Just-Dice.com : now with added CLAMs : Play or Invest

[EGStrategies]

So a couple of days ago, DaDice added a jackpot feature to their site. It seems particularly poorly thought out, but it got me thinking...

How *should* a jackpot feature be implemented?

The DaDice jackpot has several flaws:

1) it's not provably fair at all - it depends on both the betid and the time, both of which can be undetectably maniputulated by the site

2) their jackpot has the best edge for the smallest bets; it actively encourages people to make tiny dust bets rather than big bets

3) their jackpot has a huge negative house edge; it is very gameable and unsustainable, unless they intend to cheat (see point 1)

So how can we do it better?

How about:

1) Since we have 6 digit rolls as opposed to their 4 digit rolls, we can get rid of the betid and current time components, and just make it that you need to roll 99.9999 to hit the jackpot. That makes the jackpot a 1-in-a-million chance. We see around 5 million bets per day, and so will see that many jackpot wins per day.

2) Clearly we need to scale the prize according to the amount risked. It's silly to encourage dust bets. And so hitting the jackpot will pay out a share of the prize pool based on the site of the bet. How about if the bet size in CLAMs is the percentage of the prize pool you win. So if you hit the jackpot with a bet of 5 CLAMs, you get 5% of the pool. That way the pool doesn't shrink too fast and gets a chance to build up. The vast majority of bets are dust, and so we can expect most jackpot wins to be bets staking less than 1 CLAM, and so it will be relatively rare that the pot goes down by much.

3) We've promised investors a 1% house edge, and 10% commission. The house will have to fund the jackpot itself since we don't want to change the deal we made with investors. We could initially fund it with 1000 CLAMs, and leave it to stake. Would the staking rewards make up for the payouts it makes? Staking pays out 0.2% per day, and we expect 5 jackpot wins per day. So long as the sum of the stakes of the 5 winning bets is less than 0.2 CLAMs, the pot will increase that day. That's probably usually going to be the case.

Thoughts? Suggestions? How would a well thought out jackpot system work? Is the proposed scheme worth implementing? Are the proposed prizes too small to bother with?

Dooglus,

I'm against the idea of a jackpot on just-dice. I think it takes away more than it adds. You can already play low % bets if you want to get a jackpot style win.

I love JD and its innovations, especially the most recent offsite system. I am against a jackpot though as one side will ultimately have to pay for it (lower return for investors or higher edge if it were taken out of all bets). The former I feel would not spur enough new betting volume to be worthwhile for investors (I may be wrong). The latter is very bad (not that you suggested it in the first place). I say this as an investor and occasional player.

I also really like the stability and simplicity of the odds and the user experience on J-D. I have always admired your ability to not add new stuff constantly when what you have "ain't broke".

I have not tried to think of a jackpot system that would be beneficial and for all I know it could exist. I just can't get past the problem of funding it and the negative utility that probably gives investors.

[chriswen]

Okay first things first, about your payout rules.  It doesn't make any sense.  5 clams will give 5%.  50 clam will give 50%.  And then anything over 100 clams is everything?  

And then second of all it seems you have money in money out problems.

[andulolika]

So a couple of days ago, DaDice added a jackpot feature to their site. It seems particularly poorly thought out, but it got me thinking...

How *should* a jackpot feature be implemented?


The DaDice jackpot has several flaws:

1) it's not provably fair at all - it depends on both the betid and the time, both of which can be undetectably maniputulated by the site

2) their jackpot has the best edge for the smallest bets; it actively encourages people to make tiny dust bets rather than big bets

3) their jackpot has a huge negative house edge; it is very gameable and unsustainable, unless they intend to cheat (see point 1)

So how can we do it better?

How about:

1) Since we have 6 digit rolls as opposed to their 4 digit rolls, we can get rid of the betid and current time components, and just make it that you need to roll 99.9999 to hit the jackpot. That makes the jackpot a 1-in-a-million chance. We see around 5 million bets per day, and so will see that many jackpot wins per day.

