks of who to invest with, and they did not have enough chips to invest in groups with richer players.

Investing started out very chaotic and disorganized in my group, but we learned how to distribute profits and how much to invest as time went on. We invested more per turn than any other group, but even at that rate we weren't close to 40% of our individual wealth. Lauren Rosen joined our group later than anyone else, so she had less chips than all other members of our group. However, I gave her some money to invest and encouraged her to invest most of her chips so that she could catch up to us. Once she had enough chips to invest with us, I told her to join the group even though she would be investing most of her chips. She did very well on that investment, so she was able to keep up with us. On one investment, I was distributing the chips and there were a couple extra (anywhere from 3,000 to 30,000, I don't remember their actual value), so I gave

them to her to help her out. She was able to finish very well for someone who started late.

I think that this day was fairly "utopian" due to the triple presidency. Each president realized the limits of his/her power so they did not make any radical or unfair changes. Also, I think Isaac and Brian did an amazing job playing the role of Mr. Bray. They did not allow anyone to break the rules and they did their best to keep the game moving as quickly as possible.

Alex Zrenner:Since I had no money Thursday, I helped rally the other people without money together so we could at least hold one president. We did achieve that. Ryan remained the third president who decided when there would be elections. Someone convinced Basil to loan us money. We made some funds, but very little in comparison to others (our ROI is probably infinite given our lack of beginning funds). The only reason we were willing to invest was because there was no tax rate. Overall my participation was minimal.

12. Chi-Chi Amanze

I arrived late to class on this day due to waking up ill. When I arrived my company of 5 had replaced me with Basil and I was thoroughly upset. They did end up making the group of 5, a group of 6 (keeping Basil and myself), but I had missed some key investments so I had significantly less than others. Throughout the game my group subsidized me. I was betting pretty recklessly to catch up/because why not and at one point I had lost it all. My group gave me 300points each (a black chip). Alex was very dedicated to keeping the original 5 happy and prosperous. The taxes were at 0% so everything was pretty copacetic. The only drama occurred towards the end when the poor in the game tried for a new election. There was no government subsidy for those who had little or few due to no taxes so the poor "revolted". They did succeed in getting new individuals elected but the really wealthy group had broken the bank so the game was about to shutdown. Therefore the election results were negligible as the position one of the poor got elected into was the power to call elections, not either of the positions that affected taxes.

Alex Merriman:Due to the new rule changes with having three presidents, it was clear the group I have been with in all of the previous GTD games (David, cement, Gloria, chi, and I) would have one of the president positions at all times, since we had five votes. We chose to elect me as the group representative since my name would be favorable in the scenario of a tie with only Alec being able to beat me. Unfortunately, though we were fairly prosperous with our investments, the other, larger group bet more and collected a larger profit, so the rankings remained relatively the same. I collected the second most votes, so I was responsible for setting the tax rate. Since Tony was to collect any taxes I imposed, I simply set it to 0% for the entirety of the game, as to not assist my competition.

The strategy of imposing no taxes allowed large economic growth, but didn't assist my final ranking. More politicking could have occurred in which I persuaded the poor to join forces with us to gain a larger majority and remove tony from principle power; however, I was not prepared to pay off the poor for their votes with a secret ballot; therefore, the game unfolded as it did, with the rich getting richer and the poor staying relatively poor. We also added Basil into the group of 5 simply to grow stronger and be able to bet on more turns.

Ben Zhang: Since I started the game with 0 chips, there was not much I could do in terms of strategy. I formed a small alliance with the people who also had 0 chips: Ryan, Alex Z., Tony Q., and

Kushal. Our plan was to borrow some chips from other people, invest on all of our turns, and go from there. We also all voted for David to get him one of the presidential positions. However, since our group only had 5 people, and the other two groups had 8 (Tony N.'s group) and 6 people (Alex M.'s group), respectively, we were only able to elect him third president. We quickly realized that being able to call elections wouldn't help, due to our small group size. Therefore, we resorted to borrowing chips and trying to convince other people to vote for Ryan. Initially, we hit a few unlucky rolls and lost all of our investments. However, by investing each turn, we able to soon make a decent profit and distributed the chips evenly amongst the members of the group.. We were unable to convince anyone else to vote for Ryan, however, since the tax rate remained at 0% throughout the game and most people were fine with it staying that way. At the end, when we ran out of chips overall, my group decided to just call an election, since the game was winding down anyway. Interestingly enough, several members of the 6-person group did not vote, and we were able to elect Ryan 2nd president. However, we were unable to see what would have happened had we been able to continue, although I doubt anything would have happened, as without control of both the first and second presidencies, setting taxes would not be a great idea (as the taxes only go to the first president).

Kushal Byatnal:During Thursday's game, I was one of the five that started off with 0 chips. This will be a short summary because there really wasn't much the poor could do. There was no incentive for any of the rich to offer up their money - the only money I got was a loan from Basil who expected the money to be returned with 50% interest. Due to my bad luck, I lost all of the money and eventually went down to zero. I ended the game with 1000 because of Basil's charity.

