Ape Size — you don't have a picking problem, you have a sizing problem

🦍Ape Size

You don't have a picking problem.
You have a sizing problem.

A game about how much, not what.

🎲 The coin you were dealt

$LOADING

Sound moneyis it a real asset?

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Networkdoes anyone actually want it?

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Win chance

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The play – or ZERO

▸ see the 8 dials

Sound money — the asset itself

Fixed / predictable supplycan it be quietly debased?

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Secure, neutral base layercan anyone seize or censor it?

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Regulatory standingbanned or delisted overnight?

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Liquidity & accesscan you actually get in and out?

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Network — the belief around it

Real usersanyone actually holding it?

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Default choicethe one everyone assumes everyone else uses

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Momentum loopis price pulling in more buyers?

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Robust communitydo they stay through the crash?

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The two meters are multiplied, not averaged. Great money + dead community still scores near zero — a coin nobody wants is worth nothing no matter how sound it is.

How much of your bag?

10%

How this helps you in real life

Two halves — and we can only help with one.

The half we can't touch

What % chance your coin actually has. There's no formula for that. The 8 dials are a way to feel your way to a number — is the money sound, does anyone want it — but the number that falls out is your judgement, not our math. Own it.

The half we can

Once you've decided your confidence, and the bet — how many x, in how many days — the sizing is just math. And getting it wrong is what actually blows people up. That part we can do exactly.

f* = (bp − q) / b

f* the fraction of your bankroll to bet
b your payout odds — a 5× gives b = 4 (what you win per 1 staked)
p your confidence (your win chance)
q 1 − p (your lose chance)

If f* comes out zero or negative, the edge isn't there — bet nothing. This game uses the all-or-nothing form f* = (Xp − 1) / (X − 1) for a coin that Xs or zeroes — same formula, tidied. More: The Kelly Criterion (Wikipedia).

Read this / how it works

What this is+

Ape Size is a game about how much, not what. It deals you a fake coin with a random rating, asks how much of a fake bag you'd bet, then shows what the Kelly Criterion says the right-sized bet was — and why. No real coins, no wallet, nothing to buy. It's a flight simulator for the decision that blows up more accounts than bad picks ever will: position sizing.

How the score is built (the 8 dials)+

A coin's rating comes from two meters. Sound money asks if it's a real asset — supply, security, regulation, liquidity. Network asks if anyone actually wants it — users, default status, momentum, community. Four dials feed each meter, and the two meters are multiplied, so either one near empty guts the whole score. That's the honest shape of it: a coin needs both, and most coins fail one.

What Kelly is, in one breath+

The Kelly Criterion answers one question: what fraction of your bankroll maximises long-run growth, given a win chance and a payout? The counter-intuitive part — the whole lesson — is that betting more than Kelly makes you grow slower and go broke faster, because losses compound against you. Bet less and you're safe but slow. Kelly is the edge of the cliff. Disciplined money stands well back from it — a quarter of Kelly, often less.

Why the dials are random (and why it matters)+

You never rate a coin you own here — the game does, at random, on purpose. The moment you'd be rating your own bag, this would be a buy signal in a trenchcoat, and it flat-out isn't one. Random fake coins keep it a sizing gym: you drill the reflex of turning a number into a sane bet, on stakes that don't exist.

Grade your sizing, never your read+

When you hit compute, we only grade how you sized the bet you were handed. We never tell you the coin was a good call or a bad call — because one coin mooning or dying is a single roll of the dice, and you can't judge a probability from one roll. That's the deepest idea in Thinking in Bets: separate the decision from the outcome. A perfect bet can lose; a terrible bet can win. We grade the decision, not the dice.

⚠ THIS IS A FEELS GAUGE, NOT A FORMULA

The win % here is invented by a random number generator for a coin that does not exist. It is not a measurement, a prediction, or advice about any real asset. Nothing on this page is financial advice. There is no real edge being calculated, because there is no real coin. Do not size a single real trade off anything you see here.

The only thing to take away is the muscle: a rough number beats no number — and no number is how people ape the whole bag into a dog coin.