Bitcoin Forum

TL;DR: 999dice is not provably fair at all, but they hide is so well, you'd never actually know it.

Stupid-long version:

I'd like to start with some background. I'm involved in the crypto community, have been mining and trading bitcoin for a very long time. (Well, very long being a relative term.) I'm a programmer, I enjoy math, and few things give me more joy than figuring out a math/programming puzzle. I've also dabbled with gambling my entire adult life. Not addicted to it by any stretch of the imagination. Losing is frustrating and ruins the joy of it. The joy I get from it is figuring out how it works, and making it work to my advantage. Card counting? Sure, sometimes. That's a bit boring however. Let it Ride is my favorite game to play for fun. Being able to increase your bet (or reduce your losses) depending on how your hand plays out? Oh, that’s fun. (Yes, I'm aware the house edge is about 3.5% or so on Let it Ride, and card counting doesn't do much good, but at a table in a casino, when the other players realize there's an advantage to sharing their hands with each other, that changes the odds a little).

Anyway - I wrote the above just to give a little background on where I'm coming from. Naturally, being a lover of all things crypto, I eventually gravitated towards sites like primedice and satoshidice and not too long ago, 999dice.com caught my attention. .1% house edge? Wow. That’s not bad. And since it's based on cryptography, you can't accuse them of cheating, like I'm sure all the online casinos engage in.

So I start betting there, and I'm doing ok. Up 10-20 BTC some days, then I lose it, then back up a little. Yes, my bankroll for playing games is large. If you were in the chat rooms while I was playing, before I realized that the setting to disable announcing your bets in chat, you probably saw some of my bets. My auto-assigned name there was Euphantes, or something similar. My account has been deleted so I cannot access it to check. (Login names do not = chat names on 999dice.com). But shortly after my winnings went up and down, I started losing. Very badly. Against all odds it was loss after loss after loss. Last I looked my main account was down 108 BTC.

So I decide that I'm switching to an automated system based off of their API. Loving programming, I whip up a simple (which quickly became not so simple) internal webpage that had two functions, testing and live. In testing mode, I could run simulations and see how different strategies would net the largest wins with the lowest risk in the shortest amount of time.

After this post, as a reply I want to post something long winded, but worth reading, on betting systems, "luck" and how math proves the first worthless and ruins any concept of the second. It was originally here, but became too long and made this post more technical than I intended. Anyway, moving on...

Knowing you cannot beat math, I try a few different techniques to try and have the lowest risk, with the largest payouts, quickly so I can get in and out before math nails me. I run these strategies through my simulator, which uses truly random numbers generated by random.org. For anyone unfamiliar, random.org provides random numbers that are generated by encoding atmospheric noise generated by (if memory serves correctly) a radio tuned to a null station, static. The static is digitally encoded as, basically, a wav file, and bits are extracted to form random numbers. You cannot get more truly random than that.

So I test my strategies over and over, to the tune of 1, 10, 100 million rolls each, so I know how and when they go broke.

And I start betting.

And without fail, my betting strategies that produced reasonable results in my simulator failed miserably when put to actual use. My god. How horrific is my luck?! (Using the term loosely, of course). I try, and try. I change my win percentage. I change my risk factor (betting higher limits to decrease the odds I max out). I lower my starting bet. I find other ways that produce a few bitcoin per betting run, with a reasonable risk. And I then bet them, for real. And lose again.

What. The. Hell?!

So I then think, I need to actually validate this site's 'provably fair' betting. And that’s when I saw it.

Before I get to that, the site is intentionally misleading. The method the hash is generated states that the formula is server seed + client seed + bet number is then double hashed and other stuff is done. The first code example (in a language hardly anyone actually uses) does not add the "bet number”. The second (which is written to be compiled in a Microsoft .net environment - how many bitcoiners work in .net as opposed to Linux/g++/etc.?) example does.

The first example does no endian reversing of the bytes, the second does.

Nowhere is the bet number explained. What is the bet number? The bet ID? Makes sense it is...? If you place a bet and then click on the resulting roll in the bet results window, you get to a verification page, which shows under the # sign (indicating number) a 0, and then next to that is the word "Number" and under that is the bet ID. So what the hell is the bet number? Is it the number under the number symbol? The number under the word number? Do we reverse the bits? Do we USE the bet number at all? The code example the site says they actually USE doesn't even use the bet number, whatever the heck it is. The page is, I believe, intentionally ambiguous.

I emailed the admin for clarification, and he did clarify. And since the page has always been written like that, I will assume that NO ONE has EVER actually bothered to verify a bet there, independently. Which is sad. Or if they have, they also needed clarification, and the admin intentionally never actually clarified the page.

Just wanted to point out what I believe to be intentional misleading information. For anyone who wants to actually verify, the bet number is the bet sequence number - always 0, unless you are doing a multibet, in which case it starts at 0 and goes up to 199. The client seed, and the bet number are reverse-endian, for some reason, also not clearly explained on the site. Using that information I WAS able to verify bets.

What? I was able to? Then they aren't cheating, right?

Bullcrap they aren't.

Go to most dice sites. They publicly show the hash of the day, and on the next day they show the seed that generated that hash. You can hash the seed to yesterday's hash, and use the seed plus the other info to validate every roll you made the day before.

Some sites change the seed with every bet, to make it impossible to find the seed and cheat the site. Satoshidice does this, and shows you the hash on screen with every bet.

999dice APPEARS to show you the hash, but does not.

Where is the hash for your next bet on 999dice? It's on the provably fair tab. Click it. Show me where the hash is.  

What? You can't see it? Oh, right, YOU NEED TO CLICK A BUTTON TO SHOW IT.

** PLEASE, READ THE NEXT THREE PARAGRAPHS VERY CAREFULLY. This is how 999dice is stealing thousands of your bitcoin. **

Until you click that button, you cannot see the hash. If you NEVER click that button, that seed, and the hash that is generated from it, can be WHATEVER THE HELL 999dice wants and needs the seed to be. Are you on a big winning streak, and feeling lucky, and place a huge bet? Are you on a horrifically bad martingale losing streak, doubling your 5 satoshi bet all the way up to 3.35 bitcoin and praying to god you don't lose AGAIN? **DID YOU CLICK THE BUTTON TO GET THE HASH BEFORE YOU BET?**

No? Oh, ok then - sorry - you lost the roll. I guess it was just really bad luck. Do you want to validate that it was actually a losing roll and make sure we aren't cheating? Ok, here's the server seed we used, right there on the hard to find and not explained how to get there validation page, you can use that with the client seed and the bet number and you can validate and see clearly that it all matches up. See? We aren't cheating.

Wait, hold on a second... how the hell do you know that seed wasn't created AFTER you clicked the bet button and the site decided it was time for you to lose? YOU CAN'T. SUCK IT. It is utterly impossible. Because since there's a new hash with every bet, if you didn't request the hash before that crippling losing bet, piss off loser, you can't prove a thing. Once you click bet, if you didn’t copy/screenshot the hash that proves they did not generate the seed AFTER you clicked bet, it's gone. With no way to EVER. PROVE. ANYTHING.

Remember in the title how I said "and exactly why I'm positive you won't believe me"? Here's why:

You decide you want to catch the cheating jackass. So you place some bets, requesting the seed before each bet. And EVERY single roll matches up. Every bet you make, hashed out on your own computer, is legit. You win some, you lose some, but they are all, absolutely, positively, PROVEN beyond any shadow of a doubt to be provably fair and impossible to cheat. LEE-GIT.

Well, shit. You thought you were going to catch him.

And THAT is why his system is elegantly, beautifully, genius-level brilliant. When you click that button, the server KNOWS you are going to be validating the seed. The server KNOWS it can't cheat this roll. The server KNOWS you might validate the bet, you have the hash, it HAS to use the seed it promised it would use - it can't risk cheating and you catching it red handed.

Wanna see something REALLY slick? Open the laughably fair tab. Click the "get server seed" button. Look at it. See the hash? Don't change tabs. Watch the hash. Click bet. (Get some doge from the faucet or something). Did you see the seed change to the new one?

NO. You did NOT see it change to the new one - because the BUTTON REAPPEARED FORCING YOU TO CLICK IT FOR **EVERY** BET!

You click it, you copy the hash, you make a bet, you validate the seed, and the hash disappears. And you have to click the button again. The button on the tab which hides your bet results, the chat room, everything.

Who is going to place 100 bets on the site, clicking the button, copying and pasting the hash, then betting, then making sure the seed for that bet actually hashes out to match the copied hash, then doing it all over again?

NO ONE.

And that is EXACTLY why no one reading this will believe a word I am saying. Because anyone who tries to validate their bets will always have them validated 100% of the time, until they stop validating, and then they have absolutely NO way at all to know if they are being cheated or not. It is absolutely, beautifully, elegant, "politicians around the world would be envious and proud"-level deniability. No one can EVER prove he is actually cheating. Ever. And he can ALWAYS prove he is not. Always. Because he can cheat you out of every bet you make, UNTIL you explicitly TELL him, "I am watching you." And once you tell the server you're watching, it knows it can't cheat. Until you get tired of clicking that button before every bet.

The API refuses to tell you the hash also, unless you intentionally ask for it before betting. Slowing down your bets by half, which is annoying because you are likely using the API to speed your bets up. But really, who actually uses the API?

Want to know how Satoshidice's API works? First, you start a betting session by sending a command. That returns the server hash.

Then, AS A REQUIREMENT TO PLACE THE BET, you absolutely MUST send that hash you just got back to the server as a parameter to the bet function, to PROVE you have seen the hash. Let me reiterate that: you can NOT place an API bet with satoshidice without PROVING to them that you've seen and have recorded the hash.

Then the result of the bet returns the hash for the next bet you make, which, again, you're not allowed to place until you again prove that you have the new hash.

Satoshidice forces you to see and confirm you have the hash. 999dice makes it an annoyance to get.

So after losing 108 BTC on my main account, and another 99 or so on my API account - yes, I lost 207 BTC on 999dice, and after making over 8 million bets to the tune of a total of about 92,000 BTC in total bets (thereabouts), I was NEVER up more than 20, and then only briefly at the beginning, and then it was loss after loss after loss, I retrofitted my API script to send the API call to request the seed before every bet, and every time a bet was lost, it hashed everything out to ensure the site was not cheating.

After doing that, forcing 999dice.com to play fair and preventing it from cheating, in a span of 14 hours in which I had 3 betting sessions (deposit, bet, withdraw, go do something else for a while), I won back 61 bitcoin, the first two being deposits of 40 BTC each and quitting/withdrawing after I was up between 25-30 BTC each, the last being a deposit of just 4 BTC and quitting when I was at 7.3. My betting strategies (risk X amount to win Y bitcoin on every press of the go button, with a risk of Z, and quit after I am up a set amount) that worked on the simulator suddenly worked on the site. My colossal and mathematically improbable losing streaks suddenly stopped, and I was winning back my stolen bitcoin.

Then I received this email (my personally identifying information XXX'ed out)
-----
Return-Path: admin@999dice.com
Received: from imap11-2.ox.privateemail.com (imap11-2.ox.privateemail.com [192.64.116.199])
   by XXXX (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id t15NFufU015721
   for <XXXX>; Thu, 5 Feb 2015 18:15:57 -0500
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1])
   by mail.privateemail.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D0307880314
   for <XXXX>; Thu,  5 Feb 2015 18:15:55 -0500 (EST)
X-Virus-Scanned: Debian amavisd-new at imap11.ox.privateemail.com
Received: from mail.privateemail.com ([127.0.0.1])
   by localhost (imap11.ox.privateemail.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024)
   with LMTP id dMVUR-J0gp5g for <XXXX>;
   Thu,  5 Feb 2015 18:15:55 -0500 (EST)
Received: from [192.168.0.185] (kaputte.li [194.150.168.95])
   (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits))
   (No client certificate requested)
   by mail.privateemail.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 84C2B880289
   for <XXXX>; Thu,  5 Feb 2015 18:15:54 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <54D3F9B0.6040603@999dice.com> (sfid-20150205_181558_975973_AC99148C)
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 23:16:00 +0000
From: "99.9% Dice Support" admin@999dice.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: XXXX
Subject: Re: Followup
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
XXXX,
*PLEASE MAKE NO FURTHER DEPOSITS*
I am glad to see that my email got through. My email provider was having
troubles all day. I was not sure that it had, because I saw your bets
pop back up in the chat room. There's a pending withdrawal of 7.3 BTC or
so, which I will release after clicking "Send" on this email.
If I see further deposits, they'll be seized. If they're on new/stealthy
accounts that you think I won't know about, they'll still be seized -
please don't test what you can get away with - you'll lose your money.
You have no remaining balances on your account - everything that is
yours will have been paid out within a couple minutes of this email
being sent. I wish you the best of luck earning back what you've lost -
but it will have to be elsewhere - not on this website.
Jake
-----------

(Side note: Why does the admin of a legitimate site need to use privateemail.com and access said site through tor? Odd, that)

Yep. I figure out how the cheating works, and how to avoid it, I TELL him I've figured his scam out, I start winning back my lost bitcoin, and unsurprisingly, I am banned from the site.

There were many back and forth emails. When I first discovered the scam I went ballistic and demanded he return my stolen 207 bitcoin, or I'd make it my life's work to see his site shut down. I explained how the bet ID could be faked, and how the site could cheat by having to request the hash. He politely replied that I was mistaken about how the bet ID was part of the hash (I thought it was the bet ID, not the bet number which I explained above). He ignored my second accusation.

I wrote back and said ok, you're right, thanks for clearing that up about the bet ID/bet number issue, but still, you can cheat by knowing when we're looking at the hash. He ignored this email.

So I started doing testing. I ran the API, using doge, and made over 1 million bets at a 95% win chance, and my final numbers were a 95.0172% win ratio (or something close). Which sure seems like the site is legit... except that although I had a 95% win ratio, I was still down more then I should have been.

How is that possible? Because the site only needs to make you lose a few extra times on larger bets to really punch your wallet, and that would never truly affect your win percentage when you're making a million rolls. It's especially bad with martingale strategy. 49.95% odds, 1 million rolls, you can have a 49.96% win result, yet be down hundreds of bitcoin, if you won a lot of 1st rolls, and the rolls that were faked were the ones where you're at the end of the run and betting 35 bitcoin. Fake just 10 rolls out of 10000 and you bring a 49.95% win ratio down to 49.85%, something that is perfectly within the bounds of random chance. Yet 10 faked rolls could cost you 350 bitcoin if they are timed just right.

So I email him and say that I ran tests and it appears the site MIGHT not be cheating, but, I still don't trust it and I'd like an explanation.

I am ignored.

So I retrofit my script to pull the hash, and I win 61 bitcoin in 14 hours.

And then get an email that I am banned and all deposits will be CONFISCATED.

The reason he states for the ban is that I lost a lot of bitcoin, and went crazy screaming at him and calling him a cheater, and threatening extortion and going "mafia style" on him. In the chat room last night he even claimed I threatened his life. Absolutely not true. I demanded my stolen coin back or I'd do my best to expose him and ruin him/his site. So then he saw me betting again, and was afraid that if I lost again, that I'd blow up at him again.

