[Crazy Bacon Legs]

I see a lot of people slinging baseless accusations around, and I think it will hurt us in the end. So below is a lengthy analysis of odds for voting, why I think mafia voted overwhelmingly to lynch in rounds 1-3, and why voting patterns matter so much when they abruptly changed (or didn’t) in round 4. I have made known mafia members red, and known town in blue. I have included myself as town (I am) but I have not colored my name as such as I want to avoid confusion.

Let the analysis BEGIN!!!

Day 1 odds

There are 30 people to start with: 4 Parker mafia and 4 Barrow, along with 22 townspeople. Every townsperson knows one person’s role: their own. Every mafia person knows four roles: their own, and their three team mates.

A townsperson has a 8/29 chance (27.6% chance) of voting mafia and a 21/29 (74.4% chance) of inadvertently voting townsperson at the outset. The overwhelming odds in the first round are that people are going to vote townsperson because there are nothing more than dumb luck and odds at work. Given those poor odds, I would suggest townspeople are going to be naturally hesitant to vote to lynch quickly. Given that the vigilante used his power to kill a townsperson (Timbo dead and ineedanother revealed), we increased those odds in our favour a bit: now 8/27 (29.6%) for voting mafia and 19/27 (70.4%) for voting town. Still, I suggest that most townspeople would be very hesitant to vote quickly because the odds are not in our favour. Even if people don’t do the math, they tend to know this intuitively.

The mafia people are a very different story though. Their motivations are to vote quickly, and to gain steam for a lynch as long as the target isn’t one of their group. They have a 22/26 chance (84.6% chance) of voting town in the first round, and a 4/26 chance (15.4% chance) of getting lucky and happening to bump off a member of the opposite mafia. In other words, they have a 100% chance of voting correctly in this round, and every round after. They don’t rely on odds; they rely on subterfuge, innuendo and lies. Once someone makes a suggestion they know is not a member of their group, it is absolutely in their interest to jump on the vote and pile on. This changes a bit once we have the vigilante kill a townsperson. Now it’s 20/24 (80.3%) that they vote town, and 4/22 (16.7%) that they vote for the other mafia. The upshot? An overwhelming number of the people voting to lynch a townsperson should end up being mafia in the first round. To get hammer, at least some lynching votes need to be town, but the mafia are going to be chomping at the bit to vote in favour of lynching. If a mafia member had been chosen at random, there would have been a LOT more hesitation and an increased length of the round because there would necessarily be more deflection and subterfuge. Townspeople would be hesitant to vote, and at least three mafia members would be doing everything they could to steer away from a teammate. The singling out of the first lynch victim (hmmhmmcamo) during the round would have made both mafia parties VERY happy and resulted in a pile-on from both teams. So either a townsperson suggested poorly (and it was actually ineedanother who acted first) and the mafia were salivating, or the person(s) who suggested hmmhmmcamo were mafia and simply benefitted from their group and the other mafia inadvertently cooperating to kill a townsperson. While ineedanother inadvertently singled out a townsperson in error, the people who piled on quickly most certainly did NOT do it in error. We can gain a lot of information from the votes now with the benefit of hindsight.

Day 1 voting

Looking at the vote that day, it was ironically ineedanother who started the ball rolling for voting hmmhmmcamo and starseed who jumped on board and started the train going. The vote for hmmhmmcamo was as follows:

ineedanother (town)
starseed (mafia - Parker)
Aeneas (town)
devo22 (mafia - Barrow)
Completely (???)
GP_Matt (town)
bizaro86 (mafia – Parker)
Street Pharmacist (town)
Rathji (???)
kermitology (???)
flameswin (???)
CofR (???)
Baxter Renegade (???)
Hockeyguy15 (???)
GGG (town)
Crazy Bacon Legs (town)

Now I would suggest that of the 7 above with ??? next to their names, 3 were Barrow and 2 were Parker. Again, I put a higher likelihood that people are mafia in the first round. It’s easier to go undetected while knowing they are eliminating competition. For the sake of argument I will say 5 of the 7 are mafia.

Day 2 odds

hmmhmmcamo gets lynched and during the night, two townspeople (Delgar and GP_Matt) are killed by the mafia, removing three from the pot. This changes the odds of voting (randomly) a bit. Given that it’s still so early, it’s hard to really attach patterns yet. So odds are good to go with.

