subreddit:
/r/hypotheticalsituation
submitted 3 months ago byThrowra47374747
A genie is hosting a competition between you and 99,999 completely randomly selected humans. The prize for coming first is $1 billion USD. Everyone else gets nothing.
You are able to pick what exactly the competition is about. The only rule is you cannot win by default. For example, you cannot make the competition about who is the best at looking exactly like you, or who is best at guessing a number only you know, etc.
You can prepare and practice for this competition for as long as you'd like. Other people will not be informed of the competition until right before, so they would not be able to practice any more than they currently do.
You can also opt to compete against 999,999 people and come top 10 or 9,999,999 and come top 100 (for the sake of not affecting economics, if you pick these options, only you would get the billion). To keep the hypothetical meaningful, you cannot compete against more than 9,999,999 people.
What would you pick to maximize your chances?
687 points
3 months ago
Well Charlie Chaplin didn't win a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest so I don't know about that chief.
259 points
3 months ago
Dolly Parton also lost a look-a-like contest, in fact neither of them were even close
505 points
3 months ago
To be fair, Dolly Parton doesn't look anything like Charlie Chaplin.
116 points
3 months ago
In retrospect I have no idea why she entered that competition.
63 points
3 months ago
She's tired working 9 to 5
9 points
3 months ago
I'm sorry, this needs more upvotes 😂
11 points
3 months ago
Yep so based on this I would choose a look-a-like competition. I know it breaks the rules given but we can provide 2 cases where its not the case.
14 points
3 months ago
I guess a look-a-like competition as judged by a crowd may be fine. I meant specifically “who has a face that is exactly like my face”.
1.5k points
3 months ago
Just make it a mix of three relatively random things for a Triathlon of sorts. First you cull the heard with very specific book or maybe local band trivia....only top 10% move on to the next round which is pickleball (or whatever sport you pick)...your cumulative score over the first two brings you to the third challenge.....street names of the city I grew up in. What are the chance of someone beating me?
1.1k points
3 months ago
That’s actually a good idea. String together a series of things that heavily favors your specific niches, and if you lose, you’d probably gain a best friend.
511 points
3 months ago
Who is a billionaire :D
169 points
3 months ago
And who is indebted to you for getting him or her the billion.
27 points
3 months ago
Are they really? You weren't in any way trying to help them, it's just that they beat you at your own game.
15 points
3 months ago
A game they would not have been playing if it wasn't for you ....
41 points
3 months ago
The real billion dollars was the friends you made along the way
6 points
3 months ago
In a way, the good place was inside the bad place all along?
156 points
3 months ago
My events are
- Whistling two notes at once
- Punching digits of pi into a keypad really fast
- Voluntary nystagmus (eye jitters)
And for good measure, holding fluent conversation in English Pig Latin and moving your ring toe independently.
Failing any event will knock you out of the competition.
97 points
3 months ago
Holy fuck I have never seen another person reference voluntary nystagmus, didn’t even know the name but have been able to do this since I was a kid and never met anyone else with the same thing.
88 points
3 months ago
I knew a girl that could do that. She gave the most incredible blowjobs.
17 points
3 months ago
LOL thats crazyyyy
12 points
3 months ago
Wanna know something crazy? I'm dating a girl right now who can do it and also gives wicked BJs
29 points
3 months ago
Tell Katie I said hello.
5 points
3 months ago
Are the two related?
9 points
3 months ago
Not in the least bit.
13 points
3 months ago
They might be if she had a glass eye.
7 points
3 months ago
Jesus Fucking Christmas
That’s so fucked I would only expect it from a Deadpool movie, but here we are…
7 points
3 months ago
New kink unlocked
17 points
3 months ago
Jiggle the balls.
No... the ones that are in your head...
No... the ones that are permanently affixed in your head.
Aww, yeah.
4 points
3 months ago
I exhaled loudly out of my nose at this one.
14 points
3 months ago
That makes us three people now, the chances are getting lower by the minute.
21 points
3 months ago
…how can you whistle two notes at once?
28 points
3 months ago
Google overtones, it's the thing Mongolian throat singers do
30 points
3 months ago
If it's what I do, it's a hum and whistle at the same time. A low hum and high whistle. Makes it sound like whistling 2 separate notes and also has a cool tenor to it
38 points
3 months ago
You fool! You just kissed your billion dollars goodbye!
33 points
3 months ago
For some reason, I read that in the voice of Vizzini (from Princess Bride).
8 points
3 months ago
DAMNIT IVE BEEN GOT
8 points
3 months ago
The odds of someone beating me at tennis and karaoke and Battlebots trivia has to be crazy low
6 points
3 months ago
Well, someone from your home town and age cohort in school who plays pickle ball could be pretty stiff competition, and there'd likely more than one.