Let's be clear here - by his own admission - the reason I was given that I was not only banned, but any deposits I made would be confiscated, was because he "was afraid" that I'd lose again, and send him meany face emails.

What? Seriously?

It had nothing to do with the still, until this day, ignored accusations about cheating and theft? I even went so far as to say in an email, "All you had to do was say, 'Oh, crap, you're right! The way I have users request the hash really COULD be seen as cheating, and since I'm honest, I'd never want that, so I'll fix that right away. I am so sorry it came off that way!" and it would have shot my theory down. That never happened. EVERY time I directly asked him to explain, that question was ignored.

Late last night I was trying to warn some people in the chat, and as I was being repeatedly banned, I sent him an email asking if he was working hard tonight banning every tor window I could open, and all he needed to do was return my bitcoin and fix the site and I'd leave it be.

He responded that he's sorry I lost money, and before I do anything rash, he thinks I should wait a week or two to calm down before taking any action. "The site isn’t going anywhere and isn’t changing in two weeks".

What? Really? Take TWO WEEKS to "calm down"? How batshit crazy do you need to be to take TWO WEEKS to calm down?

My ex-wife once very inappropriately yelled at and went off on my son and said hurtful things to him, and I went absolutely nuts on her, having one of the largest fights we ever had, and even then I didn't need two weeks to calm down.

And to specifically state that the site isn't changing in two weeks? How about - how about - let's examine this... how about I wait two weeks so that you can make modifications to the site and any accusations can be ignored?

However, at the end of the day, I have absolutely zero proof of what I claim. The site is designed in such a way that it's impossible to prove. It's genius, really. And that's why I doubt anyone will actually take this seriously. They will talk about it in the chat room, the admin will blow it off and say how the crazy guy was mad he lost 200 bitcoin, he'll say I threatened his life and god knows what else, and be chatty and friendly, and people will ignore it. And continue to be stolen from.

But I'll close with the following scenario.

You suspect that your wife is cheating on you with your boss. The bed is way too rumpled when you get home, and she's putting off that vibe. Your boss makes snarky comments here and there, but nothing you can ever prove. But in your gut you know it's happening, but you can't prove a thing.

They both deny it and say you're being paranoid.

You WANT to catch them and prove it's happening, but in order to leave work and not get fired, you have to let your boss know you're leaving the office mid-day. You have to tell him that you won't be at your desk, and your boss knows that you might be going home. And every time you do... everything is perfect. You never catch anyone. In fact your wife is ready for you to come home, everything spotless and pristine, exactly how you'd expect it to be if nothing was going on.

People, please... when you have to inform the person who's cheating you that you are watching them, you will NEVER catch them. And when they know it's impossible for you to check on them, they can do whatever they want.

Do your own due diligence. Place bets. Notice how you always seem to lose that crucial bet. Then take the time to record the hash and see if your luck changes. The best part about all this is that by posting this, the admin may well turn off the cheat mode so that even non-hash-checked rolls are legitimate, so no one can prove otherwise. Which I guess is a victory if it stops the cheating.

Decide for yourselves, but don't be stupid and blatantly trust a site that hides the hash, makes you tell them you're looking, and provides deceptive information for calculating the hash yourself.

This was originally in the OP, but, it’s more me digressing into the math behind bets and why no system works, and why you’ll always lose in the end. I originally felt it was appropriate to help illustrate that it was not just “bad luck” that caused the massive losses and rare few wins, but math that did not add up in the end.

First, there is no betting system that works. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. The ads you see for 99.9% success rate can only be accurate if they are placing a single bet at 99.9% odds. Let me repeat that: There are NO betting systems that work. Well, one does. Go up a little, and then STOP before math screws you.

Second: Luck. There is no such thing as luck. There is math. When your roll is based on the cryptological hash of a randomly generated seed concatenated with your client seed and an incremental nonce, that is not luck. It's math. If you are betting 95% odds to win, and you bet 10,000,000 times, you will win 9,500,000 times, plus or minus a few thousand for standard deviation, but point being, there is no luck.

If you try a betting system like martingale, you WILL go broke. I absolutely guarantee it. Let’s say, for example, you're on 999dice.com that pays out 2:1 for a 49.95% odds bet. And let’s say you start with a bet of 5 satoshi, with the plan of doubling it with every loss. So, every time you win, you'll always profit 5 satoshi. That’s how martingale works. Double your last bet, and you'll always profit when you eventually win.

Let's also assume you have a bankroll of 100 bitcoin.

After losing, and doubling, that 5 satoshi bet 30 times, you're betting 26.84xxx bitcoin. (Yes, it goes up that fast).  
To double it again, you'd be betting 53+ bitcoin, and the max winnings on 999dice is 40 BTC, so, you can't bet 53. So to make the most of our winnings, lets up our base bet to 7 satoshi. That makes bet #30 cost 37.58xxx bitcoin. What the hell are the odds of losing a 50/50 bet 30 times?

Let’s do the math. You roll and the chance to lose is 50% (I am rounding it down from 50.05% just for sake of making it easy. Given house edge your odds are slightly worse than what I am about to illustrate).

So one loss is .5 (50%). Losing a second time is only a 25% chance (.5 * .5 = .25), a 1 in 4 chance (to find that, divide 1 by the decimal, .25). Losing a 3rd time in a row is 1 in 8... .5 * .5 * .5 = .125. So to figure out the odds for losing 30x in a row:

.5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 * .5 = .000000000931, which is, as a percentage (multiply by 100 to get the percentage) .0000000931% chance. And to see that in more easy to understand numbers, the chance of missing a 50/50 bet 30 times in a row is a 1 in 1,073,741,824 chance. One in a billion. One in a BILLION chance of losing 30 times in a row. The price you pay for those odds is winning 7 satoshi on a bet. As I write this, 7 satoshi is valued at 1.58 thousandths of a US penny. So you would need to win 632 times to earn a penny. And you are risking 75 bitcoin, $17,000, to do so (your total losses if you miss 30 rolls in a row).

So, you start betting. Each time you bet, if you win, you net 7 satoshi. If you lose, you keep doubling until you win, and you win 7 satoshi. Keep in mind you're risking 75 bitcoin if you lose. But, what are the chances, it's 1 in a BILLION odds, right?

So you win and win and win, and a few hours later (depending on what you're using to bet. Primedice's autobetting is really slow. 999dice is faster but has a max of 200 and your losses seem huge if bet #200 is loss 26 and you're down 4.7 bitcoin), you're up... what? 9 cents?

So you use 999dice's autobet, or a site's API to slam bets through. You have 75 bitcoin on the line, impossible to lose at 1 in a billion odds. And if you HAVE 75 bitcoin to risk, I'm going to assume you'd like to get more than a few pennies for your time. So let’s say your goal is 5 bitcoin. About 15% of your risk. So let’s run some numbers... you're not getting 7 satoshi per BET, you're getting it per WIN, so it's not 5 divided by .00000007. It's actually somewhere about double that, given the losses that 'waste' bets. The actual math behind that, I'll get into in a moment. But for now, suffice it to say that 10,000 bets nets you about .000335 bitcoin. So to get one whole bitcoin, that would take about 29,771,000 rolls. 29,771,000 / 2 * 7 satoshi =  1.041 bitcoin.

So, therefore, to earn 5 bitcoin, you'd need to make 148,855,000 rolls. Which if you could use the 999dice API to place 200 bets per second (the max per manybet API call), would take you 744,275 seconds, which is 12,404 minutes, which is 206 hours, which is 8.6 days. Wow.

Of those 144.9 million rolls, you have about 74.45 million "cycles". A cycle is you drop the die, and you either win, or you roll until you do win. And that's simple to show: 74.45 million times 7 satoshi is 5.20975 Bitcoin, our target winnings. Make sense? Each individual ROLL does not have a 1 in a billion shot of missing 30 times - that's impossible, a single roll cannot miss 30 times. A cycle of rolls can, a single roll series as an attempt to win can. So we're going to use the number of "wins" or cycles.

1 in a billion odds. What are the chances? When you attempt 74.45 million cycles, or wins, the odds of hitting that 1 in a billion are 1 in 14.42 odds. How? You divide your 74.45 million rolls into your 1 in a billion odds. It comes out to 14.42something. You roll bets for over a week, risking 75 bitcoin to win 5, and reduce your 1 in a billion odds to  
1 in 15 roughly. That is one hell of a time commitment to risk 75 bitcoin to win just 5!

What if we wanted to say screw wasting a week and having some amazing 1 in a billion odds? Go to 999dice.com right now. Pull up the betting screen. Put in 75 BTC for a bet, and set the % chance to win to 93.412%. Your winnings would be 5.209125 BTC, DAMN close to the 5.20975 we were hoping to win. So we hit roll, and we either win, or lose.

What are the chances of winning at 93.412%? Well that’s simple. 100% - 93.412% = 6.588% we have a 93.412% chance to win 5, and a 6.588% chance to lose 75 bitcoin.

Let’s turn 6.588% into a decimal... we divide by 100. That’s .06588. Anyone want to take a guess as to what 1 divided by .06588 is?

1 / .06588 is 15.17.

Wait. What? If I bet 75 bitcoin at 93.412% odds (1 in 15ish) I can win 5.2 bitcoin - or I can bet 7 satoshi, martingale, doubling, risking a possible loss of 75 bitcoin at a 1 in 14.42 odds? Isn't that funny how math works out?  
Your odds are actually better to make the single roll.

And a lot of the above numbers have been rounded off, and we generalized some with the "divide the bets by 2 to get the number of cycles", but isn't is strange how close those numbers match up?

It's not. It's math. You CANNOT beat math with silly betting strategies. The only way to "win" is to hope random chance is on your side, go up before you go down, and stop before the 1 in a billion odds hit and you lose 75 bitcoin.

I took the time to write out that extremely elaborate explanation to illustrate a single point: There is no luck, there is math. No "system" can beat the house. No strategy can win. And in a truly honest random number system, the numbers will ALWAYS work out in the end.

Hmmm, that's very interesting, I haven't read 2nd post yet

I must say that you shed some light on 999dice.

Some time ago I was told this site ain't provably fair because it uses betid which is "general" bet number that can be faked.
You checked this and this ain't true - meaning 999dice isn't cheating that way.

Having to click a button to show server seed hash - hmmm, you're right, this seems strange. I could understand that you have to click the button before you make any bet in particular session to generate new server seed, but after placing bet next seed is generated automatically I think so it should be shown without any button clicking. Same story about API.

Another thing - that e-mail from admin.
WTF???
It's both scary and funny.
Scary, because it shows that something is going on.
Funny, because you can't ban someone from bitcoin casino, it's impossible  8)

Conclusion - you said we won't belive you. I would rephrase that statement - I don't believe you have proof of 999dice scamming you.
But I do believe you went extra lengths to investigate and find out what's going on.
I do believe something's fishy.

Waiting for admin's response...

PS I'm pretty sure it's possible to write Javascript bet verifier that could be run from browser's Javascript console, suddenly it seems that playing without such safeguard is a risky idea.

It was confirmed as a scam long ago. I dont know why people still play at that site.

Seems pretty plausible, though you're right that it can't be proven. Still, people should stay away from 999dice.com until they change the way they deal with seeds to rule out this sort of tampering.

Thanks for taking the time to read it pozmu. I know it's a beast. However, with something like this I feel it's important to be as completely thorough as possible.

Regarding the bet ID, yes, that is actually what I saw first, and flipped out about, only really having the 'no hash at all until you say you're looking' sink in later. I thought the bet ID was in the hash, and that can easily be faked. But it was explained it's the bet number, always 0, unless it's a multibet. And using that, the rolls DID hash out correctly.

As for understaning having to click the button 'to start' - why? Why be forced to inform the server you're watching at all? Most betting sites publish the hash on a static page anyone can see.

If you publish the hash on a standalone page, you could read the hash on your phone, not logged in, then bet from your PC, and the server would NEVER know you checked the hash. Giving them absolutely no opportunity to cheat, because anyone, at any time, can check.

Forcing me to tell you I'm looking just screams 'We're making you tell us for a reason.'

As for being impossible to ban from a casino, yeah, it is. But since I obviously bet larger amounts, all he needs to do is put a manual hold/approval for all withdrawals on any account with more than XXX BTC in deposits or bet volume, and before allowing a withdrawal, check the blockchain for linked coins, etc. Yes it's a lot of work for him, but it's an even bigger risk for me. It's not worth it.

And as for the bet verifier - absolutely. The problem is, you gotta click that button. Which tells them you're verifying. Which means it will never not verify.

Best case scenario, if everyone starts verifying, they can't cheat.

Hmm. Maybe tonight I'll write a javascript plugin for 999dice that clicks the hash button automatically after every bet processes. Enough people start doing that, and I bet we see the .1% house edge increase within a few weeks.

Because it's not big enough 'news' for people to actually know. Thats my goal here. I'm trying to get this out as much as I can. I've been speaking with cryptocoinnews about a story, and I've sent an email to ZeroBlock. Not sure they'd accept a post like this as a paid news story.  Wouldn't bat an eyelash to spend some of my regained BTC to get this story everywhere.

They also fuck with your bet speed if you're profiting to try and throw you out of focus. Proven by using two different accounts on same network. One was betting insanely fast the other was profitting and kept getting disconnected/speed was really choppy. I think they are selective hashing when this is occuring. I have so much to say about this site, will add more later. I'm currently mobile.

Before I switched to the API, I absolutely did notice it. A lot. I even effed up a few bets because of it. Hit the button... nothing happened. Hit it again, then boom, two losses. But never considered that it might be part of the plan.

Please do post more when you can later. I'd absolutely love to read it.

Okay so I wrote a Node.js script just to test out the bet speed using the raw web API.

I noticed a few weird things.

1. Sometimes I will randomly get an "Error: Invalid Request", then It'll send the identical request in 350ms and it'll process fine.

This is fishy to me because that error is usually thrown for a different reason. Aka the backend is denying the request.
I want to reproduce this and see if they are changing the server seed when this occurs. All the other errors are very specific.
If you are betting too fast it will throw "Error: Too Fast" etc.

2. I ran the bot on one account using a shitty method that would most definitely lose. I set the bet speed to 200ms. (5 bets a second).

...I did not get "Error: Too Fast" or "Error: Invalid Request" a single time.

Then I ran it on another account, using a much better method. This time I only set the bet speed to 350ms.
That's only ~3 per second.

Every time I started to profit it would give me a "Too Fast" error, sometimes even disconnecting me completely.
...even though I was using the same bet amount and an even slower bet speed.

Sorry for your loss, and thanks for sharing your experience with them.
I have never played on 999dice after reading Stunna's accusation about them faking the bankroll, but I didn't know it is so much worse than that.

