A guide to how Provably Fair works.

[madmadmax]

The difference appears to be that traditional casinos can pay to get the stamp of approval from some body that says the random number generator they demonstrated to that body is good.  There's no way they can prove that they actually use that good random number generator when the public plays against them however.

With provably fair games the players can be sure that the algorithm that is used is the one that the casinos claim is used, because they can check the maths for themselves.

It's possible to run huge simulations to check the distributions created by the provably fair algorithms to see if there's any bias.  I don't know if anyone has done that.

And claiming that provably fair doesn't work because SatoshiDice can cheat to defraud their shareholders is disingenuous because any business can cheat its shareholders no matter what business they're in.  It's not like that is unique to provably fair casinos.

All provable fairness gives you is the assurance that the house isn't cheating the players.  And that's a lot.

As of the moment no one has done that yet thus claiming "provable fair" isn't the most noble thing to do, some would even call it lying.

S Dice would have a unique opportunity to cheat their shareholders due to the nature of the Bitcoin network, it all comes down to the greed of the individual I think, Gox could have easily hired professional security guys, rent a CDN, buy a DDOS protecting router for that 3% is it that they pull? Instead they chose to lie to their users like a bunch of teenagers and deny a DDOS ever happened (according to what I've got they have admitted to it in the end), same thing with S Dice and most successful bitcoin casinos, gluttony.

[dooglus]

As of the moment no one has done that yet thus claiming "provable fair" isn't the most noble thing to do, some would even call it lying.

"Fair" means they don't cheat the player.  "Provable" means they can prove it.  There's no lying.

S Dice would have a unique opportunity to cheat their shareholders due to the nature of the Bitcoin network, it all comes down to the greed of the individual I think, Gox could have easily hired professional security guys, rent a CDN, buy a DDOS protecting router for that 3% is it that they pull? Instead they chose to lie to their users like a bunch of teenagers and deny a DDOS ever happened (according to what I've got they have admitted to it in the end), same thing with S Dice and most successful bitcoin casinos, gluttony.

SatoshiDice has all their activity publicly available on the blockchain.  They have less opportunities to cheat their shareholders than any traditional online casino.  It would be trivial for a traditional casino to say "we had a high roller come and win a million dollars from us.  Sorry, no dividends this month".  How would the shareholders argue with that?

Gox and their DDoS has nothing to do with this, not even a little bit.

[SRoulette]

It's possible to run huge simulations to check the distributions created by the provably fair algorithms to see if there's any bias.  I don't know if anyone has done that.

Our casino http://satoshiroulette.com/ certianly has, see the original thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=147935.0
We did that recently in a thread when we upgraded our RNG to show the fairness and distribution over uneven numbers (ie 7).

huge simulation to check the distributions created by our provably fair algorithm:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use warnings;
use Digest::SHA qw(hmac_sha512_hex);
use Math::Random::MT;

my $range = $ARGV[0];
our $secret = rand();
my $r = 0;
my %hash = ();
my $cc = 1;
my $c = 1;

while(1)
{
	#$r = &get_result($c, $range);
	$r = &get_result(rand(), $range);
	$hash{$r}++;
	$c++;
	$cc++;

	if($cc >= 500000)
	{
		$cc = 0;
		my $t = 0;	# should never see zerom ut check anyway
		
		print "\ncount at $c\n";
		while($t <= $range)
		{
			if(defined  $hash{$t})
			{
				my $s = sprintf("%.4f", ( $hash{$t} / $c ) * 100 );
				print "Result: $t, Count: $hash{$t}, Perecent: $s%\n";
			}
			$t++;
		}
	}
}

exit 0;

sub get_result
{
	my $tx = shift;
	my $range = shift;
	my $seed = Digest::SHA::hmac_sha512_hex($tx, $main::secret);
	$seed =~ s/^(.{8}).*$/$1/;
	$seed = hex($seed) + 0;
	my $gen = Math::Random::MT->new($seed);
	my $number = int($gen->rand($range)+1);
	return $number;
}

Results:

