im dumb nvm

Can't you restore them to remove a name? :o

.

nobody was planning to anyway

ew rac

I think that we all had a fun night during ETF2L playoffs. The game was much more exciting for me with an equivalent of 18 ref on Reason I really was hoping for them to win until the very end as the game was pretty close. I won nothing, but still got quite a lot of fun.

I appreciate what casters said, it was very nice and looking at the twitch chat and seeing how everyone talked about bets also made me feel warm and fuzzy in the inside :)

At some point there was too much demand for my server to handle (partially because of not-so-optimal configutation, partially because of it being just a mid tier VPS) which forced me to make betting on the final limited and resulted in 4 people needing a refund as their bets were processed after a game started.

I've made some performance improvements since. Most of them related to database and websockets since they seemed to be a cause and I do have some more in my mind as normalizing some of the data stored as arrays, changing the order in which queries are executed to avoid locks and finding some affordable dedicated server for the project (though they are all expensive, so feel free to contribute if you feel like it ;))

Some random stats:

Over 7,000 unique visitors (3 days)
64,422 page views (Grand Final's day)
302,670 hits (Grand Final's day) and
675 trades (Grand Final's day)

Sounds very promising, doesn't it :) ?

Do you take a cut out of the bets to go back to the servers etc...?

I don't though there are leftovers sometimes. There used to be more of them with the first few games, but as I fixed my algorithm they certainly won't be more than maybe 20$/month (except for when someone bets earbuds on a one sided game, but I'm going to raffle them (as Scissor's) if there is too much of them before I make up some sort of compensation as I don't want to make it my main source of income).

And the more accurate my algorithm gets, the more even matches I add and the more bets people place the less
items will end as a leftover and I'm kinda aiming for it :)

My plan is to add donate button on the website at some point, but I'd like to make some way to reward donators before I do that so they feel appreciated.
I have something in mind atm, but my main point of focus is making the website work before I can bath in dirty gambling money ;)

So, you're running a gambling website at your own expense, just for fun?

My own expense is around 35$/month which is not that much and I manage to have just enough spare. Of couse I wouldn't mind if this project turned out to sustain by itself or be actually profitable, but I don't really care about it at this point since I'm still in the 12th grade and don't spend a lot. And if I were to get anything I'd rather get it because someone wanted to thank me for the work I put than take commission from his bet and pretend like it's ok.

But yeah I just needed something to fill up my spare time in school and during the evenings as I only go out once a week maybe, I mean making it is not very different from making ships in the bottles :P
It allowed me to earn some experience and it's a good thing to put in CV as well so if I were to drow.
It started as an experiment with writing a Steam client using the technologies I like mostly for the sake of doing it and ended up as what it is now.
Also please don't use word gambling as it is something unsuitable. Every choice you make is a gamble, though you can't always see the results so clearly.. And this type of gambling rewards skill and knowledge unlike lotteries.

And pattion for the game!

I think in the very near future when the site is running full time a dedicated server should be an essential upgrade to handle everything, and that is costly, so if your ideas for monetization of the site are not working out I would definitely be ok with you taking let's say 5% on all bets, or bets above a certain value or whatever it is.

I believe donations could be fine, but we'll see :)

Hello,
I had to switch to poll from epoll for now because the bug which caused Twisted to crash in some mysterious situations I when using epoll apparently wasn't fixed yet even though it was discovered two years ago.
I might switch from Twisted to asyncio, but that'd require a little bit more work and won't be so straightforward.

Long story short it means that I'm trading a little bit of performance for improved stability, please don't be suprised if things run a little bit slower though that really shouldn't be noticeable.
It should go live tonight.

If I was you Cherry I'd take a commission from the bets, end of the day it's a service that will benefit the competitive community in the long term, improved functionality on the website can only hope to expand numbers and allow for more marketing and working in partnership with all the TF2 leagues, events, tournaments and so forth.

Jon from BOTV told me that on average the Highpander vs Chessclub game had around 380 viewers, whilst the Premiership Final from Season 7 had around 260. That is an increase of nearly 50% in viewership numbers, the ETF2L Prem finals saw numbers reaching 1200+, but I don't have any figures to compare.

So go take your 5% commission and make yourself some money, you deserve it. ;)

I say for sure I would not have watched that match if it wasn't for saloon.tf and I didn't even bet! I just wanted to learn more about Euro HL so I can bet with confidence in the future.

