# Player-vs-Player Desk (THE BOARD MEETING)

> **Status: not yet operating.** THE BOARD MEETING is built and under fork
> rehearsal, but it is not deployed and the cabinet is dark. No contract
> address exists yet. When one does it will be published on
> [Official Channels](/official-channels) and nowhere else. **Participation is
> restricted to persons 18 years of age or older.** Dollar figures on this
> page are deployed parameters or worked examples, never a promise.

THE BOARD MEETING is a thirty-second prisoner's dilemma against another
person.

Two players are matched into a boardroom. Each puts up ten dollars. Two of
that is the house's, fifty cents goes to a communal jackpot, and fifteen is
the pot. For thirty seconds they can say anything to each other in a chat
window, then each presses one of two buttons, SPLIT or STEAL, and neither can
see the other's choice until both are sealed. Split and split: each takes
their $7.50 back. Steal against a splitter: the whole $15. Steal against a
stealer: the pot is forfeited and both leave with nothing.

It is the first NetNet cabinet where the edge you are playing against is
another person's decision, not a board. **The house is not your opponent.**
It takes its cut at the door and never takes a side.

The consumer application speaks plain English by design. Its rules panel
carries the whole description and links here. This page is the controlling
description of the mechanics.

## The game

* **One seat costs $10.00 in USDG, all in.** The desk buys Microsoft stock
  tokens (MSFT) with it through Rialto at the door. Chips are MSFT, every
  payout is MSFT, and a CASH OUT button sells them back to USDG whenever you
  like.
* **The split.** $7.50 of every entry goes into the pot. $2.00 goes to the
  house, half to the Manager and half to the NetNet RWA Sleeve. $0.50 goes
  into the jackpot. The split is immutable and neither house half can be set
  to zero.
* **The round.** Thirty seconds. Your choice is sealed in your browser as a
  cryptographic commitment the moment you lock it, and nothing about it,
  including whether you have locked at all, reaches the other player until
  both envelopes open together.
* **The four outcomes.** Both split: each takes $7.50 back. One steals: the
  thief takes $15.00 and the splitter takes nothing. Both steal: the $15.00
  is forfeited, half to the jackpot and half to the house, and both take
  nothing.
* **A default is a split for the money and nothing else.** If you never lock
  a choice you settle as a splitter, but you earn no loot roll and no
  jackpot ticket. If neither player locks, the table is void and nobody is
  charged.
* **The rewards are for keeping your word.** Lock SPLIT, whatever the other
  side does, and you roll the loot table and hold a jackpot ticket. Being
  robbed costs you the pot; it does not cost you your roll.
* **The 1/1 is for the thief.** THE CASTING VOTE, one in the world, rolls
  only on a successful steal, at 1 in 10,000. Nothing in the game says it
  exists.

## Why anyone splits

With only the money on the table, STEAL never does worse than SPLIT, and a
room of rational players steals every time and pays out nothing. That is
the whole problem with the game, and the jackpot is the whole answer.

Half of every forfeited pot goes into a jackpot that only players who locked
SPLIT can win. So the more the room steals, the larger the reward for not
stealing grows, until splitting is worth as much as stealing again. At the
parameters below the room settles where about **54% of players steal**,
half of all tables end with somebody being taken, and a fifth end in a
handshake. That is not a failure mode. That is the show.

The jackpot is not a bonus sitting on top of the game. It is the only thing
that makes cooperating rational, and the desk has no function that can
remove a dollar from it except a paid hit.

## The economics, in full

At the equilibrium above, of every $20.00 two players put on a table: the
house keeps about **$6.18**, roughly 31%; $10.64 returns to players through
the pot; and $3.18 flows through the jackpot back to players. **Players get
back about 69% of what they put in, all of it from each other.**

That is a higher edge than the fund's other desks. What buys it is that
this cabinet carries no house position, needs no bankroll, cannot be broken
by variance, and returns every dollar of the jackpot. What it costs a player
is real and is printed here: a player who splits into a splitter every
round is down $2.50 a round before loot and jackpot, and **on more than half
of all tables a player walks away with nothing**, because that is how often
the other side steals.

