Seeing as mariopants compos are randomly 30-45min in length or something silly like that, I think it'd be kinda fun to make it possible to deposit like, slightly more boons to gain a random amount of time additional to the time amount selected?

As an example, if I'd want to gamble on extra time on a normal 1hb, I'd deposit the 750 and gamble an additional amount (up to the 500b that's the difference between 2hb and 1hb deposits), and if rng is on my side, the compo will last for longer!

I also think the gambled deposit should be permanently lost if the gamble doesn't work, so as to not make it "just more deposit"; aka. you only get the gamble back if you get a longer ohb!

As long as the possible entrants would be made aware of the time commitment beforehand, I'm game.

That's actually a fun idea to think about. How would we classify the "extended XHB"s? Would they cause confusion or blur the line between OHBs, 2HBs and 4HBs?

Maybe they wouldn't cause much trouble to worry about. After all, disabling the late penalties has a similar impact submission-wise, I suppose.