What actually is Provably Fairness?!

[lrdeoliveira]

You hear the word "Provably fairness" a lot thrown around, but it's not really understood fully by everyone.

This article I found on the crypto gambling foundation by Kristof is really good at explaining it. I recommend anyone read it, even if you think you know!

https://cryptogambling.org/provably-fair/

Before we may begin to understand what makes a casino provably fair, we need to study how the basis of online gambling works. Simply put, players bet on the outcome of randomly generated
numbers.

Formerly, these random numbers were generated solely by the host of a game, leaving complete control in the hands of operators. Participants had to trust the host not generating results in favor of anyone. Casinos operating on these merits caused conflict of interest for those seeking a fair gambling experience.

Due to lack of transparency, the essence of provably fair games was born. Corresponding concepts provide a way for both the operators and players to contribute to randomization, which in turn removes any possibility of deceit or cheating.

The foundation of fair gaming algorithms were laid by pseudorandom number generators, utilizing seeds which determine the outcome of wagers.

A seed shall be equally influenced by players and hosts, meaning that the result of each bet at a provably fair casino is a team effort. The house is no longer in complete control of randomization.

So, wouldn’t this mean that players are able to manipulate results in their own favor?

Commitment schemes to the rescue!

To prevent malicious behavior, hosts mustn’t show us their actual seed at first. Instead, they present a commitment of their own seed to us. Similarly to envelopes, commitments seal and conceal messages contained by them. They cannot be altered or revealed without consent from the sender. For example, hosts may commit a seed by using a one-way hash function or public key cryptography.

Hosts shall provide transparency and proof of authenticity by revealing their actual seeds at the end of each game. Anyone in possession of a host’s commitment may verify the immutability of the corresponding seed.

Bets shall be reproducible once the host seed gets revealed. Players can constantly audit the behavior of hosts by comparing random results calculated by a host and them.
Proving that the outcome of a wager is computed fairly and transparently should be performed by anyone at any time. We strongly believe in widespread use of provably fair algorithms throughout the gaming industry.

[Nelka4]

Another awesome article. I actually went through a lot more of the stuff on that website and its well done. Is the foundation stagnate atm? Is anything happening?

[Aengus]

It'd be great if we could have a simpler representation of provably fair. It's something that's far more important than people are led on to believe.

[ettagames]

This is excellent! Some people asked the same question, I spent lots of time to explain it, this is good! thanks for sharing!

[mx667]

It'd be great if we could have a simpler representation of provably fair. It's something that's far more important than people are led on to believe.

Another awesome article. I actually went through a lot more of the stuff on that website and its well done. Is the foundation stagnate atm? Is anything happening?

Yeah I always get confuse when I see that statement in gambling site. But I actually do not visit gambling to often and never gamble a lot. I only see this words from freebitco.in whenever I roll in that faucet site.

At first I thought this thread will be asking about that statement, and it turn out to be an explaination. Thanks for the useful information. Even though you do not get anything from this, but we really appreciate this.

[Caladonian]

with this article i got some interest now with provably fair unlike before that i just entrust my game with the site host and wait for my luck to hit me
up, many thanks for the informative topic which tackle the very basic of our gambling activity, knowing the real factors of fairness should be the first
that we look upon the house.

[jtipt]

That's a really good article. Even I didn't knew about provable fairness in this detail, and I'm sure many new players in BTC gambling ask this question everyday. So this would really help them.

[Nelka4]

That's a really good article. Even I didn't knew about provable fairness in this detail, and I'm sure many new players in BTC gambling ask this question everyday. So this would really help them.

It's a question as to how do we spread the word about this further without spamming...

[DrGuns4Hands]

This is really helpful for those people who keeps asking what is provably fairness. I've been here in this forum for a long time and i could say that there's no single week where they're keep asking this things even tho there's an internet to use. In this article you give the good point and good explanation what it really is.

[noormcs5]

Yeah, this article really helpful for those people who have little knowledge about provably fairness. Also it is good to read, when i was reading this article, then one thing came in my mind that if anyone want to discussion with me about this topic, then sure i will give the link and free ourself from this long discussion.   

[NorrisK]

Nice explanation. Now how do we get everybody to check their actual bets?

I'm sure hardly anybody ever checked if the outcome of their bet was fair unless they lost a major chunk at one point.

[hatshepsut93]

I'm not by any means an expert in applied cryptography but I think I see some potential attack vectors for Provably Fair system that may allow some cheating.

In order to cheat in a game, the casino must somehow know what seed a player will enter before they commit their own seed, by default players seed is generated by their browser and if they use poor RNG, it's possible for a casino to adjust their own seeds to get some big edge - or even complete 100% control if the RNG is completely broken. The situation is similar with seeds typed manually - humans are very bad at generating random strings, so again server seeds can be adjusted to give casino an edge. There are also cases when casinos don't automatically call for a new seed from a player, which means that the same player seed can be reused over and over again - in this scenario it's extremely easy to adjust next servers seeds to get any results you want.

The other vector of attack is more theoretical - if casino is able to generate collisions for the hash function used for commitment, they can effectively commit multiple seeds at the same time and then pick the one that would be winning for them, if possible. This means that it's important that only secure hash functions are used, like SHA-2 and SHA-3 and not MD5.

[bajing]

with this article i got some interest now with provably fair unlike before that i just entrust my game with the site host and wait for my luck to hit me
up, many thanks for the informative topic which tackle the very basic of our gambling activity, knowing the real factors of fairness should be the first
that we look upon the house.

