Proposal: A web-site to maintain a friendly betting pool:

On superbowl sunday, friends come over and watch the game together.
It's always a bit more interesting if there are small amounts of money at stake;
an elegant parimutuel system is described below.


Proram requirements:

- The party-host can go to the website and start a new "room".

- As tickets are bought at the party, the host records them 
  on the website; they are stored in a database.

- As the game progresses, the worth of different tickets is auto-tracked.

- Users can go to the site and see the tickets they (originally) bought,
  and their projected winnings/losings.  This view should be mobile-frendly.

- It should be easy for others to download and install a running 
  version should be straightforward,
  if you have a web server with php and mysql installed.

- Willing to develop the code under a creative-commons license.

- If the host marks a room as "public", anybody can view it; 
  so you can view how your friend's party in a different dorm might be
  betting on the same game.

- Various other tools: ability for users to enter "what-if" tickets, 
  ability to print blank ticket templates, a built-in db of team logo/icons;
  the ability for people to enter new team-names+icons, ... .
  
- Are there existing free rss feeds that can be scanned to get the
  most recent scores?




========= Raymund's Parimuteul System(*) =========

- Before the game, people can buy a ticket for 25¢.  They
  write down the predicted-winner along with a spread > 0.
  (They can write down any number; it can be a duplicate of another ticket.)
  
- At the end of the game, the winning tickets are those that correctly
  predicted the winning team, 
  and whose predicted spread was the actual spread <strong>or less</strong>.
  
- In order to guarantee at least one winning ticket, the house seeds the
  pot by buying two tickets: predicting each of the two teams with a 
  spread of 1.
  (It's encouraged to give these away to the youngest and the oldest
  attendees.)


  (That is, tickets for the wrong team, or tickets that claimed the winning
  team would win by more than it did, are not winning tickets.)

  The pot is divided evenly among all the winning tickets, weighted
  by their spread.


  Example: Suppose the Ironers beat the CowWranglers by 10 points.
  Then the winning tickets are all that say 
     <quote>Ironers <var>n</var><quote>,
  where 1 &le; <var>n</var> &le 10.
  Suppose there were three such tickets &mdash; 
     Ironers 1 (two such tickets), Ironers 3, and Ironers 7.
  The total weight is 1+1+3+7=12, so the tickets 
  are worth 1/12, 1/12, 3/12, and 6/10 of the pot respectively.
    
  Nice Properties of this system:
- Duplicate tickets are no problem.
- During the game, people can 
  buy/sell/trade their existing tickets based on the game's progress.
- It accomodates risk-takers (betting on larger spreads, for bigger shares)
  and risk-averse 
  (a spread of 1 yields winnings just for predicting the winning team).
- A cheap ticket-price encourages people to buy many tickets at different
  spreads.

Disadvantage:
- payout requires a bunch of calculation, and a bunch of change.
  (Recommend: round payouts to the nearest nickel, or even the
   nearest quarter.)
   
(*) History:
I first came across this system in Houston in 2004 or so, at a superbowl party
hosted by Raymund Eich.  I *think* he indicated that he did not invent the system himself; however I don't know where he got it from.


==============
Notes on the legality of betting:
Unclear; at the least, make sure the house never takes a cut!;
tout the fact that you are betting on skill, not random events.
(E.g. don't raffle the two house tickets randomly; that'd be luck.)

http://onward.justia.com/2011/01/31/super-bowl-football-pools-are-they-legal/
http://www.nbc12.com/story/21752634/is-your-office-pool-illegal