Proof of pure luck

[BlackHatCoiner]

Few months in the gambling industry and I've never seen anyone ever questioning: How am I supposed to be sure that what am I playing is based on pure luck?

The owners could have simply programmed the numbers in a way to always be profitable, but not 100% lucky. The problem is that even if the admins were honest and said that the numbers of their game are getting generated randomly, there's no proof that they do. You still have to trust them and since we're talking about entrepreneurs, we can't be sure they're not lying. By making the program open source, yes, you do have made a big step, but still, the client can't view the back-end's code to check that the files are the open sourced ones.

Lately, I'm building a keno-based game that will prove its luck and I would like your opinion about that. I will leave an option to gamble with real bitcoins, but you can of course try it for free once it's done. It's just an experiment.
(Here's the game I'm building: https://youtu.be/RGGZ4Lgurhw)

Let me explain you the game. You choose 1-12 numbers from the range of 1 to 80. The machine then generates 20 random numbers between that range. If, for example, I've chosen 8 numbers and 7 of them are generated from the machine too I earn lots of money. So, we're talking about possibilities here. Every 5 minutes a new draw of numbers will begin, and the players that have submitted their ticket will see their results.

I've found a solution to convince everyone that the numbers will be generated randomly. Here it goes:

Let's take 20 random numbers between 1 and 80 that only the admin will know:

Code:

42,54,3,12,9,44,48,2,49,8,58,80,23,67,24

Then, let's perform SHA256 to that string:

Code:

81a147f318095a798a6dc1d108b871a008a17b80434bc3484c5dd8e906b0c523

That's all. That's the way.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The admin will generate thousands of these random "strings" and perform SHA256 to them. Then he will post on a new page of his gambling site all these hashes. Once a draw of numbers is shown, players will verify that the generated numbers produce the same hash posted on the hashes' page. Thus, they will see that the draws of numbers have already been generated and the admin can't change them for his own benefit. Players could save a copy of all the hashes so they ensure that the admin won't change the hashes.

I hope you found it interested.

[hatshepsut93]

This system, known as Provably Fair, has been known for years, and it probably greatly contributed to the growth of crypto gambling industry, since it solved the problem of trusting in the fairness of the game. But it didn't solve trust completely, a casino can still make an exit scam, they can refuse to payout the winnings, and this cryptographic commitment scheme doesn't work for investors, which means that casinos could be theoretically defrauding them.

[BlackHatCoiner]

This system, known as Provably Fair, has been known for years, and it probably greatly contributed to the growth of crypto gambling industry, since it solved the problem of trusting in the fairness of the game.

Was the way I wrote known for years? I thought they made their packages open source.

[tippytoes]

The situation that you are saying here is I think happening. But how do we know that they are somehow manipulating the game or it is rigged? There's always provable fairness in most of the casinos here. So how can you verify that they are rigged if we can't see the backdoor. There's even tutorials on how to verify your bets. What if it always show that it is provably fair? Are you still going to suspect that somehow they programmed it the way they want it to?

[dunfida]

The situation that you are saying here is I think happening. But how do we know that they are somehow manipulating the game or it is rigged? There's always provable fairness in most of the casinos here. So how can you verify that they are rigged if we can't see the backdoor. There's even tutorials on how to verify your bets. What if it always show that it is provably fair? Are you still going to suspect that somehow they programmed it the way they want it to?

People wont boggle their mind too much unless if you are really that picky or too sensitive when it comes to fairness issue.People or majority will just stick out to known or popular ones and presume out
that they havent been cheated by the house but actually no one really knows on whats happening on backdoor.Trying to prove out anything will really just give a headache, thats why majority
wont really bother that much.

This system, known as Provably Fair, has been known for years, and it probably greatly contributed to the growth of crypto gambling industry, since it solved the problem of trusting in the fairness of the game. But it didn't solve trust completely, a casino can still make an exit scam, they can refuse to payout the winnings, and this cryptographic commitment scheme doesn't work for investors, which means that casinos could be theoretically defrauding them.

Exactly!

