A fun little betting game :) Win one bitcoin and possibly even more!

[titeuf_87]

Hello,

I thought of a fun little game and I want to try it out in practice.

The goal of the game is simple:
I transfer some bitcoins to an address and publish that address. Afterwards everyone can place a bid by transferring bitcoins to that address.
After some time, when the game closes, the person that placed the highest bid will win the whole balance of that address, minus a fee (I'll go with 2.5%).

Example:
I put up 1BTC on address abc123. Afterwards the following bets happen:
-Player A transfers 0.01
-Player B transfers 0.05
-Player A transfers 0.50
-Player C transfers 1.00
-Player B transfers 1.10
and there are no more bets after this. Player B wins and he gets the sum (= 3.66 BTC) minus the fee of 2.5%. So he wins 3.5685 BTC

So, anyone up for playing this?

I'll start with the following address: 1CoMXvhsHuu3PuxVs9ZbEu7a8jPqY2dsFH.

The person that gets the highest bid by 2012-06-10 20:00 GMT wins

Good luck!

Important notes:

• I'll use one of the input addresses to send the prize to. So please use the official bitcoin client or another client / wallet website where you control the addresses. If you don't do this...you can still play, but please PM me with your transaction ID at the same time you sent your transactions.
• Bets lower than 0.01 will not be accepted.

If anyone have any questions, be sure to ask

[titeuf_87]

You can win a whole bitcoin by only bidding 0.01!

Will you be the first to place a bid?!

[Kazimir]

You can win a whole bitcoin by only bidding 0.01!

Will you be the first to place a bid?!

Eh, no, I think I'll be the *last* one to bid.
I'll send my payment at about 2012-06-10 19:59:57

[titeuf_87]

Eh, no, I think I'll be the *last* one to bid.
I'll send my payment at about 2012-06-10 19:59:57

Hehe, I didn't think this through. Should have used some rule like: if after 30 minutes no one places a bid anymore, the highest one wins. (Not going to change the rules now though!)

But be careful, someone else might bid just more than you at the last moment and then it's too late

[titeuf_87]

Only a small two hours left!

Don't miss out because you were too late

[Kazimir]

One other issue though: how do I know you're not sitting on 150K bitcoins yourself, which you will transfer from an anonymous address to the pot at 19:59:55, knowing for sure you'll get it back + getting the money from all other suckers who competed?

[titeuf_87]

One other issue though: how do I know you're not sitting on 150K bitcoins yourself, which you will transfer from an anonymous address to the pot at 19:59:55, knowing for sure you'll get it back + getting the money from all other suckers who competed?

I wish I had that many bitcoins and this could be an issue!

But I get your point. I didn't think about that either... (I got the idea for this game when I couldn't sleep at 4am, wanted to try it out the next day but I didn't think more about it)

I can say that I won't do that and people will just have to trust me. Which of course is hard, since you have to trust a stranger on the internet...

I don't think there is any other way around that? If someone can come up with an idea, I'd love to hear it!

So I hope that the winner will announce itself here to prove that I didn't try to scam anyone

[Kazimir]

Sorry to keep bothering you about this mate One more thing:

I put up 1BTC on address abc123. Afterwards the following bets happen:
-Player A transfers 0.01
-Player B transfers 0.05
-Player A transfers 0.50
-Player C transfers 1.00
-Player B transfers 1.10
and there are no more bets after this. Player B wins and he gets the sum (= 3.66 BTC) minus the fee of 2.5%. So he wins 3.5685 BTC

What would have happened if that last payment of player B was 0.99, would he still win cause he paid 0.99+0.05 = 1.04 in total? Or is it about the highest single payment, i.e. player C would win with his 1.00 transfer?

[titeuf_87]

Sorry to keep bothering you about this mate One more thing:

I put up 1BTC on address abc123. Afterwards the following bets happen:
-Player A transfers 0.01
-Player B transfers 0.05
-Player A transfers 0.50
-Player C transfers 1.00
-Player B transfers 1.10
and there are no more bets after this. Player B wins and he gets the sum (= 3.66 BTC) minus the fee of 2.5%. So he wins 3.5685 BTC

What would have happened if that last payment of player B was 0.99, would he still win cause he paid 0.99+0.05 = 1.04 in total? Or is it about the highest single payment, i.e. player C would win with his 1.00 transfer?

It's no bother

And it's the single highest transaction that counts. So only the 1.10 bet from player B. It would be hard to link all the transactions from a single player together and know they are coming from the same person.

In other news, only a small half hour left! Don't let Kazimir win that easily!

[titeuf_87]

Less than eight minutes left!

