Author

Topic: Bitdice.me it is negative EV for investors? (Read 1367 times)

legendary
Activity: 1463
Merit: 1886
I've never said that I take commission on profits, I've said that I take comm on NET INVESTMENT PROFITS.

In the given case, the net investment profit is 10 BTC, not 1. Which means the commissions due is 1 BTC, not 0.1
legendary
Activity: 1463
Merit: 1886
Let's break the maths down a bit:

(-10BTC)(0.495)+(10BTC)(0.505)= 0.1*0.9 = +0.09 BTC


So let's first look at the left hand of the equation, which we both agree on:

Code:
(-10BTC)(0.495)+(10BTC)(0.505)

This says investors have 49.5% chance of losing 10 BTC, and 50.5% of making 10 BTC. And thus, they have a total EV of 0.1 BTC.


I'm not sure how your commissions work, so let's use JD's. In the 49.5% chance that the investors lose 10 BTC, they owe 0 commissions.  But there's a 50.5% chance that they just made 10 BTC. Since their net profit for that week was 10 BTC, they need to pay 10% of it in commissions.

So let's plug that back in the equation:

(-10BTC)(0.495)+((10BTC)(0.505) * 0.9)

which gives:

-0.405 BTC


The same number the OP gave. In effect, the investors have an expected loss of 0.405 BTC. JD makes up for this, by using a high-water mark on commissions, so that if you've taken an investing loss you get pure +EV until you're eventually back in the profit


I guess what's not clear is how bitdice.me works. If investors lose 1 BTC the first week, and then make it back the 2nd week, how much commissions do they owe?







legendary
Activity: 1463
Merit: 1886
Are you sure?


What is the EV for the investors (including commissions) if there is a single wager placed that week, 10 BTC @ 2x?

(-10BTC)(0.495)+(10BTC)(0.505)= 0.1*0.9 = +0.09 BTC

?!! That is taking a commissions on EV, not profit. But one second ago you wrote:

Quote
When someone loses on site investors get 100% of it. Profits from investors, and ONLY net profits, are being deducted at the end of the week or when investor divests, which happens first.

so which is it?  Huh
legendary
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1333
So what that pretty much means is that the more bets the more chances you get to profit from the site?

Yes. Except that after the first few thousand bets each month the EV for the investor doesn't increase much more. It will top out at 0.9% (the 1% house edge, minus the 10% of that taken as commission).

When that guy lost 7k btc at your casino how much money would an investor have won if he invested lets say 10 BTC?

That would depend on the total size of the bankroll at the time. I don't remember what it was, but let's guess it was 30k BTC. That won't be too far off.

If someone loses 7,000 when you own 10 out of 30,000 of the bankroll, you get 10 1/30,000ths of the loss, of 7000 * 10 / 30000 = 7/3 = 2.333 BTC

(Then at the end of the week the site takes 10% of your net profit. Note that the 7k loss came after he had won 5k, so that 2.333 isn't all profit. Most of it is recovering from the losses you took when he won the 5k, assuming you were invested for that too).

Personally I was invested for the first half of his betting (where he won ~3k) and not invested for the second half (where he won another 2k then lost 7k). So I did badly out of it. But then I took 10% of everyone else's profit, so it worked out.
hero member
Activity: 1624
Merit: 645
Let's break the maths down a bit:

[...]
So let's plug that back in the equation:

(-10BTC)(0.495)+((10BTC)(0.505) * 0.9)

which gives:

-0.405 BTC

The same number the OP gave. In effect, the investors have an expected loss of 0.405 BTC. JD makes up for this, by using a high-water mark on commissions, so that if you've taken an investing loss you get pure +EV until you're eventually back in the profit

I calculated the EV for the investor when there's a single bet of 10 BTC at 2x when you first asked, without reading on to see how you calculated it. I wrote:

Quote
player loses 50.5% of the time, investor wins 10 BTC, pays 1 BTC commission, net win +9  
player wins 49.5%% of the time, investor loses 10 BTC, net win -10

EV for investor: 0.505 * 9 - 0.495 * 10 = -0.405 = -4.05%

so we agree. If there's only a single 10@2x bet in the first week, the EV for the investor is -4.05% of the amount wagered.

However, I disagree that JD makes up for this by using the high-water mark. While the high-water mark helps a little, I think the most significant factor is that we only take commission on *net* profits, at the end of each week. There's never only a single bet, and as soon as there are more than 17 bets, the EV for the investor goes positive.

Here's the EV for the investor for various numbers of bets:

Quote
  1 -4.0500%
   2 -1.5502%
   4 -0.9254%
   6 -0.6130%
   8 -0.4177%
  10 -0.2811%
  12 -0.1786%
  14 -0.0981%
  16 -0.0327%
  17 -0.0327%
  18  0.0218%
  20  0.0681%
  30  0.2266%
  50  0.3872%
 100  0.5501%
 200  0.6654%
 500  0.7672%
1000  0.8176%

and the script I wrote to calculate that:

Code:
#!/usr/bin/env python

f = {}
def factorial(x):
    if f.has_key(x): return f[x]
    if x < 2: return 1
    f[x] = x * factorial(x - 1)
    return f[x]

def c(n, k): return factorial(n) / (factorial(k) * factorial(n - k))

p = 0.495
for trials in [1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 30, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000]:
    sum = 0
    for wins in range(trials + 1):
        profit = (trials - 2 * wins) * 10
        if profit > 0: profit = profit * 0.9
        v = 100 * c(trials, wins) * p**wins * (1-p)**(trials-wins)
        sum += v * profit
    print "%4d %7.4f%%" % (trials, sum / (trials * 10))

Edit: I would have run it for bigger numbers of bets, but the script fails shortly after 1000, with errors like:

    v = 100 * c(trials, wins) * p**wins * (1-p)**(trials-wins)
OverflowError: long int too large to convert to float

and:

RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded

I guess I need a better implementation of c().