Town: 16/24 (66.7%) to vote town and 8/24 (33.3%) to vote mafia. Better odds, but not good enough to rush into things.

Mafia: 17/21 (76.1%) to vote town and 4/21 (19.0%) to vote for an opposing mafia. Very good odds, and people will still have trouble catching onto patterns. Again, the mafia have a vested interest in latching onto a townsperson and driving them into the ground. I suspect this is what happened again this round.

Day 2 voting

Interestingly, it was CaptainCrunch who first suggested agulati as the lynch target. starseed jumped on board immediately, which is not surprising. Then CaptainCrunch unvoted and backed off. The votes piled in and ended as follows:

starseed (mafia – Parker)
Hockeyguy15 (???)
Aeneas (town)
devo22 (mafia – Barrow)
DropIt (???)
bizaro86 (mafia – Parker)
CofR (???)
HalifaxDrunk (???)
Baxter Renegade (???)
Rathji (???)
Completely (???)
transplant99 (???)
flameswin (???)
Street Pharmacist (town)
activeStick (town)

That’s a whole lot of ??? between the mafia votes that came heavy at the start, and what appears to be an emerging pattern of the last couple votes being from townspeople. Again, this makes sense. Get the ball rolling heavily and people are bound to jump on. The result is that agulati is lynched by what I would once again suggest were an overwhelming, over-representative number of mafia votes (5).

Day 3 odds

agulati is lynched, and is followed by townsperson dsavillian and in a shocking twist, Parker mafia member bizaro86. This changes the mafia odds a bit, so we have to split them up. This leaves us with the following odds:

Town: 14/21 (66.7%) to vote town, 7/21 (33.3%) to vote mafia – exact same odds as Round 2
Barrow Mafia: 15/18 (83.3%) to vote town, 3/18 (16.7%) to vote Parker Mafia
Parker Mafia: 14/18 (77.8%) to vote town, 4/18 (22.2%) to vote Barrow Mafia

Now the game isn’t quite as random anymore; people have been posting, deflecting, lying, accusing, denouncing, etc. and it’s provided opinions and suspicions. But we can still get quite a bit from voting patterns on this day.

Day 3 voting

Strombad gets the ball rolling on activeStick and Rathji and undercoverbrother vote with him. The votes again pile on pretty quickly, this time ending as follows:

strombad (???)
Rathji (???)
undercoverbrother (???)
Lego Man (???)
ineedanother (town)
starseed (mafia – Parker)
Baxter Renegade (???)
transplant99 (???)
Hockeyguy15 (???)
Completely (???)
CaptainCrunch (???)
flameswin (???)

Now isn’t that an interesting set of facts? Of 12 votes, 10 are unknowns at this point in the game. The odds that 11/12 votes were from town members are pretty much zero. This means we pretty much know that a good chunk of these voters are mafia once again. But there are definitely a few familiar names on that list, aren’t there?

activeStick gets lynched, mafia rejoices, and we all hang our collective heads in shame. Clearly, things are not going well.

Day 4 odds

During the night, devo22 (Barrow Mafia) and GGG (town) are killed. This means the mafia odds are the same again, with 3 members remaining from each faction. Odds for the day:

Town: 12/18 (66.7%) to lynch town, 6/18 (33.3%) to lynch mafia
Mafia: 13/16 (81.3%) to lynch town, 3/16 (18.7%) to lynch mafia

With the 2/3 town and 1/3 mafia pattern of deaths recently, the town odds remain the same. That means we should see town acting consistently. Mafia odds are still very high, but we should see them change their tactics only if one of their number are being railroaded. That seems to have happened in this round.

Now this is the round where I posted about voting patterns a bit more. I just hope I didn’t mess up the pattern by pointing it out. The thing is, given that we ended up lynching a mafia member, we should expect to see a few names conspicuously absent from today’s list (i.e. Parker Mafia members) who were more than willing to lynch townspeople. And guess what? We do.

Day 4 voting

HalifaxDrunk got things going by voting for starseed first, followed by Baxter Renegade and Oling_Roachinen. HalifaxDrunk was involved in one previous lynch, day #2. Interestingly, Baxter Renegade has been involved in EVERY LYNCH. I’ll get to that in a minute.