Yeah nothing we can do than only trust host if they are fair and for the rest we only hope on the luck because it is very difficult to prove it. we should get rid of suspicion if we have a desire to bet on a particular game.

You hear the word "Provably fairness" a lot thrown around, but it's not really understood fully by everyone.

This article I found on the crypto gambling foundation by Kristof is really good at explaining it. I recommend anyone read it, even if you think you know!

https://cryptogambling.org/provably-fair/

Before we may begin to understand what makes a casino provably fair, we need to study how the basis of online gambling works. Simply put, players bet on the outcome of randomly generated
numbers.

Formerly, these random numbers were generated solely by the host of a game, leaving complete control in the hands of operators. Participants had to trust the host not generating results in favor of anyone. Casinos operating on these merits caused conflict of interest for those seeking a fair gambling experience.

Due to lack of transparency, the essence of provably fair games was born. Corresponding concepts provide a way for both the operators and players to contribute to randomization, which in turn removes any possibility of deceit or cheating.

The foundation of fair gaming algorithms were laid by pseudorandom number generators, utilizing seeds which determine the outcome of wagers.

A seed shall be equally influenced by players and hosts, meaning that the result of each bet at a provably fair casino is a team effort. The house is no longer in complete control of randomization.

So, wouldn’t this mean that players are able to manipulate results in their own favor?

Commitment schemes to the rescue!

To prevent malicious behavior, hosts mustn’t show us their actual seed at first. Instead, they present a commitment of their own seed to us. Similarly to envelopes, commitments seal and conceal messages contained by them. They cannot be altered or revealed without consent from the sender. For example, hosts may commit a seed by using a one-way hash function or public key cryptography.

Hosts shall provide transparency and proof of authenticity by revealing their actual seeds at the end of each game. Anyone in possession of a host’s commitment may verify the immutability of the corresponding seed.

Bets shall be reproducible once the host seed gets revealed. Players can constantly audit the behavior of hosts by comparing random results calculated by a host and them.
Proving that the outcome of a wager is computed fairly and transparently should be performed by anyone at any time. We strongly believe in widespread use of provably fair algorithms throughout the gaming industry.

OP: thanks this is a great article but we need more specific information to know if they are really fair.

[piloder]

Nice explanation. Now how do we get everybody to check their actual bets?

I'm sure hardly anybody ever checked if the outcome of their bet was fair unless they lost a major chunk at one point.

Its just optional most of the players including me not always care about checking and verifying each of my role other than on first few betting when I will be trying some new casino or when I will loss good amount of money with very low odd in a single role.

Most of the new gamblers even don't know why provably fairness is very important, they just focus on beating house edge.

[13abyknight]

I had read all about this even before getting into online gambling on casinos. As a matter of fact, I always used to doubt the legitimacy of provably fair sites when I used to get continuous lose streaks and at that time, I used to verify all my bets just to see if they were actually pairing correctly with the seeds. So as far as Bitcoin gambling goes, it is a MUST to play only on sites with an integrated provably fair system for verifying bets.

[eternalgloom]

This is a nice explanation but it will not do you any good if you don't know how to manually check by yourself if a gambling website is really provably fair or not.

I've found an old article that will teach you how to check each of your bets to see if they were fair. He's checking a Blackjack game, but you can easily apply this to other games on different websites yourself.

http://www.provablyfairplay.com/blog/how-to-manually-verify-provably-fair-games.html

[Oilacris]

This is a nice explanation but it will not do you any good if you don't know how to manually check by yourself if a gambling website is really provably fair or not.

I've found an old article that will teach you how to check each of your bets to see if they were fair. He's checking a Blackjack game, but you can easily apply this to other games on different websites yourself.

http://www.provablyfairplay.com/blog/how-to-manually-verify-provably-fair-games.html

This is why most people wont really bother at all to check for themselves manually because it is somehow complicated specially to those gamblers who do have zero knowledge when it comes into hashes or any other related thing.Thanks for the effort made by OP which it would really enlighten some people who doesnt what provable fairness means and also to the link you provided.

[iqlimasyadiqa]

I had read all about this even before getting into online gambling on casinos. As a matter of fact, I always used to doubt the legitimacy of provably fair sites when I used to get continuous lose streaks and at that time, I used to verify all my bets just to see if they were actually pairing correctly with the seeds. So as far as Bitcoin gambling goes, it is a MUST to play only on sites with an integrated provably fair system for verifying bets.

Gambling is a very difficult thing to predict. very much to find a system that is really fair. I agree with what you say when we find a system that is comfortable in playing gambling then stay and never think to move. because if we move then we will only increase the risk of action that we decide.

[LuanX3]

Great article OP. I would still like to know though who evaluates whether the chances of each number showing up was actually fair. Like how do we know whether the chances of rolling 1 and rolling 99 the same chances? I wish there is a governing body that would totally be the one to evaluate whether the games are provably fair indeed. It's hard for normal players to really know whether a game is indeed provably fair.

[Nelka4]

Great article OP. I would still like to know though who evaluates whether the chances of each number showing up was actually fair. Like how do we know whether the chances of rolling 1 and rolling 99 the same chances? I wish there is a governing body that would totally be the one to evaluate whether the games are provably fair indeed. It's hard for normal players to really know whether a game is indeed provably fair.

There's 3rd party sites which do this. They use the same formula the sites uses and re creates the roll the exact same way, this time with revealed seeds.