Thank you for sharing. i want to tell my friends

Op check this thread.
You have name of admin on it.
Jake is Noah Matisoff from los angeles.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=376783.0

Mate, you choose the worst site. Im really sorry for your lost. I hope owner of 999di does the right thing. (But I dont think so because they are damn thefts)

Really expensive experience.

bet on pocket rockets then and save yourself the strife.

http://www.btcfeed.net/fraud/999dice-scam-exposed/

Share this article so that when people search 999dice this is the first thing that pops up. Sites like this are what give the bitcoin community a negative image through deception and fraud. I hope cryptocoinsnews release a report about them as well, the scam is obvious and thank you keepinquiet for figuring it out.

You are the man M3. I contacted a few news outlets about a week ago to see if anyone was interested in running the story, and heard only one reply. Sorry I didnt know to contact you. Thanks for putting that together. The more noise this makes the more people will see it and know the truth.

Have you put it on reddit? I don't want to double post it.

I read that the other night, and while I cannot say for sure that is him, I found some pretty interesting coincidences that tell me it is.

First off, when you pull the whois info for 999dice.com, you get this:
Domain Name: 999DICE.COM
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 48
Whois Server: whois.enom.com
Referral URL: http://www.enom.com

The rest of the data is pretty worthless as it's all been privatized.

If you do some googling on Noah Matisoff, you find he has this site:
http://matisoff.me/

Whois information on that domain:
Domain ID:D8874866-ME
Domain Name:MATISOFF.ME
Domain Create Date:02-Aug-2013 22:41:52 UTC
Domain Last Updated Date:10-Aug-2014 05:42:14 UTC
Domain Expiration Date:02-Aug-2015 22:41:52 UTC
Last Transferred Date:
Sponsoring Registrar:eNom Inc R32-ME (48)
Created by:eNom Inc R32-ME (48)
Last Updated by Registrar:eNom Inc R32-ME (48)

Same registrar.

Another interesting little tidbit. Look at the email headers in the OP. I commented that I found it funny that a legitimate site owner would use privateemail.com instead of something a little more professional, and access said webmail through tor. (kaputte.li [194.150.168.95] is a tor exit node).

Now, lets scroll down for the mx record for matisoff.me:
https://i.imgur.com/EmAaqjl.png

privateemail.com

Before 2 days ago I'd never even heard of privateemail.com, yet 999dice and Noah Matisoff both registered their domains through the same registrar (also one I've never heard of) and both use the same email host? Yeah, a coincidence, but a pretty odd one.

I wouldn't say with certanty that "Jake" is Noah Matisoff, but... haha... I'd lay a bet on it ;)

Never noticed that myself, but my betting scripts were automated. If a bet failed, the error was checked, and acted on appropriately. Too fast, it'd pause. Generic error, it'd resubmit. So I can't say if any of that happened while I was winning, but it's odd as hell, for sure.

I read most of it.

Why not do something about, rather than telling people not to use it? Why not...talk to authorities, or crowdfund a hacker to take it down?

This IS doing something about it. The more people know, the more people are aware they are being stolen from, the less they will use the site and hopefully, shuts down.

The authorities not only don't care, what authorities? The site is hosted in germany (I believe), and the possible owner lives in California. He emails through tor. I'm sure he admins the site through tor also. Prove what? It's not silk road and heroin where the FBI gives a shit. It's gambling with magic internet money.

As for crowdfunding a hacker, that's actually MORE illegal than what 999dice is doing. It's also childish and accomplishes nothing. Makes him a martyr. Site gets hacked, he comes back up with the sympathy of his loyal customer base.

My goal is to destroy the loyal customer base. That is worth doing.

It has been proven long long time ago that 999dice is a scam!
Even now tomatocage has put in his signature that "999dice.com is a scam" .
There is nothing new in this.
just mantain distance from them.

Any one know where i can report fraud ? They must catch noah matisoff

who noah?
is he the owner of 999dice?

You can go to the court and see what they can do.

There is a million scams out there its the godforsaken wild west, sometimes there's a faster gunslinger or a band of manure thieves prowling about??

Sorry for your loss

I would though like a copy of this script (or system) that made you the 60 bitcoins in 14 hours. Why not use it en mass and put a beating on the website. Im sure many here would be happy to help with the project ;)

The admin threatening to confiscate any deposits I make is a good reason to not do that.

As far as a copy of it, won't do you much good unless you've got 50 BTC to deposit and can stomach risking the loss of it. It's not foolproof by any means. Anyone who tells you their system IS, is lying to you.

Well at least I know about this morningale dealio.

Youve also piqued my interest in gambling and might have ruined my young life.
just kidding but it does sound like interesting stuff. Sorry for your loss, take that energy and
go on a warpath. Some people deserve to be taught a lesson..

Disclaimer: 999dice is a scam, fuck them.

You managed to lose 200btc on a shady site that was widely regarded as a scam. You did not due diligence before you went on your degenerated streak (not a gambler). You are a fucking idiot.

http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
https://crimestoppers-uk.org/

I send couple months ago request on ic3.gov but they dont make nothing.
And he is from USA crimestoppers-UK they will help?

be sure to get the server hash before you place that bet

OP if you seriously picked the most shady of the dice websites to bet tens of thousands volume of bitcoins, that was well deserved. For someone that lost ~200 Bitcoin though, posting on a forum doesn't seem like the most appropriate action. I refuse to believe this.

Similar to JustDice who used to have server provided client hashes unless you forced a randomization on your client
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=482855.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=482855.0)

I did not see this mentioned so I am gonna do it ...

999dice generates a hash out of some input data (client seed which the client can control, along with other data).  It then processes that hash to get a pseudorandom number.  

999dice does track the users balance as well as wager size in a easy to prove way.  When auto betting it will bet faster if  you have a large deposited balance as well as a larger wager.  The larger the wager the faster it bets.  The larger your balance the faster it bets (or so it appears).

If the OP is correct in his assertion (correlation != causation and all that) this means either they broke sha256 (or do they use 512?  I forget) or they are just brute forcing a loss.  It is highly unlikely that they broke SHA256 or 512.  Therefore they would have to use the wager size tracking and brute force a loss when they decide they want a losing wager.

If they are brute forcing a loss then the response times from the server for larger wager losing bets would vary because it would have to do more operations to return the response.  A technique like http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2001/Mar/182 (http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2001/Mar/182) could possibly be used to detect the jitter in the response times, if tcp timestamps are passed from the end server (I think they proxy through cloudflare but I am unsure, and I am unsure if they pass that).  Short of that you would have to rely on received packet responses which has more network delay than using tcp timestamps so greater variances.

A clever person would plot the time differential between wager placed and response given both when tracking the server hash and when not to see if there is a greater deviation on losing bets when not watching.  That would help to ascertain if the correlation the OP observed is actually due to causation or just random chance.

Side channel attacks like timing based attacks are a known standard method for attacking crypto systems.  Anyone who is really into crypto should be thinking about them.  Some crypto systems have been defeated by using timing  attacks (like poor HMAC implementations that compare before they finish doing everything and short circuit abort on mismatch) This has presented itself in authentication applications (rlogin, ftpd, etc by guessing valid usernames or passwords (http://lwn.net/2002/0425/a/lacy.php3)) and other programs in the past.  Detecting TOR hidden service (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/usenix08clockskew.pdf) can use this technique as well as detecting virtual honeypots (http://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Honeypots-Tracking-Intrusion-Detection/dp/0321336321). 

It feels good to breathe new life into a paper I wrote 14 years ago.  It hasnt been cited in followup work enough in the last few years :D

Sounds like "Jake" will be getting nailed by the FBI soon enough...  these scammers never learn...

It really doesn't matter, he is doing business with US clients.  FBI will get his ass at some point when years later he wants to visit Disney World with his kids, or whatever.

I also believe 999Dice is a scam, but unfortunately none of this is really evidence. Privateemail.com is the private email hosting service that Namecheap uses (https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/email.aspx). Namecheap is the most popular domain registrar which accepts BTC payment, and thus anonymous registration. I use Namecheap and privateemail.com but I am not "Jake".

it is good that you documented all this on a public forum.  yes it may not have the priority of a silk road, but they will catch up to his ass sooner or later.

On what charge though?  If its 999dice there has to be proof a crime was actually committed and I am unconvinced that a string of losses vs a string of wins with a correlation between the two is proof.  

Technically any gambling site that does not blacklist US people could go down if the gambling is illegal in any state AND there is some US based person involved other than the gambler (31 U.S.C. §§ 5361–5367 (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/subtitle-IV/chapter-53/subchapter-IV)).  Lack of age verification makes it illegal (as well as other things).  Its illegal to run the site, not illegal to gamble there.  I have not seen a single case where 100% of everything was outside the US and they still tried to go after the site operators.  It is a RICO case which lets them parasitically go after a whole bunch of people and assets, well its RICO if anyone gets any profit from the site.  

I suspect that unless and until cheating is proved (which could be a wire fraud case) or he gets big enough to matter they wont bother with the resources though.  It is far more likely that a state attorney general with aspirations of being a federal senator or perhaps president will be the one that goes after such things.  That is why NY is going after all the ponzi sites of late.  Remember, if at least one person in the state could be harmed by the illegal acts of someone external to the state then they can indict.  If its a foreign national they can request extradition although that is handled federally in most cases (often with the State Department running point).  Once they are in the US then they can be told to take a seat over there.

No it isnt.  18 USC 1030 is the hacking statute and that has a lesser penalty than the RICO case for an illegal internet gambling site.  Illegal is a very loose term in that act it means if the laws of *any* US state are violated it is illegal, age verification is a required attribute to make it legal under that act.  There are other reasons it would be illegal.  

Not only does the RICO charge have at least twice the penalty (20 years instead of 10 as a maximum) but it exposes more people to more criminal liability because it parasitically infests a group of people.  Wire fraud if they went that route would be a 5 year max, so there it would be a lesser crime (unless they raised that since the last time I read it).  Wire fraud would not be the typical way to go when there is an internet gambling act passed in 2006 though.  He could also be charged with individual counts for each occurrence of cheating (if he is cheating) but proving which ones were cheats and which were not might be difficult and without that there is no crime.  Internet gambling can be proved by just visiting the site, no cheating or anything else to prove.  Issue subpoenas to get the real IP of the server and  then more subpoenas to get the identity (or potentially wiretaps to monitor who is accessing the site, possibly track the coins to see who is spending them and potentially cashing them out, etc).  It is not illegal to be a gambler though so if he is clever in how he pays himself he could make it look like gambling winnings which at most carry a tax liability and the IRS can go after him.  

It is a French IP owned by a German company.  Would France cooperate?  Is this even illegal there?  If it isnt they may not be able to cooperate and short of following the coins and proving who the site operator is then it would be difficult at best to do anything.  People on this site have just as much ability to track the coins and see if they can discern who is getting paid and who is just winning.  I mean sure maybe the gov can subpoena the domain registrar records to get the wallet address used to pay for the domain and see if they can trace it that way but  that might not pan out either.

They use google tracking so presumably they could subpoena google to get the AdSense or Analytics or whatever customer info and see who is accessing that and if its a linked account and chase the rabbit down that hole.

The use a Comodo ssl cert so another potential target to subpoena to try to get info.  Comodo is US and UK based so presumably there would be a hook there.

Crookservers.net is the hosting provider (who appears to have leased the FR IP).  Based on their legal style I would say US based edited by a non-lawyer (I say that as someone currently in law school in the US).  It also uses American spelling not British in the TOS.  "Sales Inquiry" is Americanized.  Inquiry is more for investigations while Enquiry is more for um well Sales Enquiries, at least from what I heard.  They do not have the required business identification for much of Europe on their page.  In fact they do not really identify who they are as a corporate entity or have telephone numbers at all.  Not surprising with all the cheap hosting providers out there doing the same though.  I bet money they are US based though, and I *will* check the server hash before placing that bet :)

Crookservers lists by default prices in pounds but does not mention VAT anywhere on their page (via google).  I believe that the UK requires VAT numbers to be published so there can be verification of them. The carnival fraud or whatever it is called.  Much recordkeeping.

It appears to be a windows machine as well.  I just find it odd that anyone would host anything on windows but I am biased.  God I hated working at Intel and all their stupid windows machines.  


I do agree with the rest of what you said though :D

Can FBI or any other authority do anything about people dealing in BTC?
They do not consider it money so why wont they stay away?

I never trust this site when Stunna leave a red -ve to jake


If that country has a regulation against BTC crime, I'm sure the law enforcement will busted that guy

They do consider it money for a variety of things.

For SEC laws its generally considered money.  For the Silk Road case Ross Ulbright was just convicted of ... money laundering which specifically requires a monetary instrument (his lawyer lost the argument that bitcoin is not money). 

Basically the courts have all  held that bitcoin is money when it comes to criminal acts  that otherwise require money.  The IRS considers it money if a merchant sells goods in it but a commodity other times.  The IRS is the weirdo and has rules that are highly situational dependent on how they view bitcoin. 

Lot of posts overnight so going to try and respond here all in one message.


Thanks for your input. However, I argue that it is "widely regarded" as a scam. There are 2 threads here about it (three maybe) and not a single one has any proof, or even anything approaching proof. In fact, one of the threads is started by someone who poorly photoshopped "proof". There will always be the sore losers who rant they were scammed. I'm providing strong circumstantial evidence that it's true, or, at least that it's a very real possibility that it's true.



What do you suggest is the most appropriate action then? Law enforcement who doesn't care? Hire a hitman? Fly out to CA and accuse some random person that someone thinks might be him, and what...? Waterboard them until they admit it? What would be a better course of action, aside from getting the word out?

And if you refuse to believe it, for your sake, I hope you don't gamble there.

There's some news coverage of this thread:

http://newsbtc.com/2015/02/08/bitcoin-gambling-website-scam-nearly-exposed/

Well of course they didn't break SHA256/512. If they did they wouldn't be running a scam dice site, they'd just empty any bitcoin address that exists any time they wanted some bitcoin.

As for the server times varying, "brute forcing" the seed would take no time at all. I'm going to simplify their process, because theirs invoves double hashing, then reading the first 3 bytes, converting it to an integer, checking it's value, then using just the last 6 digits. Too much work for a forum example.

So for my example of how "hard" it is to brute force a sha256 seed to make you lose a roll, our bitcointalk-dice site will generate your roll by double sha256'ing the seed. The client seed and nonce are irrelevant for this example, since they wouldnt change. After it's double sha'ed, we will use the first four numbers that appear to get your roll, and divide by 100, so you'll get 00.00-99.99. Also, for brevity, the server seeds will just be random words I feel like picking instead of 32 character strings that clutter up the screen.

So, you're betting 50/50, on low. Server seed is 'ripoff'. Double sha256 the word ripoff (as a string) and you get:
d7ec963e8d5eb5bd118fa809c05abc56d47f77a1a4d421db180b3bf4add8ed80

First four numbers are 7963 so your roll is 79.63. You lose.

Next roll your seed is 'theft'. Result:
30d5dd57f28d02756aa06a71d40b4f300241e5c8323ffb596f9609d630decf5f

First four are 3055 so your roll is 30.55. You win. Ok, now the server thinks you're winning too much, time for you to start losing.

