WBC No Shipping Math Trade
6/30/2016

Math trades are a great way to swap games with other people. Ben Stephenson (Bien on BGG) will run a math trade at WBC 2016. The advantage of this math trade is there will be no need to ship any games saving time and a lot of money. However, you must attend the convention or give your games to someone that will be attending.

Logistics

Deadlines

  • Trade results will be 9pm, Eastern Time, on Saturday, July 16.
  • The meeting to exchange games is 12pm, Eastern Time, on Saturday, July 30, in Dogwood Forum. If you cannot attend the convention, you should ensure that the games that you trade will be available at that time or else you should not trade. Anyone who is not present at the designated time is liable to any shipping costs required to complete the trade.

Overview

What is a math trade?

This is a trade between a whole bunch of people at once, using a computer program to decide who should give their game to whom. By matching together the likes and dislikes of a lot of people at the same time, many more trades become possible. Say Albert wants the game Power Grid, and Brian has a copy of it which they want to trade away. Brian doesn't want any of Albert's games, but would like a copy of Puerto Rico. Charles has Puerto Rico for trade, but doesn't want any of Brian's games. But Charles would like Alhambra, which Albert has and wants to trade away. So although there's no good trade between two of these people, the three together can each trade a game away to get a game they really want. The math trade software figures out these trade chains and assigns trades so that everyone gets games they want in return for trading away games they don't. In the above example you would have these trades:

  • Albert gives Alhambra to Charles and gets Power Grid from Brian.
  • Brian gives Power Grid to Albert and gets Puerto Rico from Charles.
  • Charles gives Puerto Rico to Brian and gets Alhambra from Albert.

How will the trade be run this year?

We'll be running the trade with Abecorn (www.abecorn.com). Advantages include:

  • Clean, fast interface.
  • No waiting to sync.
  • No need to browse between several different forums.
  • No misspelling, we use an elastic search so you can spell Waldschattenspiel wrong and it'll still find your game!
  • No worrying if an item's status has changed. You'll get a system message if anyone changes an item you wanted.
  • Sweeteners are built in.
  • One click picture selection and uploads, so you don't have find the picture that matches your edition!
  • Mobile/tablet and all browser compatible.
  • Duplicate protection streamlined to make sense!
  • Import your collections directly to the trade, all your trade condition information imports, too.
  • Select all of your games for trade in one click or select that you're willing to trade the same game for all your wants in one click!
  • Everything is BGG friendly and all games link back to them.

We're very responsive and working on updates constantly, so don't worry about posting in the wrong forum or asking dumb questions.

New Trader?

  1. New to math trades or haven't used abecorn? The service has built in video walk-thru tutorials. If you want to watch before you join we've linked them on BGG: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1346825/abecorn-tutorial-video-and-text
  2. If you're really hoping to get a particular game or games, try to offer a game of roughly the same or higher trade value.
  3. When offering multiple items together, try to group games that are related somehow. That way, you're more likely to find someone interested in the whole lot.

Please ask questions and make comments, we want to improve the experience for everyone! Email info@abecorn.com

Boardgame Players Association Last updated by kae.
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