[Discussion] P2P Gambling: 100% break even odds... possible game changer?

[Tacticat]

If we have a P2P currency... why wouldn't we have P2P gambling?

I'm not trying to upset all gambling website owners, but I'm confident that Bitcoin allows for a distributed gambling system that could offer even odds and 100% break even chances. This means that there would be no house edge.

This can be easily achieved by letting the players bet against each other instead of betting against the house. To demonstrate how it could work, I have created a test round on the "Games and Rounds" subforum: Here's the link.

As you can see, the idea is extremely simple and it can easily be automated in such a way that no human interaction is required, making it an efficient way to run this type of gambling.

In this case I've used the Dow Jones opening price as a source of unpredictableness so that even the game operator cannot be accused of cheating. If this were implemented in a gambling website, other methods could be used. The DJIA opening price is used by the game "Geohashing" as a source of entropy and has so far shown to be unpredictable and offer randomness after being hashed.

How could this be implemented?

The gambling website would keep track of the bets, display fancy graphics and colors of the current bets and players, etc. In case of the forum experiment I've let players decide which side they want to be on, but I could easily see how in case of a website it would suggest users to bet on one side or another depending on the current stakes so that both sides are balanced out.

The player can bet any amount they desire, because their bet will be covered by the other players. For the player, this makes the system superior to SatoshiDice and similar gambling systems as there is absolutely no house edge and a 100% break even chance.

Since this system requires players to bet against each other, the result cannot be decided instantly. In an ideal case, the random generator used would allow for a bet to be decided as soon as the amount is covered by other players. This would allow for more games to take place.

Still, I don't think it's necessarily bad if the bet only clears once every day. Other websites such as bitbet.us offer bets that take weeks or months to clear and people still bet on them. Also, the website could have multilpe "games" running at the same time, so that even in the case that the bets are decided only once a day or only once every 12 hours, players can place bets on different games at once.

What's the benefit for game operator?

First of all, a gambler will always prefer to play a game in which there is no disadvantage. Why would I want to use SatoshiDice if I could gamble with fair odds and be sure to break even?

If the game operator has got reputation, then this fact would guarantee a good amount of players. This also means that there'll be website traffic and benefit can be made thanks to advertising.

I can easily imagine such a website with a banner that says: "This bet has been sponsored by...".

Will it ever make as much money as SD is making now? No.
But it should be easy to run and attractive enough to obtain a good regular player base and thus some steady profit from advertising, sponsoring, etc.

I would still love to find a way to make this completely decentralized and require no game operator at all, but while I'm thinking on it, this is the next best thing I came up with.

Please tell me what you think.

[giantdragon]

There is already a P2P gambling service with zero house edge and 100% payout: Peerbet.org!

[kopes18]

I really like your idea. We can setup a cryptography proven fair random number generator service, maybe also decentrallized. Still use the dice game as p2p gamble game, for example: users can compare number with each other, the bigger wins.

[ComboChris]

From my experience, gamblers care much less about house edge than one would think. Most of them simply don't care whether it's 1% or 10% house edge. Some don't understand the concept of house edge and some get so caught up when they think of gambling that they think to themselves "10% is pretty much nothing, i still have 90%" or some shit like that.
I'm sure some people would use such service but don't every gambler who hears of the site to switch over there.

[unholycactus]

From my experience, gamblers care much less about house edge than one would think. Most of them simply don't care whether it's 1% or 10% house edge. Some don't understand the concept of house edge and some get so caught up when they think of gambling that they think to themselves "10% is pretty much nothing, i still have 90%" or some shit like that.
I'm sure some people would use such service but don't every gambler who hears of the site to switch over there.

From my point of view, people who really care about the house edge won't care about a break even game.
I also think you are right, the vast majority of gamblers have a hard time understanding what's profitable in the long run.

[Light]

From my point of view, people who really care about the house edge won't care about a break even game.
I also think you are right, the vast majority of gamblers have a hard time understanding what's profitable in the long run.

First off - damn that is one big necro.

Back on topic - I agree with you - people who are already gambling at dice sites know that they are inherently likely to lose in the long term but do so anyway. Sure they wouldn't mind better odds - but in such a scenario in which OP is suggesting would make the bets far less convenient (ie. the result is determined far after the bet was made) which would mean few if any players would bother. Secondly, it's not in anyone's interest to bother offering a free service like this unless they can at least break even (ie. advertising possibly) which would require large amounts of traffic - which my earlier point kind of prevents from happening.

[cherrycola]

did anything happen with this project?

[iwasneverhere]

did anything happen with this project?

Hopefully some team of people are hard at work on this somewhere. Transparency 100 % is what is needed. With hashes and seeds, manipulations have appeared.