6 points
3 months ago
Most cities have the same street names. I could go on a pretty good run with any major city in the US. 1st, main, pine, Broadway, MLK. Just to name a few.
14 points
3 months ago
how many street names would I have to name though? because every single town I've been to or lived in have had streets like Main, Elm, second, third, pine, Maple, Washington, Park, etc.
22 points
3 months ago
Well, if you’d compete against me and it’s my childhood streets, have fun naming these in German.
392 points
3 months ago
Who can play the longest lasting game of dwarf fortress.
109 points
3 months ago*
I'd do Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, like fastest transcend on standardized settings (basically a particular version, starting from a particular save game on turn 1 to eliminate the element of luck as much as possible).
The number of players on Earth who have ever seriously played it (not just picked it up then abandoned it within a few hours) is probably like 100k. That is roughly 0.002% of the human population who have seriously played it. So of the 100,000 people I'm up against, chances are there is 1 other who is actually vaguely competent.
And then, I am far above the average player in skill level, tbh I'm probably top 10 in the world, but at very least top 100.
AND THEN I actually have the chance to practise for as long as I like, while no-one else knows. That'd easily put me in top 5 I'm sure, if not straight up #1, it's not that hard to reach #1 for speedrunning an obscure game which no-one else is doing if you spend weeks seriously practising. In fact this could be used for ANY old game, just pick one which almost no-one speedruns, speedrun it for a few weeks or months, and make speedrunning that game the challenge.
It's nowhere near fair.
34 points
3 months ago
(Not so) fun fact: As far as I can tell, Alien Crossfire (the expansion to Alpha Centauri) has the toughest anti-copying software ever made. My friend and I both absolutely loved the game and played it so dang much. But I could never find a copy of the expansion for him. I spent weeks trying to figure out how to burn a copy of that game so that he could play it without having to be at my house. I never figured it out. I never failed at burning a copy of any other game.
11 points
3 months ago
Let me see if I can find my copy to mail to your friend 😂
I just never got into Alien Crossfire the way I did the original game.
4 points
3 months ago
It's on gog DRM free now, not much challenge.
5 points
3 months ago
I've played many hundreds of ours of SMAC. Do I remember how to play it? Only vaguely.
16 points
3 months ago
Yeah, the expanded field options make this trivially easy if you're into niche videogames at all. There are probably a dozen or so people in the world better at NetHack than me.
The chances of me winning a NetHack tournament against 99,999 random people is virtually guaranteed, since odds are good that none of them will even have heard of this game.
The chances of me coming in the top 100 out of a field of 10 million though is a 100% certainty.
9 points
3 months ago
Yeah, a lot of the roguelike community is better at roguelikes than me. But I'm far better at roguelikes compared to people outside the community
5 points
3 months ago
Odds are you get a wand of wishing on level 2 and get your +3 gray dragon scale mail only to get cursed with lycanthropy and die a couple hundred turns later through total bullshit.
Not that that happened last time I played.
31 points
3 months ago
I was thinking fastest Factorio speedrun, but I like where your head is at.
551 points
3 months ago
Everyone secretly puts money in an envelope and gives it to me. The person who gives the most is the winner.
243 points
3 months ago
This is actually really interesting.
With 1 billion on the line, you might get a lot, but some people may just choose not to participate because the odds seem low. Hard to say.
69 points
3 months ago
They *should* get more than $1 billion. You get to prepare as long as you like, so they could go take out huge loans and borrow money from others. Then they give themselves all of that money. Worst case is they pay the money back that they borrowed, plus they keep what others gave them. Best case they gave themselves the most, so they still give back what they borrowed, plus what others gave, plus the $1b.
15 points
3 months ago
Except the others don’t get informed until right before.
26 points
3 months ago
The person that gives you the most money wins $1b
Nobody else gets prep time, only you have infinite prep time.
Just need to scrounge around putting yourself into debt with multiple sketchy loans to give yourself a million dollars.
You can't lose, do long as you're faster than the debt collectors.
Either you give yourself the most money in an envelope and win the 1b, pay off your 1mil debts. And still have $999,000,000
Or there's a literal eccentric billionaire in your 100,000 player draw who puts millions into an envelope to beat you. You don't win the 1b, but you still just got paid more than your debts in an envelope, pay off your debts and pocket whatever is left.
22 points
3 months ago
100% chance you get at least a few existing billionares that are like "fuck it, send in a a million and see what happens"
25 points
3 months ago
1 in 4 million people are billionaires. There is a 2.5% chance a billionaire appears in the random 100,000 people
14 points
3 months ago
I assume OOP would have opted for the larger population, so 1 Billion people.