2) Clearly we need to scale the prize according to the amount risked. It's silly to encourage dust bets. And so hitting the jackpot will pay out a share of the prize pool based on the site of the bet. How about if the bet size in CLAMs is the percentage of the prize pool you win. So if you hit the jackpot with a bet of 5 CLAMs, you get 5% of the pool. That way the pool doesn't shrink too fast and gets a chance to build up. The vast majority of bets are dust, and so we can expect most jackpot wins to be bets staking less than 1 CLAM, and so it will be relatively rare that the pot goes down by much.

3) We've promised investors a 1% house edge, and 10% commission. The house will have to fund the jackpot itself since we don't want to change the deal we made with investors. We could initially fund it with 1000 CLAMs, and leave it to stake. Would the staking rewards make up for the payouts it makes? Staking pays out 0.2% per day, and we expect 5 jackpot wins per day. So long as the sum of the stakes of the 5 winning bets is less than 0.2 CLAMs, the pot will increase that day. That's probably usually going to be the case.

Thoughts? Suggestions? How would a well thought out jackpot system work? Is the proposed scheme worth implementing? Are the proposed prizes too small to bother with?

omg doog thats would be the best thing ever :3 hopefully we get it soon.

[dooglus]

3) We've promised investors a 1% house edge, and 10% commission. The house will have to fund the jackpot itself since we don't want to change the deal we made with investors

I just can't get past the problem of funding it and the negative utility that probably gives investors.

I deleted most of both of our posts and left the bit you seem to have missed. I'm proposing that I fund the jackpot.

Okay first things first, about your payout rules.  It doesn't make any sense.  5 clams will give 5%.  50 clam will give 50%.  And then anything over 100 clams is everything?  

And then second of all it seems you have money in money out problems.

If you hit the target roll number when betting 100 CLAMs or more, you win the whole pot, yes. I figure that would be very rare. People don't often bet 100 or more CLAMs, and hitting it would be a million to one shot. I would fund the pot myself, and I guess allow people to tip the pot, like they do for the bet milestone prizes.

[ShapeShift.io]

You can now buy CLAMS on your iPhone with ShapeShift's new iOS app:



ShapeShift App:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shapeshift-instant-crypto/id996569075?mt=8

[gamblingbad]

So a couple of days ago, DaDice added a jackpot feature to their site. It seems particularly poorly thought out, but it got me thinking...

How *should* a jackpot feature be implemented?

The DaDice jackpot has several flaws:

1) it's not provably fair at all - it depends on both the betid and the time, both of which can be undetectably maniputulated by the site

2) their jackpot has the best edge for the smallest bets; it actively encourages people to make tiny dust bets rather than big bets

3) their jackpot has a huge negative house edge; it is very gameable and unsustainable, unless they intend to cheat (see point 1)

So how can we do it better?

How about:

1) Since we have 6 digit rolls as opposed to their 4 digit rolls, we can get rid of the betid and current time components, and just make it that you need to roll 99.9999 to hit the jackpot. That makes the jackpot a 1-in-a-million chance. We see around 5 million bets per day, and so will see that many jackpot wins per day.

2) Clearly we need to scale the prize according to the amount risked. It's silly to encourage dust bets. And so hitting the jackpot will pay out a share of the prize pool based on the site of the bet. How about if the bet size in CLAMs is the percentage of the prize pool you win. So if you hit the jackpot with a bet of 5 CLAMs, you get 5% of the pool. That way the pool doesn't shrink too fast and gets a chance to build up. The vast majority of bets are dust, and so we can expect most jackpot wins to be bets staking less than 1 CLAM, and so it will be relatively rare that the pot goes down by much.

3) We've promised investors a 1% house edge, and 10% commission. The house will have to fund the jackpot itself since we don't want to change the deal we made with investors. We could initially fund it with 1000 CLAMs, and leave it to stake. Would the staking rewards make up for the payouts it makes? Staking pays out 0.2% per day, and we expect 5 jackpot wins per day. So long as the sum of the stakes of the 5 winning bets is less than 0.2 CLAMs, the pot will increase that day. That's probably usually going to be the case.