And seriously Cherry, if you take a small commission for yourself and improvements to the website, that's a good thing for TF2. You should go for it. Defy changed my mind.

stop suggesting he takes a commission it's really really stupid. csgo lounge doesn't take a % and neither should cherry. the only website that takes a % of items is csgojackpot and all the other copies that are popping up. those websites are mental to begin with

the market for tf2 items is laughable in comparison to csgo they don't sell quickly at all the value is low and some items sit for days before going id argue the same fact when it comes to selling them to someone via paypal as i dealt with this before. you can sell a handful of items from tf2 on the steam market (extremely low return with the exception of killstreak strange weapons or unusuals), a lot of craftable hats worth refined/keys you cant sell, you need to go through other websites and its actually a hassle since you cant just sell outright.

just setup a donation link for your own paypal, if people want to offer up support for your services there you go.

Ive been having issues receiving my payout. I click on payout, brings me to the match screen does the circle and stops. Ive been having this issue since the BK / [R] Game and Im not able to fix it.

No, that's a stupid comparision, csgo lounge is a huge player in csgo betting, the money they make on partnerships and ads alone is enough to sustain the site and it's devs. Also, it doesn't take a % now but it used to back when it started IIIRC, also they may take your items if you leave them on their inventories for longer than 21 days. If they didn't have this at the start it would never have been sustainable.

Cherry is already spending $35 month on the site with a vps, he will probably need a dedicated server to handle future load, that will probably be upwards of $100 month, do you seriously expect the site to be self sustainable with donations only? That kind of entitlement is so infuriating. Sure, he has stated he doens't want to take a % for now and it also seems he has no need for it (which I praise him for) but he has every right to do so if he wants, it's his site, developed on his free time, and being sustained with his money.

kaneco every single post you make comes off as "only i'm right everyone else is wrong" but i'll entertain the comment anyway since you seem completely oblivious as usual.

its not a stupid comparison, i'm not talking about the size of csgo lounge or the amount of people that bet on it everyone is well aware of its vast user base and ads. i'm stating a fact of how awful the tf2 market is and the reason why i bring up csgo is because they're all items on steam, and you can purchase/sell both tf2 and cs skins via steam market. suggesting he takes a % at this point in time is dumb for the fact that the value of tf2 items is always has been incredibly low. yes i know its his website thanks for bolding that part i wasn't aware.

he already stated that hes working on putting up a donation link, and since you seem clueless as fuck about tf2 items i'll give you an example. look at what people are betting now in some of the past bets, if you know the actual $ value of refined and craftable hats you would realize that even a small donation is way higher than items in tf2. you can add $5 to your steam wallet right now and get a handful of hats and strange weapons, that $5 is worth more than a bunch of bets i've seen. with the amount of people using the site now there is no doubt he will be getting donations. that will easily trump the amount of a small % of the suggested commission.

also to further strengthen my argument please point me in the direction of players that have asked for money for something they're doing for the tf2 community

a few examples: our NA DM servers are paid for by sal every single month and he asks for nothing in return. every single NA pug system from way back up until now was always paid for by whoever was running it. they paid for all the pug na servers and mix servers whether it was cinq or fog. they never asked for help they wouldn't even take into consideration donations for running them. jump servers from klanana...always ran on her own terms didn't ask for a thing in return. do i really need to go on? it's great to see this website finally going but suggesting he takes a % is a joke yes its ultimately his choice and he can feel free to do what he wants. but he can always pay for it his own way like most people have done in the past

Ok, apparently Im clueless as fuck about tf2 items. How's this then, you can still sell your low value items to scrap.tf for little below face value, converting them to metal, then you can sell that metal easily on sites like sourceop or if you're big enough of a player you can even have an agreement with sites like marketplace.tf to sell items to them for $ directly. It's a bit of work but you can easily convert tf2 items to real currency if you know where to go.

Also dude, u don't need to lecture me on this I have spent enough of my own money and time on comp.tf and related projects for the tf2 community to know how the fuck that feels and I never asked for a single dime in return, even if I barely have enough to live off at the end of the week while Im in college. So get off your high horse and stop being so butthurt about my posts, I was only writing my opinion on this since Im a good friend of Cherry and have been closely cooperating and following this project with him since the start.

i'm not butthurt at all and i already mentioned in my first post of how tedious it is to get rid of items that you cant put on the steam market.

it's just getting ridiculous seeing so many people suggest he takes a commission....if the tf2 market was good i would be 110% all for it. but the tf2 market is really really bad....when trading first started the market was excellent but since unusuals were introduced it has become complete ass. the value of refined has gone down so much so the conversion rate of items = metal = keys is bad. point being in all of this what hes doing is no different then what people have done for the community in the past...i feel like the idea of commission is just engraved in everyones heads because items are in fact involved in what hes doing doesn't mean they need to be taken in return.

