EventShell:Sloop Blackjack

From YPPedia

Synopsis

You and four of your closest friends, trying to raise 21000 PoE without going a coin over. Chart anywhere. Fight anyone. Bring home the right number and walk away a winner.

Full Description

Sloop Blackjack is played in sloops, with teams of 5. These teams, starting from a given location, have two hours to raise as close to 21000 PoE as they can without going over. (21000 would be an almost guaranteed win, 21001 or more would be an automatic loss.)

Because this format is particularly open to manipulation and cheating, there are a long list of exact and specific rules for this event. You'll want to see the forum topics for a full list.

Materials

  • 1 assistant to every 6-7 teams competing
  • That's really about it

Prize Precedents

Both of the times this event has been run, the first prizes have been renamed sloops. The prizes for the second edition were vastly superior to the prizes for the first edition: it's difficult to say whether this helped the format or not, as a different registration method was used which may also have affected turnout.

Strong Points

  • Very few materials are required to run this event.
  • It's a very simple event format, and easy to explain.

Weak Points

  • Because this is a team event, the prizes have to be team prizes... specifically, you need 5 of everything. On the second Midnight season, a lottery was run for individual prizes (everyone who was on a boat at the end went into the lottery.), which partially solved the problem, but the "big prizes" still need to be in groups of 5, though.
  • Because of the opportunities for cheating, you need to watch the teams like a hawk. (Some opportunities for cheating: manually adding PoE into the booty, arranging a PVP which awards you just enough PoE, selling commodities to a stall or shoppe a team member owns (and can therefore set the prices for), having PoE in the booty before the start of the event etc.)
  • Because of the nature of the event, preregistration is necessary. It's just impossible to have everyone register on the day-of.
  • There's arguably no skill required to win. (Although I would suggest that knowing when to stop and when to take your chances, as well as raising 21k in two hours, among other things, require some degree of skill.)

Links to Precedents

All 3 (2.5) precedents were organized by Peeteegee and Feylind of Midnight.

Status

Feylind and Peeteegee are both interested in doing another season on Midnight (and, by extension, possibly Cobalt) in the forseeable future. As such, please speak to them if you would like to "borrow" the format on either of those oceans. If you would like to attempt this event on Viridian, Sage or Hunter, though, feel free to do so. :)