[TAABL] The original Bitcoin lottery is back...

[nelisky]

The original Bitcoin lottery is back!

And though it didn't go away in the first place, there was no actual public interest shown during 2014 and we didn't push for it as there were a bunch of backend changes that we wanted to get done, but now that much is complete and we're back in business.

For those of you that played in the previous version of the lottery, the changes are subtle; no more paying dust values to the bets that didn't win and the crypto currencies supported have changed.

For everyone else;

The Amazing Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery (TAABL for short) was the first automated bitcoin lottery, one of the first bitcoin games and almost certainly the longest running game in bitcoin history.

The rules are simple:

 - Choose your game amongst the available crypto currencies, currently supported are BTC, LTC, NMC and DRK. From here there are multiple Pick sizes, and these differ in the number of characters that need to match on a block hash to become the winning bid.
 - Place your bids by sending funds to the address advertised for the game. Make sure you send from a wallet you control all addresses for, as the winning bid address is taken from the sent transaction address.
 - Wait for a block to match a bet on that Pick, hopefully it will be one of yours

 All the details about the game can be read at How To Play.

 We have seeded all BTC games and will proceed to seed all the other currencies too, to make things a little more interesting.

[nelisky]

All running TAABL games seeded with 10 bets each! The BTC bets took a long time as the transaction failed to be included in a lot of blocks (but then again it had no fee attached).

No Pick will find a winner as long as there is a single transaction placing bets, regardless of the number of bets, so the seeding by itself will not be matched until new bets come in.

And of course, good luck!

[ticoti]

if there was no interest in the past, I think that if you haven't changed anything there won't be much interest now

[nikona]

if there was no interest in the past, I think that if you haven't changed anything there won't be much interest now

I agree mate..I dont think ppl r interested in BTC lottery..to me it generally just looks like im spending money to get nothing in return. Good Luck anyways.. once it catches up some popularity n see ppl winning..It might become a hit.

[Silly Money]

Agreed with you guys. People seem to try set lotteries or raffles up every now and again but they never get any interest or maybe one or two to show a little but they never bite and put the money in, but maybe this might be different seeing as you're a Legendary Member. Most of the others I've seen are from much lower ranks.

[cazkooo]

if there was no interest in the past, I think that if you haven't changed anything there won't be much interest now

I agree mate..I dont think ppl r interested in BTC lottery..to me it generally just looks like im spending money to get nothing in return. Good Luck anyways.. once it catches up some popularity n see ppl winning..It might become a hit.

instead of lottery , people like ponzis better because lottery is so old fashion with nothing to gain there, basically you are like throwing off money for other people, ponzis give better chance to win if you are faster

[buddu]

Ponzis are to win fast or loose fast without waiting. This lottery can attract players if it is marketed well and is more safer than ponzi.

[cryptworld]

actually, it looks that there is still no interest in bitcoin lottery, try to work in a new dice site

[GannickusX]

Ponzis are to win fast or loose fast without waiting. This lottery can attract players if it is marketed well and is more safer than ponzi.

Ponzies are fucking shit, they are made for you to loose fast, anyone that ''invests'' in ponzies should get banned

[Tsquared]

I really like the idea of a Bitcoin lottery, but this seems a bit confusing (pardon the pun).

I'll read the instructions again, but my first attempt to understand how it works was unsuccessful.

TT

[Silly Money]

Ponzis are to win fast or loose fast without waiting. This lottery can attract players if it is marketed well and is more safer than ponzi.

But ponzis are gambling scams, not exactly fair. At least this is. Ponzis have their place but it's not here.

I really like the idea of a Bitcoin lottery, but this seems a bit confusing (pardon the pun).

What's the pun? 

[Tsquared]

Ponzis are to win fast or loose fast without waiting. This lottery can attract players if it is marketed well and is more safer than ponzi.

But ponzis are gambling scams, not exactly fair. At least this is. Ponzis have their place but it's not here.

I really like the idea of a Bitcoin lottery, but this seems a bit confusing (pardon the pun).

What's the pun? 

A bit confusing.

[nelisky]

I really like the idea of a Bitcoin lottery, but this seems a bit confusing (pardon the pun).

I'll read the instructions again, but my first attempt to understand how it works was unsuccessful.

TT

Let me try to explain then. You send funds to one of the games, placing bets there.

What are the exact bets you are placing? In order for us not to cheat and for the lottery to be completely provable we can't just assign you random bets, so there is a confusing algorithm that takes place but lets assume for now you don't care what the bets are, just how many.

Every time a new block is found the hash of that block is used to see if there are winners. So if the block hash is "00000000000001d164de39e85839b49d68d55604415b264820de242cb3863f0e" the last X digits will be the winning bet.

Say you are playing a Pick 3 and have placed a bet for "f0e", you'd win that round assuming the bet was placed at or before block 200002.

If you have any specific doubts let me know and I'll try harder.

[nelisky]

if there was no interest in the past, I think that if you haven't changed anything there won't be much interest now

That's harsh...

The games aren't played on merit alone, unfortunately. There's a lot that is publicity and we haven't done any, at all, ever, other than post in a single thread here and the odd plug here and there.

This game was an experiment a long, long time ago and it did have a lot of interest back then, and then again in the second incarnation. Right now the bitcoin game scene is ridiculously filled with newcomers and copycats, but TAABL is not only original but also old. We actually had one BTC Pick 5 running for just short of a year and still paid it out, so while the past is no proof of the future, I'd say we earned some trust which is an issue with a lot of new sites.

