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 1
BTC in the pool and an extra .135
BTC 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.gifWent 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 (.135
BTC) when in reality if I send money now, I'd only be eligable for a bonus of .00486
BTC. 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.