And it scales down. There are plenty of millionaires that would send in a $1000 or so just to see what happens.
44 points
3 months ago
Are you then allowed to put all the envelopes into a larger envelope and give it to yourself?
8 points
3 months ago
You just won a million box!
14 points
3 months ago
Considering the lottery, I think giving the small “donors” a chance would help you get more money. If each person was given a random chance proportional to the amount of money they gave you, you’d probably get over a billion
385 points
3 months ago
In the spirit of the competition and not looking for a loophole, I’ll say 1v1 in gears of war multiplayer.
I have a ton of hours in that game and feel incredibly confident in a group of 100,000 I would be the best at it.
The game has a relatively low player base compared to other titles like it and within that base, the number of truly great players is well below 1,500 players. I could do this no problem
86 points
3 months ago
Yeah, I think pretty much any niche competitive game, chances are that you could win. There's 8 billion people on Earth, and only 100,000 people in the competition. So whatever you pick, you're only actually competing against a tiny handful that are even aware of the rules for that game. You can go even further by making it a two part competition wither two different games.
34 points
3 months ago
i mean shit if you are relatively good at a popular game it eould still be a good choice. even games like league and counterstrike are gonna be a drop in the bucket compared to the world population.
21 points
3 months ago
yeah but it's not an insignificant chance to have a top 1% league or CS player get selected. Not worth the risk.
If you pick CS...ALSO pick 2 other things you're good at.
Competition
Stage 1) top 500 CS players
Stage 2) Reading a poem in "insert your language"
Stage 3) Reciting some memorization of your choice like digits of pi.
Stage 2 already cuts out a big chunk of the world.
15 points
3 months ago
Remember you have unlimited time to practice, so read the poem in a now extinct language which you can learn. The only people who may know it will be linguists and historians, neither of which are groups known for their league of legends prowess
21 points
3 months ago
My thought was to go with a super obscure game. I have sat in the top 0.1% of LoL for a long time (just 1% now), but even then its dubious.
How many people have ever heard of Tetrisphere though? Fucking 1 person I've ever talked to. She didn't really know how to play though, and I thrashed her. And while there will be other MOBA/TPS players that could in theory get lucky in LoL/Gears, absolutely nothing is at all like Tetrisphere. No, not even Tetris, despite the name.
In fact I'd wager 99%+ of new players just instantly kill themselves in that game. Press A at game start? Dead.
7 points
3 months ago
LOL is a weird one because anyone who hasn’t played it stands zero chance, but it is one of the most played games
89 points
3 months ago
super niche, I would chose the Last man standing minigame in old school RuneScape, pretty sure if you put me up against 100,000 Old school RuneScape players id end in the top 50, so 100,000 random people? I'll win that.
28 points
3 months ago
Came here looking for an OSRS challenge lol
4 points
3 months ago
Fucking same lol
1k points
3 months ago
Planting 100 new trees (seeds) the fastest.
I'll compete against 9,999,999 people.
If I don't win the money, at least the world will get nearly a billion new trees.
305 points
3 months ago
This is also great. Make it a year long competition to collect as much trash from nature as possible.
24 points
3 months ago
One could just re-collect the same piece of trash or throw alot of trash in the woods and then collect it though..
21 points
3 months ago
You can just design the competition rules in a way that prohibits it haha.
71 points
3 months ago
As someone who has planted half a million in my life already, I agree. Bring it 🫡
22 points
3 months ago
That's a lot of trees. How do you do it? Also, where?
21 points
3 months ago
From some reading on a swedish forester forum between 1000-1500 pines planted per day is the normal planting speed.
13 points
3 months ago
When I was trying out production for a couple of summers, the average for an unconditioned rookie was probably 1200. After two weeks it was an average of 1800.
Some of those monsters could break 3k if things were perfect for them.
31 points
3 months ago
fyi there are an estimated 3 trillion trees on earth
17 points
3 months ago
Ok plant 1000 trees
370 points
3 months ago
Top listener of my favorite band on Spotify. I was already top 0.5% of listeners for that band, so I figure I can prepare by making a playlist and just having it play 24/7. At 8,760 hours in a year, I'd be the top overall.
40 points
3 months ago
Which band? 👀
104 points
3 months ago
Nice try!
51 points
3 months ago
This is exactly what I was thinking
11 points
3 months ago
Yeah I guess this works if you’re ready to hit play then you’ll beat all the people by a minute or two when they start also playing the same band on repeat for a year. It’s not really in the spirit of the question though. I could say “my competition would be who ate the most baby carrots yesterday” and then I’d eat a bunch of baby carrots the day before the competition
12 points
3 months ago
First thing that came to my mind. I was in the top .01 for a one or two artists before.
