Patent ID: 8751312

Claim:
An auction method, which comprises: providing an object for auction; defining an amount to be collected from sales of auction tickets to be sold while the auction is open; opening the auction by offering the auction tickets for sale and thereby uniquely associating each auction ticket with a given identification and, once a given number of auction tickets have been sold, closing the auction; providing a computer program having program code stored in non-transitory form and being configured, when loaded into a memory of a computer, for determining a winning ticket of the auction and awarding the object to an auction participant holding the winning ticket; and determining one or more payback tickets in accordance with a predefined function related to the given identification associated with a respective said auction ticket; selling the auction tickets with a variable selling price and determining a winning ticket of the auction by computing a mean entry fee by dividing the total entry fee by the number of tickets sold and deriving therefrom a weight function for weighting a winning chance of each respective ticket, such that: if the entry fee paid for a given ticket equal to, or nearly equal to, the mean entry fee, the chance of winning for the given ticket is an average chance; if the entry fee paid for a given ticket is exceeds the mean entry fee, the chance of winning for the given ticket is an above average chance; if the entry fee paid for a given ticket is less than the mean entry fee, the chance of winning for the given ticket is a below average chance; determining a winner of the object for auction from one of the tickets sold by randomly selecting from a pool of candidates defined by the weight function and determining a winning ticket associated with one auction participant and allowing the one auction participant to take possession of the auction object.