Bit-Syndicate - A Bitcoin Lottery Syndicate [Restarted!!!!!]

[Noviz]

Hi, I want to introduce everyone to a new venture of mine. Bit-Syndicate.
Basically this website gives users higher chances of winning in the various Bitcoin Lotteries.

What is Bit-Syndicate?

Simply put this website is a lottery syndicate for the various Bitcoin lotteries (BitLotto, etc).
(http://bitcoinsreview.com/bit-syndicate/)

So what is a Lottery Syndicate?

A lottery syndicate is a group of people who put their money into a pot to buy tickets. The winnings are then shared back to those who contributed.
These are seen in national lotteries all over the world, usually combining groups of friends or business employees.

So the chances of winning are higher?

Yes. Because you are compiling tickets, your chance of winning is higher. Obviously, however, because the winning ticket is shared by a group the prize is divided.

For example, if you enter a lottery with 100 sold tickets you would have 1/100 chance of winning if you bought one ticket yourself. However if you were in a syndicate of say 20 pooled tickets your chances would increase to 20/100 (1/5).

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Please visit the site for more information:
http://bitcoinsreview.com/bit-syndicate/

Feel free to ask any questions either on here or by using the contact options on the Bit-Syndicate site.

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I'll use this space to update everyone (otherwise go to the website)...

- 06/08/11
- I'm going to start the main BitLotto syndicate next week. I just want to finish the first BitLotto Jr draw first to iron everything out.

- 11/08/11
- We won BitLotto Jr! 2.717 bitcoins
- Main BitLotto syndicate start delayed... now coming next week.

- 13/08/11
- BitLotto main draw syndicate now open!

- 07/09/11
- Had some time off with BitLotto Jr but now we are back up and running

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[bitlotto]

Good luck! Thanks for picking BitLotto!  I'd suggest using a special wallet only for this purpose. That way people can trace the transactions all the way to BitLotto to verify if their pool has won. Perhaps even listing what tickets are the ones you bought. I haven't read your website yet, but I'll check it out later. I wish your syndicate good luck!

[Noviz]

Good luck! Thanks for picking BitLotto!  I'd suggest using a special wallet only for this purpose. That way people can trace the transactions all the way to BitLotto to verify if their pool has won. Perhaps even listing what tickets are the ones you bought. I haven't read your website yet, but I'll check it out later. I wish your syndicate good luck!

I'm glad you are happy to let me run a syndicate. I was a little worried that you'd disapprove... although in reality it should bring more custom to your games so it's a win win situation I suppose.
Yes the idea of a special wallet is a good one. I'll keep this in mind after the trial run.
The deposit address will be the same address used to purchase the tickets so hopefully users will be able to keep track of it anyway. My intention was to buy the tickets all at once and take a screenshot of blockexplorer and ring the tickets purchased by the syndicate.

[Cory]

Awesome! I love this idea. Pooled gambling.

I just bought three tickets. Hope we win!

[Noviz]

Awesome! I love this idea. Pooled gambling.

I just bought three tickets. Hope we win!

Thanks for joining in
I have just seen the deposit to the address and have updated the website to show that fact.
I shall be purchasing the BitLotto Jr tickets soon.
As I have said on the site, the more we get involved the more chance we have of winning

[bitlotto]

The deposit address will be the same address used to purchase the tickets so hopefully users will be able to keep track of it anyway. My intention was to buy the tickets all at once and take a screenshot of blockexplorer and ring the tickets purchased by the syndicate.

For BitLotto Jr (and the main one) make sure you don't send it all at once. (I think you know that though) Each ticket has to be a separate payment. Oh, and don't wait till the very end in case the payments don't make it in a block in time! (I guess worst case they would just go to the next weeks draw) Something to consider would be making a payment of 0.050001 (or other unique amount) for each ticket. Yes, you are paying a very TINY amount more but when people see the BitLotto Jr site it will be really easy to pick out what ones are the syndicate ones. It would work until someone else decides to pay that amount too for some reason. Or just make them all at once and you can probably tell what ones are yours based off of the time you get your first confirmation. It will be the same time of the transaction in blockexplorer. Anyways, good luck with your project. If you need any help or advice feel free to PM me. 

[Noviz]

The deposit address will be the same address used to purchase the tickets so hopefully users will be able to keep track of it anyway. My intention was to buy the tickets all at once and take a screenshot of blockexplorer and ring the tickets purchased by the syndicate.