[Saint-loup]

Few months in the gambling industry and I've never seen anyone ever questioning: How am I supposed to be sure that what am I playing is based on pure luck?

The owners could have simply programmed the numbers in a way to always be profitable, but not 100% lucky. The problem is that even if the admins were honest and said that the numbers of their game are getting generated randomly, there's no proof that they do. You still have to trust them and since we're talking about entrepreneurs, we can't be sure they're not lying. By making the program open source, yes, you do have made a big step, but still, the client can't view the back-end's code to check that the files are the open sourced ones.
[...]

I'm sorry but being provably fair doesn't mean being perfectly random.
With this system, you can still choose combinations less often played by users. For example it's well known people like to play dates of birth in this kind of games or figures deemed to be lucky numbers as 7, 1, 13, etc

[AmoreJaz]

Few months in the gambling industry and I've never seen anyone ever questioning: How am I supposed to be sure that what am I playing is based on pure luck?

The owners could have simply programmed the numbers in a way to always be profitable, but not 100% lucky. The problem is that even if the admins were honest and said that the numbers of their game are getting generated randomly, there's no proof that they do. You still have to trust them and since we're talking about entrepreneurs, we can't be sure they're not lying. By making the program open source, yes, you do have made a big step, but still, the client can't view the back-end's code to check that the files are the open sourced ones.
[...]

I'm sorry but being provably fair doesn't mean being perfectly random.
With this system, you can still chose combinations less often played by users. For example it's well known people like to play dates of birth in this kind of games or figures deemed to be lucky numbers as 7, 1, 13, etc

and tbh, not many people are really bothering the provable fairness if they are known and reputable casinos here. as what dunfida is saying, it is just a headache if you want to investigate their backdoors.
 and how many people do you think are verifying their bets? i guess not so many. maybe one can check once or twice just to check the site.
but most of us are too lazy to verify the bet every time we roll. not practical esp if you are playing in a reputable casino.

[stadus]

Few months in the gambling industry and I've never seen anyone ever questioning: How am I supposed to be sure that what am I playing is based on pure luck?

The owners could have simply programmed the numbers in a way to always be profitable, but not 100% lucky. The problem is that even if the admins were honest and said that the numbers of their game are getting generated randomly, there's no proof that they do. You still have to trust them and since we're talking about entrepreneurs, we can't be sure they're not lying. By making the program open source, yes, you do have made a big step, but still, the client can't view the back-end's code to check that the files are the open sourced ones.
[...]

I'm sorry but being provably fair doesn't mean being perfectly random.
With this system, you can still chose combinations less often played by users. For example it's well known people like to play dates of birth in this kind of games or figures deemed to be lucky numbers as 7, 1, 13, etc

and tbh, not many people are really bothering the provable fairness if they are known and reputable casinos here. as what dunfida is saying, it is just a headache if you want to investigate their backdoors.
 and how many people do you think are verifying their bets? i guess not so many. maybe one can check once or twice just to check the site.
but most of us are too lazy to verify the bet every time we roll. not practical esp if you are playing in a reputable casino.

Exactly, most of us will just trust on the reputation of the site. The logic is simple, if that site has thousands or 100 of thousands of gamblers, there are certainly few who are checking the fairness of the site, so majority of us will just leave it to them to do the job and we just bet and hope we got lucky.

No one really questions the provably fairness of the site as long as it's a reputable site.

[dimonstration]

The situation that you are saying here is I think happening. But how do we know that they are somehow manipulating the game or it is rigged? There's always provable fairness in most of the casinos here. So how can you verify that they are rigged if we can't see the backdoor. There's even tutorials on how to verify your bets. What if it always show that it is provably fair? Are you still going to suspect that somehow they programmed it the way they want it to?

As long as the site have good reputation, fast in withdrawal and have active support it is fine for me. If we have trust issue too much we will just suspect anything even it is already said that it is a provably fair casino. It's just a matter of believing what we only thought. Though gambling is already  a luck game but we're not guarantee too if it's just pure luck unless we don't think what to bet or what position of the card can make us win. More casinos now are putting in their  websites that they are probably fair as many still didn't want to base  their play only in pure luck, since it involves money and we all just want to win after all.

