Topic: Hardware device and protocol for seeding and verifying Provably Fair gaming (Read 6109 times)

There is a parallel here, for example, in relation to the underground marketplaces:

1. You can have it centralized. You have to trust the site. And trust the operator does disappear or get arrested or whatever.
2. It is fully decentralized.

In 1. the site makes money off commissions or rake or house edge or something.
In 2. well, it's decentralized ... thus casinos don't have an incentive. unless there was the equivalent of mining for games.

Implementing a decentralized game where anyone can play anytime anywhere any site... it would work as long as there are "houses" or dealers.

Someone mentioned a decentralized poker platform, where everyone gets a chance to be a dealer. Every dealer gets his own table. As players, you can pick the table. It's still the same thing except instead of large massive sites, you just broke it down to per table or per dealer.

It's possible to have a decentralized dice platform, but the incentive to play depends on how large you can possibly win or the bankroll of the dice holder. Maybe it becomes player versus player dice games, and there is a discussion about that already (attempting to exclude the need for a trusted third party to escrow the coins and the dice roll result.)

@Stephen, I think the problem here is a way to either standardize the calculations for provable fairness such that it can be implemented across a wide range of games, or a method to submit "firmware" or "rules" from casinos to such devices for their own unique games.

It boils down to having machine interpretable code similar to the "about" or "verify" pages of existing bitcoin casino websites.

In a very brief chat with someone familiar with casino operations I inquired about the potential that some day a player-owned device would be used to participate in "provably fair" gaming on physical gaming systems (e.g., video slots, video poker machines, etc.)    I was told that the use of mobile phones and other electronics were not permitted in certain areas of a casino.   The purpose of that was to prevent player cheating at table games and for restrictions related to the casino's sportsbook.

The most interesting part of the conversation was the assertion that players should not be worried about the casino cheating.  "Just trust us".  Heh, we've heard that before.

@Dabs

question for merchant service provider = off topic?  so I am sorry for this, didnt want to hijack the thread. I will open a new thread to ask for it.

@elm, this is already going off-topic, but if your site is accepting bitcoin (and only bitcoin), you have everything you need in bitcoind / bitcoin-qt. While you could tie up with online wallets, I don't recommend them, except maybe just a few.

@Dabs

for me it doesnt make sense to make Live Dealer Provably Fair because as You mentioned it the games will last longer and for a casino time is money.

did You mean the Casino Hold'em? that they offer? and I saw now that the games are from Playtech. I found another nice BTC online casino http://www.bitcoincasino24.com/games/roulette/european

the games are very nice designed. but interesting is that it is Bitcoin and not Provably fair.
I asked them in another forum why he didnt do it provably fair. it could be that his games provider doesnt have this option or is not allowing it.

I would like to ask You about merchant service provider, do You know an easy and reliable provider for accepting payments and pay outs?

cheers

@elm, you can make the live dealer provably fair, but it requires that you control this live dealer (ie, she is an employee of your casino), and the changes needed will make the game last longer. They will have to uniquely mark each card, OR you have a special deck with barcodes or RFID or something similar to prove to players that the deal is fair.

All the games in that website are nice and attractive. They are also all house games (they even have casino poker). You should try the multiplayer versions.

@Dabs

I understood that Live dealer isn't provably fair  so we will not take it. but please understand that we want an online casino provably fair with BTC but for all online casino users and not only for the BTC community although we want to use BTC only.

please let me show you what I understand under an attractive roulette
http://www.scasino.com/en/casino-games/table/3d-roulette.html

other games (beside roulette)we would like to offer are BJ, Slots, Sic Bo and if You have one interesting one in mind please let me know

May I suggest that if you use some sort of animation, it is only cosmetic and does not actually affect the result. In other words, do not use a "Live Dealer".

You could make a 3D render or animation of the dice. Lots of 3D games now, with realistic physics, such as car racing games. You see all those cars crash, tumble, roll, explode, etc. Or all these first person shooter games.