For BitLotto Jr (and the main one) make sure you don't send it all at once. (I think you know that though) Each ticket has to be a separate payment. Oh, and don't wait till the very end in case the payments don't make it in a block in time! (I guess worst case they would just go to the next weeks draw) Something to consider would be making a payment of 0.050001 (or other unique amount) for each ticket. Yes, you are paying a very TINY amount more but when people see the BitLotto Jr site it will be really easy to pick out what ones are the syndicate ones. It would work until someone else decides to pay that amount too for some reason. Or just make them all at once and you can probably tell what ones are yours based off of the time you get your first confirmation. It will be the same time of the transaction in blockexplorer. Anyways, good luck with your project. If you need any help or advice feel free to PM me. 

Thanks for the advice. Yeah I'm in two minds about buying the tickets all at once or buying them when a new syndicate member sends their coins to me. This is a test run so I guess I'll see which will be the best way after this weeks draw.

On a side note:

Because this is the first draw I am purchasing two tickets myself to increase our syndicate members chances of winning!

[Noviz]

Ha I matched Cory's payment thinking that was for two tickets but instead it was three. Oh well! 

[Noviz]

Just bought the first lot of tickets (6 in total).



Annoyingly what I have now realised is that I should have used a special wallet as the coins have come from a few different addresses.
I'll get this sorted for next time as it will be easy for the syndicate players to track the payments... I'm very sorry for the inconvinience although I did expect some minor hiccups in the first run.

Just to show the power of a syndicate...

Currently there have been 26 tickets sold for the BitLotto Jr draw.
So if you bought one ticket you would have 1/26 chance of winning.
As a group we have 6 tickets... so 6/26
So our chances of winning have increased to around the region of 1/4.33!

[Cory]

Alright Noviz, I see you've matched me.

Forgive me, but I'll have to one-up you. I've just doubled your match. Just bought six more tickets.

[Noviz]

Alright Noviz, I see you've matched me.

Forgive me, but I'll have to one-up you. I've just doubled your match. Just bought six more tickets.

lol awesome
I've processed the new 6 tickets already.

Now if my maths are correct...

We now have a 12/32 chance of winning... which is around a 1/2.66 chance.



Sorry again about the cock up with the wallets. This is the first go so I expected a few teething issues. I'll be using stand alone wallets for the next draw.

[Cory]

Great!

I want more people to invest, so I will match the number of tickets the next guy buys, as long as they buy in the next 24 hours.

[Konzul]

I do like the idea, however you should make clear if and how much of a cut you take for running the syndicate. Currently you say + 0.01 per order, is that all you take? (Would leave you with the difference of cost of purchasing ticket transaction fees of 0.005 x tickets sold, not a lot of "profit" for you).

In addition for "bigger" lotteries you should consider shares in single tickets. This would enable low rollers to take part in the big jackpots.

Wish you good luck with the syndicate. Actually I might purchase a few tickets trough it soon. Long term you might want to automate the ticket purchasing to reduce effort required by you. Also using a specific wallet / hash to purchase tickets from is a great idea by bitlotto.

[Noviz]

I do like the idea, however you should make clear if and how much of a cut you take for running the syndicate. Currently you say + 0.01 per order, is that all you take? (Would leave you with the difference of cost of purchasing ticket transaction fees of 0.005 x tickets sold, not a lot of "profit" for you).

In addition for "bigger" lotteries you should consider shares in single tickets. This would enable low rollers to take part in the big jackpots.

Wish you good luck with the syndicate. Actually I might purchase a few tickets trough it soon. Long term you might want to automate the ticket purchasing to reduce effort required by you. Also using a specific wallet / hash to purchase tickets from is a great idea by bitlotto.

Basically my cut is the 0.01 per order. This might be slightly bigger or 0.01 per ticket for the main BitLotto game; I'm not really sure yet. Or maybe it could increase slightly with the amount of tickets ordered... maybe like 0.01 per two tickets.
My main profit from this essentially comes from the fact that I'll be part of the syndicate myself from time to time. I bought three tickets myself for this round.
It's all a work in progress though. Prices may change or whatever, but I want to keep it as close to the price of buying a regular ticket as possible. I doubt I'll be changing the price for BitLotto Jr because the prize pots are generally quite small so if I increase the processing fee it becomes pointless for the player. Plus its fun for me just as much as the other players... I never envisaged this as hugely profitable for myself.

