How a Round Works

dLottery always has exactly one open round. Players buy in, the timer runs down, a winner is drawn, and a fresh round opens immediately.

Lifecycle

open round  →  players buy tickets  →  timer reaches 0  →  draw  →  new round opens

1. A round opens with a duration of lossTime and the current taxesPercent. On startup, an in-progress round is resumed from the database rather than restarted.
2. Players buy tickets (Buying Tickets), each adding to the shared pool (minus tax).
3. The timer ends (or an admin runs /lottery shuffle) and the round draws.
4. A new round opens straight away.

The draw

When a round draws, dLottery checks:

Condition	Outcome
No tickets sold	No winner — “ended with no tickets sold.”
Fewer than minPlayers unique players	No winner — everyone is refunded.
Otherwise	A winner is selected, weighted by ticket count.

So a round only pays out if at least minPlayers different players took part. See Winning & Payouts for the weighting and prize.

Weighted odds

Win chance is proportional to tickets held. If three players hold 1, 3 and 6 tickets (10 total), their odds are 10%, 30% and 60%. Buying more tickets is buying more chances — but never a guarantee.

Persistence

Everything — the open round, every ticket, the pool, history and player stats — lives in MySQL, so a restart resumes exactly where it left off.