Next seed is 'scam':
92eeea29311e699e209c3127d18f13e7711c1ff903162e4bbe5ab551429ed737

92.29 - a loss. Luck was on our side this time. Lets take back some of those "winnings" we let you have.

Next seed is 'arrogant':
b13e51f886ed5ca336191d8e65fd2f6c0adf43c379af0d60215c8623008ffb89

13.51 - a win... but we want you to lose, and you didn't save the hash for 'arrogant' so lets change the seed to, new random word, 'cheat':
b2a1f658776f82f8e7fb704b3a060773bc24423dc6d0298da55eeea0eb31224d

21.65, damn, ok, try again, 'liar':
6429f62ea32edf61a0d684c5c5be80d71c82385fdaa0eae88aa1a9acc4a3a833

There we go, 64.29, you lose, sorry man. The seed was 'liar', you can be sure we didn't cheat by making sure it hashes out correctly, and you can validate we didn't change the seed by checking the hash we provided before you made the bet.

Oh, you didn't click the button? Sorry. Guess you just gotta trust us.

My point being, 'brute forcing' a sha256/512 to get a random dice number you want is simple. The odds of them finding one that works for them is exactly the same as your chance to lose. It might take 15-20 tries to find a losing hash if you're betting 95% wins, but that would take a server microseconds, tops. You'd never notice it. The TCP overhead and standard traffic time is millions of times faster than the time it'd take to hash it out.

On my mid to high end server I ran those hashes on, I just took the microtime, double hashed a random number 300 times, then checked how long it took.

.000703811 seconds.

.7 milliseconds.

My desktop pings to 999dice.com are about 170milliseconds.

In the time it takes a ICMP packet to hit 999dice and come back, they could have hashed over 72,857 guesses.

It's not hard, and if using timestamps as your basis, it's completely undetectable.

Even worse - if you never change your client seed (something I always did on every roll when using the API), they can save hashes in advance. Need the roll to be 98.55? Pull saved entry number 13,872, that one was 98.55.

it is funny
i think most people has know that it is a scam site
but why do people still play there
perhaps because of them still make a profit every day (smart player)
some are a playing with dumb and lost "a lot" and finally put hate to admin there .dont know

Based entirely on your response it appears that the URLs I posted were too technical to be understood properly.  Maybe this URL will be better for you to understand.
 Knowledge is power.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_attack)

Brute forcing the seed would take > 0 time units or > "no time  at all".  It would be detectable and then could provide the basis of proof of  your theory.  I encourage reading the original URLs I posted, they really do contain useful information relevant to proving your theory.  You do want  to prove it right?  This thread is not just a rant session and no proof will be sought?

I took the liberty of confirming that tcp timestamps are enabled and properly passed from their server.


Excellent you are on your way.  Keep up the good work.

your ping time however is irrelevant.  There are multiple reasons for this but from a basic network perspective ICMP is often given a lower priority on the various networks that comprise the internet and as such is not as reliable.

What you are after is how long the userspace application processes various tasks.  So even if ICMP was treated equally on the network you would only be measuring the kernel time to process and respond which is not very useful.


true but  tcp timestamps do not use icmp.  Fortunately the two protocols are completely separate and they must have the result before they send the tcp response back.  This means that you can measure the time it takes to process A vs processing B.  That variance can lead to actual proof as opposed to something else.  Note that you must statistically differentiate between a regular loss and what you claim to be a cheat loss (if that even happens which based on the post I am responding to I doubt more than ever).  

Keep up the good work, you are well on your way to understanding this and how you can prove your theory.  If you need any more help understanding basic networking or basic security let me know and I can fill in the missing pieces.  Side channel attacks are really not that difficult once you understand the basic concepts that go into them.  I encourage you to go forth and learn a little bit about basic networking and software development.  Based on the content of your post I can only come to the conclusion that there is much to be learned about that.

Its all about knowing how long the server does a specific task and when a task takes longer than normal you know something else is going on -  you just dont always know what so you have to get quite a few samples.  Use the faucet its free.

so you are using evidence that the site is a scam that
1) you lost money there
2) its possible they may be using fake seeds

Doesn't seem conclusive, no need to dox anyone, just move on to another gambling site and give a fair warning to others that the site may not be honest.

You have 0 evidence really that they did steal, so your title seems pretty over the top. 

Or you can actually think for yourself and look at and analyze how the site works. Blatantly trusting "the admin" is a recipe for disaster. *I* trusted the site because it's very well done and LOOKS legit. You can even verify bets. Thats the beauty of it.

And those making profit every day... how much? The smart players making profit every day, how much profit are they making?

Because I saw a lot of that chat room scroll by during my time there using the web interface. And the vast majority was people looking for people to "invest" and others happily investing. Also a lot of people bragging about their balances of .00048172 BTC.

There's a feature I was unaware of that will spam your larger bets to the chat room. The first time I ever asked a question in there, I was prased as a god as people saw my 1.5 BTC bets that won 4.5 BTC (33% odds). I was then also innundated by requests to invest in them. I also learned that "investing" was trusting some other rube who has no better odds than you do, to bet your money for you. That was a sobering moment.

Anyone who is betting there and making any profit at all that is worth mentioning is doing it quitely and not advertising it. And I guarantee you they aren't bragging about it in the chat room for you or anyone else to know.

That being said, I seriously doubt ANYONE is actually profiting for real there.

And a quick side note: I'm pissed I was scammed out of the BTC from a site that goes above and beyond to APPEAR to be legit, however, even more infuriating is the site stealing from the tons of people in the chat room who likely can't AFFORD to be losing money there.

People who have money to gamble arent begging for tips and begging for investors just so they can give it "just one more shot!"

Those are the people who can't afford it. And those are the ones who are being hurt infinitely more than I was. And THAT makes me angry as hell.

Havent read it yet, will later, maybe I don't fully understand. I do know that ICMP is slower. But my point is that if I can do 300 hashes in .7 milliseconds, the "hardest" to brute force bet is a 95% win, in which case you will need, on average, 11 hashes to force. In extreme cases, it will take 350+ or so (the largest number of "losses" in a row I saw for 5% bets, which is obviously not the maximum, but in 100,000,000 runs, a 95% chance roll happened 349 times once or twice), which is why I chose to hash 300 and time that.

And on a web server that appears to be hosted in germany, with random amounts of internet traffic, unknown amounts of server load, unknown amounts of user load on the site, you'd be hard pressed to notice a delay which could be anywhere between .002ms and 10ms, and attribute it to brute forcing a new hash. I havent checked on tcp timestamps, but are they accurate to the .000001th of a second?

And that being said, it's the easiest thing to defend against. All he needs to do is read this thread, see someone might try that, and simply add a usleep(mt_rand(100, 100000)); to the 'check if the bet won and maybe rehash it' function. (Assuming he's using PHP, which he isnt, because his site is done in windows for some bizzare reason).

How do you analyze the tcp timestamps when the server is adding random amounts of delay to every request. Delays so small no one would ever notice the site is running slower, but large enough to completely ruin any testing where you're trying to sense the differene between .002ms and .004ms?

Which is exactly why the title said "and exactly why you won't believe me".

The best scams are the ones that convinced the scammed that they aren't being scammed, and recruit them to defend the scammer. Cults have done this for a long time. It's nothing new.

You say it's possible they are using fake seeds Almost all betting sites MAY be using fake seeds. Almost none of them force you to set your own client seed. They pick it for you. When they do that, they can make your results whatever they want them to be. They all MAY be doing it.

I say it's very probable that 999dice is doing it, precisely because the site is designed in such a way that you must inform the site if you are going to validate a bet, before you can write down the hash to validate it.

If the cops call the drug dealer 30 minutes before they are busting the door in, do you think the cops will ever find drugs there?

If there were some weird law that FORCED cops to notify criminals they were coming 30 minutes in advance, do you think the fact the cops NEVER found and arrested anyone is proof that there are no criminals?

Or is it more likely they are just ditching the place before the cops get there?

Joter - a suggestion? Your site is very much like 999dice. You need to click something and send uniquely identifiable information to the server to see the hash before the roll is made.

It's impossible for "not me*" to see the hash before the bet without telling the server "Hey, I'd like to see the hash for my next bet plz, I'll be watching."

It's the same thing 999dice does.

Reason I think, in your case, is it's an oversight, is that it would take balls of steel to post an ad for your site in my thread, pointing it out to a guy who did extreme technical analysis of a betting site, and think I wouldn't notice.

Want to bring your site fully into "theres no way we are cheating you" land? Put the hash on the betting page. SHOW ME the hash ALL the time. Don't make me tell you I'm looking.

I'll tell you what though, applause for having the client seed being generated client side via javaqscript when you click the randomize button. I was afraid it was coming from the server, but poking into the source briefly, it does appear to be client side.

* By "not me" I mean I have to be logged in/have my cookie sent to the server to see the seed. Its impossible to load the seed without telling the server I'm looking at it. Since the seeds are individual per user and not static for the site for the day, I have to identify myself to see the seed, thus leaving room for the possibility of cheating.

This is a great, well-written post. If the site turns out to be a scam (which seems likely), I hope justice is served to whomever is running it. Great job keepinquiet and I hope you get your btc back.

Why not create a proxy website that allows users tohave every bet verified?

what about autobets where you have to iterate through several just to see if that one is the way you want?  eg it works like a multiplier?
What about the load of doing this to everyone as is implied?  Presumably they are not just screwing you over (if they are doing it at all). 

hundreds of bets per second, maybe thousands with some doing autobetting (there are several userscripts to do that) plus the load of the web server, MSSQL server, etc.  It is a one box show apparently.  Its also running on windows 2008 which depending on who you talk to is better in terms of performance than windows 8 server. 

The contention rate that would exist is actually quite high, if what you propose is going on.  It would be extremely noticeable if all that was going on.  However even with that timestamps  have been used to fingerprint the clock skew of a specific system even if it physically moves networks, or hides behind TOR hidden services.  There are methods that have some pretty fine accuracy.  Read the footnotes of the papers I provided as well, that will give you 10 or so other papers you can read on the subject.  The Pearson book I listed is partially available on Google Books so partially free to read (I only found it because I was searching for who cited my paper, they misspelled my name which makes me think there are no fact checkers on it so it may not be worth buying - I read nothing other than the footnote so I dunno its overall quality).



you really should read the one about guessing valid usernames.  In that one using tcp timestamps they were able to  tell if a username was valid because it would return faster by not comparing the password and doing the single hash on the supplied password.  That is just one hash, on a server far away, with other things going on.

It would at least let you confirm the theory if its really happening. 

I have lost over 5 btc to 999dice.  It definately seems like a scam in the way that if you need a crucial win to recover it will roll the opposite side or just out of range conveniently.  Even after an improbable loss streak.

This was after I reached max payout on 250+ losses.  I tried to recover at maxpayout and lost another 830k doge after losing 400k doge.   I knew I shouldn't have chased this loss but it just seeems a bit ridiculous.

http://prntscr.com/62shxu

ohh man, honestly i do not understand with things like that,
make it simple
you have 2 BTC and wants 5% profit from 2btc (0.1 BTC (cmiiw)) every day there
trust me, it is very easy
but most people (including me) when got a win they want more and more

been long time i realized. we can not win continuously because the system will change
we should to fooling the system

I think their RNG is flawed based on some analysis.  Not horribly so but enough that you do not get an even distribution of numbers.  If I had to guess I would guess they use sql server as their entropy source.  rand() gets its seed in part from time() which does not have  sufficient entropy to create an even distribution over time.

They also appear to have a flawed method of using the server seed.

Server Seed: 035a30aeb639002a3bf131ada765b18840bf4c8e5912ff7f2efe6e6993e949e2
Server Seed Hash: 88f41de51f58329026807b0a1464a6264052fe074e30274472fb63abed77915a

Yet in the code examples we see
@serverSeed binary(32),

If you will notice the server seed is larger than the space allotted for it in the first code example.  Because of the abstract types in the 2nd C# example this does not appear to be an issue.  The site however claims the first example is the actual code they use on the site.  They verify it all  through MSSQL.  This would imply that either that is no longer the validation code or they are truncating the seed.  

Putting hash on "static", standalone page would mean they use same seed for every player and disclose it every day/ hour etc.
999dice generates new seed every roll, I can understand how it may require pushing the button to generate/show hash - as you said, even when using API you have to use seperate call to get server's seed hash - reason behind that may be the fact that normally all "magic" happens in one fuction, that takes care of generating server seed, mixing it with client seed and calculating result. Separate function that pre-generate server seed is not run unless you explicitly ask for it. Such construction simplifies the process as they don't have to store pre-generated server seed anywhere - it's generated on the fly during the bet. Yes, it does make changing client seed somehow useless, as without knowing server seed hash we still have to trust casino operator, but hey - 99% users trust the casino and the remaining 1% can click the button - maybe there are some savings in processing speed that makes this complication worthwhile.

Exactly.
That would get rid of all uncertainty.


I also wanted to ask you for a copy of your script.
No, I don't have 50btc but I'm sure it could be used with smaller sum of btc/doges too  8)


People play there because they have 0.1% house edge.
Plus they have server-side autobet meaning you can do 200 martingales in one go.
Don't get me wrong, I see sarcasm in your post  :P


Every bot should have built in bet verifier.
I can't remember if that one available @ 999dice have this option... Even if it does, you would have to build it from the source (and read the source first).

There is a bitcoin casino that publishes what the next will be with every bet.  They have multiple fields stating what the last one was and what the next one is.  This could be done anywhere, even if its separate on a per user per roll basis. 

999dice clearly does cookie tracking to identify users or you would not be able to have a balance without ever logging in or creating an account.  They have 4 cookies, AccountID, LastBetCurrency, Language and SessionID.  They also have an indexed DB which I think but have not confirmed is just used for  some functions that are exposed. 

Because of the AccountId cookie it would not be hard to know who  you are talking to and since they use MSSQL they could store what the next would be there or just make it part of the session so if you abandon it its gone.  Either way they could make it easier to  have a dynamic but displayed next seedHash. 

Its all about how the developer chooses to make this information available.  If this was not the scam before after this thread I am sure that there will be some that try it. 

This guy just will not stop. So newsBTC wrote an article about them, then decided to remove it:

https://i.imgur.com/TGbkI1q.png


My theory is that this "Jake" guy sent them a message threatening them. Here is the message he sent me and my reply. God these scumbag scammers juts never stop this reminds me of Josh Garza and his bullshit accusations about coinfire and his legal threats. This guy has the audacity to go after me claiming that I am participating in extortion. Maybe we should all go after him for running an illegal gambling site for US citizens.



https://i.imgur.com/D23k7Ey.png

Is this an email to newsbtc? How did you get a screenshot of it?

WOW. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Seriously? NewsBTC removed the article? I just googled it. Clicked the link. It's gone.

WOW.

What a spineless pile of scumbags. Extortion? Really? It's not extortion...

Here, let me tell everyone about the "extortion" I engaged in:

Hey, Jake, you stole from me, give me my bitcoin back or I expose your bullshit scam everywhere!

