Too late! Ok, it seems to have gone fine regardless of the fact that I was sleeping during result processing

10 3rd places, 3 winners, me being the big winner this time (I was the big looser last time, even though I won ). Got myself 7 x 3rd places, for a total of 82.32, which will go directly to the next draw. Everyone else, thanks for playing and for those who won, congrats!

Lets make the next one a big one, shall we?

Because there were no repeating numbers I decided to go ahead and make the unique bets on this one. I'll still keep the no rollover rule, but the next one will be different Now, because we'll have almost one full week up to the next one, I'll be happy to change that in the mean time if you convince me to do so.

Here's what I've changed:

- No more ticket cancelling (you can still cancel pending bets though)
- Bets are unique, no repeating, limit 4096 bets on the draw. Will add a fourth character to the bet if we exhaust this, and will also add the 'set your own price' on the tickets sometime in the future.
- You can see your earnings (if any) on the closed draw details page.
- Roll over of prizes is back... but am working on side pot and limit for 'guaranteed jackpot' draw.

If any of the betters of the current draw disagree... PM me your BTCIN and I'll cancel your tickets

PS: this current draw is not on automatic pay yet, as I've done extensive changes to that code. So, while your prizes will be advertised promptly after the result is known, the actual prize will only be distributed to the accounts after I double check the thing.

Right, if one is on this to try and make a buck, I guess one can do that. But I brought this on myself, by trying to build a community lottery, where there's no one owner that takes part of the cake for its own benefit. I try to disclose as much as possible because I like numbers and stats, but most of the issues would not appear if I had decided to hide the information from the start... I deserve this

But I guess that if everyone buys random (I'll probably change the interface to do one click ticket buying) then the bets are spread correctly. If you like one particular number, well, then you can buy it. If we were on the million possibility scenario, I could make it so you can't repeat bets, period. But 4096? I hope we'll see more bets than that soon, especially with jackpots.

However, I can easily make it so you can't repeat numbers, and add the possibility of setting the price on tickets, as was asked before. That way, if you like a number *and it wasn't taken yet* you can buy 100 BTCs of it

Hmmm, I like that, no repeating numbers could work. I'll try that in for the next one, maybe?

Oh, and I forgot, the buying of all non duplicate tickets problem will be addressed by me removing the bet cancel, and only showing the bets after draw is locked. But when you buy random you are guaranteed to have unique bets at that point in time, at least until 95% of the bets are taken.

Ok, this is becoming a little daunting for me

I know there will always be different opinions, and it's hard to find a solution that is agreeable to everyone, but I feel like the current plan simply sucks, so we need a better one.

The 2 problems we are facing are:
- Make sure people want to bet, even though there's no added pot
- If there is a jackpot, how to make sure the ones that bet *only* on the jackpot don't gain an unfair advantage over all others, whose bets make up the jackpot

The former was supposed to be solved by not having rollovers, but that didn't really work out. I think the only way to to solve this is to have rollovers, and probably to have an initial pot.
The latter is somewhat more complex, and the only way I see this going is for guaranteed jackpot games (the ones with no rollover) to have a longer bet string, thus making it hard to cover the whole bet range. This doesn't deter you from buying 4096 ticket spread such that you cover all 3 char possibilities, but because 1 hit prize percentage in the 5 hit draws is almost 4 times the 2 and 3 hits, the jackpot gets distributed in a way it doesn't really pay off doing so, while giving you every reason to at least buy 16 tickets

I think that will make the system run smoother, but on top of that I would do a side jackpot, taking some 20% of every rollover. Once the big jackpot is won, either by 3 hits or by guaranteed jackpot, the side jacpot is used to prime the next draw.

There are 2 things open, one is how to decide when to do guaranteed jackpot, my gut feeling is when the rollover is bigger than 4096, but we can also do time based, like when the block count crosses the 10k boundary (every 10 draws effectively).
The other thing is the fact that we are dealing with 20 people betting, and that number needs to at least be tenfold so to make this interesting, but once that happens, is the 4096 possibilities enough? I'm guessing yes, until we see one single better take more that 50% of the bet space, but that is something to worry further down the line.

This next draw, completing soon, will be just like the first one, but the next should have new rules set. I'm going to start it based on the same rule set, just because time is short, but I really think we need to do something in the lines of what I've described.

I feel the same, really.

How about the rest of you, what do you think?

No, rollover was removed as explained in a previous post. I will add to the next one what would rollover from this though... if you check http://taabl.datlatec.com/details?blocknr=76775 you'll see that the sum of 2nd + 3rd + bounty equals 330, all the bets.

Ok, fair enough. Lets leave it manual for now, I'll add the option in the near future. So this means you get 0 warning that you won a prize, or that the draw has ended. Given the 'anonymous' thingy, I'm not asking for emails... I can implement ways of giving that information out, though, like RSS or IRC bot. But that's very low on my list for now, hit refresh often

And that is why you have those backups... you do backup, right???