In fact, in the Hitman series of games, some of your targets are inside Casinos and you can see them playing or something like that.

What other casino games are you thinking of? Most or all of them involve chance, which is where "Provably Fair" excels at.

@Dabs

we dont have experience with Poker so we dont touch it. but thanks for Your kind offer.

@Cudahuda

I took a look at those 3 links You posted. those casinos are not attractive at all. we  think that players should see nice animations of dice, roulette, BJ or Slots like in real world.

lets take prime dice for example, I see there all the time bets scrolling. how can I know that those are for real? they show even the fun players there with outcome .000000

regarding the client seed, do I need to change the client seed number before every bet I do?

we really like the provably fair idea very much because we also think that the player should not be cheated and he needs to know for every wager he is placing that he is not cheated. but all those BTC casinos are not attractive at all. not to say terrible (please dont kill me). why is that?

anyone is welcome to jump in this discussion to help us to find the way to bring our provably fair casino online

cheers

Take a look at sites like Bitzino.com, SatoshiDice.com, and PrimeDice.com and look at their provably fair or verification tabs and see if you can understand how they calculate their rolls.  You would need a programer to design something similar for your site.

@elm, there are some bitcoin casinos now that offer the games you mentioned. You can check them out and even play them a bit, then decide if you still want to do it (always room for more) or not.

If you ever decide to do Poker though, I'd like to help you make it provably fair. It's implementation is much more difficult and involved than all other games I have seen. Roulette, Dice, BJ, Slots are all easy to make provably fair.

@Dabs

we are a group of partners (all grandpas) who want to bring a casino online. at the start we thought to start/create a live dealer online casino. but as we know now it is not provably fair we changed our mind and go for a RNG online casino. and if I understood You right that would mean that we need to hire programmer to implement a provably fair system.

but we are interested that the games will be played without any big delays. we even think to start with roulette first and then add BJ and Slots later.

Just show a page how your provably fair is implemented, with an example. People will then be able to do it on their own. If all bets are public, it's even easier to verify.

Or is your question meant differently? As in, do you already have an existing offline casino and want to make it online and implement a provably fair system? You'll have to hire a programmer to do this.

Give me a use case and I can try and point you in the right direction.

is there a 3rd party provably fair provider for me as a casino owner? can I buy a service like this or do I need hire progammer to do this for my games?

cheers

As far as I am aware, since each site implements it a little bit differently, there is no one software that can check all sites universally.

Each site does allow you to check, so there might be some that check for you already. A lot have built in verifiers which you can extract, dissect, and make it run independently of the site. Some even have links to 3rd parties that are checking.

It's possible someone will make a collection of these verifiers available. All sites have an "about" or a "provably fair" page that explains what you need to do.

@Death And Taxes

thank You very much for jumping in with this detailed explanation. very much appreciated.

now I understand that Proven Event #1, #2 and #3 gives the player a 100% security that he wasnt cheated by the casino. and the casino proved that he handled the games 100% fair and honest. Great! Proven Event #1 alone cant be called provably fair.

IMHO, a player at a casino wants to play and enjoy playing and not after each loss to check if he was cheated. after the end of his day at the tables and after a loss at the end of his gambling day I think he would like to check it. how can a casino handle this problem? or is it just that each player will check whenever he feels like?

is there a company that provides provably fair option as a 3rd party provider?

with a live dealer casino provably fair is impossible to accomplish. (if I understood it right)

*............. If there was an automated software on the player's computer which verifies all game outcomes it ensures the provable is proven.......
so there is nothing like this yet on the market?

*....... If enough players used it then it would become impossible for the house to cheat for any significant period of time.
I am sure that if this would exist that most of the players would use it.

cheers

Hi Stephen. I'm attempting to do something and what you describe is very similar to what I have just implemented. I hashed the individual cards of the deck, I add another secret then hash them again, I sort them according to the hash values which shuffles the deck once, then all those hash values are shown.

