Sol Betting

[Julian-Dumitrascu]

We design this service together with you, its users, so have your say!
Some betting services charge a fee for all bets, others only for losing bets. If we charge for all bets, sometimes you wouldn’t really feel like you’ve won. If we charge only for losing bets, you might feel burdened that you fund both the service and the winnings. For which of these funding methods do you vote? We incline towards the latter, because it reduces the cost of this service.
While some betting services cost huge amounts of money without offering their customers the best terms, we are on our customers’ side as we build this service and help them make the most of betting while reducing its cost.
You can bet on the outcomes of:

1. Lottery draws

We suggest the following lotteries for the moment. As you discuss with us what you want from a betting service, we adapt our service to include more of what you want.
As winning odds increase, winnings become smaller. We offer bets with different odds and adapt them to match the ratios you want between the winning odds and the size of the possible winnings.

1.1 numbers 0 and 1
You can bet on both numbers.
1 number costs USD 2.
2 numbers cost USD 10k.
We’d like to offer such a lottery, because it increases your odds a lot, but this very design is risky: if all bets win, there are actually no winnings. Because every service has a cost, we keep a percentage of the pooled money, so all betters would get back less money than they would have paid.

1.2 numbers 0 and 1
You can bet on either number.
1 bet costs USD 2.

1.3 numbers 0 to 2
You can bet on up to 3 numbers.
1 number costs USD 2.
2 numbers cost USD 1k.
3 numbers cost USD 1 million.

1.4 numbers 0 to 3
You can bet on up to 4 numbers.
1 number costs USD 2.
2 numbers cost USD 100.
3 numbers cost USD 10k.
4 numbers cost USD 1 million.
Many people can afford 50% odds.

1.5 numbers 0 to 5
You can bet on up to 6 numbers.
1 number costs USD 2.
2 numbers cost USD 20.
3 numbers cost USD 400.
4 numbers cost USD 8k.
5 numbers cost USD 150k.
6 numbers cost USD 2m.
Many people can afford 50% odds. Which lottery do you prefer between lottery 3 and lottery 5?

1.6 numbers 0 to 7
You can bet on up to 8 numbers.
1 number costs USD 2.
2 numbers cost USD 10.
3 numbers cost USD 100.
4 numbers cost USD 1k.
5 numbers cost USD 10k.
6 numbers cost USD 100k.
7 numbers cost USD 1m.
8 numbers cost USD 5m.
Some people can afford 50% odds. Which lottery do you prefer between lottery 5 and lottery 6?

1.7 numbers 0 to 9
You can bet on up to 10 numbers.
1 number costs USD 2.
2 numbers cost USD 5.
3 numbers cost USD 25.
4 numbers cost USD 100.
5 numbers cost USD 500.
6 numbers cost USD 2,500.
7 numbers cost USD 12k.
8 numbers cost USD 60k.
9 numbers cost USD 300k.
10 numbers cost USD 1.5m.
Many people can afford 50% odds. Do you find this lottery more satisfactory than lottery 5 and even than lottery 6?

1.8 numbers 0 to 19
You can bet on up to 20 numbers.
1 number costs USD 2.
2 numbers cost USD 5.
3 numbers cost USD 10.
4 numbers cost USD 20.
5 numbers cost USD 40.
6 numbers cost USD 80.
7 numbers cost USD 150.
8 numbers cost USD 300.
9 numbers cost USD 500.
10 numbers cost USD 1k.
11 numbers cost USD 2k.
12 numbers cost USD 5k.
13 numbers cost USD 10k.
14 numbers cost USD 20k.
15 numbers cost USD 50k.
16 numbers cost USD 100k.
17 numbers cost USD 200k.
18 numbers cost USD 500k.
19 numbers cost USD 1m.
20 numbers cost USD 2m.
I think that many people would like it that they can afford odds of up to 50%. What odds would you buy across these 8 lotteries? How much would you pay for them?

Rules

a. One can buy any number of tickets to bet on any values for a certain draw.
b. How frequent do you want the draws to be?
c. You can ask us in advance to place your bets according to a certain schedule.
d. We can hold a raffle after every draw. We could set aside up to 5% of the gross revenue and split this fund equally among n winners. (We’ll agree with you on the value of n.) We can either limit the number of participating slips e.g. to 50% of them, or allow only losing slips to participate.
We are willing to pay out up to 85% of the gross revenue from lottery tickets. What percentage have others paid out?

2. Sporting events

We offer more and more opportunities to bet on sporting events, e.g. on soccer matches. You can bet e.g. on matches from Germany’s first league. They show the starting times in your computer’s time zone.
The higher sportspeople rank, the more people pay to see them play. A main activity in sports is scoring. I give examples of bets related to scoring:

• Who wins the match?
• Who loses the match?
• Will they draw?
• What will be the final score?
• How many goals will they score?
• What will be the goal difference between the 2 sides?
• Which side scores first?
• Which side scores last?
• Which team scores at least one goal?
• Which player scores at least one goal?

We can discuss placing such bets for every part of the game.
We share the money from the losing bets among the winning bets according to the sizes of the winning bets. Example:
There are 8 winning bets of USD 100 each and 10 losing bets of USD 72 each. We share USD 720 among 8 bets, so the gross winning is USD 90.
Some companies charge people for winning “too much”. We don’t.
We pay out 94% of the gross revenue from sports bets.
Sol Content can broadcast sporting events.

3. Competition shows

You can bet on the more predictable events from your favourite competition shows, e.g. which contestant is eliminated in a certain episode.

4. Elections

We can discuss different types of elections.

5. Other bets

You can try to forecast what the exchange rate of certain currencies or the air temperature will be in a certain place at a certain time.
We'd settle such bets according to the values published on a certain Web domain.

6. Insurance

You can insure your bet by paying a percentage of the initial amount. How does this reduce your loss?
When you pay 1%, you keep 10% of your wager.
When you pay 2%, you keep 19% of your wager.
When you pay 3%, you keep 27% of your wager.
When you pay 4%, you keep 34% of your wager.
When you pay 5%, you keep 40% of your wager.
When you pay 6%, you keep 45% of your wager.
When you pay 7%, you keep 49% of your wager.
When you pay 8%, you keep 52% of your wager.
When you pay 9%, you keep 54% of your wager.
When you pay 10%, you keep 55% of your wager.
Example:
You bet USD 100 and pay a 5% insurance fee.
We charge you USD 5 and place a bet for USD 95.
If you lose the bet, you keep USD 38.
If you win the bet, we pay out USD 95 plus your net winning share.
How much do you like this deal? We’ll agree with you on what improvements are possible.

7. Payments

You ask e.g. me to open for you an account with Sol Financial Services. We don't charge you for the transactions necessary for placing and settling bets. You can use this account to transfer money online between you and many other persons.
You deposit an amount of money into this account e.g. by using a payment card. You bet how much money you want. We transfer money back to your account according to the results of the bets.
We record how much you pay for this service and how much we pay you back. To the extent that the difference between these grows, we reduce our betting fee.