team trivia night: correct optimal bet

[twistedbeats]

12 teams. my team and another team are tied for first going into the last round with 87 points. 3rd place through 12th place are spread pretty evenly from 65 to 82 points. the question is about an 8 out of ten on the hardness scale. the last question is a bonus question, where each team bids from 2 to 20 points of their score. if they get it right they get their bid added to their score. if they get it wrong, they get half that subtracted from their score


i have convinced the team tied with us to submit the same answer bidding the same amount of points. i have also seen the answer of two random teams. if i choose to answer the same as the two random teams whose answer i have seen, since between our two teams we are making an educated guess (i'd say we can narrow it down to a range of 8 out of 50 guesses), what should we bid to maximize our chances of tying for first?


what happened in white below:

<font color="white"> we both bid the max, and guessed wrong. we ended up tying for second when everyone but the last place team guessed incorrectly. our team lost the coinflip tiebreaker and only ended up with at 10$ gift certificate, as opposed to a 20$ certificate for second and free burgers for a week for first. for the record, the burgers are some of the best i've had, and top out at 8$ per)

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