The Bitcoin Lottery

[DaMan]

Nice idea!

In that case there must be a checkbox at login to choose the playing style.

A few days ago the transactions don't took as long as now. We need more mining power to calculate the blocks faster ;-)

Some transactions took an hour or more :-(

Maybe because the priority of the transfers is to low if you use the latest bitcoin client. The new client uses 0.0005 btc transaction fee. The older clients use 0.01 btc. So the priority of the "old" client transfers must be higher the the new clients transfers. But thats only a personal speculation.

regards!

[1714823034]

1714823034

[1714823034]

1714823034

[bitlotto]

Nice idea!

In that case there must be a checkbox at login to choose the playing style.

A few days ago the transactions don't took as long as now. We need more mining power to calculate the blocks faster ;-)

Some transactions took an hour or more :-(

Maybe because the priority of the transfers is to low if you use the latest bitcoin client. The new client uses 0.0005 btc transaction fee. The older clients use 0.01 btc. So the priority of the "old" client transfers must be higher the the new clients transfers. But thats only a personal speculation.

regards!

Cool. Blocks will always come about 1 every ten minutes no matter how much power is thrown at it. It's meant to be that way.

Usually it's just the free ones that get held up a bit. But I think the more you pay in fees the higher the priority. And of course the more BTC moving around the longer the waiting line gets. It goes up and down all the time.

[bitlotto]

Fixed by lottery site http://www.btclottery.info/
but I need a way to make the drawings...

Just a friendly tip: if you post your site in too many threads people will annoyed. Perhaps just update one of your threads that already exist.

[lemonginger]

also, anyway we can access full history of bets? and full history of our own bets?

[lemonginger]

one would be useful for audits of outcomes to make sure RNG isn't stacked and all "losses" are going to jackpot fund
other would be, well useful in general just to see outcomes of past rounds

[DaMan]

All calculations regarding fees are updated now. Formerly all payouts were less the transaction fee as stated on the website. But since we watched the server log of the latest server version it is proofed that the bitcoin server used 0.0005 btc in 90% of all payouts. We calculate with 1% and in most of the cases the fee is lower than the minimum of 0.0005.

-> RESULT:

• we removed all fees
• payouts are raised from 154% to 155% and 224% to 225% (because 1% fee was removed)
• all payouts are excactly the payout percentage (even if some players send bets like 0.1099999 btc there might be a difference because of rounding the values.

-> Jackpot:

• we have a new Jackpot peak: 9.4351 BTC

Kind regards,
DaMan

[DaMan]

@lemonginger:

yes, I am thinking of a kind of statistics page with top players, top winners and the real winning percentage based on all rounds. It is of course possible to show all played rounds, because we have all in the database. But as we changed some things since the first release I have to find a way to show that.

In example we used only one roll in the first version and don't stored the payout transaction id.

Now we use two seperate rolls, one winning roll and one jackpot roll. So people who lose the normal round still have a chance to get the jackpot with the jackpot roll. And if you win the normal round and win the jackpot too, you will receive two seperate transfers. I know it would be better to send only one transaction, but I don't want to move values between accounts to keep everything as clean and simple as possible. And regarding the new bitcoin fee system the transaction fees for normal playing rounds are negligible.

Regarding the login and history of your own bets it is only possible to show all bets of the used bitcoin address. Because I see that some players use the same name, but different bitcoin addresses for playing. And the players name is not unique in the database, the bitcoin address is used as unique identifier.

I will try to integrate the statistics as soon as possible, but as I have heard earlier today my in-laws come over the weekend. * sigh * So this weekend I will probably not have much time.

For a coming version I've been thinking about a proper account management - or just makes the whole thing more complicated? Actually, I would like to keep everything as simple as possible.

Many greetings!

By the way, the jackpot has a new high of 9.4551 BTC.

[Auspician]

Fun game, but I'm curious:

Since the odds for each play to win the jackpot are 1 : 100, it seems that the main roll is only possible to result in 1 - 99, and the jackpot roll is possible to result in 1 - 100.  If the main roll had 100 possibilities, what would happen if the main roll resulted in a 100?  Would it simply be counted as a loss and added to the jackpot as normal? 

Put simply, does the first roll have nothing to do with the jackpot which is determined entirely by the second roll?

[lemonginger]

yes I am not sure why it is two rolls. doesn't really matter for jackpot odds, except you only get 9% to get 2.55x your bet back rather than 10% on your first roll

[lemonginger]

@lemonginger:

yes, I am thinking of a kind of statistics page with top players, top winners and the real winning percentage based on all rounds. It is of course possible to show all played rounds, because we have all in the database. But as we changed some things since the first release I have to find a way to show that.

Hi DaMan:

If you don't want to release your code, it would be the best way to prove a fair roll by allowing people to audit the outcomes and make sure over long periods of time that they are within statistical norms. Of course you will get unlucky gmblers cryiung about normal variance, but within a while we should have a large enough sample set to run basic tests on.

Thanks for the game!

[Auspician]

yes I am not sure why it is two rolls. doesn't really matter for jackpot odds, except you only get 9% to get 2.55x your bet back rather than 10% on your first roll

Actually you have 40% odds to get 1.55x your original bet and 10% odds to get .225x your original bet.  90-99 is 10 total numbers.  1-49 is only 49 total numbers, and the winning starts at 50.  So it seems that if you have 50% winning odds a roll of 100 on the first number is simply a loss.