Yes, clearly "extortion".

You steal from someone, they demand you return it, and now, apparently, thats extortion.

Hey, NewsBTC, way to have a spine, you worthless assholes.

Yes, I'll say that in public. You are a bullshit worthless news agency if you publish a story, then remove it, because an anonymous scammer threatens you.

In all fairness I believe that the "anonymous source" is fake.  The documents were for another case with just the name changed.  Coinfire did not do proper due diligence before posting a defamatory story which does open up a tort claim.  I say this as a law student.  I am not a lawyer, I am certainly not *your* lawyer.  This is not legal advice.  

For the record - I am completely, absolutely, not shocked.

The ability of people to believe crap "authority" tells them is without end. Admin writes back and says I'm extorting him, ACTUAL NEWS articles on a NEWS WEBSITE are removed.

I swear to god. I should start up my own scam-and-steal-from-you-site. The scammer sites receive more trust and support than those who were stolen from.

The site is designed to force you to request the hash on every roll. And there are people who honestly believe this shit.

.1% edge.

2000+ BTC profit (claimed)

And I'm an extortionist.

Absolutely stunning.

Yes that is true. Next server seed (SHA256) can only be seen if user clicks on provable fair page. We will add it in every AJAX response from the server, so it won't be shown only on demand. Thanks!

I concur.  
18 USC 1951 (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1951)

Fear includes fear of economic harm.  Legally speaking saying "pay up or I will sue" is extortion  which is why debt collectors say "under the law we have the right to sue" or something similar to make the threat in a legal way.  

Color of official right is like a cop saying "pay up or I will cite you with something".

There are many cases where news reporting of truthful statements is 100% legal.  The news can even quote someone who is completely wrong so long as  they make it a quote and do not just parrot what is said as if its fact.  Even in defamation cases (which is the best he could go for) which comes from tort law which is common law which dates back to about the 1400s England (before that defamation didnt really exist as a claim) truth is always a defense.  Reporting that someone else is saying something would absolve  them of any liability.  That is a truthful statement easily proved because they linked to this thread.  Now they can go after the OP of this thread and require the OP to prove his claims of cheating or pay up for a defamation case.  Caveat: opinions dont count.  saying "I think they are cheating" is not defamation, saying "they are cheating" is unless its true.

I doubt that will happen though.  Tort law includes emotional distress and how many internet trolls have you seen sued?  Man I would love to be the lawyer that gets that class action lawsuit.  Parasitically attach to the websites hosting the trollfests under the same premise that landlords have to put locks on the common areas in high crime areas because they are responsible for securing against harm to tenants.  I would win all the internets!

None of this is legal advise, I am a law student not a lawyer and certainly not *your* lawyer.  Saul Goodman is my hero.

With a 5% chance of win thats not improbable at all

OP, since 999dice's admin honored you with an entire page with your name please accept my apologies for my last post here. I was doubtful but proven wrong.

But allow me to comment that I find wrong in both yours and the admin's actions. While he did warn you to not deposit there again, you didn't listen. Him confiscating your coins right after is nothing more than outright theft though. If revealing this scam is your last resort to find justice I wish you luck. I hope those losses won't cause any serious problems in your life.

Thanks for the transparency. Going above and beyond to prove fairness and legitimacy, I hope, will bring you a lot more business.

Well first off, an illegally operating bitcoin gambling site illegally doing business with someone in the US very likely has absolutely zero chance of winning any lawsuit anyway, given, oh, the fact they are operating illegally. So I'm not sure why anyone would worry. As for the removed news story, well, it just speaks to the journalistic integrity there, as well as their knowledge of journalism.

They were quoting what I said. How that makes them party to "extortion" is beyond me.

And if Saul Goodman is your hero - look me up when you pass the bar. ;)

Wrote a script to defeat any potential cheating on 999dice.com. It pulls the hash before every bet. Doesn't do multibets yet, but if you look at it, it should be simple to do. I'll work on that lateron.

It's over here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=950605.msg10407384#msg10407384

5% odds is .05*.05*.05 ...  to figure out the odds of consecutive losses.  Even  the best Martingale strategy will eventually lose because it will take infinite funds on a particularly bad losing streak.

if you want a lawyer like that why wait?  hire me now :D

No, Just-Dice constantly displays all relevant seed information on the 'Fair?' tab, and keeps it constant until you request for it to be changed.

That is in no way similar to 999dice knowing whether you have seen your seed hash or not. Just-Dice knows that you can been sent all your seed information before you make any rolls and so can never risk cheating for fear of detection.

tldr: at 999dice you have to specifically ask to receive your server seed hash and it constantly changes. at JD there's no way to not receive your server seed hash and it only changes when you ask it to

This. I thought it was pretty fucking weird that you have to click a button to see your server seed hash.

I found something kind of odd in the JS.

$.connection.mainHub.server.setClientSeed

I'm pretty sure they send your client seed to them.. lol why would they need to have this function when its sent as a parameter in the raw bet request?

I've received requests from people in the past to look into 999dice's provably fair system but I never got around to doing so. I'm sorry now that I didn't.

Withholding the server seed hash until it is explicitly requested is dubious behaviour. It allows the site to cheat on all rolls except those for which the server seed hash has been requested, which will be almost all of them.

Changing the server seed for each individual roll in itself is bad enough, since it requires the user to keep extensive records and also to change their client seed every roll to be sure that they aren't being cheated. Add the hiding of the server seed hash on top of that and you really do have to wonder what's going on. Why would anyone go to such lengths to hamper their provable fairness?

Of course none of this is proof that any cheating is going on, much like how having to let your boss know when you take the afternoon off doesn't prove that he's doing your wife. But when every other company in town lets you come and go as you please without notification you have to wonder what he is trying to hide.

Also, with so many sites struggling to make a profit with a 1% house edge how does 999dice manage to profit so well with only a 0.1% edge? Players should demand an overhaul of the probably fair system as soon as possible. Ideally players will be able to verify their rolls with very little effort. Using a single client/server seed pair for as many rolls as the user likes (pioneered by Just-Dice.com in June 2013) is the industry standard.

There are some wiki pages and all but if there was a page that detailed how to properly do provably fair and flaws in every implementation known (without naming names on *that* page they can go somewhere else) along with detailed information why its not provably fair it would educate site operators as well as users and allow for better validation of provably fair claims.

For example 999dice is not "provably fair" because you cant prove its fair when you dont click the  button.  It might be fair but its not provably fair.  That is the distinction I am trying to make with the suggestion for the wikipage possibly on bitcoin.it or somewhere else that can become a public repo of knowledge on the subject.

I  think bitzino was one of the first to do provably fair systems and has some fairly detailed information about how they generate things.  https://bitzino.com/about/fair  

Casinos can be profitable as long as there is a house edge.  Short of the player cheating there would never be a break even for the player and over  time, over an aggregate amount of users the casino wins.  Even the best betting strategy will eventually crumble, although short term wins of sufficient size could pose problems for the house bank.  

The libertarian in me says that it is the players choice, if that is how they want to spend their entertainment dollars that is their choice.  The indian in me says woohoo casino profits pay for my health care, undergrad college and some other things.  Although sadly not graduate studies in law (only medicine/dental and then under strict conditions) so law school is all on me.  god I need a job.

I think that the laws that forbid gambling are legislated morality which never works out.  The US really should embrace internet gambling and stop having the silly rules.  Although I do see some progress in this. sports betting is illegal period under the federal wire act, other betting is legal if address verification is done to ensure same state as the site, age verification, and the site is registered with the state like any brick and mortar casino (which means the gambling commission can certify fairness in the games, which includes a full source code review for e-games like  slots and verified sealed (sticker) eproms containing the firmware).  This is actually progress which generally forbid it before 2006.  Maybe in a few more years they will open it further seeing how desperate they are for taxes.  Pushing it underground just encourages more scammers, fraud, deceit, unfair rules, illegal debt collection practices, etc.  Let hte people decide for themselves what is acceptable and what isnt on a personal level and the people that try to force laws to make everyone conform to their personal life choices need to stfu and go away.  

Hey at least with  the 2006 internet gambling act the gambler cant get into trouble and generally only the site management or those that facilitate the sites operation can if they are US based or US citizens.  Protip: dont hide the money source, pokerstars or whomever it was got money laundering charges because they listed credit card deposits as a purchase of goods instead of what it was.  Although  they would have gotten into troubles for  taking credit cards anyway.  That is one of many possible laws that has caused Coinbase to ban accounts that send BTC to known gambling addresses, with  their regulated exchange the fact they accept credit cards and possible status as a money transmitter  they need to be squeaky clean and cant have people using their webwallets for that or they can go down.  I think that is a side effect of the law but it is the law unfortunately.

Yup ,and every serious site is accepting jd provably fair system.

It isn't perfect , but its the best out there for now.

What makes it look even worse is that 999dice is clearly "inspired" by Just-Dice - the site design is uncannily similar - and yet somehow they managed to mess up their provably fair system so much that they can cheat undetectably unless the play goes out of their way to click an extra button before every roll they make.

It's a little hard to believe that such a reduction in provable fairness would happen accidentally.

Good point.
On first look it may seem to be a good thing as it make everything more random.
But you're 100% right with the fact that you need to change client seed with every new server seed, which in 999dice case = every bet.

People have messed up crypto even by almost cloning good implementations on accident leading to compromises.  If they do not understand why publishing the hashes are important then they may not consider it bad to stick it out of the way to avoid the clutter of information many average people just  wont understand.

real life example: CEX messed up crypto for their API, it is a HMAC done by someone who does not understand what all HMAC is supposed to do.  They use it just to authenticate a user not the user+message.  The message itself is never HMACed and thus could be altered in transit (sha1 ssl cert not withstanding and while sha1 is broken and has been for  years no "in the wild" attack has been discovered and broken means different things to cryptographers than average people although sha1 is pretty bad).

Sony and some Bitcoin  wallets with weak random in ECDSA is another good example.  Although Sony was worse because it was not just a  group of related transactions it  was many transactions separated by a large time window.  There are something like 300 weak r wallets out there.  Most addresses havent been used in years though.  A few are still in use with instant withdraws on  the few thousand satoshi transmitted through at infrequent intervals.  No idea if someone is sweeping coins or if the legit wallet owner is transferring but the transfers out come in within 1 second of the deposit.  Last transaction I saw on a weak r wallet was Jan 31, 2015 for 6000+ satoshi.  Oh I stand corrected Feb 8, 2015 for 6717 satoshi.

End result by effectively cloning a REST API they have done it in a way that its horribly broken.  Other examples include some other crypto libraries where it tries to short circuit the encryption and returns early upon a mismatch.  Timing attacks then ensue and you just brute force the password one character at a time until you have it.  This is akin to an oracle attack on crypto which is another example of how good crypto can be improperly implemented merely by different error messages or return values.

I can see it being innocent that 999dice just thought they would move the cruft to the side without thinking about the effects - effectively removing "provably" from "provably fair".  Either they are clever cheaters or of a more innocent mind that they do not see the potential for evil in the implementation.   Without knowing more about the specific individual (not the speculated one and then more than "well he is a known scammer" not all con artists are the same) it is hard to tell.

Total fairness can never go to 100%,  you can approach 100% but never actually reach it.  This example is just to illustrate why it cant be 100%.  However the closer you get to 100% the more likely the server is not cheating. 

The server can pregenerate about half of the potential client seeds.  In 999dice's case that would be 32 bits which would take about 1 hour on an Intel ivy bridge.  GPU farms could potentially cut this time.  Important note for non-crypto people the other half takes a much longer time, each bit doubles the time so its not 2 hours for the whole space.  Using a pre-generated pairing they could issue server keys based on probability  that they will win skewing odds in their favor.

The risk of cheating, even in an otherwise provably fair system is > 0%. 

The cost of mounting this attack in a practical way would make it less probable.  In fact I believe this attack would not be likely at all.  They would only have a small pool of server seeds that they have pregenerated and people would continually see the same ones and that would give them away.


The reality is that the more a site strives to reach 100% provably fair the more likely they are being fair. 

I tried clicking their checkbox for manually entering client seed but nothing happened. How can they be limiting it to 32 bits? That's just 4 bytes.

This again could be an innocent mistake, but really, why would you limit the client seed to something easily bruteforced if your intention was to make a provably fair game?


If you copy an existing provably fair site and change the provably fair system in at least 3 different ways to make it less provably fair, then what are the odds that you made all three changes innocently?

1) change the server seed every roll, requiring the user to change their client seed if they want provable fairness
2) hide the server seed hash behind a button so you can tell which rolls are possibly being verified and which aren't
3) restrict the range of possible client seeds to just 32 bits

It's still possible that the site is running an honest game and it's just unfortunate that they made three unfortunate mistakes in their provably fair system. It's also possible that they knew full well what they were doing, and used it to cheat careless players.

Their theoretical edge is 0.1%, but their actual profit is closer to 0.4%, 4 times higher than it should be. That's also possibly entirely innocent.

Like I say, I would recommend not playing there until they fix things.

This. Absolutely, positively, completely, this. Every word of it is exactly what I am saying. Wish to god your site still took BTC. Really don't feel like effing around with 'clams'.

And, when I was writing my script to neuter 999dice (posted in the other thread, look for the link on page 4) I found it VERY difficult to set the client seed. The damn input box doesnt even have a name.

The way 999dice "records" your personal client seed is there is a form input type=text box, with no name, and, also, no id tag. You have to reference it by the the span it's inside.

Then, the ONLY way the client seed gets updated on the server is when that box loses focus. No submit, no change event, it's a lose focus event.

Know what that means? If you change it, and do NOT click outside it, and then click a bet button, there's a damn good chance that your bet is processed BEFORE the client seed change is processed.

Look at my code in the other thread. It takes FOUR lines of code to update the client seed. I need to set it in two places, in a roundabout way, then specifically call a server update function.

WHY is it so difficult to update the client seed? Why is the updating done on a losefocus event?

The full weight of that didn't dawn on me until just now.

New account, I can still only post once every 10 mins. Adding this here an an edit instead:


Don't forget - when the player DOES go out of his way to click that button every time, he gets banned.

I lost 207 BTC. I call the admin out on the BS 'tell us you're verifying' scam. I verify EVERY bet. I start winning. I am banned.

A 2 year old could connect those dots.

I can see #1 being "it makes it more secure" or some such thinking that clients will not be able to brute force.  This would be especially true with people that do not fully understand crypto or how to calculate how long it would take.  Other sites change that for every client every roll and are provably fair.

I can see #2 being move the cruft and clean the interface.  *especially* if a dev does not understand the implications and believes that few if anyone will ever verify as a result most people do not want to see it.  I can even see feedback to site operators suggesting such a move by people who do not understand the implications.  If you did not know what it was or never were going to be bothered checking would you even know to complain that it was not there?  I suspect that is the vast majority of people in the world.

#3 is actually 64 bits.  If I said 32 I was wrong.  According to the sql purportedly used by the site to do the wager it is 8 bytes.  32 bytes for the server seed.  The 32 bytes truncates the longer server seed though.

however if they are doing all of this to cheat there was a lot more planning that went into things.  I am a believer that most people are lazy or stupid and few go the extra mile to create something exceptionally clever.  