I tried a tactic where I offered my voting position (where I would let the rich invest on my turn) in exchange for 1000 coins (which would be beneficial for them since they were making over 1000+ profit on each turn). However, for a reason that still confuses me, they refused to take me up on my offer.

Towards the end of the game, I refused to invest my remaining 1000 (due to bad luck) and just held onto my money. There were no other tactics that I could use to gain money. We did call an election though and the collective poor joined together to get one of us elected as the second president. However, by this point, time was up and the game ended. Next time, calling an election earlier might have been more beneficial as we could have set the tax rate at this point and maybe gained some leverage.

Tony Nader:To start the day a little differently, Professor Bray informed the class that we will play the game by ourselves without him acting as a sort of mediator. However two students who cannot using the online voting account acted as Professor Bray and disturbed the chips and orchestrated the investments. We also implemented a few new rules including 3 Presidents, all with a specific power. 

The game started with an election, and I was voted the first President, who has the power to disturb any taxes. Unfortunately, the second President, Alex, set tax rates at 0%, so I did not have the chances to unfairly distribute the tax revenue. The game went by very fast, for everyone was winning and winning big. My investment group were the big winners, with all of us finishing with at least 200,000 chips (I think). However, there was a group of poor people who were not so lucky and could not invest for most of the game. I did not witness any rebellious acts or treason in this game, which I believe is a result of the three Presidents. The game ended quite fast due to the rich group winning so much and the banks (Professor Bray's fill-in's) running out of chips to

distribute. 

Brian Mazur:From my perspective, three groups of "investors" had formed even before we started playing the game. One group included Tony, Hannah, yourself, Hilary and Cameron. The other included Alex M., Chi-Chi, Basil and Nick. A final group with considerably less money and less cohesion included Alex Z., and Kushal. Tony set a tax rate of 0% which helped not only his group of investors make a lot of money, but Alex M's group also benefited. As each group began to make more money, they began to invest more. Hence, we eventually began to run out of chips because the groups were making so much money. Although Chi-Chi and Basil did share money with the less fortunate group, they simply did not have the capital to keep up with the other two groups. 

Ryan Meingasner:Because I was going to begin the game with no money, my goal was to campaign to the other "poor" people in order to get enough votes to become one of the three presidents. From here my goal was to use this power to gain chips for myself and the other players without chips. My plan seemed to work and I was elected president #3. I could call elections at any time during the game. Unfortunately the groups were so set by the time the game started that there was no way anyone would break off from their groups to vote for a different president in another election, so there seemed to be no point in calling an election. I invested chips which had been given to me by other players and eventually received a small amount of income from my investments. Towards the end of the game I elided to call an election and won the position of president #2. However, this was the round right before the game ran out of chips so nothing really came of that.

David Boyer:I didn't think that this day was an interesting day. Going into the day, we had our group of five, which we knew secured on of the president spots. When the game started Alex, from our group, was the second president meaning he set the tax rate, but the problem was Tony would collect all the tax revenue. Since the people who were not in either my group or Tony's group didn't have any chips, there was no taxes the whole game, meaning anyone and everyone could invest at will. Since Tony's group started with more chips there totals grew at a faster rate than ours. I think almost all of today was based on the roles of the dice. If you tripled a huge investment then you would do well. That's really all there was to the day. My group did all right, but we didn't make nearly as much as the other group. And the game had to end because the bank ran out of chips. I didn't really find today all that interesting. 

Official Results:

Day 4 Starting Chips

Day 4 Ending Chips

Percent Return on Investmen

tPer Round

Day 4 Starting Class Rank

Day 4 Ending Class Rank

Improvement in Class Rank

Nick 5,000 510,000 9.5 1 8.5Alec 5,000 501,000 9.5 2 7.5Cameron 9,000 500,000 2.5 3 -0.5Tony N. 7,000 490,000 5 4 1Hilary 10,000 483,000 1 5 -4Jenna 9,000 471,000 2.5 6 -3.5Hannah 8,000 435,000 4 7 -3Lauren 6,000 283,000 6 8 -2Alex M. 5,000 124,000 9.5 9 0.5David 5,000 120,000 9.5 10 -0.5Bemenet 3,000 119,000 14 11 3Gloria 4,000 116,000 13 12 1Basil 5,000 111,000 9.5 13 -3.5Chi-Chi 5,000 35,000 9.5 14 -4.5Tony Q. 0 7,000 17 15 2Ryan 0 2,000 17 16 1Alex Z. 0 1,000 17 18 -1Ben 0 1,000 17 18 -1Kushal 0 1,000 17 18 -1

TOTAL 86,000 4,310,000 76%AVERAGE 4,526 226,842 76%

RICHEST 10,000 510,000 77%/AVERAGE 2.21 2.25

Richest/Average ratio BASICALLY STAYED THE SAME.

Record of elections:

Election # Round # 1st President 2nd President 3rd President1 1 Tony N. Alex M. Ryan2 6 Tony N. Ryan Alex M.