Thoughts? Suggestions? How would a well thought out jackpot system work? Is the proposed scheme worth implementing? Are the proposed prizes too small to bother with?

Some places have jackpot where users can decide to be part of it or not. And users that want have a chance be a part of jackpot pays a little extra % egde then the gamblers that not gamble for jackpot. Other way is to make a fund that is invested in jd that pays out daily jackpots. A third way maybe would be investors and you pay equal share of the jackpot. And jackpot should be based on wager to be fair, 1 clam wager = 1 jackpot ticket or something like that. Or bets over 1 clam. I think its best to have jackpot that not pay out to often so the jackpot gets a nice size.

[dooglus]

Some places have jackpot where users can decide to be part of it or not. And users that want have a chance be a part of jackpot pays a little extra % edge then the gamblers that not gamble for jackpot.

It could be an option in the account tab, to opt in or out of the jackpot. Most people would leave that at its default, so we would need to decide what the default is. If the default is to opt out, players get the 1% edge they're used to, but almost nobody contributes to the pot. And if the default is to opt in, players will be confused as to why their 49.5% bets no longer pay a full 2x.

Other way is to make a fund that is invested in jd that pays out daily jackpots.

I'm thinking to have the jackpot amount stake. It could be in a separate address, and just get the full 100% of any staking rewards that that address earns. Staking returns are bigger than investment returns, and are always positive. I don't think it's good for the size of the jackpot to go down when players win.

A third way maybe would be investors and you pay equal share of the jackpot.

I don't want to take anything from the investors that they didn't already sign up for. They agreed to 10% commission, so that's what I take.

And jackpot should be based on wager to be fair, 1 clam wager = 1 jackpot ticket or something like that. Or bets over 1 clam.

That's a decent idea. Maybe a small daily and bigger weekly draw, where every bet has a chance of winning in proportion to the size of the bet.

Warning: stream of consciousness rambling incoming. Skip if you like - just trying to figure out how it could work...

It's not immediately clear how to make that provably fair. What do we use to pick the winner? I guess the same issue exists for the "roll 99.9999 to win" jackpot idea - I could brute force myself a client seed that rolls a 99.9999 whenever I wanted if I wanted to claim the jackpot for myself. Maybe jackpot/lottery schemes can't really be provably fair. The way I've seen it done before it to use an external source of entropy: "the hash of the next bitcoin block found after midnight" or whatever.

But even then... so we decide that we're going to use the last 8 hex digits of the hash of the next bitcoin block to tell us which bet wins the jackpot. We can divide those last 8 digits by 0x100000000 to get a random number between 0 and 1, and use that to pick the winning bet. Suppose there were just 4 bets, worth 1, 2, 3 and 4 CLAMs, and the BTC block hash gives us 0.64653 for the 0-1 ranged number. We'd line the bets up in betid order (4, 1, 3, 2), sum them (10 CLAMs), multiply that sum by the BTC block hash number (0.64653 * 10 = 6.4653), then step through the bets in order to see which one takes the total to that amount. The 2nd bet takes the total to 5, and the 3rd bet takes it to 8, so the 3rd bet wins. That seems like a fair way of doing it, but is impossible to verify without a list of all the bets. And there are 5 million bets per day, so that's not practical. I guess if we arrange the bets by userid and sum them by userid it becomes much easier: (eg. the 1 and 2 were by user 23, and the 3 and 4 were by user 21. We sum by userid and list them in order of userid, so the list becomes just: {user21: 7, user23: 3}. Then user21 wins, because he takes the total bet over the 6.4653 threshold. That means that low betids win more when the last 8 digits of the BTC block hash are low, which is potentially gameable by large miners, but it's probably not worth worrying about for the size of jackpot we'll be talking about.

I think its best to have jackpot that not pay out to often so the jackpot gets a nice size.

We can pay out small amounts regularly, like 1% per hour maybe, and 5% per day - then have bigger weekly and/or monthly payouts.