Take the average code injection backdoor, its simple and obvious.  A linux kernel source repo attack put a single '=' instead of '==' and most people reading the code would miss it (evidenced by the fact that people did miss it).  This allowed someone in the know elevate privs  to root (or was it ring 0?  I think it was just root).  

Take the NSA and the standard tables used for some crypto implementations.  These looked good, for a great many years it went unnoticed.  They were backdoored allowing someone in the know to much more easily break the crypto.  

I illustrate these two examples to say that sometimes people do things with malicious intent.  They go to lengths to leave it undiscovered.  These are not the norm.  It does happen but its more likely that stupidity or ignorance was behind the problem.

Correlation does not equal causation.  It never has it never will.  That is not proof of anything.  The emails suggest that you were banned for what you said in emails to the site operator not  for winning.  There is no proof that you were banned because you were winning.

Sent PM, please replay ASAP ;)

Never said it was proof, and connecting dots isnt.

Let me say this for the 94th time in this thread and in others: I HAVE NO PROOF. I NEVER HAD PROOF. ITS WHY I THINK HIS SCHEME IS BRILLIANT, BECAUSE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE.

My god. Stop saying "its not proof". No shit. I NEVER said it was.

I'm not looking to convict him in a court of law by a jury of his peers beyond all reaonable doubt. But that is not the only measure of the probability (or plausibility) of something.

My son was sent home sick from school yesterday. Threw up in the bathroom. No one saw it. He APPEARED sick. He didn't want to eat. I didn't do DNA swabs of the toilet. The obvious signs of it were enough to convince me he was actually sick.

I BELIEVE (without proof, again, 95th time) 999dice's insane profits are due to a system designed to cheat the user, where the user can prove nothing, and the site can always "prove" fairness, due to intentional site design, and the be behavior of the site owner (anonymous proxies, answering every question BUT this specific one, banning, threatening news sites).

Yes, a two year old could connect those dots.

Another news site contacted me yesterday and asked me a lot of questions. One of which, I forget what we were dicussing, prompted this response:

"You tell me which of these two scenarios seems most likely for a legitimate company falsely accused:

User claims site is scam. News story is posted. News outlet contacts site. Site owner makes threats, claims news outlet is an accessory to extortion, attacks the user's character.

OR

User claims site is scam. News story posted. News outlet contacts site. Site owner responds, sorry about user's losses, we are provably fair, we'd be happy to show you."

Which of those two are the actions of someone with something to hide?

Listen, if anyone doesn't wasnt to believe me, fine, I'm at the point defending this position that I don't care anymore. Go gamble there. Have fun. Let me know how it works out. Statistics say you should, after an infinite number of bets, lose only .1% of your total bets. Let me know if that number works out for you.

coz its a gambling site....why will people belive u thar a gambling site is steeling coins

because they want to win every time and they forget that the casinos were not invented for that. you cannot win against them. :)

I read the statement that a 2 year old could connect the dots which you outlined as you lost, verified then won,  then got banned as a string of events indicating that your losses were related to not checking.  That it was implied they were cheating.  Especially coupled with the title of this thread.


I understand why you can arrive at the conclusion  there is something to hide, however I can see the sheer stupidity in that and am more likely to believe in stupid people than cheating absent proof that the person is exceptionally clever.  I do not believe this person to be exceptionally clever.  Occam's Razor and all that.  It could be that he/they are really clever though, it could be that they are cheating, I do leave the possibility open but the implication is that they are cheating that circumstantial evidence is enough to support that claim. 

I think the extortion claims came from your demand that your losses be returned.  I think that upset the admin a bit (thus the banning).  It speaks to a more immature mind and a thin skin (its the internet people need to have a thicker one if they want to have a publicly accessible site).  This also speaks more to not being clever than being clever, or at least bad interpersonal skills.

That is the thing and with the max win per wager as most sites do even a martingale strategy will eventually fail, assuming you do not first run out of your bankroll.  Even with a 95% chance of winning there is still provable statistical odds of a long string of consecutive losses.  The site profit would increase dramatically if people do not have a large enough bankroll.  The odds of 2 consecutive losses would be 0.05*0.05 = 1:400.  4 consecutive losses 1:160,000.  6 consecutive losses 1:64,000,000.  Lotteries in the US are often 1:175,000,000 for the grand prize (powerball, a multi-state lottery is exactly that).

With 95% chance to win you have to have almost 1900% wager increases to win back enough to cover previously lost bets.  If your base wager is 10 satoshi and a 1900% increase it goes 10->200->40000->8000000->16BTC->320 BTC.  Most people will not have that much in their bankroll anyway.  The odds of that happening are only 1:64 million.  Its not hard to make millions of bets. 

If the RNG is flawed as I suspect it is there will be ups and downs in the numbers generated.  This results in the odds skewing so at some points its less likely at others its more likely. 

This does not mean that no cheating is going on, it just means that its highly probable that over time users will lose. 

Yes, I implied it. Oddly enough, I do not need proof to imply it or state my opinion.


So by default, no one is guilty of anything if it requires any degree of smarts to pull off, because everyone is too lazy and stupid? Thats a bit narrow for a lawyer. Just strikes me odd. While, yes, people are stupid and overlook things, I think that is EXACTLY what "Jake" was hoping for. To be thought of like you are. Massive benefits of the doubt because who would go to that amount of effort?

Well, I think someone who appears to have profited 2,000 BTC in a single year would go to that amount of effort.

Anyone here not willing to work extra hard for a bonus half a million $$$?

And at the time his site went up, that would have been $3 million. Oh I'd be one hard working sneaky sonofabitch for $3,000,000

Neither. The "correct" scenario is:

[...]Site owner responds: "Thanks for pointing out this serious flaw in our provable fairness. We will fix it as soon as possible so that every player can easily verify that their rolls are fair."

My second post in this thread goes into the numbers much more deeply.

When running simulations, at a 49.95% bet (999dice's 2:1 odds number, given the house edge), I repeatedly saw instances where the roll was failed over 350 times IN A ROW.

He's the simple math of it - if you lower the base bet to a number small enough that you can cover-by-doubling your losses to an "impossible to lose" point, you are going to have to bet enough times to make any significant winnings that the "impossible to lose" odds are suddenly a very real reality.

Lets use 999dice's numbers: Betting 95% win gets you x1.05157 your bet on a win. To even win anything, you'd need to bet at least 20 satoshi, as anything less than 20 satoshi results in winnings less than 1 satoshi.

To recoup your losses on 999dice, you need to bet 19.38x your last bet.
20 sat bets
After 1 loss: 387 satoshi
2? 7500 satoshi
3? 145535 sats
4? .0281 BTC
5? .546 BTC
6? 10.581 BTC

That's all we're willing to do. Not lose more than that.


What are the chances?

To lose once: 5% - 1 in 20
Lose twice in a row: .25% - 1 in 400
Three times: .0125% - 1 in 8000
Four? .000625% chance - 1 in 160,000
Five times in a row? .00003125% chance - 1 in 3.2 million
Six? .0000015625% - 1 in 64 million
And finally... 7... It's a 1 in 1.28 BILLION chance to lose that 7th roll. Impossible. Even the lottery is easier to win.

So, on any given roll, you are risking about 11.15 BTC to win 1 satoshi. Of course your chances of losing are 1 in 1.28 BILLION, so it's "impossible".

But winning 1 satoshi is hardly worth the effort. Whats your goal? Lets be really safe and say we just want .25 BTC. To get that, we'd need to roll slightly over 25 million times. Slightly over, because 5% of all rolls will be a loss, and it's a wasted roll, so we'll need to roll the recovery roll. So...

25 million - 5% is:
1.25mil re-rolls, and 23.75 million wins.
5% of the 1.25 million rerolls will also be losses, statistically speaking. So:
1.25mil 1st rerolls
62500 2nd... oh and 5% of those...
3125 3rd rerolls... and 5% of those...
156 (rounding down) 4th... and 5% of those...
7 (rounding down) 5th rerolls, and 5% of those...
well, rounding down, thank god we don't lose any of the 6th 10.581 BTC rolls.

So, we have 1,315,788 wasted rolls to losses, and 23,684,212 wins. We lost 5.55% of the rolls to losses, so lets up that to  getting us .2368 BTC in winnings. So we need to roll 26,470,432 times to, in theory, get .25 BTC.

Thats 26.47 million chances to roll that 1 in 1.28 billion. Whats that work out to? 1,280,000,000 / 26,470,432?

48. 1 in 48 odds to fail your roll 7 times in a row. 1 in 48 is a 2% chance. Would you risk 11.15 BTC to win .25 BTC?

If you are, save yourself a lot of time, and go bet 11.15 BTC over at 98% odds. This is where part of my example does not add up, as 999dice doesn't allow 98% bets. While Primedice DOES, their edge is 10x as large, making the math not work out. But lets say 999dice DID allow 98% bets. It would pay out 99.9/98 which is 1.01938. So, you'd get 1.938% of your risk back as winnings.

Whats 1.938% of 11.15?

.216.

Damn close to the .25 you were trying to get (the house edge breaks this example a bit - if you had no edge at all, the numbers would be much closer.) And with only ONE chance to lose it. If you did the 25 million bets, while its a 1 in 48 chance to lose it, there's also a very small chance it happens 2 or more times. Using some complicated binomial probability distribution mumbo jumbo, while there's only a 2% chance you lose 11.15 BTC trying to get .25 BTC, there's also a .000456% chance - 1 in 219k chance it happens 2 or more times. Yes, really small, but you could lose even more than 11.15 BTC.

Moral of the story: How many times can a 5% loss chance lose in a row? An infinite number. It just depends on how many chances you give it to happen.

Moral 2: Don't try and beat math. She's a mean mofo.

As I pointed out when  I did the same math and came up with the  same numbers that assumes their RNG is doing an even distribution.  I also pointed out that I do not believe that it is.  It appears (without doing enough statistical charting to validate my opinion) that there are times where that is much more likely and times where that is much less likely. 

The fact that they double hash also reduces the number of outputs.  If you have all the possible values a  hash will be a subset of that.  A double hash requires the input of the first hash so its outputs are even more limited.  I believe this plays into part of why their RNG appears flawed but I have not done the math to confirm it.  I still think the original RNG is flawed and if they are using MSSQL for rand() as they do for validating the bet (per their site) then its known to be flawed.  Its deterministic based in part of the C call  time(). 

Don't be so sure.

On Just-Dice, at 49.5% chance of winning, we have seen a winning streak of length 30, and a losing streak of length 32.

Those are 1-in-3-billion and 1-in-1.5-billion chances respectively.

Billion-to-one shots do happen. (Especially when you have over a billion bets on the site)...

>>> 1 / 0.505**32
3,123,747,346

>>> 1 / 0.495**30
1,451,590,214

Also, are you sure about your math there? If you have only a 1-in-1.28 billion chance of losing, then you can expect to win 1 satoshi around 1.28 billion times before you lose your 11.15 BTC.

There are 100 million satoshis in 1 BTC, so 1.28 billion satoshis is 12.8 BTC, and so your expectation is positive (win 12.8 BTC for every 11.15 BTC you lose).

People win
against
casinos
every
day.

The trick is
to quit while
you're ahead.

If you play
long enough
you will lose
in the end.

haiku or hai about no?
:)

Arnab went as far as to use a table to lay out his weird post. I've no idea why anyone would do that.

meh its ok.  I just couldnt think of anything funny to say so I thought a pun would have to do.

What is a haiku?
I'm just splitting my text up
like Arnab above.

haiku is traditional
and short form of
Japanese poetry.

Thanks for the info.
Haiku seems pretty easy.
I was worried there may have been some kind of silly rule about syllable counts.

That depends if you are into traditional art or modern art which throws out all the rules to wake up the sheeple.   ;D

Well don't misquote me then say I'm wrong :) I go on in that post to show that if you roll the dice often enough, you WILL hit that impossible 1-in-1.28-billion failure. During my tests (and betting) I hit a 37-in-a-row loss on a 49.95% bet... twice I think.

As for my math on that, the 1 satoshi profit and the 11.15 BTC cost were estimates. No way to know the 11.15 BTC for sure, because in X number of rolls, the profit won't always be the same, as it doesnt account for losses "eating" some of those rolls.

And as it turns out, my math in the above examples was wrong anyway. I'll explain more on that later - I was forgetting to use binomial distribution on the first part too.

Side note, a Haiku isn't just 3 lines, it should be 5/7/5 syllables. I also believe a "traditional" haiku is about nature or something similar. Nowadays it's just a 5/7/5 poem.

 Don't Lose Your Bitcoin
In No Way Provably Fair
     999dice Scam

See? Haiku ;)

I don't think you need the binomial distribution.


Your error is that you need to multiply your bet by 20.3877551, not 19.38x. If you multiply by less than 20 your net profit will be smaller the longer your streak, and it will be negative if the streak is long enough.

To calculate how much you need to increase your bet to keep the same net profit:

>>> edge = 0.001
>>> chance = 0.95
>>> (1 - edge) / (1 - edge - chance)
20.3877551020408

I think the problem here is that 999dice asks for a percentage increase which is always 100% lower than actual because your last bet is added.  I did not verify the math though to see if 19 or 20 was used I just know that you have to subtract 1 from what is entered on the webpage.

In short it was not a devious clever calculated number designed to cause people to lose money over time but a more simple mistake which I think is far more common :)

Oops, you're right. I had 19.38 in my head because thats the base # and 999dice used funky multipliers. On loss increase bet by 100% actually DOUBLES your bet, which when you think about it, makes sense  when using the term "increase your bet by" where I am more inclined to think of 100 as 100% of your bet - 50 would be half, 200 would be double.

So for 999dice, if you enter 1938 in the box, it IS increasing it x20.38.

As for the binomial, yes, you do. I wasn't thinking clearly. Here's why:

Say you are making 20 "runs". Not rolls, runs. A run is where you bet until you max out and quit, or win. Much easier to do that math, as if you are doing rolls, you could have 1 chance at maxxing out, or 15-20 depending on how many rolls until you do. And you wouldn't want to quit in the middle of a run, you're losing by doing that.

So, say your chance of maxxing out and losing big is only .28% per run - your multiplers and bankroll is big enough that you can fail 21 times before you max out. .28% or 1 in 357 odds.

When you are doing something like flipping a coin, rolling a die, etc, that has a set chance for success or failure, the math to calculate your odds over time is not simple division. While if I do that once, my chances are 1 in 357 (.28%), if I do it 20x, my chances of it happening at least once can be much greater, or much less, than it appears.

Look at it this way... you have a 100 sided die. The chance of it landing on 1 is 1% - 1 in 100 odds.

What if you roll it 100 times? Your odds of getting a 1 are NOT 1 in 1. 1 in 1 odds means you WILL get a 1. You could roll it 500 times and not get a single 1. You could roll it 14 times and get 3.