Code:

perl number_distribution_mersenne.pl 7

count at 500000
Result: 1, Count: 70994, Perecent: 14.1988%
Result: 2, Count: 71495, Perecent: 14.2990%
Result: 3, Count: 71369, Perecent: 14.2738%
Result: 4, Count: 71446, Perecent: 14.2892%
Result: 5, Count: 71470, Perecent: 14.2940%
Result: 6, Count: 71637, Perecent: 14.3274%
Result: 7, Count: 71588, Perecent: 14.3176%

count at 1000000
Result: 1, Count: 142091, Perecent: 14.2091%
Result: 2, Count: 142924, Perecent: 14.2924%
Result: 3, Count: 143039, Perecent: 14.3039%
Result: 4, Count: 143031, Perecent: 14.3031%
Result: 5, Count: 143140, Perecent: 14.3140%
Result: 6, Count: 142669, Perecent: 14.2669%
Result: 7, Count: 143105, Perecent: 14.3105%

count at 1500000
Result: 1, Count: 214198, Perecent: 14.2799%
Result: 2, Count: 213999, Perecent: 14.2666%
Result: 3, Count: 214668, Perecent: 14.3112%
Result: 4, Count: 214527, Perecent: 14.3018%
Result: 5, Count: 214434, Perecent: 14.2956%
Result: 6, Count: 213722, Perecent: 14.2481%
Result: 7, Count: 214451, Perecent: 14.2967%

count at 2000000
Result: 1, Count: 285847, Perecent: 14.2924%
Result: 2, Count: 285742, Perecent: 14.2871%
Result: 3, Count: 286227, Perecent: 14.3114%
Result: 4, Count: 285383, Perecent: 14.2691%
Result: 5, Count: 286089, Perecent: 14.3044%
Result: 6, Count: 285052, Perecent: 14.2526%
Result: 7, Count: 285659, Perecent: 14.2829%

As you can see it is very fair distribution.
We are happy to run any simulation a player requests or assist with getting the simulation script to work.

edit: the above is just from a ~3 minute run, I will let it run for the next ~24 hour and give an update on its results.

[SRoulette]

Hopefully a sample of 125'000'000 is sufficient

Code:

count at 125000000
Result: 1, Count: 17853524, Perecent: 14.2828%
Result: 2, Count: 17860550, Perecent: 14.2884%
Result: 3, Count: 17862642, Perecent: 14.2901%
Result: 4, Count: 17855991, Perecent: 14.2848%
Result: 5, Count: 17862922, Perecent: 14.2903%
Result: 6, Count: 17851206, Perecent: 14.2810%
Result: 7, Count: 17853164, Perecent: 14.2825%

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Thanks for doing the simulation SRoulette

[SRoulette]

Thanks for doing the simulation SRoulette

Always happy to help
Anything we can to do reassure players is in ours and the communities best interest.

[madmadmax]

As of the moment no one has done that yet thus claiming "provable fair" isn't the most noble thing to do, some would even call it lying.

"Fair" means they don't cheat the player.  "Provable" means they can prove it.  There's no lying.

S Dice would have a unique opportunity to cheat their shareholders due to the nature of the Bitcoin network, it all comes down to the greed of the individual I think, Gox could have easily hired professional security guys, rent a CDN, buy a DDOS protecting router for that 3% is it that they pull? Instead they chose to lie to their users like a bunch of teenagers and deny a DDOS ever happened (according to what I've got they have admitted to it in the end), same thing with S Dice and most successful bitcoin casinos, gluttony.

SatoshiDice has all their activity publicly available on the blockchain.  They have less opportunities to cheat their shareholders than any traditional online casino.  It would be trivial for a traditional casino to say "we had a high roller come and win a million dollars from us.  Sorry, no dividends this month".  How would the shareholders argue with that?

Gox and their DDoS has nothing to do with this, not even a little bit.

Here is a situation though, Satoshidice knows their own secret word ahead of time, thus they can submit bets to themselves as if they are the player, since they can potentially "be" the player and know the secret word ahead of time (since they are really Satoshidice) they can thus submit selective bets and raise the house edge to such a degree that no one of the investors would be getting a cent.

In the "real world" there is so much surveillance and protocols that casinos have to follow that claiming a person won a million dollars without it happening would be virtually impossible. Funny that so many people are defending their precious stock yet they fail to see and to point out this simple flaw while claiming some algorithms/blockchain protects them on the low level.

