Training game
Confidence Auction
Participants estimate a number and stake points on how sure they are. The closest answer takes the whole pot, so the ranking moves after every question - and the last one can turn it all over.
What is the Confidence Auction game?
The trainer prepares questions whose answer is a single number - how many kilometres, what percentage, which year. Every participant gets the same bank of points and, on each question, declares two things: the number they believe and the stake they put behind it. Whoever lands closest takes everything the rest of the room put on the table.
This is a game about calibration: not how much you know, but whether you know how much you know. It works as a warm-up, as a check on the numbers from a whole training day, and as the finale where the prize genuinely hangs on the last question.
See how it works
One round: question, stake, reveal
Features
Key capabilities
Closest wins, not only exact
Nobody has to know the answer to the digit - what counts is the distance to the truth, which brings the whole room in, not just the trivia buffs.
The stake is the confidence - and it doubles on a win
The table minimum, or half of what is left once a bank shrinks - and at most everything, all in. The closest answer collects every other stake plus twice their own from the bank, so betting boldly genuinely pays. Betting is compulsory, so nobody can sit a round out.
Standings after every question
The trainer projects the round settlement and the new places. Who took a risk, and what it cost them, is visible to everyone.
Questions from AI or from your document
Give a topic or point at a file and AI drafts questions with a number for an answer. You can also type them or paste a whole list.
Answers stay hidden from the room
The true values never reach participants' phones - they appear only at the moment of the reveal.
A phone is all it takes
Participants join with a QR code, no account and no install. Refreshing the page comes back to the same bank.
Step by step
How it works
Write a question set
Questions with one number for an answer - typed, pasted or drafted by AI. Set the starting bank and the minimum stake.
Participants join
Project the QR code; joining takes a name and nothing else. Everyone gets the same bank of points.
Question, stake, reveal
One question on screen, everybody declares a number and a stake, and you reveal the answer and pay the pot out.
Play it out and debrief
The game ends with the questions, or when only one player still has money. The final standings are a ready-made way into a conversation about confidence.
Use cases
What it’s good for
- A warm-up at the start of a training day - industry numbers worth arguing about.
- A check on the numbers quoted during the day: who really remembered the magnitudes and who just nodded.
- A finale with a prize - a big bet on the last question can change the podium.
- A workshop on risk and decision-making: the stake is a price put on your own certainty.
- Onboarding: the numbers about the company, the product and the market, as a game.
- Team-building - light, loud and fair to newcomers and veterans alike.
Training by Octigo
Want this run as a full training?
You are free to run our games and simulations on your own. But if you would like us to deliver a complete training, with a professional debrief and the concepts behind the “Confidence Auction” simulation explained in depth, get in touch. Octigo is a professional training company with 20 years of experience and many awards for its simulations.
- 20 years of experience in corporate training
- Award-winning training simulations
- A professional debrief and takeaways after the session
- A programme tailored to your goals and your team
Prefer to write to us directly? szkolenia@octigo.pl
Try “Confidence Auction” in Verbalu
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