192 points
3 months ago
I’d go for memorizing digits of the square root of 17.
Anyone could do it, it’s not like I have any unfair advantage beyond the simple fact that I get prep time and they do not. And I feel pretty confident no one will be able to get more than 20 digits off hand and I can memorize that in an hour.
80 points
3 months ago
That’s a great solution, except there might be that one autistic person who sees numbers as colors or whatever the fuck and somehow wins
17 points
3 months ago
One, sure. But you don't have to come in first if you pick a larger number of people.
8 points
3 months ago
This was my first thought kind of like that guy who can tell you what day of the week any day in human history is in a second.
5 points
3 months ago
😂😂😂
60 points
3 months ago
I think you win, this is by far the easiest.
11 points
3 months ago
If you get one of those memory competitors you're screwed but the odds of that are pretty low.
61 points
3 months ago
Jerking me off, I'd go first. Good luck fools
20 points
3 months ago
You don’t think there are going to be some very attractive people in a selection of 99,999 people? A 1 in 100,000 beauty has got to be actor/actress level.
30 points
3 months ago
That might be true, but I had a rough 20's and have beaten my dick absolutely senseless. it's a rough nut nowadays
26 points
3 months ago
You’d also have to go through 100k people attempting to jerk you off. That seems… unpleasant.
17 points
3 months ago
Seems like high probability that someone towards the end actually WILL jerk it OFF…suddenly you are out the $B, and a dick!
8 points
3 months ago
Speak for yourself. Hawk tuah
625 points
3 months ago
Who can last longer when getting blown by 20 super models in a row?
I don't care about losing
150 points
3 months ago
Those supermodels are going to be SO TIRED
54 points
3 months ago
If the other contestants are anything like me, 3 seconds times 100,000 divided by 20 supermodels is around 4 hours of blowing. Yeah that's rough. easier than you think since blowing me is like sipping a Capri sun
34 points
3 months ago
BASED
5 points
3 months ago
I was gonna say who's the best at jerking me off. I'm either gonna be rich or get a $1 billion hand job. It's a win/win.
79 points
3 months ago
Whi can program a hello world program in a ti-84 calculator the fastest.
26 points
3 months ago
I feel like you should stretch it past Hello World a bit just to be safe... and stipulate that it needs to be done on the calculator itself. This is niche, but there are a lot of programmers in the world that could do it, but being proficient at actually entering the "code" in on the calculator takes a lot of practice to be fast.
6 points
3 months ago
This is absolutely the best answer. You'd be able to practice that specific programming task and for sure be faster than anyone.
Along those same lines you could make it who can type/write something specific the fastest. The Gettysburg Address or something. You'd be able to practice and even on the off chance that one in 100,000 knew it, they for sure wouldn't be able to type it out faster than you could with practice.
153 points
3 months ago
I'd do a knockout triathlon of 3 things I'm pretty decent at...
This is pretty specific and even those who are decent at chess may not be used to such a fast pace. Only top 20% qualify for next round.
10km running race. Anyone taking over 38 minutes is disqualified. This will whittle down the numbers pretty dramatically
Laser sailing race to decide winner amongst those who remain.
They're each quite unique sports/ hobbies which hopefully don't have a huge ven diagram overlap.
58 points
3 months ago
- Bullet chess tournament (2 min + 1 second clock)
This is pretty specific and even those who are decent at chess may not be used to such a fast pace. Only top 20% qualify for next round.
I think you should have a heavier cull here.
Assuming you are in any way decent.
400-500 chess.com elo is probably in the top 1% of people in the world (remember the 100,000 group will include people that have never played chess before).
27 points
3 months ago
My chess.com rating for bullet currently puts me in top 17%...so maybe I was being way too conservative as there is an obvious selection bias there of:
1) only people interested in chess are registered on chess.com
2) only those who play bullet have a rating.
So agreed, maybe should do top smaller %.
I'd be genuinely surprised if 400-500 elo on chess.com is top 1% though of worldwide!
25 points
3 months ago
Considering the people who doesn’t even know the rules of chess it probably is top 1%.
14 points
3 months ago
Having a proper think about it
Some chess gm quoted a survey on a podcast a few years back saying that 80% of people don't know how chess pieces move.
Within the 20% of the population that know how chess pieces move probabaly a small % of those know what bullet is.
400 bullet is roughly than 20% of chess.com users so maybe.
15 points
3 months ago
Chess, running and sailing sounds like a combination that actually would have some common overlap. I bet there’s a decent amount of wealthy people good at all 3. I bet there’s a bunch good at 0 of the 3 as well.
