bustabit.com -- The Social Gambling Game

[Ruzka]

Really enjoying this game Just wish I had some actual bitcoins I could deposit right now haha.

Thanks. What's you're username? I'll send you few thousand bits so you can keep enjoying =)

My username is Ruzka

Thanks a lot

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[espringe]

My username is Ruzka

Thanks a lot

Credited your account with 3k bits. Use how ever you like =)

[BitCoinPokerBro]

If you want to give it a try without commitment, there's a builtin faucet that gives out 2 bits (2 millionths of a bitcoin) an hour.

I'm checking out your site,  but FYI there's a weird typo in the OP (bolded above).  A bit is a unit of information.  I think you meant a 2 μBTC (sometimes written ubtc in ascii).   The other normal way of saying this 200 Satoshi.  Cheers!

It is not really a typo, as there were some heated discussion on introducing a new unit "bit" for 1 bit = 100 satoshi.
You can check http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rmto3/its_bits/ and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=592691.0 for examples.

The bitcoin community can not make up it's mind about the "bit" unit. First it was 1/10 of a satoshi (made popular by faucets at the time). Now it's equal to 1 μBTC which we already have a name for. Where will the madness end??

[espringe]

Thanks everyone! Really appreciate the strong showing. We've had 22.3 BTC wagered from our 362 signups.

The most won goes to: https://www.moneypot.com/user/Kasurak who currently has a net profit of 54.5 thousand bits, and most gross profit goes to https://www.moneypot.com/user/kolloh with 1.8 million bits gross profits (winnings, excluding loses)

[izanagi narukami]

Thanks everyone! Really appreciate the strong showing. We've had 22.3 BTC wagered from our 362 signups.
...

Any chance to give some prize for top 10 at leaderboard for some period (daily,weekly,or monthly?)

[espringe]

Any prize for top 10 at leaderboard for some period (daily,weekly,or monthly?)

That's a great idea. I'll first add a leaderboard of the day / week / month  -- and then start a prize scheme for it.

[dooglus]

Let's stop spamming that poor guy's thread with moneypot discussion.

I really appreciate how you didn't totally dump on the site for the _massive_ issue I had when you were playing (my latest deploy had a bug in the max loss alarms, which caused havoc, but I fixed it pretty quick) -- and you didn't mention it, so just wanted to say that was quite kind of you =)

I didn't notice it. Maybe because I was new to the site and didn't know what was going on anyway. I did see a message saying that I needed to refresh the page, but then it seemed to refresh itself and I didn't have to do anything.

The site isn't really provably fair. Each "game" you pick how far the multiplier is going to go before the game crashes. You provide a hash of that number, so we can be sure you picked it in advance.

Yeah, that's correct -- I definitely should acknowledge it. Due to the nature of the game, I'm not sure it's even possible to be fully provably fair.

I had an idea about that. Publish the algorithm by which you come up with each game's multiplier. Presumably it will be seeded somehow. Pick a random seed that you will use for game 1 billion. sha256 hash it to get the seed you will use for the game before that, and so on. Each games seed is the sha256 hash of the game that comes after it. So you have a billion-long chain of sha256 hashes. Before each game you publish the hash of the current game's seed, which allows everyone to verify all the previous games but none of the future games. Now you can't be accused of rigging the outcomes.

I had an idea of introducing an "inverse game" -- where if someone suspects unfair play, they could place a a bet on the "inverse game". That is to say, they continually lose money (instead of continually make money) and on the game crash, they *make* their bet. So any multiplier < 2x, they would make a profit, any mutliplier > 2x they would take a loss.

But you still get to see, in real time, whether most people are playing the regular or inverse game, and adjust the outcomes to be mostly under 2x or mostly over 2x accordingly.

Because I predetermine the multiplier, I can't change it. But  I could *always* feign network issues, and not accept any unfavorable games. So I'm really at a loss to how I can make the game fully provably fair.

That's always a possibility, but that needn't stop you from making the game as provably fair as possible.

5) I won a bunch of bonuses for being last to bail, but the bonuses weren't added to my bankroll until I reloaded the site I think.

Yeah, sorry -- this is a UI bug. They were adding to your balance, but the front-end didn't add them. I'll fix this tomorrow. As you noticed, refreshing the page fixes the problem

It's kind of useful. It means I can appear to lose my whole balance and still have a decent amount left for the next time I play.

Thanks very much. Really, really appreciate the great feedback and the time you took to playing the game. If you feel like playing more, I credited your account with a few bits to keep going

You're welcome. Thanks for the 'bits'. I managed to get greedy at just the wrong time and lost almost all of them.

[espringe]

I had an idea about that. Publish the algorithm by which you come up with each game's multiplier. Presumably it will be seeded somehow. Pick a random seed that you will use for game 1 billion. sha256 hash it to get the seed you will use for the game before that, and so on. Each games seed is the sha256 hash of the game that comes after it. So you have a billion-long chain of sha256 hashes. Before each game you publish the hash of the current game's seed, which allows everyone to verify all the previous games but none of the future games. Now you can't be accused of rigging the outcomes.