I'm sure that if we had 1000 regular bettors that would make the EV so good for the odd player that the game would be highly alluring, but it's just me at the moment, so it might simply not spur any interest, always a risk we take.

[nelisky]

actually, it looks that there is still no interest in bitcoin lottery, try to work in a new dice site

Funny you should say that

We did, back in 2012 -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120239.0

But again lack of publicity may have been a bad idea. There isn't lack of new stuff over you average dice site too, so innovation isn't the issue for sure

[Gronthaing]

I'm getting an error on the site:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tornado/web.py", line 1141, in _when_complete
    callback()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tornado/web.py", line 1162, in _execute_method
    self._when_complete(method(*self.path_args, **self.path_kwargs),
  File "/home/web/www/taabl/lib/bvlib/web.py", line 127, in get
    raise tornado.web.HTTPError(500)
HTTPError: HTTP 500: Internal Server Error

actually, it looks that there is still no interest in bitcoin lottery, try to work in a new dice site

Funny you should say that

We did, back in 2012 -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120239.0

But again lack of publicity may have been a bad idea. There isn't lack of new stuff over you average dice site too, so innovation isn't the issue for sure

How about a signature campaign to promote the sites? Isn't cheap, but may be worth it. You can start with a small campaign and see how it goes. Use ref links to know where traffic to the sites come from. If all goes well then expand the campaign with better pay and more people.

[nelisky]

I'm getting an error on the site:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tornado/web.py", line 1141, in _when_complete
    callback()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tornado/web.py", line 1162, in _execute_method
    self._when_complete(method(*self.path_args, **self.path_kwargs),
  File "/home/web/www/taabl/lib/bvlib/web.py", line 127, in get
    raise tornado.web.HTTPError(500)
HTTPError: HTTP 500: Internal Server Error

actually, it looks that there is still no interest in bitcoin lottery, try to work in a new dice site

Funny you should say that

We did, back in 2012 -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120239.0

But again lack of publicity may have been a bad idea. There isn't lack of new stuff over you average dice site too, so innovation isn't the issue for sure

How about a signature campaign to promote the sites? Isn't cheap, but may be worth it. You can start with a small campaign and see how it goes. Use ref links to know where traffic to the sites come from. If all goes well then expand the campaign with better pay and more people.

Thanks for the heads up, we had a runaway log that nuked the server's disk space, all fixed now.

As for the signature campaign, that could work but I have a hard time convincing myself to take that road. It's just too... commercial, I guess. I don't mind spending money to make money but it just feels like I'm advertising my sites the same way most scams/schemes are, just feels gooey.

And if we must take down taabl we will, though it is a shame to do it since this is as much of a piece of bitcoin history as you'll ever get, and any profit that comes out of it will be to pay for other more important projects we have going, like DividendRippler.

[nelisky]

Bump for awareness... There are 10 bets placed on each game on each currency, and if I do win any of these bets I'll be sure to reseed the game.

[Tsquared]

So I placed a bet of .005 and then another for .01. Both on Pick 2.

The first bet gave me bd on the board, and the second is still not confirmed, so don't know hat picks I'll get.

So I guess with a single bet, you get the first two characters of the tx id, but when placing multiple bets with one transaction the picks are calculated By the system?

How will I know my picks for the second bet?

What happens if someone sends .012 BTC?

TT

[nelisky]

So I placed a bet of .005 and then another for .01. Both on Pick 2.

The first bet gave me bd on the board, and the second is still not confirmed, so don't know hat picks I'll get.

So I guess with a single bet, you get the first two characters of the tx id, but when placing multiple bets with one transaction the picks are calculated By the system?

How will I know my picks for the second bet?

The bet determination works as follows:
 a) first choice is number of satoshis sent trimmed to max bet size. For Pick 2 there are 256 possible values (0x00 to 0xff, or 0 to 255) so since you sent no satoshis the default bet is 0x00
 b) if (a) is taken (it was) try the the first 2 characters from the bet transaction id (as it is a pick 2), in your placed bets case that's [bd]0f60...
 c) if (b) is taken add 1 to it (so 0xbd would become 0xbe)
 d) if (c) is taken go back to (c), wrapping as needed
 e) if there are more than one bet in the transaction step (c) will move to the next X characters (it would be bd[0f]60... in your case, but you only sent one)

This way you can always verify that the bets are real and we're not cheating, even though it sounds a bit confusing at first. As for your 0.01 bet the numbers will be calculated like this:
 a) 00 is taken
 b) [55]cef7... is free, first bet 55
 b) 55[ce]f7... is free, second bet ce

Unless of course another transaction get included in a block before yours (or first in the same block) and it just happens to cover one or both of your predicted bets, in which case for each one c) would add 1 to the bet until an empty slot is found.

What happens if someone sends .012 BTC?

That, as well as an explanation for the bet placing algorithm is explained in the How To Play page, but I'm aware it is a little vague and needs much improvement. In theory sending .012 is the same as sending .01 plus 200000 satoshis for bet selection (which is still 00 for a Pick 2).

If bets have fixed prices, what happens to the satoshis I used to set my desired bet?

These are collected as optional fees, or donations if you will. Of course you don't need to send any satoshis but you don't want to leave things to chance now, do you?

So if you send 0.012 you get two bets and we get a 0.002 donation (Thanks! ), but if you send it by mistake just get in touch with us and we'll get you the extra funds back.


Hope that answered all your questions but if not just let me know. Oh, and good luck!