jryden:

1) Well I have noticed that the opening bid has slowly been growing as time goes on. For a 16-25 player pond, an opening bid in the 40's is usually OK. With more players, you *MAY* be able to go a little lower - but with the first few bids - 10-20-50 points is NOT going to make a diffrence in the game - so I normally don't take the chance.

You can also take a look at past bids in current ponds - so take a look at a few - study the first few moves by players. That will also help.

2) The beter you do, the higher your BKR! (Other then that, I'm not sure - it's supposable similar to how the regular game BKR's are calculated, but not sure how.)

3) When a player becomes a pawn, they can no longer move - so their last move will become they move for all the next rounds. So if you are watching, you will know you can bid 1 point above the pawn's auto-move and still stay in the game