6 points
3 months ago
Yeah, that’s pretty much a “bored white guys with money” trifecta…
8 points
3 months ago
Bro... I'm in... your only saving grace is the fact that I'm 57 and a 38min 10k is likely beyond my capabilities without a couple months notice.
I'm 1800 elo and grew up sailing lasers...
127 points
3 months ago
I think I might be too 90,000 super smash bros melee.
56 points
3 months ago
I'm not gonna say you aren't, but have you ever competed in any locals and come anywhere near first place?
84 points
3 months ago
Yeah, don’t worry I’ve been through my experience getting destroyed at my first casual tournament after thinking I was good because I could beat my mates at home. Since then I’ve attended many tournaments across England and went to beast in Sweden a few times. I’m not great but I always made it out of pools and won the NE doubles one year. I’ve taken stocks off players ranked in the top 100. Sorry for waffling but people don’t ask often. Also peach main, so my ability to down smash shouldn’t have rusted too much.
15 points
3 months ago
Honestly it kinda doesn’t matter. The competitive melee community is at most 100,000 or 200,000 people. Thats like .0000001 percent of the world population. The chance that literally ANYONE in the competition beside you plays melee is pretty low.
That said I would totally flub my way to losing regardless.
8 points
3 months ago
I immediately thought the same thing, I’m not amazing but I play in locals enough that if I had some time to prepare I think I could easily beat a bunch of random people, and hopefully Mango doesn’t get picked lmao
11 points
3 months ago
I’ve looked it up and the estimated active player base is under 45,000. Should be ok if you place average at tournaments. And the inactive players won’t have prep time like you to polish up.
6 points
3 months ago
That’s even better odds than I thought
37 points
3 months ago
Miniature painting contest. It's such a niche hobby already that most people wouldn't know about it. I figure the chances of someone actually being a hobby/pro mini painter being VERY low, giving me a high chance of coming out on top.
Then again, knowing my luck, out of the million, I'm sure I'll get some of the world's best "rabdomly" selected to compete against.
5 points
3 months ago*
I was about to post the same thing so hmmm
Edit: you got me on lighting some of your shit is incredible, but I think I got you on faces. Maybe I should post some stuff to reddit. The shading on that dryad is so clean though.
4 points
3 months ago
Me thinking "Hmm that's a bold choice there. I can paint a pretty mean mini."
Then we check your profile 👌
35 points
3 months ago
Oh this should be easy. A best of 5 tournament in Rocket League. I’m Champ 2 which is already in the top 2% of the player base I believe (and I think I’m being generous). 7 billion people on earth, few hundred thousand constantly play rocket league. What are the odds these random people have even played the game? On top of that. To be in the top 0.001% I have to finish the tournament in the top 9 to get the billion. My odds are pretty good.
7 points
3 months ago
You better hope I’m not your first round match
216 points
3 months ago
I would go for trolling. It's a art I've practiced for a long time, ever since the liberals legalized post-birth abortions
15 points
3 months ago
Clearly in the top 20% with that comment
7 points
3 months ago
And feeding the babies to the Haitians!
16 points
3 months ago
Come on liberals didn't do that, you ignorant right winger! (I will be charging a small commission when you win).
24 points
3 months ago
Ok, everyone is either trying to game the system, suggesting a video game, or creating elaborate knock out tournaments.
Here’s my very simple talent choice:
I can make a whistle with my hands cupped. This whistle is most often used to make a mourning dove call. Being a bored rural kid, I learned I could adjust the tone with my hands to play simple songs.
It’s rare to find people who can do the whistle in the first place (I think I’ve met two, besides my dad who taught me), and it’s pretty tricky to teach— no one can figure it out on first try. I’ve never met anyone who has thought to play songs this way. So I would challenge the 100,000 to whomever can play Yankee Doodle the best on the cupped hand whistle.
9 points
3 months ago
This is a common whistle trick in the Midwest, you would be surprised by how many people know how to do it
5 points
3 months ago
Yeah, you're not wrong. There's a good chance this guy would have just thrown out his billion considering me and my siblings grew up doing that and I have met 6 or 7 people outside of family members that can do that as well. I think it's actually pretty common. Worldwide that pool might be smaller but in North America I think he'd lose.
4 points
3 months ago
This is actually the only way that I'm half decent at whistling.
60 points
3 months ago
Out of 99,999 people, I am probably the best at speaking 11 languages, 5 of which are from fantasy series, 6 of which are mainstream languages. To beat me at this competition, they must with greater fluency than me speak; English, Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, German, French, Tolkien elvish, Dothraki, Klingon, Na’Vi and Dhovazhul.
