Bitcoin Forum

The Amazing Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery returns! www.TAABL.net (http://www.TAABL.net)

Well, sort of. It's a close clone of the original TAABL that was born circa August 2010 to be the original bitcoin lottery.One of the games provided, BitPick, is reproduced here with a twist; no accounts are needed, we'll be using the bitcoin transactions as medium to place bets and extract addresses to pay prizes, just like DICE on CRACK and Satoshi Dice (added anonymity)

Please read http://taabl.net/howtoplay (http://taabl.net/howtoplay) for instructions and explanations.

3 games are provided: The very fast paced Pick 2, the slightly more sedate Pick 3 and the "once a year or so" Pick 4.

In a nutshell, you pick the last digits of the hash of each completed block. If your picks match exactly, you win the entire pot! The house fee of only 1.0% means your expectation is 99% no matter how many entries there are.

Don't want to read, and just play? Jump in anytime into a pick 2, just send 0.1 or multiple thereof to: 12TaAbLWBNKB1NLYH92CPnC1DizQoNK6FN, you can even place a bet larger than the available slots in a Pick, the remaining credit will be used against future picks. You will receive 2 satoshis when a round is complete, and the whole pot when you win.

Enjoy!

Thanks for the wagers! Lotteries are slowly finishing, and here are some raw stats to help with your wagering.

The pick 2 (0.10 BTC) has been getting hit every few hours with 25 wagers.
The pick 3 (0.05 BTC) was just hit for the first time. With ~50 entries, it should hit about 6 times a week.
The pick 4 (0.01 BTC) should be hit about 3 times a week with 250 entries

Any interest in a pick 5, or a larger lottery?

TAABL limits are going up! The Amazing Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery is 100% anonymous, 100% transparent and 100% verifiable. With an expected return of 99.0%, it is also one of the highest payout games on the internet. A lottery is over when a block hash matches one of the picks (example, you have 'eab' and block hash ends in 'eab', you win the pot).

New Levels:

Pick 2 1.00 BTC Each (256 tickets total)
Pick 3 0.10 BTC Each (4,096 tickets total)
Pick 4 0.10 BTC Each (65,536 tickets total)

Why the change? Ticket sales have been sporadic at best, due to the speed at which the lotteries have been going off. We are hopeful the new structure will allow for more even, spaced out lotteries. As always, you can jump in ANYTIME and have a 99% expected return. There is NO signup, username, or password required. A bitcoin transaction is all that is needed to connect you to your picks. Your funds will be returned from where they came, so send from a wallet that you control the private keys. Input your tx on TAABL.net to get your lottery numbers.

TAABL will be seeding all lotteries with at least 1.00 btc per day for the time being, so keep checking the current pot size.

Join the Pick 2 ANYTIME (1.0 btc): 12TaAbLWBNKB1NLYH92CPnC1DizQoNK6FN
Join the Pick 3 ANYTIME (0.1 btc): 13TAabLHjNzwg8Mj7XYn76FuVAqj32s8EM
Join the Pick 4 ANYTIME (0.1 btc): 14TAAbLiw2QLuRJCGQ3iETYg3vcpweZkTE
(* Deposit in multiples of the entry fee for multiple picks)

Good luck!

Congratulations to the person that took the 4.95 BTC Pick 2 pot. Only 5 tickets and it took a day, lets see how many we can fit next time.

http://taabl.net/pick?_=509008f58127a87c9a98dd92

This time it was the Pick 3 pot that got collected. 32 tickets, for a total pot of 3.168 BTC, took a little less than 2 days to match.

http://taabl.net/pick?_=509001ec8127a87c9a98dd8c (http://taabl.net/pick?_=509001ec8127a87c9a98dd8c)

Crazy! Again almost one exact day, again 5 tickets. Congrats to the winner.

http://taabl.net/pick?_=50916a568127a87ee3226eb3

Today is a very dynamic day.

1.98 BTC was the pot for the Pick 3 that took a little over 7 hours to complete. http://taabl.net/pick?_=5092693d8127a87ee3226ed1

Everyone will just have to bet faster on the Pick 3 :) Pot of 1.386 BTC just claimed.

http://taabl.net/pick?_=5092d1628127a84fa434c06e

Why ruin a perfectly fine pattern? Pick 2 collected in just just of a day, 4.95 BTC pot.

http://taabl.net/pick?_=5092af8a8127a87ee3226ef7

Pick 2, Pick 3 and Pick 4 all completed! Wow...