That uniquely identifies each card without showing the player what the card rank and suit is.

Then I allow the players to further cut or reshuffle the deck some more.

More details and an actual example is in my thread. In relation to this topic, such an implementation would require a customized hardware device, or a device that allows users to update with either source code or firmware. Your device would essentially be an interpreter that accepts numbers from the casino then verifies everything for the player.

A third party open source software verifier would achieve the same result.

Provably fair doesn't mean "hard to cheat" it means it is impossible for the site to cheat without being detected* through the use of strong cryptography.  A video of a dealer doesn't prove the deck has the right number of cards, that the deck hasn't been stacked in favor of the house, that the dealer isn't trained to deal "seconds", etc.   It certainly makes it HARDER to cheat compared to some site that is 100% opaque but it isn't provably fair.  The difference is "fair" vs "PROVABLY fair".

PROVEN EVENT #1:
If a site generates a random 256 bit number and provides me the hash I know they can't change it after the fact.  If they change their secret number it won't produce the same hash.

PROVEN EVENT #2
If I generate my own 256 bit number and provide it to the site (after EVENT #1) and the site XOR the two values to use as the "combined secret" then I can prove that the site couldn't have rigged the random number in their favor (as they don't know until after selecting their random number what mine will be).

PROVEN EVENT #3
If the game is based on the combined secret in #2 I can prove it was done fairly.  After the game the site will reveal their secret number (which I can verify hashes to the hash provided in event #1).  I can also verify that the "game secret" is the XOR of the house's secret number and my secret number.  Assuming the house also provides details steps on how that number produces the output I can verify they have shown me the proper output (sequence of cards, winning number, win/loss, etc).

When those three events occur and in the proper order, and are verified by the user it is not possible for the house to cheat.  Try to think of a scenario where the house could cheat and not be detected.  It is mathematically proven that if I lost then it was due to "fair chance".

A video of a dealer doesn't provide that.  It may make it harder to cheat but harder to cheat isn't the same standard as PROVABLY fair.  You "could" (not a accusation more a thought exercise) manipulate the video feed, the shoe used to deal could be designed to read the cards and allow the dealer to deal the second card (i.e. player has 16 and hits in BJ, the next card is a 5 and the second card is a K).  The quality of the video, the resolution, the angle, etc may make it HARDER to cheat but the house still CAN cheat.  Likewise the use of a video dealer makes it impossible for YOU to prove the game is "fair" (losses/wins based on random chance).  It basically comes down to trusting the site.  Maybe a video live dealer will increase the trust players have but it still requires trust.  The same thing would apply to other games.  In roulette a video feed doesn't guarantee the wheel is fair (i.e. each number has an equal and random chance of being picked) and not rigged. 

* The point of this thread is that while an event can be provably fair it requires the player to verify.  So a game can be in theory provably fair but if the player doesn't a) submit its own random player key, b) verify the hashes of house key, c) verify the output matches the combined game key then while it is provably the house could cheat.  If the rate of verification is low and the rate that house cheats is low it is very possible the cheating would go undetected.  If there was an automated software on the player's computer which verifies all game outcomes it ensures the provable is proven.  If enough players used it then it would become impossible for the house to cheat for any significant period of time.

@Stephen

thanks for explaining. this sounds very complicated for a live casino to implement IMHO. and now I understand that this would not be possible at all with a live roulette.

cheers

Live dealer:
 - http://www.livedealer.org/introduction/

Provably fair with a live game would involve something like the decks of cards being shuffled (however you deem the shuffle to be considered fair), then on each card is printed a unique ID (e.g., serial number like 1 for the top card, 2 for the next, 3, ...etc)   then both sides of each card photographed, digitized and encrypted and the digital content given to you.

So before you place your bet you have evidence that allows you to later know the order of every card in the card shoe before the game.   After the game, you are given the passphrase used to decrypt and, if you know each action each player took, you can prove if the dealer cheated you.