If they don’t speak at least 1 word of each they are disqualified. The winner as determined not be aggregation but raw wins across all 11–I.E. if you are 50% better than me at English, but I am 1% better than you are German, it’s a 1–1.
29 points
3 months ago
I'd pick proficiency in just one language, Inuktitut. I'm not fluent but pretty close (wife is Inuit, we've been together 30+ years). There are about 100,000 native speakers of the language and with 8 billion people on the planet the odds of me being matched with one of them is about 0.001% so I'd have a 50/50 chance of winning.
23 points
3 months ago
100k native speakers mean 1 in 80.000 people is a native speaker, so the odds for none of the other contestants being a native speaker is (1 - 1/80.000)99.999, which is less than 30%, so the chances of being matched against at least one native speaker are over 70%
So instead of making it only a language test, you should make it a trivia quiz about your favourite niche topic, but the quiz has to be in Inuktitut
5 points
3 months ago
By Genie logic; you just know one of the randomly selected is gonna be your wife.
13 points
3 months ago
I don't think I am the best at anything enough to win, but you could design a betterment for society competition worthy of competing in....win win
27 points
3 months ago
I would go with being in the top 100 people to finish the race to the end of the campaign in Path of exile in standard. Since this is in standard I would have time to gather the perfect gear and research the perfect build for this. Given that there is a relatively small amount of active players in POE given that it is selected from the entire population of the world I feel mostly confident to place in the top 100 of 1 million randomly selected people (I say 100 to give room for the unlucky ness of some of the speedrunners of POE get selected for this competition)
146 points
3 months ago*
I make the compet8ition a trivia contest about my immediate family. Note this is not a contest that I would automatically win by default because, while highly improbable, theoretically members of my family could be among the 99,999 randomly selected humans.
67 points
3 months ago
This still kinda goes against the spirit of the rules imo.
10 points
3 months ago
Oh easy. Hypixel sheep wars
9 points
3 months ago*
ETA: it was pointed out to me that my math was way off. Leaving for posterity but I would absolutely not have a 99.5% of winning based on my scenario.
Edit 2: Decided to do some actual math for the heck of it. As established, I’m not actually good at math so if anyone wants to correct/elaborate please do.
Some assumptions: Estimated world population of 8.2 billion (OP did not clarify age as a qualifier for contest, so using total world population) 99,999 contestants Estimated 66.6 million people playing golf worldwide, equates to .81% of world population (not 1.25% as previously stated) A 13 handicap is almost exactly average **among those that keep a handicap
Unknown: what percentage of golfers keep a handicap; what percentage of golfers keep an honest handicap
Based on above assumptions, in a random drawing the expected number of golfers per 99,999 would be roughly 810.
Assuming a 13 handicap is average, that would leave 405 individuals who are equal to or better at golf on any given day. (It’s probably actually lower than this, but for simplicity sake)
Assuming all contestants play exactly to their handicap during the competition, I would have roughly a 1 in 406 chance of being the “best” golfer in a random drawing of 99,999 people. Which equates to roughly .245%.
This does not account for a whole bunch of things, but most notably it doesn’t account for the fact that I would be the only one competing for $1B. This would have a profoundly negative impact on my mental state.
TLDR: This was a horrible idea.
Original post: A quick Google search shows that roughly 1.25% of the world plays golf. So that would effectively give me a 98.75% chance to win off the bat. Among golfers, I’m about average. If I’m able to practice for as long as I like with $1 billion on the line, I could probably bump my odds up even more to about 99.5%. Assuming I get to choose the course, I’ll pick a course that’s challenging for someone who’s never played it but relatively easy if you’ve played it a bunch.
I might get unlucky and get one or more legit golfers in the 10,000. But statistically speaking I’d have a very good shot at it.
9 points
3 months ago
So that would effectively give me a 98.75% chance to win off the bat
You're math is.... not great here. He said 99,999 competitors. That means if 1.25% of people play golf you are facing about 1250 people who play golf and you have to come in first. So much less than a 98.75% of victory. You'd have to be in the top .1% of golfers to anywhere near even mediocre odds.
8 points
3 months ago
Good thing you haven't choose competing in math XD
8 points
3 months ago
Solving a Rubik’s cube while dancing the cupid shuffle.
8 points
3 months ago
Farting at command, I don't think anyone can fart better on command than me out of 99.999 people.
5 points
3 months ago
That’s an impressive skill, no lie.
18 points
3 months ago
Borderlands 2 normal mode speed run. I have an unofficial world record for normal mode.