Seeing something with a 1% chance of failure, and assuming you have a 50/50 shot at it if you do it 50 times is wrong. It doesnt work like that.

You need binomial distrbution - which is a statistical method to calculate probability.

In truth, if you can fail 21 times before losing big, and the chances of that happening the first time you drop the dice or click the button, and commit to the run are .28%, and you do it 20 times, for the total of 20 runs, you chances of failing 1 or more times is actually about 5.6%. Double it to 40 runs and the chance increases to 10.88% - not 11.2%. It's not straight math. It's a stupid complicated forumula that needs to be calculated over and over and totalled up to get an accurate number.

Its why a lot of gamblers who calculate odds fail, because they don't look at it right. And I completely goofed when posting my examples in this thread, forgetting that important part.

To simplify things, suppose we're doing a 50/50 bet, and we bust if we lose 3 times in a row. Let's say it pays out 2x, so there's a 0% house edge too.

Like you say, we might play 1000 times without hitting 3 losses in a row, or we might lose the first 3 plays and bust straight away.

What we're interested in here is what is the probability of any particular martingale sequence busting.

Well, it busts if we get 3 losses in a row, and each play is independent and loses with probability 1/2, so the probability of busting is 1/8. Every time we play, we have a 1/8 chance of busting, and a 7/8 chance of winning. So 7 times out of 8 we win 1 unit, and 1 time out of 8 we lose 1+2+4 = 7 units. That all sounds right, since total losses = total wins.

I didn't have to use the binomial distribution anywhere - I just raised the probability of losing a single play by the number of plays it takes to bust me. 1/2 ^ 3 = 1^8.

If you were to ask "how many times do we expect to win 1 unit before we bust?" or "how many times do we expect to bust if we make 1000 plays?" then the math gets difficult. Note, however, that neither of these questions are what we're looking at. We're just looking at our expected profits from playing the game.

I got mixed up in a bet about this kind of stuff (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=610339.msg7060900#msg7060900) a while ago, betting on the existence or otherwise of a streak of a certain length the JD bet history. I'm still not sure how lucky I was to win that bet given the probabilities involved.


I think the biggest mistake was that you used 19.x instead of 20.x as the stake multiplier, making it look like your bust cost you less than it actually would have. If you use the 20.x figure instead you'll find that your expected losses when you bust are greater than the sum of your expected wins.

Hi this is owner of 999dice https://i.imgur.com/PHC9ex7.jpg Please send email to his job. Thank you. http://back9ins.com/about-us/contact-us/

Keepingitquiet,

I've PM'ed you. did you receive it?

Except there is absolutely zero proof of that. None.

Well two things:
First, you cannot use binomial distribution for events which rely on each other (lose 3 in a row) unless you calculate the odds of losing 3 in a row and use that as a single failure event. Problem is a single failure event "uses up" rolls. Ie: if you are rolling 20 times, but have 3 failures, 6 of the 20 are "used" up as part of the failure run. Hence my use of "runs" instead of rolls.

Second: if you have a 12.5% chance of failure (your 1/8th example above) and you make 6 attempts, what is your chance of failing? It's not 1in8 / 6. The ONLY way to accurately gauge it is the BD(tired of typing that).

One run is 1/8th. Two runs is not 1 in 4. 8 runs is absolutely not 1 in 1 - it's totally possible to do 8 and not bust at all. When I started dice betting I miscalculated the odds and didn't know why until I studied statistics.

Thinking a .02% chance (1 in 2000 chance) of failure, and you make 100 runs, and you'll only have a 1 in 200 chances of losing will make you go broke when you lose a hell of a lot more often.

very good find.
i wont say they are cheating but they are not a provably fair system then

Right. I don't think anyone is counting rolls. We're counting "martingale sequences" - start at your base, play until you win or bust, that's 1 sequence.


I don't think that's true.

If I make 6 attempts and each one has a 1/8 probability of failing, the probability that at least 1 of them fails is 1 minus the probability that none of them fail, ie.:

1 - (1 - 1/8)^6
= 1 - 0.875^6
= 1 - 0.4488
= 0.5512

No BD in sight. No factorial, etc.


First off, you made a couple of mistakes:

1) I think you meant ".05% chance" (since that is 1 in 2000 : 100 / 0.02 = 5000 and 100 / 0.05 = 2000)

2) Also, did you mean "1 in 20" not "1 in 200" (since 2000/100 = 20)?

Anyway, the truth is that when the number of runs you're making (100) is significantly lower than the odds against failure happening (2000) then the naive guesstimate ("2000/100 = 20, so it's 1 in 20") is pretty accurate, and a little conservative. It tells you your chance of failure is HIGHER than it really is.

In fact when you make 100 runs and each has a 1 in 2000 chance of failure, your overall chance of failure is lower than 1 in 20. It's more like 1 in 20.5 - to be precise, it's 1 in:

1 / (1 - (1 - 1/2000)^100)
= 20.49916711818098

Like you said, if you make 2000 runs with a 1 in 2000 chance of failure per run, the overall chance of failure isn't 1 in 1. The actual chance of failure is lower than the naive runs/odds calculation would lead you to believe. In this case it's 1 in 1.58:

1 / (1 - (1 - 1/2000)^2000)
1.58174652400438

So after all of this there is still not 100% proof that they scam

no, but now you know how to make sure not to get scammed from them and you know that they are lying when they say its provably fair -> its not (this lie is a scam in itself - though it COULD be an accident)

I'm fucking pissed off I won 2.5 mil doge over 3 days there and now I just lose lose lose lose in the most retarded ways.  This site is definately a scam, I can't even break even and I've been trying for months.  I've lost over a thousand dollars here easily just trying to break even.  Doesn't seem to matter if I play safe or bet big, either way I lose.

Maybe take their URL out of your signature then?

But you won 2.5 million doge so the casino is not riggef after all if it lets you win that amount, the fact that you lost afterwards doesnt mean shit

Winning 2.5 mil DOGEs doesn't mean the site is not rigged. It would make sense for such site to let new players win to earn their trust.


This. Accusing site of being a scam and promoting them in your sig at the same time looks pretty weird.

2.5 million doge is a really big sum of money already so if in fact they let new players win means that you can create new accounts and win in all of them

That's ~1.5 bitcoin. Definitely not a fortune.

No one will deposit all their funds on the site they don't trust. So it's better for the site to let big players win (or not scam them straight away) as there's a big chance they'll be back with more funds.

You won't be creating new account each time unless you know the site is a scam. But if you know that, you won't be playing there at all.

From my personal experience, when I started there I won as expected. Won some, lost some. Went up 10+ BTC, lost it. Went up 15 BTC, lost it, went down 10... went back to +15 or so... and thats when the insane losses started. And me, assuming it was provably fair, deposited more, to try and win back those losses. A few times.

If a site that is programmed to scam you by hiding the provably fair numbers just ripped off your first deposit, you wouldn't come back and refer others to the site.

If you won some, and the site appeared to play fair for a bit, to the point that you believed it WAS fair, it's a lot easier to take the rest of your coins, and probably have you deposit more, too.

All I know, and can state for sure is this:
New player, site seemed legit for a bit.
Then massive, uncontrollable losses happened.
Figure out whats going on, start requesting the hash with every roll.
After winning back 61 BTC by requesting the hash, I'm banned from the site.

Again, no, not any PROOF at all, but thats one hell of an odd coincidence isnt it?

Not really. It's pretty common for people to win a lot before losing it all back again.

And the site op claims he banned you because he was sick of your complaining, which is understandable too. I've tried banning people before too because I didn't want to deal with their paranoia. They never go away though until they're ready to. Banning them only makes them more determined to come back.

Not saying that the site didn't scam you, just saying that it's not clear either way.

The most damning evidence for me is that they took the provably fair JD design, deliberately changed it in a very specific way that makes it possible for them to cheat undetectably, and didn't change it back even when people complained about it.

This was a very good read, i figured they had been proven for scamming a long time ago, but it seems we finally have a semi-hard proof. Glad to see Dooglus on this too!

You know me ... anything to run down the competition... (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=952183.0;all) ;)

(read that thread if you didn't already - it's kind of funny)

call the website rep. :)

stupid if you play in 999dice.............
scammer bro u see profite site
profit 2347.54946745 BTC (site)  CRAZY SCAMMMMMM

i am lose 0.5 - 0.7 btc

much RED(LOSE) if you try play in 999dice you stupid

From your post the only conclusion i get is that you are stupid

not a fair system

how you paid ??? ;D ;D

UN FRIGGING BELIEVABLE.

999dice fixes their shit, and makes an unnecessary change that accomplishes the SAME crap they pulled before.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=971447.new#new

Yes, I believe this is true.
Why? Because 999dice is the only website I lose ALL of my capital on.

please close the damn site

CLOSE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yeh.they steal my coins too....and now i am using dicenow.com which is far better from this one

Deal with trustworthy sites only , don't send money to strangers that will 99% result in stolen money.

All casinos are scam, ofc you gonna lose your money on them, but that doesnt make it a real scam

Nice catch!

Are you saying they didn't used to overwrite your client seed each roll, and now they do?

I'm not sure it really matters. Even if they left your client seed alone they could still cheat by picking server seeds which play badly with your client seed. They still get to change the server seed to whatever they want each roll, right?

The only problem with the scam you suggest they're pulling is that it's exploitable by a smart player. If the site watches for patterns in your play (hi, lo, hi, lo, ...) and gives you rolls which deliberately make you lose, all you need to do is break the pattern for your biggest bets. If you just lost a bunch betting lo, then hi, then lo, the site will be expecting you to make a big bet on 'hi' next, so they'll give you a low number. So bet <50.5 instead. If they're trying to cheat you, you'll win.

It basically stops being a game of dice and becomes a game of rock-paper-scissors where both sides try to predict the other side's next move. The problem is one side is a dumb program and the other side is a smart human (that's you), so you should win.

If anyone is interested in: I've written a bot that verifies each and every bet to be played fair. And it's client seed is set 'manually' right before a bet is placed without telling the server before betting.
Check out this response to keepinquiet's last find: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=971447.msg10722138#msg10722138 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=971447.msg10722138#msg10722138)

And the bots thread on this board is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=980826 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=980826)

All kinds of scams currently exist in various fraudulent schemes in the Bitcoin space

That just seems like a guy who lost money and its angry about it, what did he expect in the first place when he started gambling? To be rich?

right. I am wondering why this post is not edited.

Casinos are not made to make you rich...:)

Of course casinos are not made to make you reach, but at least they should provide you with a basic level of certainty when you're gambling. That's why provably fair gambling thrived with bitcoin. 999dice had (and has) many flaws in its verification system. the 0.1% house edge seems highly unlikely anyway.

This kinda shows us that even the probably fair sites out there can do the same as well.

You just have to observe, and catch it before they are cheating you out or not. Which is pretty annoying in my view, this goes back to "Hey, you gotta check on your own" thing.

If you cant find it, oh well! we win, house rules etc.

I have won at 999dice.com.  I don't think it's a scam at all.  I think it's one of the best dice sites out there and I hope they never ever change.

Yep i dont think its a scam either, i used to play there and it just seems that most of the people who play there are pretty dumb wich would explain why their profit is so high with such low house edge

Dice isn't a game of skill. Being "dumb" doesn't change the house edge. However you play the edge is the same, unless the site is cheating.

Even if they weren't systematically scamming every user with rigged rolls I'd wager that the owner (Jake) who if he is who I think he is (Jakemcrs aka simpledice) is absolutely rigging the rolls of highrollers.

I still don't think an edge that low is possible with max bets as high as he's placed them. Also one thing we have confirmed is the fact that he's a liar and has not returned to bitcointalk after he promised to prove his bankroll/massive volume claims to this community. He said something along the lines of how I'd owe him an apology once he shows proof and then vanished forever.

I will say that I'm more confident that 999dice is a scam than I was of dice.ninja, dicebitcoin, or the variety of other gambling sites that have been declared proven scams.

Haha... Thats so true. I know a guy who was trying to lose so hard. Betting "dumb" and he just couldn't lose and eventually went up A LOT.
So yeah , doesn't matter if u are dumb or smart , all that matters is house edge and ur luck :) .

But what does matter is if you quit or you still play there and when i was playing there the users in chat were always coming up with "new strategies" and they kept loosing their money and again and again, thats what i meant by dumb players

Well if their stealing peoples coins then people should stop playing on sites like this and move on elsewhere.  I do not play such sites so I do not even bother to risk losing or having coins stolen from me if the sites rigged from the beginning ill stay well away from such places. Problem solved.

When testing changes to Just-Dice I will sometimes try to lose, and it's hard. The 1% edge is tiny if you don't play for long.

The most effective way of losing is to play with a very low chance of winning, but then it can go horribly wrong and you win a massive payout if you're unlucky.

Whether you quit or not only matters to individual players. It doesn't affect the site's percentage profit. As far as the math is concerned all players are the same. One player playing for 10 hours is the same as 10 players playing for an hour each - you still expect them to lose 0.1% of everything they wager if the house edge is 0.1%.

But its not the same if someone goes there and loses 0.10 btc only to return with another 0.10 and lose again and after that again, doing it all the time, they just keep loosing more and more, if the player only came the first time and lost 0.10 and then quit then the site profit would only have gotten  up by 0.10

Forgive me for not reading through the entire thread and I might have missed a discussion regarding this.  About that issue where clicking the button that reveals the hash and them possibly doing "whatever the fuck they want" with the hash before you click the button.  The hash generated and viewed after you click the button should automatically pertain to all previous rolls as long as you haven't changed the hash, should it not?  A verifier would prove the roll numbers match up.  I don't see where OP's logic is in that argument, unless he just isn't aware of how it actually works.  Full disclosure: I've never played at 99dice.

Of course the hash when you click the button is going to pertain to all previous rolls but if you dont click the button you dont see the hash, when you click it then the site can chose a hash that pertains to all previous rolls and you would think they are legit

I doubt any dice site has that kind of computational power no matter how much they've earned. It would be like trying to use vanitygen to get 1UNPOSS1BLEADDRESS1234567890 and expecting it to happen instantly.

No uppercase 'o'.

site scam 999dice....FUCK

Now site is downline, i think are big scam!, i los 1 btc here!

How do you know site is down? Why do you keep playing there if you think they are a scam? Ive seen plenty of people calling them a scam but still playing there, you gotta be really stupid to do that.

I just stop to trust all casino that operated via bitcoin
I lost more than 12 btc in one year
The problem is that I never had the opportunity to cash out at last 0.01 btc
So I will stop using btc casino
But back to betfair.

The fact that you lost doesn't say anything about trust of the particular casino. All of them have house edge, meaning that you're more likely to lose over time.

Do you think it would be different if you've used fiat casinos? I doubt that.

But yes, if you keep losing and the amount you've lost is significant to you, then, by all means, you should stop gambling all together.

The site IS down! When loading the site this message appears: "I apologize for the unexpected downtime.

We expect to be back online within 12 hours.

All deposits & coins are safe. Nothing is lost."

So if the site truly is scamming, I don't think they will be back at all.
Hopefully they keep their promise..

