Offering bounty on own question and accepting own answer?

Question

My question: Yet Another Java GUI Calculator

I'm thinking of offering a bounty to see if I can attract any answers for my "specific feedback", and unless there are any dark horse answers during the 7-day bounty period, I will be very inclined to accept my own answer, or at the very least, bounty expires and... then what?

1. I accept my own answer just before the bounty period ends, but I cannot award the bounty to myself.
2. I let the bounty expire, and assuming there's no newer answer during the bounty period that I really feel like awarding the bounty to, the bounty is not awarded to anyone and... goes to /dev/null?

Answer 1

Bounty logic is relatively sensible, but not particularly well documented. There is a comprehensive post on meta.se about how it works, though.

In short, in your case, if you offer a bounty, you will never get any of that rep back, even if you accept, or answer your own question.

If you award the bounty to anyone other than yourself, the entire bounty goes to them.

Otherwise, when the bounty-period ends, if the bounty was offered by the question asker, and they accepted an answer (that was not their own answer), then that answer is given the entire bounty.

Otherwise, the highest-scored answer given after the bounty has been offered will, if the score is 2 or more, be awarded half the bounty.

If two answers given after the bounty was offered, both share the top score, then the oldest one will be awarded the half-bounty.