Thanks for your feedback. I'm told that Scabby had some interesting things to say about a possible jackpot scheme in the JD chat this morning, but I missed it. I'll have to go back and read what he had to say.

[dooglus]

The site profit went over 100k and stayed there for 6 hours or so, until:



Here's the recent profit chart:

[chriswen]

Yeah I think a daily/weekly draw is a better idea.

[TigerTatas]

My ideas for running a jackpot.

Funding the jackpot:
Dooglus adds 1k to a staking account and 100% of his stakes go to jackpot balance.
Players have the option to supply 1/2 of their invested stake to jackpot. Default to No. (Benefit for doing this below)
Players have the option to simply donate to the jackpot.
/Tip Last command includes jackpot always.

Determine winner:
Player rolls 99.9999 is solid. (If I was worried about you brute-forcing a winning seed and playing under a fake account to win, I wouldn't play at your site. I see that as a non-issue.)
When a player rolls 99.9999 a 'Congratulations' message can appear in chat and possibly a special color for the Bet Results tabs.
When a player rolls 99.9999 they are credited with (both daily and weekly) jackpot points equal to wagered amount, but no rewards are given yet.

Winner Payout:
Each day, 1% of the jackpot is split between all players with jackpot (daily) bonus points in proportion to their amount as a percentage of the sum of all qualifying points.
Daily jackpot bonus points are reset to 0.

Each week, 10% of the jackpot is split between all players with jackpot (week) bonus points in proportion to their amount as a percentage of the sum of all qualifying points.
Weekly jackpot bonus points are reset to 0.

(I think this will allow the jackpot to grow nicely.)

Incentive for player to donate 1/2 stakes:
Players that donate 1/2 their staked income get a x2 multiplier on jackpot points they earn. (Up to a maximum of amount invested)

[chriswen]

Winner Payout:
Each day, 1% of the jackpot is split between all players with jackpot (daily) bonus points in proportion to their amount as a percentage of the sum of all qualifying points.
Daily jackpot bonus points are reset to 0.

Each week, 10% of the jackpot is split between all players with jackpot (week) bonus points in proportion to their amount as a percentage of the sum of all qualifying points.
Weekly jackpot bonus points are reset to 0.

(I think this will allow the jackpot to grow nicely.)

This won't allow the jackpot to grow nicely.  Percentages are too high.  Maybe if the weekly jackpot bonus points are reset to something non zero.

Incentive for player to donate 1/2 stakes:
Players that donate 1/2 their staked income get a x2 multiplier on jackpot points they earn. (Up to a maximum of amount invested)

I don't think this is really an incentive for investment.  It's just a bonus for gambling, and its not even +EV.

EDIT: I probably sound really harsh.  Interesting way of combining the ideas.

[cparsley]

ok the folks pooing everyones thoughts, what would you suggest in place of it?

Lets keep it positive!

[res85]

It could be an option in the account tab, to opt in or out of the jackpot. Most people would leave that at its default, so we would need to decide what the default is. If the default is to opt out, players get the 1% edge they're used to, but almost nobody contributes to the pot. And if the default is to opt in, players will be confused as to why their 49.5% bets no longer pay a full 2x.

I actually think having it as a more visible setting for example next to randomize would be fine even with default set to opt out, but of course I don't know if it breaks the feel of the design.

Another idea could be running a seperate lottery to fund the jackpot, if it is not to complicated to make a provenly fair one of those.

If the jackpot isn't directly funded (in part) by the current roller, I think it might be a good idead to have a requirment like "the possible profit of the bet needs to exeed 10 (or maybe a lower/higher number of your choice) clams" . This has 2 benefits: Investors might want to contribute to the jackpot, as it could encourage bigger bets and the Jackpot will not be won as often. I don't have the stats, but how are the ods of a 99.99.99 been rolled in a bet which results in 10 or more clams potential profit?

just some random thoughts^^

[dooglus]

My ideas for running a jackpot.