That said, I've done the math and this game seems rigged.  Based upon my calculations, aside from the jackpot 84.5% of the bets are paid out as smaller wins.  This leaves 15.5% of the transactions to go into the jackpot, before the owner's fees. 

Based upon the common bid of .1 BTC, this means that on average .0155 of every bet goes into the jackpot.  After the last jackpot won by Hyper, there was 1.045 BTCs left in the pot.  The current pot at the time of this message is 15.8522 BTCs.  This means 14.8072 BTCs have been added to the pot through bids.

Since we already know that almost all bids are for .1BTCs, and that the jackpot increases by .0155 BTCs on average per transaction, that means that the jackpot has not been won over the course of the last 955+ bids.

Sounds a little sketchy to me that with 1 : 100 odds won't find a winner after 955 tries.

[lemonginger]

Sounds a little sketchy to me that with 1 : 100 odds won't find a winner after 955 tries.

edit:

hmmm, that is not outside the bounds of possibility, but is getting up there. But I have to check the math on jackpot addition. This is why we need full stats available.

[tito13kfm]

You can roll a 0 in the first round, I believe that is why it is 50-99 for payout.

With the number of rolls between jackpots approaching improbable for a fair game my best guess is he is doing his random function incorrectly.  Some programming languages will interpret random(100) and give you a number between 0-99 only.

If my thinking is correct, the jackpot will never be hit without a change in the programming.

[lemonginger]

Yes you can lol

18. Jun 2011 21:53 h   flower      
Bet: 0.1 btc   Rolls -> Win: 0 • Jackpot: 9   

But jackpot has been won once at least.

I have been trying to write down the numbers as they scroll by but it is too hard to keep track of only 40 rolls at a time.

I would not play this anymore without a full paper trail for outcome auditing. It is just too easy to hide things without it. No disrespect to the coder, who prob has great intentions, but stuff like this needs to either be released with code or with outcome stats available.

[tito13kfm]

But jackpot has been won once at least.

Yes, but the OP has made changes to the code and payout structure a couple of times since.  There is always the possibility an error was introduced.  There was a recent opensource application that had an inadvertent space introduced to its source code which resulted in entire /usr directories being wiped out on accident.

Typos and rounding errors happen all the time.  Without being able to examine the source for OP's rolling function nobody can state if it is fair or not.

[lemonginger]

But jackpot has been won once at least.

Yes, but the OP has made changes to the code and payout structure a couple of times since.  There is always the possibility an error was introduced.  There was a recent opensource application that had an inadvertent space introduced to its source code which resulted in entire /usr directories being wiped out on accident.

Typos and rounding errors happen all the time.  Without being able to examine the source for OP's rolling function nobody can state if it is fair or not.

Oh I agree absolutely, we are quite a few standard deviations away from normal at this point. I definitely support either code releaseor data auditing for all gambling games that want to be "respectable" // I don't care if the games are fixed, I just want to be able to calculate correct odds.

[tito13kfm]

But jackpot has been won once at least.

Yes, but the OP has made changes to the code and payout structure a couple of times since.  There is always the possibility an error was introduced.  There was a recent opensource application that had an inadvertent space introduced to its source code which resulted in entire /usr directories being wiped out on accident.

Typos and rounding errors happen all the time.  Without being able to examine the source for OP's rolling function nobody can state if it is fair or not.

Oh I agree absolutely, we are quite a few standard deviations away from normal at this point. I definitely support either code releaseor data auditing for all gambling games that want to be "respectable" // I don't care if the games are fixed, I just want to be able to calculate correct odds.

According to my calculations.  At this moment in time, if the site is not rigged in any way the EV of each .1 BTC bet is above .1BTC because of the jackpot size.  Smart money would be to play like crazy if you trust the lottery.

Of course my calculations don't take in to account my 2 semesters of failed statistics courses.

[lemonginger]

Well the chances of not rolling a 100 in 500 rolls would be less than .6% -- unlikely but not impossible
The chances of not rolling a 100 in 1000 rolls would be essentially 0 (like .004% chance) -- statistically impossible

Even assuming there were a few "whales" that bet big somewhere along the way, I am thinking that things got screwed up with the addition of the 'second roll" as I have watched hundreds of rolls go by today multiple times.

second roll makes no sense anyway -- have 50-89 be first payout 90-99 be second payout and 100 be jackpot payout -- adding a dice roll doesn't "do" anything to increase your chances of winning

I am guessing that you are right that the same roll mechanism is used for both and it can go 0-99.

In this case I would recommend going back through the database and paying out jackpots to everyone that rolled a 99 at whatever equivalent the jackpot would have been. It will take some manual calculation to get people their correct amounts, but it shouldn't be very difficult at all.

[lemonginger]

According to my calculations.  At this moment in time, if the site is not rigged in any way the EV of each .1 BTC bet is above .1BTC because of the jackpot size.  Smart money would be to play like crazy if you trust the lottery.

Of course my calculations don't take in to account my 2 semesters of failed statistics courses.

Oh it +EV to play far before this point. It is seriously plus EV to play right now. But not if the second roll can never hit 100 lol.

[bitlotto]

I'm curious about if you have any way of demonstrating that the jackpots can't be rigged to go to you when you the owner plays? Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing, I'm just curious if you do.