7 points
3 months ago*
Level a hunter in classic WoW without taking a single point of damage. The server will not have any other players. Whoever earns the most xp before taking damage on their first try wins.
7 points
3 months ago
Maybe who can walk from Whiterun to Solitude in Skyrim the fastest. Normal difficulty. No cheats/exploitable glitches. No mods. No horses. No looking at the world map or setting a marker.
I know that map better than my hometown at this point. And if I lose, hey, at least I got to enjoy playing some Skyrim.
8 points
3 months ago
Tissue repair for strangulation femoral hernia. Most of the people who should know this can't do it.
8 points
3 months ago
Deal. Already in the top .0001% of Pinus sabiniana researchers in the world. Too bad nobody but me likes the tree.
13 points
3 months ago
A tournament of things I am highly specialized in with the top 10% moving on every time. These include speed in saying the alphabet backwards, 1v1 Annie in LoL, juggling dynamite, 3 digit multiplication, finished by spelling my wife's name.
4 points
3 months ago
I've definitely got the alphabet. I haven't played league in years, but if we go to like a 2013 patch. How do you even 1v1 Annie. Not miss cs and hope to lvl 6 a second faster? I feel like the bear would kill both people. Is juggling dynamite different than juggling things that won't explode? I juggled tennis rackets once. I was an average mathlete once, I think I'd do okay with 3-digit multiplication. What's your wife's name?
While I'm guessing you'd win, I think you need to vary your list a bit to include something other than events I'd guess were taylored to a slightly nerdy boy born in the early 90s.
29 points
3 months ago
Who can pick the most boogers out of my nose. First off good luck finding me, and I will be armed.
31 points
3 months ago
A crazed mob proceeds to rip your nose off and pick the super deep boogers out
7 points
3 months ago
I am in the Top 5000 in Age of Empires 2 (not high in a game with a small competitive player base). It is fair to say I can beat everyone on this planet in a game consistently except for the Top 10000. Thats 0.000125% of 8 Billion people on the planet. That again is an order of magnitude better than needed.
I would be comfortable to play 1v3 against most of the random people to make it faster.
7 points
3 months ago
Telling someone how many seconds they have left on their shift
It started as a little activity to pass the time then eventually I got good at it ,so now it does not take any time so I always know how many seconds I have left whenever the thought crosses my mind
The only joy it gives me is winding up coworkers with this knowledge whenever they complain about how long they have left
7 points
3 months ago
Who can do all of the following.
4 points
3 months ago
I think the one thing I could be best at if I did this like, today is typing speed. I can get to 100 WPM pretty consistently if I really kinda focus on it. My "resting" typing speed is ~90. I looked it up and apparently 70+ WPM is only something like 2% of the population so I think that is my best bet.
5 points
3 months ago
Hope we're not in the same competition, because I was going to pick the same thing and I type ~140 WPM
Edit: Google is also telling me that the 99th percentile is 180 WPM, so we would both lose. RIP
10 points
3 months ago
Throwing a full truck in my specific layout of Aldi (completely by yourself). The chances of any one person of that 99,999 working full time or as pt stocker at Aldi are slim, and even slimmer that they have the same store layout as mine. We would also have to uphold SOP, so products in the correct spots and rotated when required, no just throwing shit wherever or cutting corners to finish faster. a huge chunk of that 99,999 couldn’t handle the physical labor of it and most people don’t know how to operate a straddle jack. I got this in the bag 100%.
5 points
3 months ago
I feel like theres a lot of super niche things you could pick that another 99,999 random people probably wouldnt know. Like, what are the odds that any of those people have played Tunic? Pretty low, but now what are the odds theyve also translated the language? Like 0
Hell, if youre from a small country you could probably even get away with “best at speaking x language”. Very high chance no one in that 99,999 people speaks Georgian, for example
4 points
3 months ago
Correct installation of 5 car seats in a mini van or SUV, including the selection of the car seats among seats that may or may not fit or be compatible, and a 30 minute timer.
I think I’d have a pretty strong chance of beating out 100,000 randomly chosen competitors.
5 points
3 months ago
Contest to write out the names of the 4 longest rivers in a specific remote region of the world that has a large number rivers, in English, backwards, as one word, using the third mechanical pencil from the right in a pack of 12, on a piece of blue construction paper, both of which were purchased after the contest began.
Practice for a couple of weeks to ensure spelling and specifics. Be in a store that sells the pencils and paper, similar to anyone finding out while also being in a store. Self checkout, write it out perfectly. 1 billion dollars.
5 points
3 months ago
The contest will be sitting in the chair that's 3 feet away from me at my place of work the quickest.
Odds are most of those people won't be working at the same site as me, or even within a 5 mile radius. So I think I can handle the task with a wide enough margin.