Neat idea! Oh man, how do you expect me to fix my UI bugs when you give me such tantalizing ideas to play around with. I've got a little script generating my sha256 chain now. But it's quite an intrusive change, so I don't think I'll be able to get it live for a while.

But you still get to see, in real time, whether most people are playing the regular or inverse game, and adjust the outcomes to be mostly under 2x or mostly over 2x accordingly.

True. Although if I did that, I'd be vulnerable to someone who knew I did that, and switched.

That's always a possibility, but that needn't stop you from making the game as provably fair as possible.

Good point. I'm working on another social real time gambling game at the same time, which has the same problem -- so using a chain like that is quite appealing.

You're welcome. Thanks for the 'bits'. I managed to get greedy at just the wrong time and lost almost all of them.

hehe. Thanks man =) To be honest, I was driven out of fear that you might want to muck around with a few BTC on my site. Even though the odds are in my favor, I find the prospect of being the counter-party against your bets rather terrifying (when the bankroll is also known as my personal savings) =/

[dooglus]

Neat idea! Oh man, how do you expect me to fix my UI bugs when you give me such tantalizing ideas to play around with. I've got a little script generating my sha256 chain now. But it's quite an intrusive change, so I don't think I'll be able to get it live for a while.

See the "how does it work?" answer here: https://lbaat.net/howtouse for where I first saw this idea.

Even though the odds are in my favor, I find the prospect of being the counter-party against your bets rather terrifying (when the bankroll is also known as my personal savings) =/

That's why we crowd-source our bankrolls these days, so we don't have to risk our savings...

Have you done any analysis to determine what a safe amount to risk per game is?

Do I remember reading that you risk up to 10% of the bankroll per game? That seems very dangerous for a game with a 1% house edge.

[espringe]

Do I remember reading that you risk up to 10% of the bankroll per game? That seems very dangerous for a game with a 1% house edge.

Yeah, that's right. Although there is *also* a 1 BTC max bet, so it's not as bad as it would first seem -- but my bankroll simulations are still quite terrifying. I can promise you, if someone starts placing max bets -- my heart will be racing faster than theirs.

My total savings is about ~77 BTC, give or take a little -- so risking just 1% of that isn't really an appealing max-win at this stage. To be honest, I'm pretty ok with losing up to 10% in a single game -- I just hope that it's because my site has continued to grow in popularity -- I'll eventually recuperate my loses. But if not, I'll survive -- life is cheap here (Guadalajara) and I also work a part time job.

But yeah, there's definitely a real danger of someone putting a significant dent in my bankroll. But hey, I guess I'm just a gambler at heart. At least this time the odds are with me

[espringe]

I had an idea about that. Publish the algorithm by which you come up with each game's multiplier. Presumably it will be seeded somehow. Pick a random seed that you will use for game 1 billion. sha256 hash it to get the seed you will use for the game before that, and so on. Each games seed is the sha256 hash of the game that comes after it. So you have a billion-long chain of sha256 hashes. Before each game you publish the hash of the current game's seed, which allows everyone to verify all the previous games but none of the future games. Now you can't be accused of rigging the outcomes.

Hmm.  I just tried it, and was able to create a 0.2% undetectable house advantage for me, for the first year of operation. The problem is quite simple, I don't (and can't!) publish the starting seed -- which means I can cherry-pick the best one for me. Certain sequences are going to be more or less favorable to me. When I tried generating thousands of starting seeds -- and picking the one the lead the the most favorable opening year for me -- I was able to pretty quickly find one that would give me a 0.2% advantage. If I spent a bit more time, I'm sure I could do even better.


Given this, I'm not sure if I should bother continuing down this route?

[dooglus]

But yeah, there's definitely a real danger of someone putting a significant dent in my bankroll. But hey, I guess I'm just a gambler at heart. At least this time the odds are with me

Good luck with that. I just wanted to make you aware of the risk you were taking if you weren't already.

You're the third instance of someone limiting the maximum bet (and not just the maximum profit per bet) I've seen recently.

PrimeDice effectively does that, by limiting the maximum payout per bet (including the return of your stake) to 40 BTC. So if you want to bet at 98%, 1.01x, you're limited to betting around 39.6 BTC to win 0.4 I think.

Then dice.ninja launched, and they limit the max bet to 5 times the max profit (which is 0.5% of their bankroll). Apparently the same guys own dark-dice or some such, which lost a lot of coins to someone betting high stake, high chance of winning, low payout bets over and over and getting lucky.

I wonder if there's a good reason to limit the max bet beyond just limiting the maximum profit per bet. The Kelly criterion tells me no, but when I see it happening in three different places maybe there's a reason for it.

So you have a billion-long chain of sha256 hashes.

