auction. In this type of auction the bids of other participants are necessarily secret, although some companies may provide broad guidance following a bid, such as whether the winning unique bid is higher or lower than one's last bid. In some instances the players may receive enough information for the game to be considered one of strategy. In other cases the guidance provided may be of little or no strategic value and the game may be considered one of chance. Profitability of unique bid auctions Although items worth thousands of dollars can, under some circumstances, be won by very low bids of far less than their value, the auction organizer typically charges a participation fee, which in an auction with a sufficiently large number of bidders will exceed the value of the item being sold, allowing the auction organizer to make a profit. Because such auctions typically require very large numbers of bidders to be profitable, virtually all instances of unique bid auctions are heavily dependent on the use of technology, in that they are either run solely using mobile technology (e.g. bidders submit their bids via reverse charge text messages) or they are on-line auction sites, or both. Legality The legality of unique bid auctions depends on a combination of governing gambling laws and the design of the specific auction model. If an investigating authority were to determine that randomness or chance plays too large a role in the outcome, the auction may be considered a type of lottery. If, on the other hand, the investigating authority found strategy and skill played a sufficient enough role in the outcome, they may find the auction to be legal. Worldwide, there are no reported cases or statutes specifically outlawing the lowest-unique bid auction model. The definition of a lottery differs among jurisdictions and is to be judged in a case by case manner. An English case held that "there will seemingly be never any finality on the question what is a lottery" because “attempts to do so may indeed be counter-productive, since each added precision merely provides an incentive to devise a variant which eludes it”. Legislatures tend to leave the definition open in order to encompass lotteries that were not envisaged at the time of the enactment of the legislation. Under English common law, a lottery includes any game, method, device, scheme or competition whereby money or money’s worth is