So what that pretty much means is that the more bets the more chances you get to profit from the site? When that guy lost 7k btc at your casino how much money would an investor have won if he invested lets say 10 BTC?
legendary
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1333
Let's break the maths down a bit:

[...]
So let's plug that back in the equation:

(-10BTC)(0.495)+((10BTC)(0.505) * 0.9)

which gives:

-0.405 BTC

The same number the OP gave. In effect, the investors have an expected loss of 0.405 BTC. JD makes up for this, by using a high-water mark on commissions, so that if you've taken an investing loss you get pure +EV until you're eventually back in the profit

I calculated the EV for the investor when there's a single bet of 10 BTC at 2x when you first asked, without reading on to see how you calculated it. I wrote:

Quote
player loses 50.5% of the time, investor wins 10 BTC, pays 1 BTC commission, net win +9  
player wins 49.5%% of the time, investor loses 10 BTC, net win -10

EV for investor: 0.505 * 9 - 0.495 * 10 = -0.405 = -4.05%

so we agree. If there's only a single 10@2x bet in the first week, the EV for the investor is -4.05% of the amount wagered.

However, I disagree that JD makes up for this by using the high-water mark. While the high-water mark helps a little, I think the most significant factor is that we only take commission on *net* profits, at the end of each week. There's never only a single bet, and as soon as there are more than 17 bets, the EV for the investor goes positive.

Here's the EV for the investor for various numbers of bets:

Quote
  1 -4.0500%
   2 -1.5502%
   4 -0.9254%
   6 -0.6130%
   8 -0.4177%
  10 -0.2811%
  12 -0.1786%
  14 -0.0981%
  16 -0.0327%
  17 -0.0327%
  18  0.0218%
  20  0.0681%
  30  0.2266%
  50  0.3872%
 100  0.5501%
 200  0.6654%
 500  0.7672%
1000  0.8176%

and the script I wrote to calculate that:

Code:
#!/usr/bin/env python

f = {}
def factorial(x):
    if f.has_key(x): return f[x]
    if x < 2: return 1
    f[x] = x * factorial(x - 1)
    return f[x]

def c(n, k): return factorial(n) / (factorial(k) * factorial(n - k))

p = 0.495
for trials in [1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 30, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000]:
    sum = 0
    for wins in range(trials + 1):
        profit = (trials - 2 * wins) * 10
        if profit > 0: profit = profit * 0.9
        v = 100 * c(trials, wins) * p**wins * (1-p)**(trials-wins)
        sum += v * profit
    print "%4d %7.4f%%" % (trials, sum / (trials * 10))

Edit: I would have run it for bigger numbers of bets, but the script fails shortly after 1000, with errors like:

    v = 100 * c(trials, wins) * p**wins * (1-p)**(trials-wins)
OverflowError: long int too large to convert to float

and:

RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded

I guess I need a better implementation of c().
legendary
Activity: 1344
Merit: 1000
Of course not, I believe they are giving away a percentage from their house advantage.
It just reduces their profit earned from the house advantage.
member
Activity: 142
Merit: 10
From my understanding, this is a similar model other dice sites used and investors at bitdice, JD, etc have done very well. You can check the site's profit, or the amount invested as evidence of that.
legendary
Activity: 1876
Merit: 1295
DiceSites.com owner
Yeh, realize it just now, whoops. Mm. So any site that has 10% commission on all profits of all bets are EV-? Cuz I am invested in a smaller site that does that, and I actually thought it was EV- but didn't take much time to figure it out.




"net profit" should be "commission high-water mark" (right?) so BitDice should be EV+ because of that. (I am currently down 2 coins on BD investing, yeahhhh EV+ FTW)
legendary
Activity: 1876
Merit: 1295
DiceSites.com owner
edit: -snip-

I think OP's calculation is correct, however because BitDice only charges commission on net profits, it's still EV+.




BTW Alex, still would be nice if you could list "Commission amount" in "Invest" tab, noticed this isn't there anymore since V3 Smiley
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 250
investing doesn't guarantee profit, but it should, more or less, in the long run given a house edge. what probably happened in your case was someone won big, causing that shirt term investment to be -EV.
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
I hear that they take 10% of profits weekly. Too bad, I wish I could get a better answer than that because they don't tell you the terms for investing.

so assume that 10btc is wagered a week. the percentages show negative ev on all of the odds a player can choose.

(-10BTC)(0.495)+(9BTC)(0.505)= -0.405

(Investors Loss)(chance of losing)+(Investors Profit)(chance of winning) = (Expected Loss per 10BTC wagered)

Isnt the formula you used is wrong? I dont think invesyment is always -EV because of the 1% house edge
hero member
Activity: 1624
Merit: 645
the house edge is expressed in chance of win and chance of loss from the investors perspective.

But what is the problem of that? If investing into the site would be always +EV then everyone would invest and wait to win their money, eventually, that would just ruin the site, when a site allows investments is also because they can win from it as far as i understand it
newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 0
the house edge is expressed in chance of win and chance of loss from the investors perspective.
hero member
Activity: 935
Merit: 1002
They have a positive house edge of 1%.So if someone would wager 10BTC it is expected to earn 0.1BTC you get 0.09 and they take their 10%.
newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 0
I hear that they take 10% of profits weekly. Too bad, I wish I could get a better answer than that because they don't tell you the terms for investing.

so assume that 10btc is wagered a week. the percentages show negative ev on all of the odds a player can choose.

(-10BTC)(0.495)+(9BTC)(0.505)= -0.405

(Investors Loss)(chance of losing)+(Investors Profit)(chance of winning) = (Expected Loss per 10BTC wagered)
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