[maydna]

You can check by yourself. Most gamblers who only want to have fun in gambling will not check on that because they will think that it is a waste of time and can get headaches checking the result. They would let the result comes out to them without thinking if the game was cheating or not by the admin or not because they know that they need the luck to win.

As long as you can play gambling on the trusty website and that site is recommended, I think you don't have to think about cheating because the site or the owner will not try to do that. If you always check the result, I don't think you can enjoy the game because you will busy checking the result. That is up to you.

[Saint-loup]

Thanks for the information and detailed explanation. AFAIK, it is possible to change player seed on many gambling platforms and this should increase randomness.

Few months in the gambling industry and I've never seen anyone ever questioning: How am I supposed to be sure that what am I playing is based on pure luck?

The owners could have simply programmed the numbers in a way to always be profitable, but not 100% lucky. The problem is that even if the admins were honest and said that the numbers of their game are getting generated randomly, there's no proof that they do. You still have to trust them and since we're talking about entrepreneurs, we can't be sure they're not lying. By making the program open source, yes, you do have made a big step, but still, the client can't view the back-end's code to check that the files are the open sourced ones.
[...]

I'm sorry but being provably fair doesn't mean being perfectly random.
With this system, you can still chose combinations less often played by users. For example it's well known people like to play dates of birth in this kind of games or figures deemed to be lucky numbers as 7, 1, 13, etc

That is why gamblers prefer to bet on lucky numbers aka date of birth, wedding day, etc. Btw, is it possible to achieve 100% authentic randomness?

AFAIK authentic randomness can only be achieved with physical randomness like real dices, coins, card decks, nuclear activity, etc. But here we are talking about unbiased randomness, it's quite different.

[Darker45]

Thanks for the information and detailed explanation. AFAIK, it is possible to change player seed on many gambling platforms and this should increase randomness.

Few months in the gambling industry and I've never seen anyone ever questioning: How am I supposed to be sure that what am I playing is based on pure luck?

The owners could have simply programmed the numbers in a way to always be profitable, but not 100% lucky. The problem is that even if the admins were honest and said that the numbers of their game are getting generated randomly, there's no proof that they do. You still have to trust them and since we're talking about entrepreneurs, we can't be sure they're not lying. By making the program open source, yes, you do have made a big step, but still, the client can't view the back-end's code to check that the files are the open sourced ones.
[...]

I'm sorry but being provably fair doesn't mean being perfectly random.
With this system, you can still chose combinations less often played by users. For example it's well known people like to play dates of birth in this kind of games or figures deemed to be lucky numbers as 7, 1, 13, etc

That is why gamblers prefer to bet on lucky numbers aka date of birth, wedding day, etc. Btw, is it possible to achieve 100% authentic randomness?

AFAIK authentic randomness can only be achieved with physical randomness like real dices, coins, card decks, nuclear activity, etc. But here we are talking about unbiased randomness, it's quite different.

Actually, if we talk of authentic randomness, as in random in the strictest sense of the word, there is no such a thing, not even in the physical roll of a dice, or flip of a coin, and so on. And so we are only settling on an acceptable amount of randomness, something which far exceeds our unaided human computation. I guess this is good enough for RNGs.

[Lorence.xD]

This system, known as Provably Fair, has been known for years, and it probably greatly contributed to the growth of crypto gambling industry, since it solved the problem of trusting in the fairness of the game. But it didn't solve trust completely, a casino can still make an exit scam, they can refuse to payout the winnings, and this cryptographic commitment scheme doesn't work for investors, which means that casinos could be theoretically defrauding them.

That is the number one problem for online gambling, you can't win big because someone might fuck you from behind by witholding your winnings. I think trusting strangers is a hard thing to do because people are different. In my opinion, this is the number one dilemma of gambling entrepreneur, making sure that their games balances between being trustworthy and profitable. You can't have imbalances because that will be bad for your business either way. If you open up your business too much, exploits will pop up and if you want to rake profit then you will do questionable measures.

