Just-Dice.com : Invest in 1% House Edge Dice Game

[Dabs]

Well it sucks for the guy that he had his coins stolen, but, like, at the point that they are stolen: they are stolen. He can't 'refund' the statistic of the losing 30BTC bet that the thief made. Therefore, if you issued a refund, you would be taking a 30BTC loss for something that isn't your fault. Not to mention creating an incentive for people to ask for refunds. Even if you said no to every person after this one (and there would be more.. surely) you still have to spend time replying.

"Reporting your website for fraud contacting both hosting and domain hosting to explain".

That's what I got when I asked him to stop begging me for bitcoins.

I'm not an investor, but if someone threatened me like that, I'd respond with the threat of revealing his user name, so everyone can insult his incompetence.

JD is not and was not at fault. Whoever has access to the private key of a bitcoin wallet, has the power to send the coins in that wallet to any other wallet. So, who did not adequately protect his phone? This is a bitcoin problem, not a just-dice problem.

Of course, people are going to say, it's a customer. (Is he?) There is a saying that goes "The Customer is King" or "The Customer always correct." But that's only for PR purposes. The truth is, the customer can and sometimes is wrong.

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[dooglus]

The whale came back, and won another whole bunch.

I was watching the betting patterns as it happened, and it was somewhat suspicious.

The pattern was to bet 0.01 until a loss, and then bet big, knowing that the loss made the next roll more likely to be a win.

Then a series of 5 losses in a row came up, and he bet 0.01 on all of them.

Series like that are where the previous gains are meant to be recovered, but if you bet tiny amounts through the losing sequences, you end up winning.

This could be nothing, and I may be overreacting, but it's suspicious enough that I wanted to bring it to investors' attention and let them decide what to do with their investment.

To that end I have set the "max profit" to 0, so not bets are currently being processed.  I didn't want to have to do that, but I would rather be safe than sorry.  No accounts are frozen, you can still divest, invest, deposit, withdraw, as before.  Just no bets are currently being processed until I can look at the data.

I'm sorry to have to do that.  It may look like I'm just upset that the house lost for a change, but it's not that.  I'm worried the server seeds have somehow been compromised, and that they are being used to win.

I don't know how I can tell if that is the case, or what to do next.

Lots of people in the chat are telling me I've done the wrong thing.

Let the shitstorm commence...

[iguru42]

Given the circumstances your actions sound reasonable to me. 

[mechs]

Doog,
  I agree with your action, to go from +20 BTC to -90 BTC in 2 days is crazy and the betting looks so suspicious.  I hope you will agree, if the site has not been compromised, then you need to change the parameters.  We do not need to give so many better parameters than competitors with the ultra low edge and high max payout that variance alone can cause massive loses from millionaire whales.
   Anyway, my 2 bits.  

[mechs]

As a correction, that my personnal loss as an investor.  The site went from up 2k to down 2k in a couple days - a 4k BTC loss.

[wolverine.ks]

can you set up some bots to do the same technique? as a way to see if it works?

[julz]

Also - can you review the rng being used and confirm it's not subject to some mathematical analysis that is giving certain bettors an edge?

I'm also little uncomfortable with such a low house edge of 1% - as it's very few games at real casinos that have such a low margin for the house.
Perhaps it is just variance, but there's a reason casinos often have much higher edges...  the maths really could just screw the house over the 'short term' - but mathematically - what is 'short term' anyway?  
With such a low edge - surely there is the possibility the house is in a hole for *years*.

From my investment, it seems I'm already looking at about 4 months of *expected* return - just to get back to even - let alone profit.


edit: I guess to be provably fair - the randomness is purely from the sha512 hash which is being applied.
Is this known to have properly randomly distributed outputs for an incrementing input?

[mechs]

Is it possible the server has been compromised at this player has the server seed?  You mentioned it is hosted at Amazon, maybe an amazon employee is responsible.  Then there would not even be a need to hack the server.

[A Meteorite]

Site is offline. Assuming it's so doog can preserve the state of the server while he investigates?

EDIT: It's back up, appears there's some new code...

[twentyseventy]

I sincerely hope that it's nothing, but this sounds like the best course of action at the moment-

[Dabs]

I believe SHA512 is not broken. That guy was just lucky. The pattern may be something else, like looking at the previous bets, and not just dependent on a win or loss.

