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Contest!! Summer Forum Lottery

  • Thread starter DeletedUser8152
  • Start date

DeletedUser8152

Summer Forum Lottery!

With Greva's Casino open again, we thought it would be fun to have a little extra gambling fix here in the forum! The game is simple: every day we will pick a random number between 1 and 10000 using a public random number generator service. The player who guesses closest wins a prize. If you guess the number exactly you triple the jackpot!

summer.png

Details

The contest will run for ten days, starting August 5 and ending August 14. Each daily lottery begins at midnight Eastern time, with entries received in the next 24 hour period being applied to the next drawing. (The actual drawings won't always happen promptly at midnight, but that will still be the cutoff time for the day's drawing, regardless.) The first day's contest will begin in the evening of Thursday August 4 and end in the evening of Friday August 5.

Each day will have it's own thread. To enter the contest, simply post in that thread with your guess (an integer between 1 and 10000, inclusive) and the world you would like your prize applied to if you win.

You can only enter once per day, so if you post more than once in a day only the last guess will be used. You are free to change your guess this way if you want. Posts won't count if made before midnight at the start of the day, or after midnight at the end of the day. If you edit your post after midnight at the end of the day, it will be disqualified.

The winning number for the day will be determined using the third party service TRENT. This is public random number generator that provides secure numbers for contests. Here is how it works: Prior to the start of each day, we will reserve a drawing number on TRENT. This is a unique ID code. We'll provide that code so anyone can verify that the number has been reserved. At the end of the day, we will use that code and generate the winning number. You can then check on the website that the code and number correspond, and when it was drawn. That way everyone knows that one and only one number was used, and nobody knows what the number is until the actual drawing.

If two or more players' guesses are equally close to the winning number, the tie will be broken by listing the players' names in alphanumeric order (as defined by Google Sheets). The day's winning number from TRENT will be divided by the number of players on the list, and the remainder from the division will determine the position on the list of the winning player. A remainder of zero means the first player on the list wins.

Prize list:

Friday August 5: Two Fishing Huts WINNER: Alexander the Blue!
Saturday August 6: Ten Watchfires WINNER: BruteForceAttack!
Sunday August 7: Bazaar WINNER: Cassaundrea!
Monday August 8: Renovation Kit WINNER: Queste!
Tuesday August 9: Luau WINNER: swerz!
Wednesday August 10: 250 diamonds WINNER: pygalgia!
Thursday August 11: Two Pole Houses WINNER: Alexander the Blue!
Friday August 12: Ten Victory Towers WINNER: ardak kumerin!
Saturday August 13: Oasis WINNER ardak kumerin!
Sunday August 14: Shrine of Knowledge WINNER Alexander the Blue!

Again, if you guess the winning number exactly, you win triple the stated prize!

Please Note:
Use this thread for questions and comments about the contest. To actually enter the contest you need to post in the daily thread which is titled "Summer Forum Lottery Entry Thread for <date>".
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser8152

Do you think it would be an advantage? I think the tiebreaker is unbiased with respect to names.
 

DeletedUser25273

jaelis said:
Do you think it would be an advantage? I think the tiebreaker is unbiased with respect to names.
Click to expand...

Close but not perfectly. If the number of tied entries doesn't evenly divide into 10000 there will be a small bias to earlier names. For example, if 3 people tie, then the first name has 3334 chances to win, while the other 2 have only 3333. This only applies if the 'or more' clause happens, which means we have multiple people on the same number (the only way to have 3 people the same distance from a given number). This bias only occurs for number 3 or greater, so only with duplicate numbers chosen.

Also, if we assume no duplicate numbers chosen, then ties will always be between 2 people. For there to be the tie, the number drawn has to be the number exactly between them (and the distance between needs to be even for this to be possible). If that number is even, then the lower name alphabetically will win, and if odd, the higher name will win, so the tie breaker isn't really 'random' but predictable (even if chaotic).

The method probably is 'good enough' as other factors likely far outweigh this slight bias for an unusual case. The biggest bias is that picks made later have the slight advantage of being able to chose more open areas in the numbers, with the danger that if you make too good of a pick, someone picking after you may try to claim some of the good land from you, or even worse be computing the exact same way and both of you landing on exactly the same number meaning your only chance to win will be part of a tie breaker.
 

DeletedUser25625

With 10,000 available numbers - I think we can add the stipulation that whoever posts first has dibs on a particular number.

So - rather than just posting your own guess. You have to post the entire list [numeric/order] of taken guesses.

For example.

Player A posts:
"23 - Player A"

Player B would now have to post:
"23 - Player A
9987 - Player B"

Thanks for this contest !!
 

DeletedUser25273

It only Thursday, they will unlock Thursday evening, and only post after midnight (so actually ON Friday) count.
 

DeletedUser8152

nomad richie said:
Close but not perfectly. If the number of tied entries doesn't evenly divide into 10000 there will be a small bias to earlier names. For example, if 3 people tie, then the first name has 3334 chances to win, while the other 2 have only 3333. This only applies if the 'or more' clause happens, which means we have multiple people on the same number (the only way to have 3 people the same distance from a given number). This bias only occurs for number 3 or greater, so only with duplicate numbers chosen.
Click to expand...
Agreed except that I think the person with the middle name on the list has the (tiny) advantage. From 1 to 9999 all the remainders are equally likely, so the extra is 10000, which has a remainder of 1 and thus is the second person on the list. I thought it was harder to try to get the middle position than to get first or last. And I thought about using number from 1 to 12000 to avoid the problem, but it seems so small...
 

DeletedUser8152

Parasite the Simbiote said:
With 10,000 available numbers - I think we can add the stipulation that whoever posts first has dibs on a particular number.

So - rather than just posting your own guess. You have to post the entire list [numeric/order] of taken guesses.

For example.

Player A posts:
"23 - Player A"

Player B would now have to post:
"23 - Player A
9987 - Player B"

Thanks for this contest !!
Click to expand...
In theory I agree but if you make it complicated to enter people will screw up and get frustrated. With 10k numbers to pick from I don't think there's ever going to be much difference between picking someone else's number and picking a number adjacent to their's. Plus if someone picks your number and you care, you can change it.
 

DeletedUser8152

Posted at the end of the daily threads. I'll also try to update the OP here.
 
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