We can now establish who is right in the first argument: Me


Satoshidice claims it is "provably fair" but decides they will not prove that they are fair and so far it hasn't been proven once. Now I do understand your claim that they must not prove that they are fair to really be fair but then it's the argument of religion basically, if I hold my hand behind my back and claim I have a couple of pounds of diamonds in my hand I would be the one making the statement thus I would be the one needing proof (e.g. showing you the diamonds) and not you needing proof of me not having the diamonds in my hand behind my back in order to establish that they really are not there, since I have no initial proof of my statement it is disregarded.

Makes sense? Gox has everything to do with it since both of the companies are ran by teenagers that fail to employ the proper people to do a job they are unqualified to do out of pure greed.

We can now establish who is right in the second argument: Me

Thanks for doing the simulation SRoulette

Always happy to help
Anything we can to do reassure players is in ours and the communities best interest.

Interesting that the mainstream will roll with the established website despite the utter stupidity in doing so while such alternatives exist.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

As of the moment no one has done that yet thus claiming "provable fair" isn't the most noble thing to do, some would even call it lying.

"Fair" means they don't cheat the player.  "Provable" means they can prove it.  There's no lying.

S Dice would have a unique opportunity to cheat their shareholders due to the nature of the Bitcoin network, it all comes down to the greed of the individual I think, Gox could have easily hired professional security guys, rent a CDN, buy a DDOS protecting router for that 3% is it that they pull? Instead they chose to lie to their users like a bunch of teenagers and deny a DDOS ever happened (according to what I've got they have admitted to it in the end), same thing with S Dice and most successful bitcoin casinos, gluttony.

SatoshiDice has all their activity publicly available on the blockchain.  They have less opportunities to cheat their shareholders than any traditional online casino.  It would be trivial for a traditional casino to say "we had a high roller come and win a million dollars from us.  Sorry, no dividends this month".  How would the shareholders argue with that?

Gox and their DDoS has nothing to do with this, not even a little bit.

Here is a situation though, Satoshidice knows their own secret word ahead of time, thus they can submit bets to themselves as if they are the player, since they can potentially "be" the player and know the secret word ahead of time (since they are really Satoshidice) they can thus submit selective bets and raise the house edge to such a degree that no one of the investors would be getting a cent.

In the "real world" there is so much surveillance and protocols that casinos have to follow that claiming a person won a million dollars without it happening would be virtually impossible. Funny that so many people are defending their precious stock yet they fail to see and to point out this simple flaw while claiming some algorithms/blockchain protects them on the low level.

We can now establish who is right in the first argument: Me


Satoshidice claims it is "provably fair" but decides they will not prove that they are fair and so far it hasn't been proven once. Now I do understand your claim that they must not prove that they are fair to really be fair but then it's the argument of religion basically, if I hold my hand behind my back and claim I have a couple of pounds of diamonds in my hand I would be the one making the statement thus I would be the one needing proof (e.g. showing you the diamonds) and not you needing proof of me not having the diamonds in my hand behind my back in order to establish that they really are not there, since I have no initial proof of my statement it is disregarded.

Makes sense? Gox has everything to do with it since both of the companies are ran by teenagers that fail to employ the proper people to do a job they are unqualified to do out of pure greed.

We can now establish who is right in the second argument: Me

Thanks for doing the simulation SRoulette

Always happy to help
Anything we can to do reassure players is in ours and the communities best interest.

Interesting that the mainstream will roll with the established website despite the utter stupidity in doing so while such alternatives exist.

WTF?

SatoshiDICE is provably fair for your own games. Provably fair is not a magic bullet - it doesn't suddenly allow you to prove the house isn't making any bets, or that the house isn't cheating their shareholders, but that doesn't mean something is not fair.

And, wow, it's ridiculously easy to prove s.dice is provably fair.. get past secrets, generate random hashes ("txids"), repeat many times.

[00null]

...

WTF?

SatoshiDICE is provably fair for your own games. Provably fair is not a magic bullet - it doesn't suddenly allow you to prove the house isn't making any bets, or that the house isn't cheating their shareholders, but that doesn't mean something is not fair.

And, wow, it's ridiculously easy to prove s.dice is provably fair.. get past secrets, generate random hashes ("txids"), repeat many times.