Four and a half days for the Pick 4 to give out 7.326.

http://taabl.net/pick?_=5093e92a8127a85894293bed
http://taabl.net/pick?_=509301e38127a833731709bd
http://taabl.net/pick?_=508ef30f8127a8514a6c02b1

Well, the past few days were exciting, 5 Picks were completed for a total of ~18 BTC.

http://taabl.net/pick?_=509475918127a85894293c36
http://taabl.net/pick?_=5094c6eb8127a85894293c52
http://taabl.net/pick?_=509518bc8127a85894293c8c
http://taabl.net/pick?_=50965b168127a85894293cda
http://taabl.net/pick?_=509507938127a85894293c5d

And don't forget, we're testing raffle style picks, with the first one giving out  an FPGA miner! Read all about it in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122329.0

Just wanted to say, I love this website and games so far.

Thank you!

And another Pick 3 pot was collected -> http://taabl.net/pick?_=50982a9c8127a850f4b1cb17

Don't forget that the FPGA Miner raffle is still active, so it's not too late to join :)

A 3.96 btc pot was collected on the Pick 2, and a rather humble 1.386 btc pot on the Pick 3.

http://taabl.net/pick?_=5097d3458127a850f4b1cb01
http://taabl.net/pick?_=509920ed8127a850f4b1cb5b

The FPGA Miner raffle is having a bit less interest than we anticipated, but it is still up for grabs (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122329.0) folks!

Roughly 2 weeks have passed since the service was launched. Comments? Complaints? Any feedback?

Some action last week on TAABL, with 8x Pick 2, 2x Pick 3 and 2x Pick 4, for a combined Pot of 36.135 BTC. I'll refrain from posting all the Pick links here, people know where to find it now, right?

The FPGA Raffle (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122329.0) is still running, so don't lose the chance of taking home the miner yourself.

We're moving the Pick 2 bet value from 1.0 BTC to 0.5 BTC, as requested by BitCoiner2012 in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122329.msg1331755#msg1331755. To make the change seamless a new address will be used for the new BitPick, so send 0.5 or multiples thereof to 12tAabLFLxvUzC5KuX7VKMM8bYRncbQ84E to play.

Once the current BTC 1.0  Pick 2 ends it will not spawn a new one. Let us know what you think about this, and good luck!

It looks like we're picking up speed; the last Pick 3s were record breakers at BTC 8.613 and BTC 8.217 pots and the running Pick 4 has a whooping BTC 28.809 pot at this moment.

Good luck!

It had to match immediately after I mentioned it hadn't yet...

Congrats to the big winner! Pick 4 matched a little under an hour now:

http://taabl.net/pick?_=50a012da8127a82bacd87326

Another decent pick 4 underway at taabl.net. Currently 2nd largest pot at 16.6 BTC. Jump in anytime for 0.1 btc.

And we are adding a Pick 5 to the games available!

This means there's 1 in a million chances of hitting for each new block, more precisely one in 1.048.575.

Each bet costs 0.1 BTC and you can send your wager to 15TaABLmhxiRQ9DTX6ZcZ9S9RknVZmP5jX.

Good luck!

What is the reasoning behind showing every single possible bet on the page for each pick rather than just ones that have been submitted? This makes them incredibly hard to read, and just seems completely unnecessary. If it was toggleable then I'd be satisfied.

Notice that we don't display every possible value (there are no blank rows). We have worked with different ways to make it more visually appealing than just dumping all data. With your request, however, we will work on a toggle feature. Thanks for the input!

We have added detailed/resumed views to the Pick pages, you can find the toggle below the numbers table. Whatever you choose will be used thereafter, assuming you have cookies enabled. Do let us know if it improves your experience.

Thanks for the feedback!

Love it already. I like both options being available.

I actually didn't notice that. Thanks for pointing it out.


And it looks like it's been implemented. Awesome! Now to see if I can come up with some BTC to play with this with.
I remember the original TAABL, it was pretty entertaining to use... wonder if I had any balance left on my old account.

We will be moving DiceOnCrack and TAABL across servers today, so there might me a few short downtimes as DNS records get updated. You can safely continue using them as there is no expected downtime on the blockchain :)

It has happened a few times, and just now once more, that the Pick 2 hits a match with a single bet on it, which is fine when that bet is from TAABL's own seeding but otherwise means a bet will pay 99% of itself.