I'm sure you know what to do or what to check if the server seeds have been compromised. I don't think they have. How does your site store it?

My guess, he's just a good gambler.

The RNG is SHA512 on the seeds and nonce. There is no known mathematical analysis except to guess when you are going to win and when you are going to lose. But the use of the same seeds with an incrementing nonce does imply that the dice, in this case, do have some sort of memory.

Again, that is gambler's fallacy, but as a player, I believe it to be true in this case. However, I am not going to debate or argue it with anyone here. I've said what I've said in the other thread about my martingale sequences on 87%. And I've come up positive after almost a million bets.

This new whale must have a variation on this system.

But these are just anecdotal ... he did what he did, I did what I did, doesn't prove anything.

[julz]

I believe SHA512 is not broken. That guy was just lucky. The pattern may be something else, like looking at the previous bets, and not just dependent on a win or loss.

I'm sure you know what to do or what to check if the server seeds have been compromised. I don't think they have. How does your site store it?

My guess, he's just a good gambler.

The RNG is SHA512 on the seeds and nonce. There is no known mathematical analysis except to guess when you are going to win and when you are going to lose. But the use of the same seeds with an incrementing nonce does imply that the dice, in this case, do have some sort of memory.

Again, that is gambler's fallacy, but as a player, I believe it to be true in this case. However, I am not going to debate or argue it with anyone here. I've said what I've said in the other thread about my martingale sequences on 87%. And I've come up positive after almost a million bets.

This new whale must have a variation on this system.

But these are just anecdotal ... he did what he did, I did what I did, doesn't prove anything.

Well.. SHA-256 has been demonstrated to have non-random properties when 'step reduced'.   I believe some of the javascript sha algorithms have the option to set the number of rounds applied.
A lower number of rounds can be used in order to reduce CPU time - and I think it's worth reviewing whether enough rounds are being applied in this case.
 

[mechs]

If there was an error in implementation, Dooglas should not allow new investor until the site is back to profits.  Would not be fair for the early investors to be saddle with a loss due to an error as a beta tester and the new investor to benefit from that by diluting those sitting on a loss.

[dooglus]

Site is offline. Assuming it's so doog can preserve the state of the server while he investigates?

EDIT: It's back up, appears there's some new code...

The "new code" was just me adding an index to the bet table so I could quickly select bets by userid.  Not really new code at all.

I'm going to put the site back how it was, with a 1% edge and 1% max profit.

I've looked at the whale's wins, and while lucky, they're not exception.

Good luck all, and sorry for the disruption...

[drawingthesun]

Not sure where to post ideas, in the gambling thread or the securities.

I posted this in the gambling thread, maybe it should be here instead:

Hey Dooglus, I know your busy with lots of crazy stuff with the site, but can I suggest some stuff? (once all the crazy is over of course)

• A problem you may develop far in the future is that you might have a lot of lost coins sitting in user accounts. I suggest that every user is forced to add a withdraw address so they can be credited if the account has not been used for 10 years or until the site closes. Also this is good for emergencies.
• If I want to watch two users in two windows I open private browsing and filter them by user ID. But then when I close I never access those accounts again. I suspect you will eventually have millions of accounts that were one use and have never even had a balance. I suggest accounts that have been used once with no login and no balance be terminated and removed internally to save database space. Perhaps re-enter the user ID back into the pool of ID's for new users.
• Could you please allow API access to the data located at https://just-dice.com/roll/1 so users can download everything (or even have a torrent of the data updated weekly) This will allow analysis over the data and put to rest any allegations that owners or whales have found weaknesses in the system and are taking advantage.

Thanks Dooglus, I really like the site and the entertainment over the past few days has been incredible.

[MRKLYE]

Site is back up! Seems to be working 100%

Get in here people!

[BigBitz]

Site is back up! Seems to be working 100%

Get in here people!

What's the stats like? We -4000?

[davecoin]

-1829

[BigBitz]

-1829

Clawing back..... Thx

[trout]

please don't chase away the whales.
They are our only hope.
There are but a few  whales out there, and without them it may take a year to recover all this loss.