[Kazimir]

Crap, I set my mobile phone alarm, only to find out it's apparently 1 minute behind or so
JUST missed it

[titeuf_87]

Crap, I set my mobile phone alarm, only to find out it's apparently 1 minute behind or so
JUST missed it

Hurry up and place your bid

[Kazimir]

Hurry up and place your bid

I did, but I doubt it go through in time  

(edit) oh it did appear on blockchain.info by now. But with a logged time of 20:03:11, apparently.

Did I win, or if not, what's your refund policy?

[titeuf_87]

Hurry up and place your bid

I did, but I doubt it go through in time 

It's a bit late, but you were the only one that played so you still won

I'm assuming that this transaction is yours?

If so, please let me know what address you want your winnings to go to and I'll transfer (1+2) * 0.975 = 2.925 BTC to.

[Kazimir]

Awesome

I'm assuming that this transaction is yours?

Actually that's an address link (including all transactions going there) but this transaction is mine, yeah.

If so, please let me know what address you want your winnings to go to and I'll transfer (1+2) * 0.975 = 2.925 BTC to.

The same address as where it came from (that's 18dbqv6Q1g2UgjfDRMhQRXvThVHykZDRje) would be fine.

Oh and I like your initiative for this game, so I'd like to give you a tip of 0.925 BTC, could you deduct that from my winnings please?

[titeuf_87]

Awesome

I'm assuming that this transaction is yours?

Actually that's an address link (including all transactions going there) but this transaction is mine, yeah.

If so, please let me know what address you want your winnings to go to and I'll transfer (1+2) * 0.975 = 2.925 BTC to.

The same address as where it came from (that's 18dbqv6Q1g2UgjfDRMhQRXvThVHykZDRje) would be fine.

Oh and I like your initiative for this game, so I'd like to give you a tip of 0.925 BTC, could you deduct that from my winnings please?

Hehe, thanks

I sent you the 2 bitcoins.

Was fun, thanks for the interests and for your various remarks!

[Kazimir]

I actually thought of one way to avoid the problem of people waiting till the very end and checking out what other payments have been made. But it may be kinda labour-intensive.

Generate a shitload of addresses in advance. Upload them (the entire list in a txt file) in a password protected archive and publish the link. Everybody who wants to play along can request a unique address (this could be automated through a simple online form and putting all the addresses in a DB or something).

After the deadline, you transfer all the bids from all the public addresses (well only the ones that actually received money) to one new address (this is now the pot) and you publish the password for the earlier uploaded archive so people can verify the results.

However this doesn't guarantee that the organizer won't join in himself, by checking all the served out addresses just before the deadline, finding the biggest transaction, and doing one additional transaction for a slightly higher amount. I can't seem to think of a way to prevent this. Maybe people are fine with that, but a nice aspect of open games like satoshidice etc, is that they don't need to trust the organizers, everything is transparent, verifiable, and cheat-proof by design.

[titeuf_87]

This is a nice idea, but I liked the fact that players could see what others bet: this could have increased competition when trying to outbid each others.

My hope was that people would start out small, but then place higher and higher bids to try to win the bids from others -and- not lose what they've bid so far.

I think the best way would to have no fixed end time: something like if there are no transactions in the last half hour, the highest bidder wins.
Or use generated blocks, like, everyone has to bid before the initial deposit has x confirmations. This could work nicely since new blocks aren't that predictable.

But the trust issue will stay there

[dooglus]

Or use generated blocks, like, everyone has to bid before the initial deposit has x confirmations. This could work nicely since new blocks aren't that predictable.

Or "the game ends as soon as there are x blocks without a deposit" - then the game can go on for a long time, but stops when people stop playing.

But the trust issue will stay there

I don't see the trust issue in that case.  You don't know anything that we don't.  Every player can see all the bets, and can decide to bet more or not, just like you can.  We have to trust that you'll pay the winner, but we have to trust satoshidice to pay their winners too.

This article is related, has lots of maths, but may give you some ideas:

  http://www.chapman.edu/ESI/wp/GeneralizedTullockContest-Sheremeta.pdf

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction

[titeuf_87]

Or use generated blocks, like, everyone has to bid before the initial deposit has x confirmations. This could work nicely since new blocks aren't that predictable.

Or "the game ends as soon as there are x blocks without a deposit" - then the game can go on for a long time, but stops when people stop playing.

But the trust issue will stay there

I don't see the trust issue in that case.  You don't know anything that we don't.  Every player can see all the bets, and can decide to bet more or not, just like you can.  We have to trust that you'll pay the winner, but we have to trust satoshidice to pay their winners too.

This article is related, has lots of maths, but may give you some ideas:

  http://www.chapman.edu/ESI/wp/GeneralizedTullockContest-Sheremeta.pdf

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction

Learn something new every day!

Thanks for the links The pdf I'll read over when I'm more awake as right now it's a bit hard to understand.

I'll do something like that next: if the highest transaction is not outbid and gets six confirmations then that one wins.

Just have to code work out a way to keep track of that since I can't be online 24h a day.