To your second point...
Currently each single ticket is counted as such. So lets say person A has 3 tickets in the syndicate and person B has 7. If the lottery winnings is 10 bitcoins then person A recieves 3 and person B recieves 7... obviously because one ticket is worth 1 bitcoin.
For the big lottery I might consider running a side syndicate for a single ticket orders to accomodate those that can only afford one ticket... so each player can only buy one ticket thus giving a higher share of the prize for those who cannot afford many tickets. That might be somewhat difficult to 'police' though... So we'd basically have a Single ticket syndicate and a Multi ticket syndicate. Obviously the multi one would generally have a higher chance of winning but would result in a smaller ticket value. Single ticket syndicates would result in a smaller chance of winning but a higher share of the prize.

Thank you for the advice and suggestions. As I have said many times this is a work in progress and I love user feedback.
I expect I'll be using the seperate wallet idea in the next draw... in fact I've already set it up on my end. I'll have a look into automation of ticket purchasing although it's not really been that bad to do it manually so far... I guess I'll see how many players we can get. Of course if I end up having to process 100+ tickets, the manual way might become a problem.
Hope to see you joining the syndicate soon

[whirlpool]

How are you planning on dividing up the winnings from the lottery? Will they be split equally, or proportionally depending on the number of tickets a person has purchased?

[Noviz]

How are you planning on dividing up the winnings from the lottery? Will they be split equally, or proportionally depending on the number of tickets a person has purchased?

The winnings at the moment are divided proportionally. I may change this if it turns out one user is simply buying 10's of tickets making it worthless to other players. Or, depending on the amount of people playing, I might have a proportional syndicate and a equal syndicate for those that can only afford one ticket. The issue with the 'equal' payment is that it would be really difficult to 'police' as a one player could simply buy tickets from different wallets.

Do you think splitting equally would be better?

[jimbo77]

How are you planning on dividing up the winnings from the lottery? Will they be split equally, or proportionally depending on the number of tickets a person has purchased?

The winnings at the moment are divided proportionally. I may change this if it turns out one user is simply buying 10's of tickets making it worthless to other players. Or, depending on the amount of people playing, I might have a proportional syndicate and a equal syndicate for those that can only afford one ticket. The issue with the 'equal' payment is that it would be really difficult to 'police' as a one player could simply buy tickets from different wallets.

Do you think splitting equally would be better?

I may join but it would have to be proportional.

[Noviz]

How are you planning on dividing up the winnings from the lottery? Will they be split equally, or proportionally depending on the number of tickets a person has purchased?

The winnings at the moment are divided proportionally. I may change this if it turns out one user is simply buying 10's of tickets making it worthless to other players. Or, depending on the amount of people playing, I might have a proportional syndicate and a equal syndicate for those that can only afford one ticket. The issue with the 'equal' payment is that it would be really difficult to 'police' as a one player could simply buy tickets from different wallets.

Do you think splitting equally would be better?

I may join but it would have to be proportional.

It is proportional at the moment. I doubt it will be changing unless I find that one player is buying loads of tickets making single ticket players worthless.
Feel free to join in

As a side note I'll be starting the main BitLotto draw syndicate next week. I just want to finish the first BitLotto Jr draw first to iron everything out.

[whirlpool]

I believe that a proportional system would be better in the main BitLotto, because with the large jackpot, it wouldn't be fair if someone who bought one ticket got the same amount as someone who bought ten tickets.

[Noviz]

I believe that a proportional system would be better in the main BitLotto, because with the large jackpot, it wouldn't be fair if someone who bought one ticket got the same amount as someone who bought ten tickets.

Ah yes that is why I made it proportional in the first place.

It may well turn out that the winnings from the BitLotto Jr may be quite small... however the chances of winning it multiple times will be quite high so in some respects it all balances out.
I'm definitely making sure that as a syndicate we don't dominate ticket sales as that would mean the winnings per ticket would be tiny. So it may end up that the syndicates may close early if we have bought too many... then open again as our percentage of the overall ticket sales decreases. It'll just take a little extra management on my end... it shouldn't be a problem though, especially for the big BitLotto draw.