I love this business model. I have invested a bit and will probably invest more. I'd like to make some suggestions:
1. Maximum bet should be whatever gives the highest return to Just-Dice (following the Kelly Criterion). Not only it increases our expected profit, but it attracts more people looking to hit the jackpot. And people hitting a gigantic jackpot is also great for marketing. If some risk adverse investors prefer to have lower returns and volatility, they can simple divest a portion of their actual share.
I agree with this (though to be technical, the proper term is "maximum profit", not "maximum bet"). The reason it was reduced was because of massive house losses in the early Nakowa days. Investors were panicking, hollering at dooglus to make this change or that change. As steward of investor funds, I would have felt a lot of pressure to do *something*, so I'm not surprised Doog decided to lower the max.
In reality the underlying problem was that too many investors were overinvested for their own comfort levels. Or at least the vocal, panicky ones were. They didn't understand the volatility risk they were assuming. Kudos to Rampion for
owning up to this.
The problem with the solution of lowering the max profit is that it reduces the expectancy for everyone, particularly those investors who didn't or wouldn't lose their lunch after a 20% loss. Also, like you say, it potentially turns away some customers who would otherwise patronize.
Another option, if it's cheap enough to implement, would be letting investors choose how much they are willing to risk in a single bet.
I don't particularly like this idea, because it adds complexity and it's basically unnecessary.
2. Customers should be treated with much more respect. Stop calling them "whales" and that kind of things. You are doing exactly the opposite of what "serious" casinos do, specially brick and mortar ones. Customers must feel comfortable betting at Just Dice. We have to try to make them feel good even when they lose, so it's more likely that they come back. People don't like feeling stupid.
3. I don't get why some of you complain so much when some customers make a lot of money. Don't you understand that they are losing in the long run? I wish we had thousands of high rollers gambling all day. They win sometimes, it's inevitable, they wouldn't be willing to participate if they couldn't win. Every time they bet, we win 0.01 of that amount, that's the only thing that matters. There's no winning strategy, each bet has the same negative expected value. The only thing that we must care about is people being able to bet profitably, by knowing what the dice result will be.
I don't think the term "whale" is particularly derogatory. There's a bit of status associated with earning that title.
It's an uphill battle to influence what random people are going to write on this thread or in the just dice chatbox.