My immediate plan to avoid this is to set a minimum number of bets before the Pick becomes active. How does 5 bets minimum sound? And is there any reason for me not to do this on all Picks?

TTBit proposed a slightly different approach to the problem raised on my last post; from now on Picks will not find winners until there are at least two transactions and that is now denoted in the 'how to play' page.

Of course if the same person sends two transactions and wins, that person will still end up with 1% loss from the house fee.

The first Pick 5 was just hit, winner received 23.76 BTC Congrats!

We're having a great run with the Pick5 pot over 55 BTC now and a slightly more modest yet still great Pick4 pot of over 16BTC now! Don't miss your chance.

Also there's a Pipe Pick running for $10 iTunes gift cards that received no love up to this point -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=135209.0

Good luck!

Time for a few stats:

The Pick 2 is our fastest paced raffle, almost always hitting in less than a day, which leaves little time for people to place wagers. There were a couple of cases where a single bet would be matched, leaving the winner with a negative outcome due to the house fee, but that has since been resolved by preventing the pick to actively match a result until there have been at least 2 transactions received for wagering.

Pick 2 is also the one that moved more coins to date. It is 5 times more expensive per bet to make it interesting in terms of total value despite the fact it is very quickly matched.

There was a common misconception that the choice 00 was a more common winning bet than others, which while being correct is also a bit misleading. The 00 choice hit 15 times, 3 times as much as the next most common match, 2D. Why was it the most common? Simple, every time a new pick was spawned the first bet (that didn't carry any satoshi configured number preference) would always be 00, so that number was simply in every Pick.

Some numbers, for games started between the 15th of November of 2012 and today, that have been concluded:

Total number of completed Pick 2's: 87
Sum total of pots distributed: BTC 311.850

Longest run:  3 days, 6 hours and 17 minutes
Shortest run: 44 minutes
Average run: 16 hours, 10 minutes

Largest pot:   BTC 8.415
Smallest pot: BTC 0.990
Average pot:  BTC 3.585

All choices that had where matched more than one time:

00: 15
2D: 5
7C: 2
CD: 2
C8: 2
A2: 2
94: 2

Good luck!

Pick 4 just hit for 37.32300000 BTC to lucky ticket #21d8

The pick 5, when hit, will be the largest TAABL lottery, currently 60.1920 BTC. Join anytime for 0.10 BTC

Congrats to the Lucky winner!

Some more stats, this time around for the Pick 3.

Total number of completed Pick 3's: 40
Sum total of pots distributed: BTC 133.254

Longest run:  8 days, 16 hours and 30 minutes
Shortest run: 1 hour and 51 minutes
Average run: 1 day, 9 hours, 21 minutes

Largest pot:   BTC 8.613
Smallest pot: BTC 0.792
Average pot:  BTC 3.331

There were no choices being hit more than once so far.

Time for Pick 4 stats;

Total number of completed Pick 4's: 6
Sum total of pots distributed: BTC 111.573

Longest run:  19 days, 13 hours and 20 minutes
Shortest run: 3 days, 16 hours and 5 minutes
Average run: 9 days, 13 hours, 6 minutes

Largest pot:   BTC 37.323
Smallest pot: BTC 5.049
Average pot:  BTC 18.596

There were no choices being hit more than once so far.

Bumping for interest:

Pick 5 has creeped up to ~75 BTC, and will be our largest lottery when hit. Join anytime for 99% payback by sending 0.10 BTC or multiples of 0.10 BTC to 15TaABLmhxiRQ9DTX6ZcZ9S9RknVZmP5jX, details on taabl.net

Bump for service announcement that TAABL has included LTC and TRC.

Good Luck!

We have just doubled the seeding on all TAABL.net LTC BitPicks. You can win a bundle for as low as 10 LTC  :)

We have had both a Pick 2 and a Pick 3 won on the LTC games in the past couple of days. Congratulations to the winners!