This madmadmax guy wants to be cheated, so he is either a "simple mind" or more probably a paid shill. Actually he should use fiat money instead of Bitcoins because the fed has those wonderful statistics requires blind trust instead of being provably. But the fact that he seems to prefer Bitcoins tells us he actually knows the difference between provably and just telling fancy tales like the fed and his casino. Now if you combine those informations you end up knowing that he is a paid shill from one of those cheating casinos.

[SRoulette]

Here is a situation though, Satoshidice knows their own secret word ahead of time, thus they can submit bets to themselves as if they are the player, since they can potentially "be" the player and know the secret word ahead of time (since they are really Satoshidice) they can thus submit selective bets and raise the house edge to such a degree that no one of the investors would be getting a cent.

To make sure we are on the same page, you mean that the casino's earnings are not provable to investors due to easy manipulation and knowing secrets ahead of time.  
You would do this by creating a rawtx and checking its result, rinse and repeat until you have the required winning tx and then broadcast it.

This is completely true and something many SDICE. investors do not appreciate, comments were made before that they could simply run bots to attract investors prior to making their IPO.

We also could abuse this by using it to claim progressive jackpots or flooding our log with win statements to make it look more attractive to players. This would require much more work as our jackpots require you to hit a single number on a max bet thus increasing difficulty of 'mining' the correct sized txid.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Here is a situation though, Satoshidice knows their own secret word ahead of time, thus they can submit bets to themselves as if they are the player, since they can potentially "be" the player and know the secret word ahead of time (since they are really Satoshidice) they can thus submit selective bets and raise the house edge to such a degree that no one of the investors would be getting a cent.

To make sure we are on the same page, you mean that the casino's earnings are not provable to investors due to easy manipulation and knowing secrets ahead of time.  
You would do this by creating a rawtx and checking its result, rinse and repeat until you have the required winning tx and then broadcast it.

This is completely true and something many SDICE. investors do not appreciate, comments were made before that they could simply run bots to attract investors prior to making their IPO.

We also could abuse this by using it to claim progressive jackpots or flooding our log with win statements to make it look more attractive to players. This would require much more work as our jackpots require you to hit a single number on a max bet thus increasing difficulty of 'mining' the correct sized txid.

You could claim progressive bets, but the damage is minimal, because other players will that the progressive jackpot has gone down.

[SRoulette]

Here is a situation though, Satoshidice knows their own secret word ahead of time, thus they can submit bets to themselves as if they are the player, since they can potentially "be" the player and know the secret word ahead of time (since they are really Satoshidice) they can thus submit selective bets and raise the house edge to such a degree that no one of the investors would be getting a cent.

To make sure we are on the same page, you mean that the casino's earnings are not provable to investors due to easy manipulation and knowing secrets ahead of time.  
You would do this by creating a rawtx and checking its result, rinse and repeat until you have the required winning tx and then broadcast it.

This is completely true and something many SDICE. investors do not appreciate, comments were made before that they could simply run bots to attract investors prior to making their IPO.

We also could abuse this by using it to claim progressive jackpots or flooding our log with win statements to make it look more attractive to players. This would require much more work as our jackpots require you to hit a single number on a max bet thus increasing difficulty of 'mining' the correct sized txid.

You could claim progressive bets, but the damage is minimal, because other players will that the progressive jackpot has gone down.

Also its far more effort that its worth, we want players to claim the jackpots. A big progressive jackpot won by a known member of the community vs a random anon is the best kind of advertising we get  

[madmadmax]

WTF?

SatoshiDICE is provably fair for your own games. Provably fair is not a magic bullet - it doesn't suddenly allow you to prove the house isn't making any bets, or that the house isn't cheating their shareholders, but that doesn't mean something is not fair.

And, wow, it's ridiculously easy to prove s.dice is provably fair.. get past secrets, generate random hashes ("txids"), repeat many times.

This madmadmax guy wants to be cheated, so he is either a "simple mind" or more probably a paid shill. Actually he should use fiat money instead of Bitcoins because the fed has those wonderful statistics requires blind trust instead of being provably. But the fact that he seems to prefer Bitcoins tells us he actually knows the difference between provably and just telling fancy tales like the fed and his casino. Now if you combine those informations you end up knowing that he is a paid shill from one of those cheating casinos.

Thing yes provable fair has not been proven even once until today. Please educate yourself before replying to "big guys" talking okay buds?

You two are a joke, living proof of how gullible the masses are on a big scale, don't play at SRoulettes casino for all I care.

