Credit Card Roulette
Sorry for my german readers, but here we go again with an english article.
A few days ago, during a workshop for how to write a Master thesis, a classmate mentioned it would be interesting to elaborate on a game called Credit Card Roulette, if you were a student of Behavioral Economics.
I never heard of that game before, so he explained. When going to a restaurant with a couple of friends, everybody drops his creditcard in the middle of the table and places his order. In the end, the waiter comes and draws creditcards as long as there are some left. The last creditcard has to pay for the complete round then.
The interesting thing to elaborate on is now the strategy of choosing an expensive or a cheap meal. If everybody chooses an expensive dish, it will make no big difference to the final price whether you chose an expensive or a cheap one. If everybody chooses a cheap one, being afraid of a high bill, it might be benefitial to order the expensive one. Furthermore, a very important factor to this is the number of players and the probability of having to pay for everything.
Eatfoo disuss many more Economics of Credit Card Roulette. Another option is to draw cards after each course, making people being more hungry and thirsty all of a sudden after their card is out of the game. An important argument made there is, that playing that game often enough with the same group of friends will eventually even out the payments, so there is no big loss in total. Also, it can be more benefitial to play it with some people you meet for the first time and then never meet again, since then the risk of getting involved in another game is not present.
There is even an iPhone app available for that, but that‘s less more thrilling than the real deal.
I don‘t know whether I‘m eager to try that or not. It sounds like a really nice and thrilling way to spend a visit at the restaurant. But on the other hand, I know that such games never end good for me.