Posted by 
The image has everything essential about the money.
Transformers are great. Of the two types of games that DietBet offers at this time, the wager to lose 10% of your weight in a controlled manner over 6 months is the better one overall. (The other game is the Kickstarter, a simple 4% in 4 weeks game, and I will write about that later.)
Transformers are the most complicated weight-loss wager offered by either DietBet or Healthy Wage. I will now explain what happened chronologically with the Fitness Transformer that started in late February and concluded this week.
Round 1
I paid a $125 fee to enter the transformer on an “all-in” basis. That means once I started (after a 14-day cancellation period), I would lose all my money if things started to go poorly and I wasn’t losing the weight.
This $125 is split into 6 pieces, and each piece is contributed to a pot that is paid out at the end of each monthly round. The first 6 pieces are each 10% of the total fee, or $12.50. The remaining piece constitutes half of the fee, or $62.50.
An alternative would have been to pay $25 each month for 6 months. This option would allow me to drop out at any time. I would be released from making payments for rounds that had not started yet.
At the beginning of each of the first 5 rounds, the $25 monthly fee is split into two equal pieces. One piece, $12.50, goes into the pot that is paid out at the end of the round. The other $12.50 goes into the Round 6 pot.
Should a monthly payment player make it to Round 6, the final $25 payment goes into the big Round 6 pot. Monthly players who make it to Round 6 will therefore have contributed a total of $87.50 to the big Round 6 pot—in contrast with all-in players who put in $62.50 right at the start. All Round 6 winners get an equal share of that pot, however.
The trade-off for cutting your losses by dropping is that monthly payments add up to $150, assuming I made it all the way to Round 6. The all-in option is cheaper if nothing goes wrong, and the final return on the wager is better.
I weighed in at 250.8. This established the weigh-in goals to make over the 6 months.
At the end of Round 1 in late March, there is a weigh in to determine winners of the pot for that round. The requirement for winning is to have dropped 3% of your starting weight. Out of 378 players (dividing $12.50 into $4,725 to get this), 260 made it—about 69%. DietBet takes a 25% skim off of all pots in a transformer. So there was about $3,548 to split amongst the winners.
I got $13.63 along with all the other winners. I had to be 243.3 to make it. (I can’t remember what I weighed each time; if I find out I’ll update the post.) The winnings actually do not get paid out at this time; rather, all winnings are held until the end of Round 6, or until a player exits the transformer early by dropping out or by being disqualified in Round 5.
Note that losing Round 1 does not disqualify a player from the rest of a transformer. A player can rally and make weight for later rounds and still qualify for and win Round 6. The same goes for Rounds 2, 3, and 4; see below for how Round 5 is different.
Round 2
In late April, I weighed out for Round 2. This time to win that pot I had to be down 6% from starting weight.
There were 371 players in Round 2–the other 7 in Round 1 were likely monthly players who quit. There were 157 winners, or 42%. The payout was $22.16.
I would like to note here that $22.16 would represent a 77% return on a $12.50 investment. The 6% goal compares to that in the 12-week “mini” challenges in Healthy Wage—except that in the transformer a player is required to drop that amount in approximately 8 1/2 weeks. Most minis don’t pay 77%. It makes sense, as 6% is harder to lose in 8 1/2 weeks than in 12.
Round 3
This time it’s a goal of 8% down from the start. So a player can slow down on a week-to-week basis after Round 2 finishes.
8 more drops, 362 players remain. 129 winners is 36%. $26.31 earned.
Round 4
9% down from start.
6 drops, 356 players. 121 winners makes 34%. $28.04 earned.
Round 5
10% down from start. Anybody making weight in Round 5 qualifies for Round 6 and merely needs to maintain weight to win in that round.
10 drops, 346 players. 132 made it, or 38%. $24.58 paid.
Another 33 players weighed in at 6% or higher, but under 10%. These players joined the Round 5 winners in the competition for the Round 6 jackpot. The other 181 were disqualified: the idea being that sprinting to lose over 4% of your weight to win in Round 6 is unhealthy. I believe (although not certain) that these players were payed out at this time for previous rounds won. I know that any monthly players in that contingent were relieved of making a Round 6 payment, as it did not make sense for them to do so.
Round 6
In the big round, there were 165 people playing (I could tell by counting the player profiles on the website page). You can also do the math on the pot figures to figure out how many players were paying monthly and how many were all in. I don’t remember the figure exactly but I think it was about 80% all-in and 20% monthly.
Most of the 165 made it. It was actually 140, or 85%. It makes sense that the figure would be high, because the people who were really far behind were winnowed out earlier. $127.64 paid.
At the end of Round 6, I was 212.6 pounds. I needed to be 225.7. I got $224.36 on the whole thing. That’s 97% back on the $124 originally put in.
I have 2 more transformers that are 1 day apart and will conclude in early fall. I actually expect both to pay back better than this one. I will compare those payouts to this one when the time comes.
Weight Betting Odds 