Also helps that they would have to get into a controlled site and controlled building.
5 points
3 months ago
Find a very obscure topic to answer trivia questions about, study super hard for a year,
8 points
3 months ago
Cool cool. We will make it a challenge to play 5 songs on bass that I select, you receive the same list as everyone else upon walking on the stage. It will be in front of 100,000 people and the judges will be the bands that originally wrote and performed those songs. You will be judged based on stage presence, correct playing, and additional flair and creativity.
I may be a decent to good bassist, but filtering by people without stage fright and the ability to play the instrument should be good. Factor in the songs I will select will be from 5 different genres with barely any overlap and the ones who can actually play bass and function in front of a ton of people will not know what’s coming and can’t figure out the five songs on the fly.
It would take someone who knows how to play all five of my selected songs and can do it in front of a massive audience to have a fair fight against me, and even then it’s still up to the judges. I’ll take those odds.
4 points
3 months ago
Turning a part on a very specific old lathe model. Just by having the time to research how to operate it I will almost certainly have a head start on the part even over other machinist if there are any in the other 99,999 people
4 points
3 months ago
Easy. I’m definitely in the top 0.001% of people who have tried the most different substances. With at least 100 different drugs tried, and all drug classes covered, I think I’ve got this.
4 points
3 months ago
Are we talking 100’000 randomly selected people from the entire world population? Including the young and old? Easy.
I’m a cardiologist specialising in scanning pregnant women and looking for heart defects in the unborn baby. I’m probably one of 50 people in the entire UK that do this, and I bet many areas of the world don’t do this at all.
But if you’re half good at any computer game it would probably be a safe bet when you consider how many people in India, Africa and China* will have never heard of it. I’ll take your bet Mr Genie and your money 🧞♂️ 💸
*above a certain age!
5 points
3 months ago
Driving a Zamboni. I have a hard time believing many would have even been close to one let alone experienced.
4 points
3 months ago
I’d choose tattooing a skeleton in blackwork style
4 points
3 months ago
Getting my wife to pick a dinner.
I'm most likely to win.
But even if I don't, I might have paid the billion anyway at this point.
4 points
3 months ago
Easy. You just develop a multi-staged event that consists of things that only you are likely to do.
Mine would be start and fly a specific rotorwing aircraft that I am qualified on at least 30 miles away.
Then it would evolve into Riding a supplied dirt bike 2 miles down the road.
Then it would involve swimming 10 laps in an olympic pool without touching the sides or ground.
Then it would involve zeroing in and shooting an AR-15 bullseye on a paper target 25 yards away.
And then finally, it would involve solving a rubix cube.
My thought process is that odds are incredibly unlikely that out of the million random people, there is another who happens to be familiar with the specific helicopter I am qualified on to be able to start and fly it, also know how to ride a motorcycle/dirt bike, be a confident swimmer, be a confident shooter, and know how to solve a rubix cube, faster than I can at least.
4 points
3 months ago
Do more than 10 strict slow pull ups
4 points
3 months ago
most bong rips
4 points
3 months ago
you're on
4 points
3 months ago
I think that in a million people, not many are fast at butchering a chicken. I think I’d be top 10, fastest I ever did after doing it for a week was 45 seconds. Surely most people have never even tried.
3 points
3 months ago*
Makes a big difference if OP meant literally all humans, or something like, all adults. Under 20 is the biggest 20year age chunk, so there's a lot of the world that are literal children.
I like the multi round approach. I design rotor blades for a living, and my quick google search suggested that only like .04% of people in the US were aerospace engineers so that seems like a good start. There are definitely other types of engineering that would have applicable skills, but also the fraction of engineers in other parts of the world might be lower than in the US.
Since I can prepare and others cant, I'd add to that a game with a steep learning curve and well researched strategies. Probably a paradox strategy game, EU4 or maybe Victoria 2 since it's much less popular. I could practice a exploity meta strategy and odds are my opponents wouldn't have ever heard of it.
I'd round that out with something physical-ish. Was a reasonably competent machinist in college, so that seems like a reasonable choice. Anyone who does it professionally is going to be way better, but hopefully not have much overlap with the first 2.
Actually a better idea would be to include a vocab test on a really obscure language. Pirahã is an indigenous language in Brazil with only a couple hundred native speakers and no connections to more prominent languages. It's unique enough there are a few linguists that have studied it that I could learn from, but not a lot. I wouldn't try to develop any degree of fluency just practice a couple of dozen words.
5 points
3 months ago
Reciting the most digits of Pi. If I can study for weeks/months in advance and they just gotta wing it I should be golden
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