[BRules]

but it is unfair to the players that the numbers are not generated according to the standards of the industry

Thing yes provable fair has not been proven even once until today.

You're wrong.

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-90A/SP800-90A.pdf

case closed

[SRoulette]

http://satoshiroulette.com/log.php?mode=BTC

For interest look at our log, you will see some winning and losing streaks there you are welcome to verify a snapshot of our results at any time.
We even offer on player request forcing out of band secret changes so they can verify a recent set of bets instead of waiting up to 24 hours.

It is also possible to modify our simulation so it reads in every txid in a bitcoin wallet and uses each one as its input to produce even more real world results.
If you are interested please let us know, as we said its in our best interest to reassure you of our legitimacy and put away your concerns.

[00null]

Thing yes provable fair has not been proven even once until today. Please educate yourself before replying to "big guys" talking okay buds?
You two are a joke, living proof of how gullible the masses are on a big scale, don't play at SRoulettes casino for all I care.

"big guy" LMAO. Actually provably fair proofs it on every single game. And even a below than average educated teenager could easily grasp it. So please don't count yourself as a "big guy".
Anyway, most people would not admit publicly that they do not understand how provably fair works. So, respect for admitting it. Still, now everyone knows that you are not very bright light, so to speak.

[madmadmax]

Thing yes provable fair has not been proven even once until today. Please educate yourself before replying to "big guys" talking okay buds?
You two are a joke, living proof of how gullible the masses are on a big scale, don't play at SRoulettes casino for all I care.

"big guy" LMAO. Actually provably fair proofs it on every single game. And even a below than average educated teenager could easily grasp it. So please don't count yourself as a "big guy".
Anyway, most people would not admit publicly that they do not understand how provably fair works. So, respect for admitting it. Still, now everyone knows that you are not very bright light, so to speak.

but it is unfair to the players that the numbers are not generated according to the standards of the industry

Thing yes provable fair has not been proven even once until today.

You're wrong.

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-90A/SP800-90A.pdf

case closed

You two kids are hopeless but let me educate you a little, yes it is possible to prove that the bet result was generated using the transaction id, the secret key and whatnot but who guarantees even distribution across all numbers as it needs to be by the industries standards?

You could theoretically even have a proper house edge, just that you would have abnormally long "cold" periods and "hot" periods, if you bet 20 times in a row and loose every time and some else evens the house edge by winning 20 times it isn't very fair is it? Potentially house edge heightening, but at least you admit that you are a gullible sheep and posses no ability to read and comprehend text, so very brave of you  .

[00null]

...

Yes provably fair means that you are exposed to 100% pure random. It seems you prefer casinos that manipulate you into thinking that you are not losing while you actually lose.
Anyway, It is worthless arguing with you, because either you are 10 years old, completely stupid or be paid to lure innocent players to your cheating casino. I hope for you it's the first, because then there is still a chance you could grow yourself a brain to understand that 100% pure random is better than manipulation.

[madmadmax]

...

Yes provably fair means that you are exposed to 100% pure random. It seems you prefer casinos that manipulate you into thinking that you are not losing while you actually lose.
Anyway, It is worthless arguing with you, because either you are 10 years old, completely stupid or be paid to lure innocent players to your cheating casino. I hope for you it's the first, because then there is still a chance you could grow yourself a brain to understand that 100% pure random is better than manipulation.

Way to take this argument to the level of name calling, what exactly makes you come to the conclusion it is 100% random if no statistical analysis has been done? What makes you think that it isn't weighed in one way or another? Just because it's hashes 2 times this possibility is somehow automatically eliminated?

[BRules]

You two kids.

thank you, I love when someone say I'm younger.

but who guarantees even distribution across all numbers as it needs to be by the industries standards?

You say this a lot. so, can you explain me what exactly you mean by your "industries standards"?

You could theoretically even have a proper house edge, just that you would have abnormally long "cold" periods and "hot" periods, if you bet 20 times in a row and loose every time and some else evens the house edge by winning 20 times it isn't very fair is it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy

Potentially house edge heightening, but at least you admit that you are a gullible sheep and posses no ability to read and comprehend text.

hmmmm, maybe my 15 years in the field wasn't enough to compreend the text. so, can you point me what I miss about that NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) paper?


and please, try to prove what you're saying because until now you just chitchatting