How to pick a winning ticket in a raffle?

tbtorro

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I think it would generate much more interest if the winning number would be generated more transparent. I would love to buy tickets, but sadly I don't trust a closed system (no offence to Amibay, I wouldn't trust it anywhere else).

Some (on other forums/social media) used publicly available data for drawing winners, for example, he would sell 60 tickets, (number could be self chosen or randomly assigned) then would list all the tickets (with betters) in a post. And the winning ticket would be the first pulled number of the UK Powerball on the coming Friday. This is an open and transparent system.

Just saying.

Also, I highly recommend to double check the paypal's terms, as several hundred payments coming in (all same small amount) will trip PayPal's flagging system, almost 100% guaranteed. When that happens, they'll freeze the account to 'investigate' (they can do this for WHATEVER reason for 180 days according to their terms) and you might enter 'account verification hell' which could drag out for months. Happened to many accounts before, happened to me (for another reason), wasn't fun, took me almost 3 (three) months to resolve it with no access to my funds.
 
How to pick a winning ticket in a raffle?

Hopefully you've all seen this thread where you have a chance to win a 4000D

This is the idea that timtheloon came up with
Entries will be entered into a random name picker after the competition closing date.
(
http://www.classtools.net/education-games-php/fruit_machine using the Typewriter option to pick the winning entry)

I looked at this and it did seem to do the job.

We're willing to listen to an alternative method of picking a winner - we do want this to be seen as a fair competition and that everybody that buys a ticket has an equal chance to win.

Don't forget that we are looking at a minimum of 667 tickets.

We need it to be as easy as possible to collect the names etc as this will have to be managed by me in my spare time.

Do you have another idea we can investigate?
 
You can draw the winner à la Champions League style, using the traditional pot-style with a live stream so that anyone can watch. Sounds bizarre but it's an alternative.
 
Sounds Nice Kirk , but there is a big difference.
Thats some 1000 Numbers and not only 64 like in that traditional things.

BTW great Idea Tim and very cool to generate Donations that way!

What about this Idea to pick the Winner.

If there are for example 2600 Numbers (every Number have Names in the Row of Donations)

Someone , perhaps a friend of Tim who is not on Amibay call a Random Phone-Number via Livestream and ask for a Number between 1 and 2600.....
the one who got the Number is the Winner.
Thats cool and fair for everyone.
 
Cloakroom Tickets.jpg
What about something like this?

A couple of books in different colours - you pick the colour and the number.

We then get four or more people together to witness the draw from a bucket with all the entries in.
 
View attachment 140377
What about something like this?

A couple of books in different colours - you pick the colour and the number.

We then get four or more people together to witness the draw from a bucket with all the entries in.

There must be an electronic solution that is much easier to manage..
 
Some (on other forums/social media) used publicly available data for drawing winners, for example, he would sell 60 tickets, (number could be self chosen or randomly assigned) then would list all the tickets (with betters) in a post. And the winning ticket would be the first pulled number of the UK Powerball on the coming Friday. This is an open and transparent system.

Something like this. A publicly viewable number. It would make it fair for everyone since nobody connected with the comp or Amibay could have any influence over the result (I'm not suggesting this would happen) - but it would make everything fair and transparent.

:)
 
Some (on other forums/social media) used publicly available data for drawing winners, for example, he would sell 60 tickets, (number could be self chosen or randomly assigned) then would list all the tickets (with betters) in a post. And the winning ticket would be the first pulled number of the UK Powerball on the coming Friday. This is an open and transparent system.

Something like this. A publicly viewable number. It would make it fair for everyone since nobody connected with the comp or Amibay could have any influence over the result (I'm not suggesting this would happen) - but it would make everything fair and transparent.

:)

Yes, this is obvious, just need to find a randomly, changing, on-line verifiable number between 0-1000 (say) and also one that has logs.

I'm looking into live telemetry data from NASA (from satellites, or the international space station). For example many sensor values have fraction precision in 1/1000. So a winning number could be the fractions of the value of one of these sensors at midnight the lottery ends (when the number is "drawn").