The tf2 market is a shithole right now, keys going for 20 refs, etc etc... completely agree with you, but probably the reason people are suggesting it is that it probably is the most straightforward solution to make the site sustainable since it deals with so many items.

Different people have different situations, some people might have a stable income and that extra at the end of the month is nothing for them but others might be living in a difficult situation (or in college lol) and that little help to sustain their projects might be essential for them, not everyone is well off. For cherry $100 at the end of the month might not be anything, but I know I wouldn't be able to sustain that if it was me.

It's just finding a balance in self sustainability and offering the users a quality service. ex: serveme introduced donations and at the start it barely went over 30% the monthly costs, it only became sustainable when arie started introducing really useful features for donators and "limiting" a bit the usage of non-donators. Nowadays it regularly goes over 150% the monthly costs, which is a great success IMO.

My point is, very few people donate just for the sake of it, but if you change it up to a improved user experience for a small fee then that might be enough to make it work. But then you also enter a bit of a gray area where that can start to become kinda a freemium service and regular users feel betrayed by that. So it's not always easy. Which is why I suggested he takes a commission at the start (if he needs to). At least until the site takes off and has enough leverage to be sustainable in other forms.

You should know Sal is technically donating to run the NA DM servers, meaning you operate under the costs DONATED to you.The person running the NA pug system is still donating their money to run it, Arie I am sure is donating money to run serveme.tf but still asks for donations. Almost every service we take for granted in this community is run through donations, without them we would die as a community. Not that we will ever stop getting donations, people here are generous and awesome as ever and it seems Cherry is infact a very modest and decent guy and I'd happily donate money to him, like I would donate shitloads for zoob who runs logs.tf at his own expense and never asks for anything back or credit.

All I am saying is if he wanted to make some money from it, takes one google search to find the value of a key, I seen it go for $2, the amount of keys going in bets I would not be surprised if the numbers increased (which will happen over time with the right promotion) there is potential there to at the very least forecast enough to cover the running costs (let alone he could potential to actually make a profit). I definitely think putting a some hours of actual market research is worth the time, after 30 seconds of checking websites it's potentially a go-er.

Depending on donations isn't a sustainable model, I can't understand why people would be opposed to someone from the competitive community using their ingenuity to make some actual money for themselves, like Geel has for scrap.tf. Whether or not he can forecast the level of profit to be more worthwhile than asking someone for a $5 donation isn't the point - A financial co-operative could go to the government and ask for a 50 grand grant to keep themselves running, but that isn't the point - the point is they make enough business with their product to earn enough money to be self-sustainable and hell, put the money back into the cooperative. The potential is there...It's really down to Cherry if he wants to pursue it.

And btw I disagree with everything Kaneco ever says but I agree on this one. It's honestly a good thing to see someone finding of a way to make money from TF2 without asking for donations, least directly.

If Cherry wants a donation btw, I'd be the first to donate.

Btw those betting on Premtech vs Highpander, I'll have you know we're not as clear favourites as you might think, since they beat us last season, just saying, smart money is on Premtech folks!

i agree with a lot of your points hild but at the moment since the website is brand new i feel like this is a very gray area when it comes to $. and as we all agreed its ultimately cherry's choice obviously what he wants to do....if he added a donation link sure i'd help out for his troubles but if he wants to take a % of the already low value items i wouldn't bother using the website that just me personally.

also that part about donations is entirely debatable...i mean you say "technically hes donating to the tf2 community" sure i can see that since hes paying for servers for everyone to use.

but i don't see it that way at all. i see it as sal has been around tf2 for a while and he's well aware that mostly everything thats done here is ran independently. going off of if you want something done...do it yourself. there used to be dm servers from extv but they were total dog shit and no one kept up with updating them so ultimately fog said i'll start my own that are better if people want to use them go ahead if not oh well. and with time everyone used them then sal took over eventually

Shh, don't tell them that, I want to be rich!

(Seriously though, the odds being 80-20 are fairly ridiculous)

I wish i had lost my first bet so I didnt have anything else to bet with. first csgo now this

How long do I have to claim any won items? I bet on the Aussie Prem finals game but I probably won't be up to claim anything until a few hours after the match is over.

7 days