I was introduced to the best channel on twitch a few days ago. For those of you unfamiliar with the pastime about to sweep the nation, you bet play money on fan created fighting game characters, which are then pitted against each other in AI battles.
Let's be clear: there is zero balance in this game. If you're expecting fair fights, you won't be getting many of them. This shit is hilarious. That's your value. The last two nights it's made me laugh until I've cried.
My first 200 saltybucks went on goku in a matchup against green lantern. He's goku, he's gotta be good.
Suck a baby dick, Goku.
Goku got thrashed like the stupid bitch he is. My first lesson was complete: dragonball z characters are shit. I don't remember what my second pick was, but I'm sure if he were a horse I'd have shot him after the race, because that match sent me straight to the minimum balance salt mines. As I write this I'm at the highest total I've had since I was banished to that hellish place, which is to say, sixty three bucks.
If you've never read twitch chat - you're a smart person. If you've never read salty chat - you're missing out. As each bet comes up the chat explodes as fevered gamblers try to convince fellow viewers to place sucker wagers.
THIS CRONO IS FUCKING REAL ALWAYS BET ON TITS GO ALL IN ON KRILLIN
If you pay careful attention to these warnings and read them all, you will learn a valuable lesson, which is that you are wasting your life. If you actually followed their advice, prepare to be roundly mocked as the odds display.
The main draw, though, is how completely fucking ludicrous the fights are. At least every other round expect to witness something you would never have anticipated. I've seen things in salty bet... well...
So here are the things I've learned about Salty Bet in the last few days...
Its hysterically fun: I don't know why but I can't get enough of this. It's fake money, and not real people playing, but its just too funny to see some of these fights go down. The chat is an extra layer of enjoyment and always good for a laugh.
Free to play, Pay to win: It's free to sign up for an account, and you start with $400. I chose to bet it all my first match because why not. I lost it all. From that point on, you will start with $10 every time you go broke, and the more bets you place, the more money you will get as you rank up. If you choose to pay to subscribe, you become Salty Illuminati. You will always have at least $666 in your account. The bigger upside, is you seem to get detailed stats on all the characters. If you notice that the betting seems to be fairly lopsided, it's because it is. Some people just know who is going to win before the fight even starts. That leads me to the most important thing...
Never trust chat: Remember those people that know who is going to win before the match starts? Well, the more people that bet wrong, the more money they make. It's not a coincidence that the chat consensus on who to bet on, is different than the actual betting results. The way the betting works is like this... The match itself runs strictly by game balance, which is to say there isnt any. Some players are just completely broken, and some are completely useless. The betting odds have nothing to do with who is expected to win, but rather they are directly determined by the bets. If people bet for one character over another 100:1 the odds will be 100:1. There are a few things to learn from this. The first, is that subscribers almost always win, unless it is a very close fight. Your random choice between the two is exactly that. You can't base your judgement on character strength, size, weapon, or anything else. Second, is that with the rare exceptions of close fights, you will never make a lot of money. This is because the majority of odds wind up 20:1 or greater. In you're lucky enough to win, well the odds on that player are so good, that you may only get a $1 return on a $50-100 bet.
What to do: The best method I've found so far is to watch as many games as possible and learn which players are strongest. As far as betting, If I am fairly certain one player will win, I will only bet $1. The reason, as stated above, is that unless I am betting high dollar amounts, the most I will win is $1 or 2, so why bet more and risk it? I don't have enough money to just throw around right now, but I've managed to work up to $150 from $10 last night before I started this and would just all in every bet. In certain cases when I know for sure someone will win, I will bet a larger portion of my cash and have been pretty successful doing it.
tl;dr The system is rigged Its still fun Don't always bet on waifu
To put this into modern terms it would be like playing Pokemon if the point of the game Pokemon was to get Pikachu addicted to hard drugs and then put him in a series of ever more dangerous situations so you could watch him make increasingly bad decisions for the amusement of Bulbasaur and Charmander, who were both placing bets on when he would finally die.
EPT![[image loading]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/6ae6c79c7ce77c3d74e2568083bce6be/tumblr_mfyxwyOt3z1s1rfxho1_500.png )
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gq27XfO.png)