Indeed, and congrats to all the winners!!!

I got 3 x 3rd places, which means I lost a whole bunch of bitcoins, and yet I feel like a winner

So, 8 winners, a single 2nd place takes the large slice. What stats would you like to see appearing? I'll show you what you won on the finished draw details, and keep the ticket list for downloading indefinitely. Anything else? Any statistics? Just name it

Now, payment, I'm going to bite the bullet and run the payment script, which will deposit the prizes in the taabl accounts. Next time it will send the prizes directly to the BTCOUT address, as part of my strategy of making this very anonymous (you don't need to log in and withdraw, thus leaving your IP address behind, just paranoia 101). Anyone objects this?

I'm hoping to get a lot of feedback, so bring it on!

And obviously I failed at the most important snippet of code in the whole system: I'm comparing drawblock < currentblock, meaning we need to wait for one more block

sorry guys, next time it works as expected.

I'm actually quite nervous about my code handling the real thing

I'm a veteran at these things, why does it still happen?

Aha, yes, I get it now!

Well, sure, why not. The way the thing is coded already supports this, though the interface doesn't. I'll run some tests, I'm sure I can put this in soon.

As I run the final tests to the prize distribution without the unclaimed rollover, it occurred to me: If we let the unclaimed prizes be evenly distributed on the claimed pot... should we not go back to the 5 characters bets? Yeah, chances of hitting all 5 are 1 in 1048576, but the prizes are split down, so it just adds to the distribution of prizes. Can I get the next one on 5 chars, people?

The prizes could then be, as initially proposed:
1st prize - 5 characters correct - 50%
2nd prize - 4 (rightmost) characters correct - 6%
3rd prize - 3 (rightmost) characters correct - 8%
4th prize - 2 (rightmost) characters correct - 9%
5th prize - 1 (rightmost) character correct - 25%
bounty pool - 2%

open to discussion

I'll open a quick, 3 digit draw at 77000 (that's 225 from the one open now!) just to even out the numbers, we can discuss till then. After that, we'll be at every 1k as decided.

Yes, but when the dollars get stolen/spent, you no longer hold the bills. It's pretty obvious that something happened.

If you could spend based on the serial of the bill, or something alike, that would be a good analogy.

Huh? I don't get it, can you expand on your reasoning here?


And you will get it... but not on the 'classic' lottery. There will be, when I get around to finishing it, a parallel 'pick 3' game on the site, on which you buy a number and that number is in play until someone hits first prize, taking the whole pot. The 'number' (it's a number in the hexadecimal form, so I guess it's safe to call it that) will be matched against every future block until there's a winner, as proposed.

Good eye you have there. Fixed on the development version, will be up for next upgrade. Thanks!

Almost there!

Remember, this one will not pay up automagically, as I need to double check the numbers first. So have some patience if you do win....

As for the poll so far, consensus on ticket price (1BTC) and draw interval (1k blocks). That much is settled for now.

a) Cancel tickets:
  1) remove completely - 3 votes
  2) allow for 100 blocks after ticket registration - I would vote this one
  3) allow till draw locked - 1 vote

I'll remove the ticket canceling for the next draw, and we can discuss if its better for most that way

b) Other bets visibility
  1) only show when draw is locked - 2 votes
  2) show but don't state number of duplicates - I would vote this one
  3) show everything, all the time - 2 votes

Well, it's a draw, so I decide
We will go with 1, but with the knowledge that random bets will not repeat numbers already registered. So if you choose a number, you choose a number, your call. But if you buy one ticket, you buy one unique ticket at the time, which might become a dup if someone manually selects your number, but only that way.
The exception to the random uniqueness is when 95% of available numbers have been taken, to avoid taking too much time going for the holes.

c) Unclaimed prizes
  1) Just roll over to the next draw - 1 vote
  2) Just add to the prizes actually won on the same draw - 3 votes
  3) do 1) but when pot reaches 5000 (or some other number) do a special "Guaranteed Jackpot!" which is just 2) above - guess what my vote would be?

I still feel that 1 is better than 2 in the long run, but I get that you don't feel the same way. The only way I can see this keeping interest by high pots is from human intervention I am going to try and keep at least 50% of the total bets for as long as I can (just like I do right now) to up the pot, and we do 2). All donations made to the address in the site will be used for betting, I'll try to keep a log of what I bet and earn, just for kicks. If anyone wants to do that instead of me, that is also fine... I'll post that person's address on the site with an explanation of what is happening.
We'll revisit this at some later date.

All good? I'm going to quickly code the blend in of unclaimed prizes real quick, and hope it doesn't break everything

Superb! Thanks a lot.

Well, the rules haven't been written down, and all my extra time has been spent testing and fixing. But that particular scenario has been mentioned a couple of times before... 1 ticket = 1 prize. You don't get on second and one third if you get one first...

Is this something you'd like to see changed? If so, why?

I'm just mimicking the local state lottery on this one, really. It also makes prize calculation easier, but only marginally so