The voting ended as follows:

HalifaxDrunk (???)
Baxter Renegade (???)
Oling_Roachinen (???)
flameswin (???)
strombad (???)
Crazy Bacon Legs (town)
Street Pharmacist (town)
undercoverbrother (???)
Completely (???)
CaptainCrunch (???)
DropIt (???)

So we have nine unknowns, one (eventually) dead townsperson, and one town. This is true whether you’re me or not, as long as you’re town. I am going to come out and say that three of the above are Barrow mafia. Yes, I think all three probably voted against starseed, and it is conceivable that one of starseed’s own teammates voted against him to muddy the water. 3 or 4 of the above are mafia, but I lean to it being 3.

During the night, two town (Aeneas and Street Pharmacist, who was roleblocker) die. You will recall that this leaves the random odds for the next day identical for town. But I think we are way past random now.

In fact, we can derive some very interesting patterns from this, and possibly figure out who most of our mafia members are. Let's give it a go with the actual voting evidence before us!

Barrow Mafia members:

Baxter Renegade: One of only two people to vote to lynch town three times running, followed by an impassioned vote against starseed. Baxter Renegade is mafia, specifically aligned against starseed. I invite you all to go back and read his posts, and then try to explain how he is NOT mafia. Conclusion: Barrow mafia

flameswin: Voted three times to lynch town, then voted to lynch starseed. Patterns are pointed out and he immediately launches into attacks on the people questioning his behaviour. There are ways in which I think people tend to react when falsely accused, and they don’t fit with flameswin’s lashing out behaviour. I have said it before, and I repeat: flameswin would not play this way if he were town. I’m afraid I just don’t buy it. The only think I am not necessarily sure of is whether he is Barrow or Parker, although I have mostly made up my mind. I lean heavily toward him being Barrow, for reasons below. It’s the “starseed seems pretty townie today” business that makes me suspicious as to which faction he is.

Completely: For similar reasons as above, Completely jumped in on every vote, including against starseed. I suspect he is Barrow Mafia with Baxter Renegade and flameswin. They all voted to lynch all four times, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Also, read his posts and tell me they actually say anything at all. Interestingly, their dead friend devo22 did not vote to lynch day 3 before he died. I am not sure if the heat was getting to be too much, or if it was just a decision they made as a group. I still call this very strong evidence against these three. I think they just could not pass up the opportunity to vote to lynch when they knew there was a head of steam. It’s like waggling a sausage in front of a hungry dog: bound to end in tragedy and fewer fingers.

Parker mafia members:

Rathji: I have previously said I did not suspect Rathji, but I am afraid I must rescind my previous belief. I now very heavily suspect Rathji of being mafia, specifically Parker mafia. Rathji voted with the group to town lynch the first three times, and then suddenly he is conspicuously absent on the starseed vote. It just so happens there is exactly one other person who did exactly this.

Hockeyguy15: I have long been suspicious of Hockeyguy15, but this last round kind of sealed it for me. Hockeyguy15 also voted to lynch town three times, and then he suddenly fails to vote for starseed. Add to this that the voting pattern was also always the same for these guys: bizaro86 (until dead), Hockeyguy15, Rathji, starseed (until dead).

I believe the end result will be:

Barrow mafia: devo22, Baxter Renegade, flameswin, Completely

Parker mafia: bizaro86, starseed, Rathji, Hockeyguy15

Now, go back and read posts for these guys. You will see patterns emerge (as an example, look to starseed’s early defense of bizaro86, Rathji “suspecting” starseed and then backing off, later following starseed’s accusations against CaptainCrunch and defending him, HockeyGuy15 conspicuously NEVER mentioning starseed, etc.) There is a lot of information, but there is so much to be learned by who addresses certain information and who ignores it. You will note that the things these guys say are completely independent of me. I can't possibly put words in their mouths. And yet the information is all out there.

Of all these, I am most certain about Baxter Renegade. His consistent behaviour of jumping in to lynch townspeople and his vote against starseed makes him stick out like a sore thumb. I think flameswin is mafia, but I must admit he’s laid the seed of doubt a bit. I would be more comfortable lynching Baxter Renegade, and I hope you do the same.

I invite all of you: vote Baxter Renegade. When you see I have led the charge to lynch both Barrow and Parker mafia, you will all know I am town and we can win this game handily. Then, fame and fortune await us all!

unvote

vote: Baxter Renegade

Next time I will make a LONG post.