Why do you keep playing there? They wont run away with the money, theres no point they can just keep scamming in game and win even more, is not like there is more than a few hundred btc at most in deposits since everyone else would have lost their btc already

Just came here after reading a post in the gambling forum that linked to this - I havent posted in here in a while.

Just wanted to reply to the past few posts.

999dice does not use a system where their hash applies to "all previous rolls". They re-make the server hash for EVERY roll, so it's completely irrelevant.

If you didn't click - they do whatever they want. If you do click, they are forced to play nice. Their old system used to force a click for every roll. They changed it, claiming they aren't hiding anything - now you don't need to click it, but the client seed is provided by the server, not your browser, and they forcibly change it EVERY roll. Set your seed, make a fair roll, then they change it. To something THEY picked for you. Thus, knowing exactly what your roll will be, before you place your bet, unless you change the seed EVERY time.

Now, if you're fixing your broken ass cheating site to respond to claims you're a bullshit scam, while doing that, WHY would you change something UNRELATED - the client seed - and change it from 'we dont care what it is' to 'we set it with a server generated number and change it every time you roll'.

Why? Why do that?

Because they are stealing your bitcoin. How the living hell does a site with a .1% edge make 3400+ bitcoin in under 2 years? Thats a consistent 4,650 bitcoin bet EVERY DAY for 2 years to reach 3400.

Riiiight.

 I just wanted to add that although I have no proof, I am almost certain this site is a scam. I lost several bitcoin here doing 95% bets, and my friend did the math witch came out to a 1 in 2 million chance. And that was just 1 session, I lost bitcoin before that here with what seemed like, "crazy bad luck" on a few other occasions as well. That provably fair crap is what tricks you, and most of us don't even know what all those numbers mean or how to actually put it all together to see if you are getting a fair bet. IMO the you only get a fair bet if you click the button every time is spot on. This site needs to be outed as a cheat so they can stop stealing coins from the community. I went and checked today and there are still plenty of people gambling there. Scum bags like this is what gives bitcoin a bad name, and these are parasites to the community. Every scam thread I've looked at never once did a rep from 999dice even come and defend themselves, the fact that you need to click the button every single time tells me in my gut it's a scam. If not then why make it so hard to verify bets?

Dont fall for the, i lost a crazy bet that i should have won because that doesnt prove anything, on just dice people had 32 loss streaks which is something like 1 in a billion, that doesnt mean the site is a scam

The thread is too long to read, so does whatever OP says still hold true? or was it disproved (that seems unlikely)?

Nothing seems to have changed and it still requires a click to see the hash, and everything is vague.
I anyway, tried it with a small deposit and lost it, tho that doesn't mean anything..

IMO, 999dice is highly suspicious, and doesn't seem to be provably fair.

Well all his accusations have strong evidence behind them, unfortunately its impossible to prove if they are indeed cheating, more or less like dadice case where they didnt want to show the cold wallet and now people is calling them scammers.

If so, then 999dice is not provably fair.
Provably fair requires guarantee that the fairness is provable. Not provable (even in a single scenario) = Not provably fair.

Whenever I tried 999dice before or after this, I had always ended up losing my funds. Though it doesn't actually mean anything, I am not going to deposit there whatever happens.
I usually don't end up losing the entire deposit like that unless I am chasing something. https://www.moneypot.com/users/ndnhc

Da Dice is provably fair. No one has complained about not honoring withdrawals or anything. All that is there is (in the words of the those who suspect so ;)), there is no assurance that Da Dice has the funds they claim. It is approx. 500 to 600BTC before kelly.
I am personally positive that they have the funds. The campaign budget (proposed to me while making decisions) was big enough that such amount is only expected. Claiming it a scam for not providing the signed message is absurd though some like QS do, and is not right and is only a speculation on the part.

999dice does look really suspicious just by how it looks but i personally have won there and ended up on profit, i stopped playing dice and i saw this thread after playing there, maybe they only scam big amounts and let the others win so it looks more legit

I won small amount too there like .05 BTC, I think they scam you on the big rolls like 95% with several coins. As long as you click that provably fair tab every bet you are probably getting a fair bet, I wouldnt make any without it, and won't be depositing anymore there. I thought I was extremely unlucky, what added up to 1 in 2 million, so I got suspicious and found these threads. That's where they got me I do a few big bets at 90-95% and can lose 2 or 3, sometimes 4 in a row, but they will make sure you lose any bigger amount of bitcoin you deposit.

Bet Number

1.Server Seed + Client Seed (->byte[4]) + Bet Number (->byte[4])
===============================================

      var res = DiceWebAPI.PlaceBet(Session, decimal.Parse("-0.00000001"), 0, 499499, 333, Currency);
      if (!res.Success) { return; }
      var s = res.Secret;
      for (int n = 0; n < 1000000; n++) {
              int i = DiceWebAPI.GenerateBetResult(res.ServerSeed, 333, n);
              if (i == s) { MessageBox.Show("betnumber="+ n.ToString());break; }
       }
================================================
from this test

i found that betNumber=0 always


------------
Update:
Bet Number Used To Verify Bets In Auto Bets It will Be 0,1,2,3,4,...

/*
I Think, To Get 100% Fair Bets, Do That Test With Every Bet
Note That ServerSeedHash Is The Same For All (BTC,DOGE,LTC)
So If You Run More Than One Bot You Have To Do Some Complex Programming To Know The Next ServerSeedHash Because May Be It Taken By Other Bot And The Server Create New One.
*/

using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Globalization;

//==========================================================================================
        static bool VerifyBetResult(string serverSeed, int clientSeed, int betNumber,
                            long betResult, string serverSeedHash = null)
        {
            Func<string, byte[]> strtobytes = s => Enumerable
                .Range(0, s.Length / 2)
                .Select(x => byte.Parse(s.Substring(x * 2, 2), NumberStyles.HexNumber))
                .ToArray();
            byte[] server = strtobytes(serverSeed);
            byte[] client = BitConverter.GetBytes(clientSeed).Reverse().ToArray();
            byte[] num = BitConverter.GetBytes(betNumber).Reverse().ToArray();
            byte[] serverhash = serverSeedHash == null ? null : strtobytes(serverSeedHash);
            byte[] data = server.Concat(client).Concat(num).ToArray();
            using (SHA512 sha512 = new SHA512Managed())
            {
                if (serverhash != null)
                    using (SHA256 sha256 = new SHA256Managed())
                        if (!sha256.ComputeHash(server).SequenceEqual(serverhash))
                            throw new Exception("Server seed hash does not match server seed");

                byte[] hash = sha512.ComputeHash(sha512.ComputeHash(data));
                while (true)
                {
                    for (int x = 0; x <= 61; x += 3)
                    {
                        long result = (hash[ x ] << 16 ) | (hash[x + 1] << 8 ) | hash[x + 2];
                        if (result < 16000000)
                            return result % 1000000 == betResult;
                    }
                    hash = sha512.ComputeHash(hash);
                }
            }
        }

//==========================================================================================

            var ServerSeedHash = DiceWebAPI.GetServerSeedHash(Session).ServerSeedHash;
            int clientSeed = 333;//any number
            int BetNumber = 0;//must be 0

            var res = DiceWebAPI.PlaceBet(Session, decimal.Parse("-0.00000001"), 0, 499499, clientSeed, Currency);
            if (!res.Success) { return; }
            var it = VerifyBetResult(res.ServerSeed, clientSeed, BetNumber, res.Secret, ServerSeedHash);
            if (!it) MessageBox.Show("Something wrong!!");


//==========================================================================================

// c# code to verify every bet in the multi bet results


using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Globalization;
//==========================================================================================
        static bool VerifyBetResult(string serverSeed, int clientSeed, int betNumber,
                            long betResult, string serverSeedHash = null)
        {
            Func<string, byte[]> strtobytes = s => Enumerable
                .Range(0, s.Length / 2)
                .Select(x => byte.Parse(s.Substring(x * 2, 2), NumberStyles.HexNumber))
                .ToArray();
            byte[] server = strtobytes(serverSeed);
            byte[] client = BitConverter.GetBytes(clientSeed).Reverse().ToArray();
            byte[] num = BitConverter.GetBytes(betNumber).Reverse().ToArray();
            byte[] serverhash = serverSeedHash == null ? null : strtobytes(serverSeedHash);
            byte[] data = server.Concat(client).Concat(num).ToArray();
            using (SHA512 sha512 = new SHA512Managed())
            {
                if (serverhash != null)
                    using (SHA256 sha256 = new SHA256Managed())
                        if (!sha256.ComputeHash(server).SequenceEqual(serverhash))
                            throw new Exception("Server seed hash does not match server seed");

                byte[] hash = sha512.ComputeHash(sha512.ComputeHash(data));
                while (true)
                {
                    for (int x = 0; x <= 61; x += 3)
                    {
                        long result = (hash[ x ] << 16 ) | (hash[x + 1] << 8 ) | hash[x + 2];
                        if (result < 16000000)
                            return result % 1000000 == betResult;
                    }
                    hash = sha512.ComputeHash(hash);
                }
            }
        }

//==========================================================================================


                var seed = rnd.Next(rnd.Next(0, 111111), rnd.Next(222222, 999999));
                var settings = new AutomatedBetsSettings
                {
                    BasePayIn = baseBet,
                    GuessLow = guessLow,
                    GuessHigh = guessHigh,
                    MaxBets = betCount > Session.MaxBetBatchSize ? Session.MaxBetBatchSize : betCount,
                    ResetOnWin = resetOnWin,
                    ResetOnLose = resetOnLoss,
                    IncreaseOnWinPercent = increaseOnWin,
                    IncreaseOnLosePercent = increaseOnLoss,
                    MaxAllowedPayIn = maxBet,
                    ResetOnLoseMaxBet = resetOnMaxLoss,
                    StopOnLoseMaxBet = stopOnMaxLoss,
                    StopMaxBalance = stopMaxBalance,
                    ClientSeed = seed,//rnd.Next(),
                    Currency = Currency
                };

                var ServerSeedHash = DiceWebAPI.GetServerSeedHash(Session).ServerSeedHash;

                var result = DiceWebAPI.PlaceAutomatedBets(Session, settings);
                if (!result.Success || result.BetCount == 0)
                {
                       return;
                }

                //verify result
                bool it = false;
                for (int i = 0; i < result.BetCount; i++){
                    it = VerifyBetResult(result.ServerSeed, seed, i, result.Secrets, ServerSeedHash);
                    if (!it) { MessageBox.Show("Verify Fail: Something wrong!!"); }
                }

thanks for letting us know about this side of jake. I was betting on the site too. Down -7 btc since i joined the website.

You know, the fact that people create new accounts to come and post in the one post from someone that cared enough to look into why 999dice.com scams people by deceiving them into believing that their betting is fair is beyond me. You won't change anyone's opinion with your lies and referral link...  ::)

1) I trust the site as I have done millions of rolls, and all rolls seems to fit into common statistic. The three screendumps below sums up tp 3 mill rolls done i the last couple of day and this is what I base my opinion on.
  http://elbrandt.com/account1.jpg
  http://elbrandt.com/account2.jpg
  http://elbrandt.com/account3.jpg
2) as I think the site is 100% fair, I off course recommend the site to other users and then it would be stupid not to include my referral link in the post ( even though the referral commission are peanuts)

They won't scam you for 0.01 DOGE. They'll scam you for way, way more than that. Already addressed this in your thread.

If you begin to bet with hundreds or thousands of dollars rather than fractions of pennies then maybe you'll see a very noticeable gap in ev.

Yeah. That's how house edge works.

But even if there is a statistical loss, gamblers like to take the chance to win. After all, life is full of unfair risks—gambling is no different. In relation to zero house edge, you are expected to approach your original bankroll as you gamble more. If you want this to happen then you would simply bet the minimum at the highest chance and continue betting for eternity. Think of it like betting on black & red at Roulette without any 0's.

But this is all irrelevant because the site isn't fair and they cheat players.

If I make higher bets i'm not able to make millions of bets and then statistical variance kicks in. Betting a couple of thousand high bets where you have huge losses does not mean the site is a scam. It is most likely just bad luck. The system I use makes my bot bet several huge bets and sometimes I loose and sometimes I win. But my records shows the losses are according to basic statistical math.

Unless you show a log with millions of bets where you can show the bets are rigged you cannot acuse the site of being fraudulent.

Have you read the OP of this very thread you're posting on? If you have then you would realize that the site is a scam and that all of your anecdotal evidence should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

The site is NOT provably fair. It's selectively provably fair. Meaning that your bets can and will be rigged... if it's profitable to do so. It wouldn't make sense to exit scam for $40. But for $40,000... sure.

That is not how house edge works.

But you are right you will always lose in the long run because of the house edge.

is it possible  they can  reverse code it once you click that button to be sure its "fair" once they know you checked?

like ok we know the roll = "49.50"  and his client seed =  "jhoitybihiopyiye"

so to get to  49.50  could they do something like this to get the  correct  sever seed?

49.50(roll) / jhoitybihiopyiye(client seed)  = server seed

just taking a stab at it cause i know another site does the same practice

If you know site that's cheating you should post it in scam accusation.

I don't know if 999dice is cheating this way, but I think even if they would you could avoid by setting client seed after viewing server seed's hash.

And for some time you don't need to click a button every time to see server seed hash, it's enough to open provably fair tab once.

What do you think this thread is? Did you just read the title and not bother looking at the post?

You clearly did not read the thread. The server seed changes every time.

Was your name "Lyco" on 999dice? I remember seeing your bets.
And you might have been one of my referrals... Is this your stats?

#224234985   Lyco   

14.54834995         ETH
1118.09577106     BTC
114326.41837954 Doge

it is so shocking to see this.
I used to play there and i thought it was my bad luck.
This site changed my life.

i will tell my story when I have time.

can someone verify that owner of 999dice is also known as Jake.  (Noah Matisoff)

Hi
Would u be interested to launch legal action against 999dice.com?

I lost alot of coins there.

pls  pm me

OP hasn't been online since Sep 2018, i doubt you would get any reply from him. Why did you playing on 999dice ? Did you never heard any shady behind their simple dice game?

Nope
there wasn't much report about it back then.

999dice was precisely a scam organization purpose to use the non-profit or 0.1% house edge to attract gamblers so they can steal their coin.

 Bad to gamble with Bitcoin or it bad to gamble on the site and you the first person that will make this kind of statement cause every gambling site consider Bitcoin to be good choice.

A lot of people have lost their funds not only OP alone.

It is quite special how big this topic has now become. Why is it still active anyway?
legal action would be the best thing to do, but where do you start? It is not easy to find the right people who can help you with this.

And yet nobody want to standup to take action.

How? 999dice is known as scam gambling site, but how can we take down their site? It has been running more than 5 years IIRC and until now i don't see they will close soon.

Take action about the site which was conducted anonymously with new wallet generated per visitation? The only action we can take from our end is to make newbies aware of the scam activities done on the site which a lot of members of this forum have done already and we can't possibly control what newbies do later cause it difficult to google a site before using it.