The jackpot pays one ticket in 5,000. Its expected value to a ticket is
fixed by the equilibrium at about $3.45; the odds set only how large the
pot grows and how often somebody wins it. It settles around $17,000 and, at
launch volume, pays roughly daily. It opens seeded with $10,000 from the
fund, which is a one-way contribution and never comes back.

## Every leg is MSFT

The pot, the jackpot, the loot and the fees are all held and paid in MSFT
stock tokens. The desk prices the door against Chainlink's MSFT/USD feed
through an adapter that applies the token's corporate-action multiplier, and
refuses any quote more than 5% from that mark. **No path a player uses to
get their money out reads the oracle**: closing a seat, claiming the jackpot
and minting loot are plain token transfers, so a stale feed, a corporate
action or a broken swap can slow a new entry but can never strand a
player's MSFT.

## Randomness, and how to check it

The outcome of a table is not random and never touches a beacon. It is two
people's decisions. Each is revealed from a commitment its owner made
before the other was known, and both commitments and both revealed salts are
published with every table, so anyone can recompute them.

The loot roll and the jackpot ticket derive from a three-party commitment:
the house's secret, committed to both players before either locks, and both
players' own salts. Nobody sees the other two inputs in time to steer it.
THE CASTING VOTE alone is decided by drand quicknet, a public randomness
beacon verified on chain, named for a round that had not yet published when
the batch of tables was committed.

The words for the outcome are **sealed** and **verifiable**. The words for
the loot and the jackpot are **committed** and, for the 1/1 only, **provably
fair**. This page never uses the second phrase about the first thing.

## Fairness, stated per actor

* **The other player** cannot learn your choice, or whether you have chosen,
  until both are sealed. There is no window in which knowing theirs can
  change yours.
* **The house** holds no position and cannot influence who wins a table. It
  cannot read a choice before it is sealed, cannot alter a result the player
  co-signed, and cannot take a dollar from the jackpot.
* **A colluding pair** can guarantee each other a handshake. They earn loot
  and jackpot tickets at about twice the rate of an honest player per dollar.
  The house is unaffected; the cost lands on other players, who share those
  pools. The fund weighed this and accepted it in exchange for a game two
  people can start at any hour, and holds levers it can pull without a
  redeploy if it shows up in the data.
* **The server** matches players, runs the clock and co-signs every seat
  state. Its power is bounded: a player closes their seat at their newest
  co-signed state without the server's cooperation, and a close the player
  never agreed to opens a challenge window rather than paying.

## What the desk can never do

* Take a dollar from the jackpot except to pay a winning ticket.
* Pay a seat more than it deposited plus half of everything it ever staked,
  or more than fifty times its deposits, whichever is smaller.
* Pay any close out of the jackpot or the fee buckets.
* Read the oracle on a close, a claim or a mint.
* Seat a house account or a bot as an opponent.
* Deal a table that cannot pay rewards.

## Parameters

| | |
|---|---|
| Door | $10.00 USDG, fee-inclusive |
| Pot / house / jackpot | $7.50 / $2.00 / $0.50 per entry |
| House split | 50% Manager, 50% RWA Sleeve, neither zeroable |
| Mutual-steal forfeit | 50% jackpot, 50% house |
| Round | 30 seconds, 5-second reveal window |
| Jackpot odds | 1 in 5,000 per SPLIT lock, whole pot to one winner |
| Opening seed | $10,000 MSFT, one-way |
| Loot table | 1,060 pieces of NetNet Gear, table 2; `L` = 20,000 |
| Artifact | THE CASTING VOTE, 1 in 10,000 successful steals, brass BLUE SCREEN only |
| Challenge window | 1 hour |

## Risk factors

Beyond the fund-level [Risk Factors](/risks): on more than half of tables
you receive nothing; the house edge at equilibrium is about 31% of entries
and a typical player who never hits the jackpot experiences closer to 47%;
MSFT stock tokens carry equity price risk for as long as you hold chips; the
cabinet depends on a live matchmaking server, and no server has guaranteed
uptime; a stock split in MSFT would stop new entries and cash-outs until a
new desk is deployed, though never a close; and the loot table closes
permanently when its 1,060 pieces are gone.