A unique bid auction is a type of strategy game related to traditional auctions where the winner is usually the individual with the lowest unique bid, although less commonly the auction rules may specify that the highest unique bid is the winner. Unique bid auctions are often used as a form of competition or lottery because bidders pay a fee to make a bid.
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This type of auction requires bidders to place bids that are global unique bids. That is, for a bid to be eligible to win no other bidder can have made a bid for the same amount. Bidders are generally able to place multiple bids and the number of current bids at each amount is typically kept secret.
There are two major variants of unique bid auctions:
Unique bid auctions will typically allow bids to be very precise, in that each bid can be specific to the 'penny'.
For example, a unique bid auction might run as follows:
| Value | Number of bids | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| $0.01 | 34 | |
| $0.02 | 9 | |
| $0.03 | 17 | |
| $0.04 | 57 | |
| $0.05 | 35 | |
| $0.06 | 1 | Lowest unique bid |
| $0.07 | 17 | |
| $0.08 | 0 | |
| $0.09 | 1 | Highest unique bid |
| $0.10 | 2 |
In a lowest unique bid auction, the bidder who submitted the single bid of $0.06 would win the auction, and would be eligible to purchase the product or service for $0.06, because their bid was the lowest unique bid. In a highest unique bid auction, the bidder who submitted a bid of $0.09 would win the auction.
In this type of auction the bids of other participants are necessarily secret, although some companies may provide broad guidance following a bid, such as whether the winning unique bid is higher or lower than one's last bid. In some instances the players may receive enough information for the game to be considered one of strategy. In other cases the guidance provided may be of little or no strategic value and the game may be considered one of chance.
Although items worth thousands of dollars can, under some circumstances, be won by very low bids of far less than their value, the auction organizer typically charges a participation fee, which in an auction with a sufficiently large number of bidders will exceed the value of the item being sold, allowing the auction organizer to make a profit.
Because such auctions typically require very large numbers of bidders to be profitable, virtually all instances of unique bid auctions are heavily dependent on the use of technology, in that they are either run solely using mobile technology (e.g. bidders submit their bids via reverse charge text messages) or they are on-line auction sites, or both.
The legality of unique bid auctions depends on a combination of governing gambling laws and the design of the specific auction model. If an investigating authority were to determine that randomness or chance plays too large a role in the outcome, the auction may be considered a type of lottery. If, on the other hand, the investigating authority found strategy and skill played a sufficient enough role in the outcome, they may find the auction to be legal. Worldwide, there are no reported cases or statutes specifically outlawing the lowest-unique bid auction model.
The definition of a lottery differs among jurisdictions and is to be judged in a case by case manner.[1] An English case held that "there will seemingly be never any finality on the question what is a lottery" because “attempts to do so may indeed be counter-productive, since each added precision merely provides an incentive to devise a variant which eludes it”.[2] Legislatures tend to leave the definition open in order to encompass lotteries that were not envisaged at the time of the enactment of the legislation.
Under English common law, a lottery includes any game, method, device, scheme or competition whereby money or money’s worth is distributed or allotted in any manner depending upon or to be determined by chance or lot, whether the same is held, drawn, exercised or managed within or without the jurisdiction. A business model is therefore a lottery if participants are required to:-
(a) pay a non-refundable fee of money or money in kind, in (b) a scheme of lot or chance, to (c) receive a reward of some kind,
Depending on a combination of governing gambling laws and the design of the specific auction, unique bid auctions may satisfy the above criteria.
Unique bid auction companies typically avoid calling the payment by the bidder an outright fee for the chance of winning an item, applying synonyms to elude the purpose of raising revenue from a collective pool of bidders that covers the cost of the auction item.
Some businesses forego refunding the fee paid and provide something else in kind to distance themselves from being a lottery. In the New Zealand case Department of Internal Affairs v Hayes [2007],[3] customers offered bids costing 99 cents for the chance to win a Peugot car. The company offered Pizza Hut discount coupons to the bidders. Although customers received an item of value, the bids were sent for the purpose of winning a car, and the refund was not identical to what had been offered, and was held to be a lottery.
Other auction models offer rewards points, discounts and other bonuses.
If no fee of any kind is required to bid, as with traditional auction models like ebay, the scheme is not a lottery because participants are not losing money or kind.
Chance means that the result be uncertain, indefinite or doubtful.[4]
Although the role of chance makes a scheme a lottery, unique bid auctions may avoid lottery classification if chance plays only an incidental role when skill is the overriding factor.[5] The legal question becomes whether "chance predominates and is the one outstanding feature".[5] "The exercise of any skill, greater than a mere scintilla, which, looking at the scheme as a whole, has contributed to the successful result, will be sufficient to take the case out of the (English) Act."[6] An example where a scheme was permitted to run despite the role of chance was when the individual "used his knowledge and experience of the football world in choosing the pools to be entered into and the method of completing them".[5]
A distinguishing difference between unique bid auctions and traditional lotteries or games of chance (gambling) is the absence of a external randomizing device. All cards games, lotteries, raffles and mechanical games typically found in casinos utilize an exogenous device to introduce chance into the game. In card games it is the deck of cards. Lotteries use randomly selected numbers while raffles rely on randomly selected tickets or markers to select the winner. Table games in casinos use dice. In a unique bid auction, there is no external device that introduces chance or randomness. The outcome of the auction, while not controlled exclusively by one player, is controlled exclusively by the collective group of players. (On the other hand, sports betting also involves no external randomizing device, but is nearly universally considered a form of gambling.)
The unique bid auction model's attractiveness is the possibility of obtaining an item at significantly lower cost than the retail price.
The theory of unique bid auctions has been the subject of mathematical investigation. In a 2007 paper Bruss, Louchard and Ward proposed a technique for calculating game-theoretic probabilistic optimal strategies for unique bid auctions, given a small set of extra assumptions about the nature of the auction.[7] Another paper by Raviv and Gabor in the same year made theoretical predictions and compared their results to the results of real-world unique bid auctions.[8] Another paper by Rapoport et. al. compared theoretical results to the results of experimental auctions[9].
Further work by Bruss et al.[10] and a number of other researchers including Gallice[11], and Rapoport and Otsubo[12] has continued to develop the theory on this subject.
In a 2011 study Pigolotti et.al. conducted a thorough study of the unique bid auction in the grand canonical ensemble, finding a theoretical expression for the Nash equilibrium distribution and showing that real-world players play according to this distribution when the number of players in the auction is low. [13].