Thanks for taking the time.

Funding the jackpot:
Dooglus adds 1k to a staking account and 100% of his stakes go to jackpot balance.

100% of my stakes? I don't like that idea one little bit! Do you mean the jackpot account's stakes go to the jackpot account? That seems reasonable.

Players have the option to supply 1/2 of their invested stake to jackpot. Default to No. (Benefit for doing this below)
Players have the option to simply donate to the jackpot.
/Tip Last command includes jackpot always.

When you say "players", you mean "investors", right? Because they're the only ones who benefit from staking. Note that most weeks, for most investors, their return from staking is bigger than their return from players losing. You can see this from the fact that the site has staked 200k, but only won 100k from players - staking is twice as big as gambling profits. So it sounds like you're asking investors to give up 33% of their expected income if I've understood correctly.

Determine winner:
Player rolls 99.9999 is solid. (If I was worried about you brute-forcing a winning seed and playing under a fake account to win, I wouldn't play at your site. I see that as a non-issue.)
When a player rolls 99.9999 a 'Congratulations' message can appear in chat and possibly a special color for the Bet Results tabs.
When a player rolls 99.9999 they are credited with (both daily and weekly) jackpot points equal to wagered amount, but no rewards are given yet.

I'd like to have 00.0000 count as well. I don't want to bias the jackpot in favour of people who only like to bet 'hi'. I'd also make it that your bet has to be a winning bet to qualify, so it's still only 1 in a million that counts. If someone rolls 99.9999 while betting 'lo', the site could comment on the fact in chat, but not award any thing. Or maybe award 10% of the points they would have got if they rolled correctly, as a booby prize.

Winner Payout:
Each day, 1% of the jackpot is split between all players with jackpot (daily) bonus points in proportion to their amount as a percentage of the sum of all qualifying points.
Daily jackpot bonus points are reset to 0.

Each week, 10% of the jackpot is split between all players with jackpot (week) bonus points in proportion to their amount as a percentage of the sum of all qualifying points.
Weekly jackpot bonus points are reset to 0.

(I think this will allow the jackpot to grow nicely.)

I think it will grow towards a limit, and pretty much stay there. We can consider the inflow to be roughly constant, and the outflow to be 17% per week (seven 1% daily payout, and one 10% weekly payout). So the pot will reach a point where the weekly inflow is equal to 17% of the pot. Or in other words the pot will grow to be 6 times the size of the weekly inflow.

Incentive for player to donate 1/2 stakes:
Players that donate 1/2 their staked income get a x2 multiplier on jackpot points they earn. (Up to a maximum of amount invested)

Again, I'm guessing you mean 'investors' when you say 'players' here. I think it's good to make some kind of incentive for investors to contribute to the pot, but I don't think this works. If I'm an investor with 10k invested, I'm making quite a lot from staking. I don't want to give half of it up just to get double jackpot points. Instead I can move 10 CLAMs to a new account, invest it, and set just that account to give up half its staking rewards. Then bet on that account and get double jackpot points. In doing so I've managed to keep almost all my staking rewards and still get double jackpot points.

This won't allow the jackpot to grow nicely.  Percentages are too high.  Maybe if the weekly jackpot bonus points are reset to something non zero.

I don't understand. Whether or not the points are reset each week, the weekly payout is always going to be 10% of the pot as I understood the proposal. Taking 10% out each week will limit its growth, of course - but I don't see how the points affect it.

I don't think this is really an incentive for investment.  It's just a bonus for gambling, and its not even +EV.

I don't think we can make things +EV for everyone. Somebody has to pay for the jackpot. Adding a jackpot is increasing the player's expectation, and so it has to reduce someone else's expectation. But I agree that asking investors to give up half their staking income for improved jackpot payoffs is unlikely to be well received.

[chriswen]

Determine winner:
Player rolls 99.9999 is solid. (If I was worried about you brute-forcing a winning seed and playing under a fake account to win, I wouldn't play at your site. I see that as a non-issue.)
When a player rolls 99.9999 a 'Congratulations' message can appear in chat and possibly a special color for the Bet Results tabs.
When a player rolls 99.9999 they are credited with (both daily and weekly) jackpot points equal to wagered amount, but no rewards are given yet.

