Abundance and Famine

Abundance and Famine is a Main Match game that appeared in the third episode of The Genius: Rules of the Game.

Rules and Layout



 * There are two "lands" in the game: the Abundance Land, which has 6 bread, and the Famine Land, which has 3 bread. Players can choose a land to travel to, and then receive a different share of bread depending on which land you go to and how many people there are.
 * When all of the players have "traveled" to each of their respective lands, the bread in each land is split evenly amongst the people in that land. Any remaining bread is discarded.
 * At the end of each round, the number of tickets at each land will be revealed so that players can keep track of how much bread they received.
 * The game consists of five rounds. The person with the most bread at the end will be the winner; conversely, the person with the least bread at the end will be the loser and the elimination candidate.
 * Players can choose which lands to travel to when by use of tickets; to accomplish this, each player will be given 5 of their own coupons. Tickets can be purchased every round from a private ticket booth. In the ticket booth, there will be counters for both Abundance and Famine. Players may use a coupon and in exchange receive a ticket to the destination of their choice.
 * Tickets will go on sale for 15 minutes every round. A player may only enter the booth alone and only once per round. Players are not allowed to stay in the booth for more than 30 seconds. After 15 minutes of ticket sales, the round will end.
 * There are no limits to how the players can use their 5 coupons. They can choose to use one ticket for each of their five rounds, use all of their coupons in a round or simply not choose to use any of their coupons at all.
 * Finally, if a player wishes to get more tickets then they can get using their 5 original coupons, they may purchase additional tickets for one garnet each.

Tips and Tricks

 * The players quickly picked up on the fact that they were not required to go to a land in each round, which means coupons could not be forced into being wasted.

Rewards

 * After the game ends, players will get a garnet for every 3 bread they have.

WARNING: The rest of the page below contains strategies for the game, some of which came from the episode itself. Read at your own discretion.

Strategies

 * 2 Sit Out Strategy: If two players agree not to travel to a land each round, the 9 bread from Abundance and Famine can be collected by everyone so that everyone secures one garnet each. If the plan continues through all five rounds, however, someone will obtain 5 bread and be the winner.
 * 3 Bread Strategy: During Rounds 1-3, only 3 people will purchase tickets for each of the rounds; two will go to Abundance, and one will go to Famine. During Round 4, only 2 people will purchase tickets, and both will go to Abundance. By the end of Round 4, every person will have 3 bread and secure a garnet.


 * The 4-2 6-3 Lockout Strategy: This strategy can be employed if the majority alliance has 8 people. In the first round, Player A can purchase 4 tickets to Abundance and Player B can purchase 2 tickets to Famine. This way, it'll be impossible for the other alliance to get more bread than these two people. After Round 1 in which Player A successfully obtained 4 bread, the majority alliance was able to lockout the minority alliance from obtaining any bread ever again for the next four rounds by purchasing 6 tickets for Abundance and 3 tickets for Famine, guaranteeing that any purchase of tickets from the minority alliance will cause an overflow and therefore become unable to obtain any bread, ensuring Player A would still have the most bread at the end. However, an additional ticket will need to be purchased as the majority alliance will be short of one ticket coming into Round 5.

Trivia and Notes

 * When the Main Match was explained, it contained several errors:
 * It was stated that the contestants will have' to choose a land to travel to. However, since tickets are used to go to a destination and players are not required to use their tickets, it is possible that a player ends up not using any tickets at all and never has to travel to a land.
 * In addition, they stated that the number of players in each land will be revealed at the end of each round; however, this was not true, as only the number of tickets in each land was revealed.