I don't understand how to play  :'(

I have to apologize for the lack of information. Assuming you already went through http://taabl.net/howtoplay let me tell you that playing is much MUCH simpler than understanding the how to :)

- Elect your game(s), from Pick 2 to Pick 5 (the number after the Pick is the number of characters that will be matched, the larger this number the less likely it is to match with the next block).
- Place your bet(s) - careful not to use web wallets where you don't control the addresses and private keys, as the wins will be paid back to the address you sent from.
- After two confirmations the bet is added to the Pick, you can see which is yours by looking for your payment transaction hash.
- When the pick matches, a winner is found. The winner gets the pot, all others get a few satoshis (same number as the Pick) to signal the pick has ended.

I'll be glad to go into detail on any part of the workflow, just let me know what your exact questions are.

In reaction to the current value of Bitcoins, we have changed the bet amounts on BTC BitPicks to one tenth of what they were before, so single bets are now:

BitPick 2 - BTC 0.05
BitPick 3 - BTC 0.01
BitPick 4 - BTC 0.01
BitPick 5 - will be BTC 0.01 too, but since there is are bets already placed in the running game the change will happen after a winner is found

The same 1/10 rule will be applied to LTC BitPicks, but only BitPick 2 was changed so far to LTC 5.0 per bet, others will be altered as the active games come to completion.

TRC BitPicks remain unaltered.

Good luck!

I'm also having some hard time in order to understand this game.

I'm unable to figure it out what the odds involved in this game are.

BTW would you mind creating one more column in order to add the odds for each PICK? (And one else adding the players already in).

Or, at least, that kind of info might be included in the "how to play" section...

The odds are dependent on how many others are playing, it is the same as a raffle.  The selection numbers are the last digits of the block hash, for example "4d783" in this block: http://blockchain.info/block-height/237472

The odds of any winner in a pick 3 is 1 in 16^3, or 1 in 4096. If you hold 1 ticket and 19 others are holding 1 ticket, you have a 1 in 20 chance of winning (eventually). Of note, it doesn't matter when you join a game, as you have to hold the ticket number when it hits - meaning you can't have the prior block be 12345 and then you select ticket #12345.

Thank you for the explanation.

But I guess it's not so +EV in order to get in...  ;)

Who won that Litecoin Pick 5...? What's the address? Where can I find a blockchain style proof of payment?

http://explorer.litecoin.net/tx/480c68c3b4eba98813c90cd709213194c225c2dd783951e8017dd73b772efa27

If you click on paytx hash you'll get the above link. Click on the Pick 5 link to see which number and tx won; http://taabl.net/pick?_=511d0f2e4d8b2045fb0a8cb9

What does it mean by "not yet redeemed"?

Also, I could never find that link from TAABL. It takes you to Blockchain.

"not yet redeemed" means just that; the funds are on that address and haven't been moved.

What do you mean it takes you to Blockchain? If you look in "previous games" on the main page you'll get the link I posted. Have I placed the wrong link somewhere else?

Okay, so that just means the money has yet to be moved? I'm just concerned, because I pumped a ton of LTC into it, and I am wondering if somehow I sent it from more than one address, which is not unusual...  Is there any way to discern where the address is from (waht kind of wallet) based on the first few characters?

Further, could there ever be complications about sending the winnings to an address of an exchange? I had something similar when coinotron sent me 430 TRC to Vircurex and it never applied.... ever.

Are you also telling me that every other payout:
http://explorer.litecoin.net/tx/480c68c3b4eba98813c90cd709213194c225c2dd783951e8017dd73b772efa27#o14

Was also not redeemed? So no one is moving any coins.......

And 3 weeks shy of 2 years running, we have a winner for the BTC Pick 5 game! Congratulations to the owner of 1NLGxRunq5MYR5YWQycRJKConHcpaBrUvk  who made 2.277 BTC out of the 0.1 bet made 16 months ago... I really hope the wallet still exists!

There was a little trouble getting this one paid out as I haven't made any updates to TAABL or DiceOnCrack in quite a while and TAABL particularly was trying to send "signal" transactions to all betting addresses, in values of 1 to 5 satoshis each, which is now called dust and can't be propagated. This means that no signals are going out anymore, of course. It also means that I'll be doing some much needed updating to these sites if there is any interest in using them which, by the looks of it, there isn't :(

If you enjoyed playing these games before or want to try them now, let us know!

For those that haven't been around for that long, TAABL was one of the first bitcoin games to come to live and certainly the first automated bitcoin lottery. Of course many things have changed along the way and are bound to change more still, but it is a bit of bitcoin history nonetheless...