Introducing PevPot.com The Bitcoin Lottery

[vendetahome]

it seems to be pretty interesting in my opinion and the prize is huge, the only disadvantage that i can see is that you need to wait a few days for the winner to be drawn what is a really long time in my opinion, though still i think i will participate

[1713565727]

1713565727

[1713565727]

1713565727

[dooglus]

it seems to be pretty interesting in my opinion and the prize is huge, the only disadvantage that i can see is that you need to wait a few days for the winner to be drawn what is a really long time in my opinion, though still i think i will participate

There's one draw every 1000 blocks. Since there are 6 blocks per hour and 24 hours per day, that means there should be one draw every 6.944 days:

  >>> 1000.0 / 24 / 6
  6.9444444

If you don't want to have your coins tied up for too long, you can wait until near the end to buy your tickets. But you get a better share of the "early bird bonus" if you buy your tickets early.

[Straux]

You guys should have a mini-pot section. Maybe the same as the normal pot, but maybe one every five minutes, or maybe a 5 TX max pot, or a 0.005 BTC max bid/max pot size.

I think 1000 blocks is a little overkill for me, I don't really like waiting multiple days, because otherwise I would just Gamble in a real lottery...

[fxmgt]

Hi
Except i would like daily draws or so, and except I can't check if I won as I am too newbie to understand, I think the game is good and Ryan is very fair.

I have NOTHING against a whale coming to put 10BTC in the pot when there is only 0.10.

Indeed he has high odds of winning small, the 0.10 , and low odds of loosing big, the 10 BTC. So no problem at all, even if Ryan was doing this, what he is not.

Sure, this feature may be unpleasant for some, but for me as long as it is fair and EV+ or even only EV=0 then I'm fine.

Ryan decides the rules, there will always be unhappy people, or it does not fit their brain, I understand, Ryan can change rules if he feels it's good. But usually he thinks this quite well....

I am very astonished there is not MUCH MORE people playing.....!

PS : btw a few weeks ago with only 0.05 or so I won about 11BTC, so I took the whale's money

[DarkDays]

Just wanted to report my experience:

I remember reading about this when it first started a couple of months ago and thought it was a great idea but as someone who doesn't like their coins in limbo more than a few hours, I figured I'd check it out down the road when I was able to catch it a few hours before it closed.  

TODAY IS THAT DAY!

I remembered, went to the site and saw that there were a scat few hours until the draw, with 1BTC in the pool and an extra .135BTC as the sponsor bonus.  But wait, it doesn't say "sponsor bonus" anymore, it says "early bird bonus".  What is an early bird bonus?  I went to the FAQ and read...nothing.  I guess my question isn't that frequent.  I went to the first post on this thread and read..."90% of the money the sponsors pay goes directly into the prize pot (we keep 10%)."

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/wth.gif

Went back to the site, but this time I clicked "how it works" and read "In addition to winning the entire pot, the winner also qualifies for a percent of early bird bonus, which is graciously filled by the draw sponsors. The earlier in the draw that you bought your tickets, the more of the early bird bonuses you get!

This is what makes the lottery Positive Expected Value because players get out more than what they do, and is designed to encourage players to not wait until the last moment to buy tickets. "

OK!  But...that still doesn't fill me in.  What is "a percent"?  How often does it go down?  What does it start at?  What does it end at?  

I had to come in here and read every single post in this thread, and in post #104 you explain how it works: "STARTING FROM NEXT DRAW (#3) 10% of sponsorship money goes to me (commission), and the remaining 90% goes to the: "Early bird bonus pool".

When someone wins the lotto, we get the block-height of their transaction and figure out:

Code:(1000 - BLOCKS_SINCE_STARTING)/1000

You get this fraction of "Early bird bonus pool". What ever is left over, will be carried to the next months early bird bonus pool."

Makes sense.  

But, I just wanted to point out that for someone to figure out how the early bird bonus (the part that makes the game +ev) works, they would have to leave the site, know to come to this site, know to find this thread (currently on the second page), know to ignore the first post, and know to go to the 104th post.  That's a lot of work, not to mention the site itself is a little misleading since it states a static bonus (.135BTC) when in reality if I send money now, I'd only be eligable for a bonus of .00486BTC.  Obv nothing shady is going on and I'm still excited to try it out, but imo the bonus system needs to be explained a little better on the site.

[coinableS]

I am very astonished there is not MUCH MORE people playing.....!

Just my personal opinion, I really think it has to do with the name, pevpot. I think a lot more people would play if they knew it was a lottery ran by the moneypot/bust-a-bit crew. There are always a ton of players at bustabit... maybe they can start promoting it at bustabit?

[Financisto]

Nice and innovative lottery project. Congratulations!

It loosely reminds me of a crazy idea (not so +EV) I had long ago:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=409660.0

If marketing is well done, your project may become the Google of lotteries! 

BTW (talking about Google) why not displaying AdWords like style of ads from sponsors alongside with their banners/images?

Pot decreased considerably...

Tip: raise min ticket purchase to .001 BTC so things get more interesting once more...

Some more suggestions:

I think one draw every two days would be great after this project (pot) gets more gamblers' attention (money).

Although Sponsors should buy adds for a whole week in order to get exposure for their business.

Think about it!