I'd like to have 00.0000 count as well. I don't want to bias the jackpot in favour of people who only like to bet 'hi'. I'd also make it that your bet has to be a winning bet to qualify, so it's still only 1 in a million that counts. If someone rolls 99.9999 while betting 'lo', the site could comment on the fact in chat, but not award any thing. Or maybe award 10% of the points they would have got if they rolled correctly, as a booby prize.

This won't allow the jackpot to grow nicely.  Percentages are too high.  Maybe if the weekly jackpot bonus points are reset to something non zero.

I don't understand. Whether or not the points are reset each week, the weekly payout is always going to be 10% of the pot as I understood the proposal. Taking 10% out each week will limit its growth, of course - but I don't see how the points affect it.

Yeah I think its a good idea to remove the bias for high and low by doing something for both sides.

This won't allow the jackpot to grow nicely.  Percentages are too high.  Maybe if the weekly jackpot bonus points are reset to something non zero.

I don't understand. Whether or not the points are reset each week, the weekly payout is always going to be 10% of the pot as I understood the proposal. Taking 10% out each week will limit its growth, of course - but I don't see how the points affect it.

I was under the assumption that a majority of the inflows would be from the jackpot staking.  And that inflow decreases with a decrease of the jackpot size.  And 17% each week is more than the inflow from staking.

[dooglus]

I actually think having it as a more visible setting for example next to randomize would be fine even with default set to opt out, but of course I don't know if it breaks the feel of the design.

Yes, you're right. It should be more visible, or people won't even know about it.

Another idea could be running a seperate lottery to fund the jackpot, if it is not to complicated to make a provenly fair one of those.

Yes. The lottery could have a house edge greater than 1%, with the extra going to fund the jackpot.

If the jackpot isn't directly funded (in part) by the current roller, I think it might be a good idead to have a requirment like "the possible profit of the bet needs to exeed 10 (or maybe a lower/higher number of your choice) clams" . This has 2 benefits: Investors might want to contribute to the jackpot, as it could encourage bigger bets and the Jackpot will not be won as often. I don't have the stats, but how are the ods of a 99.99.99 been rolled in a bet which results in 10 or more clams potential profit?

1) Investors don't want bigger bets, they want lots of small bets (assuming the total volume is the same). Bigger bets means bigger variance. Lots of small bets summing to the same amount gives the same expectation, but with a much lower variance. When the odds are in your favour, you don't want too much variance.

2) Tiger suggested having the "points" given out according to the size of the bet. That seems reasonable. Someone hitting the jackpot number while making a tiny bet will get a tiny number of points. That's a good point though - what if only one person hits the 99.9999 or whatever one day, and does it betting just 1 satoshi? Even though he only gets a tiny number of points, he still has all the points awarded that day. Does he still get the full 1% daily payout? If the pot is 1000 CLAMs, that's a 10 CLAM payout for a 1 satoshi bet...

just some random thoughts^^

Thanks for them.

[dooglus]

We were approaching 100k profit for the 4th or 5th time, but then:

[MICRO]

LOL

I see my profit dropped a bit

[chriswen]

Okay a lottery with a house edge greater than 1% and a progressive jackpot would be cool.  That would cause the jackpot to grow.

[dooglus]

Okay a lottery with a house edge greater than 1% and a progressive jackpot would be cool.  That would cause the jackpot to grow.

How about if we just let players make multiple bets at the same time?

For example, put 99% of their stake at 49.5%, and the other 1% at 0.0001%. The payout on the 49.5% part will be only slightly lower than normal, but there's a tiny chance of them 'hitting the jackpot'.

We don't need a separate jackpot pool, it's a regular bet, with a regular 1% house edge, and so the investors will bankroll it just like they bankroll every other bet.

In other news, luther went a little crazy: