Since my last test, there have been some welcome improvements to the case unboxing simulator,
link's in the description.
Most importantly, it now automatically unboxes cases, only stopping at items of value.
This has made my life easier so I've been able to do more with this analysis than I
would have otherwise.
I decided to unbox 20 knives, running 20 different simulations at once.
Even then it took me ALL NIGHT since it stops at other items as well as knives.
You can't imagine how relieved I was once it was all over.
You can see all of the 20 unboxings here.
In case you don't believe me.
Of course, it gets more interesting once the results are put into a graph.
This one... hmm, something's not right...
ah, that's better.
Along the bottom it shows how much I had to spend before unboxing a knife.
The further up the dots are, the better the return.
In short, if it reaches 100% then the value of the items I received was equal to the amount
I had to spend to get them.
But as you can see, none of them reached that point so I lost money on all of them, even
on the ones where I only had to unbox a hundred crates or so before getting a knife.
The figures are surprisingly round: I had to spend an average of $2,500 on keys and
cases to unbox each shadow knife.
Altogether I spent $50,000 on 13,412 case before I got my 20th knife.
The average value of a knife was $130, or the cost of 35 case openings.
Had I bought all 13,412 weapons from the market it would have cost me half as much, saving
me almost $24,000.
But don't worry, I'm sure this was just an unlucky streak and that I'll make a profit
next time.
So, the conclusion remains the same: if you want a knife, it's best just to buy them rather
than to open cases.
The result of case openings is sort of like a cone that gets narrower the more cases you
unbox.
On your first case, there's a lot of random chance.
You could make a small loss on a useless skin, or a huge gain by unboxing the rarest knife-
though obviously that's rare.
But if everybody who watches this video tries out the simulation, perhaps 30 of you will
get it on your first box.
It's just probability.
There will also be some of you who won't get it after 3000 cases- and it could be you!
Your best chances of making a 'profit' are if you unbox a knife in the first 100 crates
or so where the value of the knife is more likely to offset the cost of the other cases
you've opened, but as time goes on and you unbox more and more cases, probability will
round off your chances.
Eventually, after unlimited case openings, you will almost definitely have made a loss.
Assuming these 20 case unboxings are accurate, you'll find that for every dollar you spend
you lose 48 cents.
But don't take my word for it.
Load up the simulation for yourself and see where you end up.
I've enjoyed running it in the background when doing something else, it's fun to check
up on every half hour to see how it's going.
And now for some lessons in basic probability, because it still blows my mind.
When I had just a couple of simulations left running, I decided to open up some more simulations
just for the fun of it, to have a sort of race between the ones that had been open for
about 10 hours against the ones I had just started.
You might think that the ones that had been open for longer would be more likely to get
the knife first.
It would only be fair, right?
But no, it doesn't work like that.
Every single unboxing you do has the same chance of unboxing a knife.
Using this logic, if you had one that had been running for an entire day and 2 that
had just been started, there's double the chance that the freshly started simulations
unbox a knife first.
It doesn't sound fair, does it.
And to further mind-blow you, it was about 6 in the morning and one of the simulations
I had just started unboxed a knife.
But this wasn't one of the original 20 I had started.
Would it have been fair to have included that new unboxing in the results instead of one
of the older simulations that was still running but hadn't unboxed a knife yet?
No.
I mean, after the first 19 had been unboxed 'correctly', the 20th would inevitably take
less than average time had the result have been picked from more than one simulation.
And that isn't fair.
Hopefully some of you find this sort of stuff interesting.
It's worth understanding everything that I've just said before gambling against the odds.
And some of you will be listening to everything I've just said and will be thinking 'ha, that's
obvious!'
...but that still doesn't stop people from gambling away a lot of money on cases, in
some situations, using money they can't afford.
This is a serious issue.
Don't do it.
Opening them on a new day or after a period of time, or after a series of bad case unboxings
doesn't improve your chances.
If you've made a loss and think that you can turn your fortune around by opening more...
well, the annoying thing is that you might, but the odds are against you and only become
more with every case you unbox.
Stop chasing your losses.
Accept that you've lost money and just buy the item you want.
It hurts to accept it and at the time it's easier to carry on.
But don't.
Instead, use the simulation to satisfy your unboxing needs.
Besides, unboxing more knives simply lowers their value anyway.