We could call it the "Amibay-NASA lottery" :) The key of course that it should be EASILY verifiable by anyone from the NASA logs of that day/time.
 
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@tbtorro

That sounds plausible.

So to be clear my plan was not only to collect the names but also issue with a number incremented on the sequence of payment.

So i.e. I would be Davideo 1
etc, etc

This would then give us a number and a name to go with it.

I'll be putting the first list together tomorrow of all participants to date.
 
I've just cleaned up this thread - all posts can still be seen by Mods and Admins.

Any more ideas on how we can pick the winning number?

What happens if the number picked has not been used?
 
Dear all!

Just a suggestion but more like a little joke... What about lava lamps?
(Not sure that there is an API to access this wall :p.)

Cheers!
 
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Okay Ill take 18,20,32,25,69,121,256,512,744,769 please.

- - - Updated - - -

Redraw until it is a used number.

Just a thought to keep it transparent you need someone with absolutely no interest in this draw to go online with a PC capable of recording video to hard disk - generally nvidia cards are good at this with their shadowplay option at an exact specific time generate a random number on this site.

https://www.mathgoodies.com/calculators/random_no_custom

Or maybe live stream the draw on twitch - then everyone can watch.
 
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I spoke to Tim Prior to Christmas and we have agreed that the competition will close at Midnight (GMT) on the 31st December.

The draw will take place on the 5th January at an agreed time. (Work commitments on my side will hold up the draw until then as I need to check all the chosen tickets are correctly allocated).

Any entries after the close of the competition will be refunded and will not be entered into the draw.

All we have to do now is to find a fair/verifiable method to make the draw. So please post any methods you can think of in this thread.

Tim is available for the week beginning 7th January to get the system posted out to the lucky winner.

So if you want a chance to win the 4000D you had better get buying some tickets.

Thanks
 
All we have to do now is to find a fair/verifiable method to make the draw. So please post any methods you can think of in this thread.

A better suggestion:

Go to https://random.org/lists/ and click Switch to Advanced Mode, paste in the list of sold tickets, select Use pregenerated randomization from 2019-01-05 or whatever future date you decide on, click Randomize, and the first ticket in the list is the winner.

If you haven't got the time to format the PDF as a plain list, then use a list of the numbers 1 through 1000 instead, and start from the top until you find a sold ticket.

This is as simple and fair as it gets, and anyone can verify the result in less than a minute.
 
@Leffmann

Thanks for the suggestion.

The numbers taken to date are in a table but also in a text list with the Forum name next to it. So I should be able to squirt that straight in.

I'll give it a go over the weekend and see how it goes.
 
@tbtorro

I normally moderate out the ticket number posts and to be honest I was in a rush and just replied to confirm the numbers had been entered.

I'll tidy the thread up but it's a byproduct of the competition area.


The competition area was originally set up for members to post answers to a quiz and as such all replies except for Mods/Admins are auto-moderated.

This stops members seeing their posts and allowing them to check that they had typed their choice in correctly.

The competition closes tomorrow night at midnight so it should be back on subject then.

In the meantime I'll hopefully keep on top of the moderating out non-conforming posts.
 
@Leffmann

I've just tried your idea with 50 numbers (1-50) with todays date as the seed.

It seems easy to use and is verifiable by anyone.

Attached is the result I got from it tonight

View attachment 50 Numbers.txt
 
One thought:

The outcome is obviously affected by the order of the entries in the list. Decide on an order to use and post the definite and final list shortly after the competition has closed, otherwise someone can cry foul and say the list was ordered at the date of the drawing in a way that resulted in a favorable outcome.

One way is to decide beforehand that the list will contain only the sold tickets, in ascending order with ticket #1 at the top.
 
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One way is to decide beforehand that the list will contain only the sold tickets, in ascending order with ticket #1 at the top.

I pushed the 50 numbers I did in numerical order as you state the order did make a difference - I pushed the outcome back in as an input just to check the outcome.

So I'd assume we push the numbers in in numerical order.
 
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