[Chemistry1988]

I am very astonished there is not MUCH MORE people playing.....!

Just my personal opinion, I really think it has to do with the name, pevpot. I think a lot more people would play if they knew it was a lottery ran by the moneypot/bust-a-bit crew. There are always a ton of players at bustabit... maybe they can start promoting it at bustabit?

I actually quite like the name PevPot (which I assume "Pev" stands for "Positive EV"). The name is short and is very easy to remember IMO. Ryan could do a bit more in advertising the site though.

[dooglus]

I have NOTHING against a whale coming to put 10BTC in the pot when there is only 0.10.

Me neither.

Any "real" lottery you see will have millions of players, and you have a tiny chance of winning a huge jackpot.

Nobody complains that their chance of winning is too small.

Who cares if there are a million players betting $1 each or one player betting $1 million? The result is the same: you have a 1 in a million chance of winning a million dollars...

Just wanted to report my experience:

tl;dr: The site needs updating to talk about the early-bird bonus and how it shrinks over time. Good point.

[dooglus]

I actually quite like the name PevPot (which I assume "Pev" stands for "Positive EV"). The name is short and is very easy to remember IMO. Ryan could do a bit more in advertising the site though.

I guess the problem is that being +EV the site makes very little money for itself. Ryan takes 10% of the sponsorship money, which most weeks seems to be just 0.1 BTC from Just-Dice and 0.05 BTC from Ryan - so he makes a 0.04 BTC loss each week, before paying for hosting or advertising. Doesn't leave a whole lot of room for an advertising budget I guess!

I expect his hope was that word of a +EV lottery word spread virally - it's not often you find a +EV game run by a trusted community member after all. It's unfortunate that the game isn't more popular, but I guess most people don't recognise a good deal when they see it.

[Chemistry1988]

I actually quite like the name PevPot (which I assume "Pev" stands for "Positive EV"). The name is short and is very easy to remember IMO. Ryan could do a bit more in advertising the site though.

I guess the problem is that being +EV the site makes very little money for itself. Ryan takes 10% of the sponsorship money, which most weeks seems to be just 0.1 BTC from Just-Dice and 0.05 BTC from Ryan - so he makes a 0.04 BTC loss each week, before paying for hosting or advertising. Doesn't leave a whole lot of room for an advertising budget I guess!

I expect his hope was that word of a +EV lottery word spread virally - it's not often you find a +EV game run by a trusted community member after all. It's unfortunate that the game isn't more popular, but I guess most people don't recognise a good deal when they see it.

Hmmm I knew it doesn't get many sponsors but I didn't know it was so bad. Speaking of advertising, there are a few ways on my mind that will hopefully help it get more popular without much budget:
1. Ryan could bump the thread daily (cannot do it sooner than 24 hours or it will be against the rule of bitcointalk) so to get more new users be aware of the site.
2. I knew there is already a subtle mentioning of Pevpot on BAB front page, but I guess it could be made more noticeable.
3. From the above posts, it seems many users don't enjoy waiting for a few days to get the lotto result, so may be there could be a new lotto which runs for every 100 blocks. The new 100-block lotto would probably only share a small proportion of the sponsors pot such that it will still be +EV, while the original 1000-block lotto would not be heavily affected.

[VTC]

Draw 9
./stretch 000000000000000002b3414231a4306c71440840f75dbdfe46ab2782fac58c55
a651027b6e80017a26e34c8c94ee664d4a0e14fd23196c6714b9b6a8c20d813d

Winning Ticket: 8,582,043

[marketingcoin]

This is my first time trying it, i sent some mbtc before the drawing 6 end. How to know who win?

[RHavar]

Running draw #9 now, lets see who won!


As for the site, the whole point of it for me was that it's a low-maintenance site. Just once a week I pay out the winner. I'm probably never going have the energy to actively market or advertise it. I really just built the site for the fun of building it, as I thought it  a neat idea, so I built it. If it spreads virally, then that's awesome. If it doesn't, oh well. But my main project is bustabit  (and with about ~150 people online right now, and ~700 BTC/wager a day, it keeps me pretty busy )

But it seems like a pretty awesome place to advertise, here's our traffic stats from google analytics:



not bad when you can get a listing on the homepage for like 0.001 BTC

[RHavar]

Draw 9
./stretch 000000000000000002b3414231a4306c71440840f75dbdfe46ab2782fac58c55
a651027b6e80017a26e34c8c94ee664d4a0e14fd23196c6714b9b6a8c20d813d

Winning Ticket: 8,582,043

That's would mean: https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/2b5c07d866e7219684646ea617853dbac4b67571bd670526af9493d6a89a2c5f?txoutIdx=0  is the winner for draw #9. Just verifying that right stretched hash right now =)

[Financisto]

Maybe some signature campaign might help increasing pot's volume and lottery's visitors/gamblers.

[powrslave]

Is there a step by step how to register account?

I'm using blockchain.info

[BigMac]

Is there a step by step how to register account?

I'm using blockchain.info

It is easier for you to play the game without registering your address. Take a look at the "Play from anywhere" on the right hand side on https://www.pevpot.com/how-to-play.

[lobo13hf]

Can i send from bittrex address?

[dodgecharger]

Can i send from bittrex address?

I don't think so. You need to have the control of the private key to sign a message.