[hulla]

Few months in the gambling industry and I've never seen anyone ever questioning: How am I supposed to be sure that what am I playing is based on pure luck?

The owners could have simply programmed the numbers in a way to always be profitable, but not 100% lucky. The problem is that even if the admins were honest and said that the numbers of their game are getting generated randomly, there's no proof that they do.

In other to clear the air and make gamblers understand that game results are generated randomly despite the house edge of most gambling to be 1% was the reason why provably fair was introduced so that gambler can check the result of the game are fair and not rigged or fixed.

You still have to trust them and since we're talking about entrepreneurs, we can't be sure they're not lying. By making the program open source, yes, you do have made a big step, but still, the client can't view the back-end's code to check that the files are the open sourced ones.

Providing the open source code or the back end code of a gambling site can cause future complication of the gambling site and the last time I checked every gambling site paid huge fund for the programmer that creates the code for them exposing it for others to emulate it won't seems good and not gambling site owner will ever do that.

[iamsheikhadil]

It's a nice idea but this is what most casinos do as well which are provably fair! They give you a server hash which you can later verify by combining with your client seed and check if the results produced are the same or not. Am I missing something? Because technically it's the same thing as you have just proposed! Sites that offer keno games like stake, have the exact same mechanism to prove that they are indeed fair!

[cabron]

It's a nice idea but this is what most casinos do as well which are provably fair! They give you a server hash which you can later verify by combining with your client seed and check if the results produced are the same or not. Am I missing something? Because technically it's the same thing as you have just proposed! Sites that offer keno games like stake, have the exact same mechanism to prove that they are indeed fair!

Fair or not, the possibility of the house defrauding will still be an existing threat to players particularly the high rollers. They could still run with the money just as it had happened in the past. The only thats is important I think is how long the casino had established themselves in the industry that had build the trust over time. When a casino had been around for years and have not gotten some accusations, will not run out of players whether they play out of luck or with a strategy implemented.

[ReiMomo]

Interesting fact!

Proof of luck will always matter on the provably fair system that the gambling site has. Users always monitor the hash given to ensure the accuracy of giving the hash and it should always accurate to the result. This means that there is no manipulation of the sites between the operator of the site. OP was extremely right. Verifying gambling sites that have claim provably fair will always good even though dice site gambling.

[imstillthebest]

Few months in the gambling industry and I've never seen anyone ever questioning: How am I supposed to be sure that what am I playing is based on pure luck?

because thats too common . thru the years gamblers already know how to clasify gambling games if its luck or skill based pretty easy by just looking on the game mechanics and i think there are now sites that categorized thier games . they put in the description that these games are skill based and that games are luck based . at the end of the day , it will all depend on the gambler if he will play the game based on how its clasified or if he will play the game the other way around  . thats possible like example me i play dice game the most and they say its luck based ? well not me because i implement a strat , i imposed my skills towards this game .

[Wexnident]

~snip

I'd agree with Darker with this, there are various arguments about what is truly random since the word random itself can be defined in various ways, or various levels, such as in simple layman terms or delving deeper into it. It can mostly be said to be a term that is just used to comfortably explain how numbers are being shown in a sequence, basically when we don't really have a basis upon to rely on. There's the idea that quantum physics provides real randomness, but it delves a bit too deep which is too much for me at this point.

You still have to trust them and since we're talking about entrepreneurs, we can't be sure they're not lying. By making the program open source, yes, you do have made a big step, but still, the client can't view the back-end's code to check that the files are the open sourced ones.

Even if they were to truly show the back end code, would others even understand it fully? It's a matter of that not everyone can't fully understand everything, hence why most people rely on reputation. There are a lot of people that check out the fairness of literally everything, and not just gambling casinos, and once compiled? It provides a pretty trustworthy record, provided that the sample size is big enough that is.

[Janation]

Reading this hit me with a realization.

As long as we are gambling online, either slot, roulette or dice, we can't achieve that randomness that we all wanted unless we actually use a natural dice, roulette, I don't know about slots though. Then if you win, a casino could make an exit scam and won't pay the winners or even sometimes freeze the account, provable fair my $$$.