The Gaussian competition involves the tipper nominating a winning margin and a standard deviation.

The standard deviation allows the tipper to express his or her confidence in their choice of margin. The smaller the standard deviation, the more points you will get if the true margin is close to your one, but if it is too far out, you will receive a large negative score.

The tipper is rewarded with a constant plus the logarithm of the probability they assigned to the winning margin (denoted x below) in a manner similar to the Probabilistic competition. The formula for the game score (in bits) is:

In this competition the accuracy of prediction of winning margin is important. The standard deviation proves to be difficult to estimate accurately; experience has shown that a value around 40 is a good place to start.

See also the Normal and Probabilistic competitions.