Hmm.  I just tried it, and was able to create a 0.2% undetectable house advantage for me, for the first year of operation.

Given this, I'm not sure if I should bother continuing down this route?

Well, this is still better than the current situation, which is that you get to create whatever house advantage you like, whenever you like. Don't you?

The problem could be solved using the server-seed, client-seed technique of other sites. Only instead of per player and per randomize, it only happens once.

Create your chain of a billion sha256 hashes, publish the billionth hash, then (and only then) have someone trusted pick a client seed which will be combined with each of your billion hashes in turn to pick the outcome of each game. That basically makes you commit to your hash chain before you are able to tell whether it is a "good" or "bad" one.

[espringe]

I wonder if there's a good reason to limit the max bet beyond just limiting the maximum profit per bet. The Kelly criterion tells me no, but when I see it happening in three different places maybe there's a reason for it.

Hmmmm. I need to run the maths, as I'm don't have an intuitive sense of if it would matter or not -- as my house odds are a bit different than a normal gambling site: https://www.moneypot.com/faq#odds (I try give conservative gamblers a much fairer deal).

However, I don't think the typical large-gambler would play like that. If they do, that's fine -- they can run into my 10% bankroll loss rule. But for normal cases, the 1 BTC / game to be the limiting factor. If a whale came in my casino, doing hundreds of normal style 1 BTC bets -- I'd be ecstatic. If a whale came in, and wanted to make a big win or big loss and then walk  ... I'd be shitting bricks.

Create your chain of a billion sha256 hashes, publish the billionth hash, then (and only then) have someone trusted pick a client seed which will be combined with each of your billion hashes in turn to pick the outcome of each game. That basically makes you commit to your hash chain before you are able to tell whether it is a "good" or "bad" one.

True, that's quite nice.  Once I tell everyone the process, I'll could publish the last hash in the blockchain -- and use the block hash as the "client seed". If you don't mind, I'll send you all the details before I push the button and you can do a final review?

I'm planning on using this process for my next game on moneypot -- which is pretty similar in requirements (real time, social game)

[dooglus]

True, that's quite nice.  Once I tell everyone the process, I'll could publish the last hash in the blockchain -- and use the block hash as the "client seed". If you don't mind, I'll send you all the details before I push the button and you can do a final review?

Of course you need to tell us when you're going to do it, not after you've done it - or it has the same problem (you could generate 100 chains, publish all their hashes in the blockchain, and pick the one with the best client seed) - and even then posts can be edited, so you'd probably want people to quote it before you send it to the miners.

Then there's the concern that maybe you rent a bunch of hashrate so you can pick a nice block hash... (withhold the transaction from other miners, so you know you will mine it; check the block hash before broadcasting the block; only publish the block if it's "good") but I guess however you do it there's scope for cheating. If you have me pick the client seed people can suspect us of colluding.

And yes, that's fine. I can review it for you.

[beber456]

very interesting concept... i gonna register soon

[Candystripes]

I just have to say, I love this game so much! I highly recommend it to anyone, really. It's fun, which is what gambling really comes down to. Get syou excited, disappoints, wins a ton, etc. Never going back to dice xD.

[dooglus]

I just have to say, I love this game so much! I highly recommend it to anyone, really. It's fun, which is what gambling really comes down to. Get syou excited, disappoints, wins a ton, etc. Never going back to dice xD.

Give it a day or two and report back. I initially had the same feeling, but I found it doesn't last.

I've no idea why. It could just be about the level of "polish" on the various sites, or maybe it's the bad taste left by the lack of true provable fairness at moneypot, but I find I keep going back to dicebitco.in.

It was fun last night when a bunch of us all had 'free trial' bits to throw away and I could experiment with strategy, but I always end up busting in the end. When you see one player betting 1k at 1.02x over and over, it seems that betting 1k at 1.03x is +EV, since you get 1% of both his bet and your bet as a bonus every time you win (so long as nobody is playing for bigger stakes or bigger multipliers). As new players play you are pressured to increase your stake and/or multiplier to keep it +EV, but then you also increase your chance of busting. Quite an interesting dynamic.

[dooglus]

On https://www.moneypot.com/game/487409 I would much prefer to see it sorted by cash-out time rather than bet size.

It's quite easy to sort by bet size in my head if I need to, but the payouts often look much the same, and aren't "nice" numbers.

The bonus amounts on that page are very small and hard to read. There's horizontal space, so they could be bigger and beside the symbol rather than under it.

[espringe]

Thanks dooglus, I agree with everything you've said so far. You've been immensely helpful, and really having you and jebby play on my site was the highlight of my month. I could feel my heart racing when you both deposited a bitcoin each.

I'm going to go through everything you said and implement it all -- with the possible exception of prematurely ending the game when everyone cashes out. I'll fire you a message when I'm there, and would love you have you play again.

Seriously, thanks very much!

[dooglus]

This could use some padding between name and multiplier: