Are winners random? (or streaky)?

My perception, based on similar experience of winning 2 or 3 in a seemingly quick succession, then nothing for month on end, it seems streaky.

I think userid plays a role as well. I have a winner of my GA, who won alot of games and is not to old on the site as well, and his userID is a mix of numbers and letters. Either he is very smart and very lucky to win so many games, or his userid is favored by the algorithm as he might be popping up is random picks alot. 62 wins in 5 months is quite a luck

2 wins in 2200 entries. So it's 1 win per 1100 entries. Most of the ppl have 1 win per 300-500 entries. If i didn't won today game i would be really frustrated.

People do realize that something can be completely random and streaky at the same time, right? -_-

If you give a chimpanzee a typewriter and infinite time, he will eventually type out the collected works of William Shakespeare.

Can you give me a definition for randomness?

/me stares at loss streak, cries inside

It's human nature to attempt to align patterns in environments of randomness. Simply take a visit to any casino.

i can go weeks without winning a single time or very few then win a bunch all of a sudden for example last week i won 19 games 12 of them were on the same day.

I do seem to win in streaks, whenever I win a game I seem to win a couple more in the following week and then nothing for months, but I know perfectly well it's all random so I don't worry about it.

you should erase the /r in the strawpoll link, thats the link for the results
And i dont know what to say, i've had those "streaks" before (not so many games btw) but i dont think theres a way for it not to be random? maybe a queue or something like that

As soemone who havent won a single item in my life ( including all steam giveaway sites ) i can confirm that this is not random.

Streaky! what I don't get is why? isn't it better to win really randomly?

I definitely noticed this, too.
Many people won in a row from me, even when the giveaways ended 30 minutes apart. The same happened to my boyfriend when we made trains together. Some users even won from me and from him in the same event. I feel like the "randomization" has something to do with the entry time or other factors...
And also: I check every single person that wins something from me, e.g. if they have multiple wins etc. and also if they regifted... So by checking many many "won pages" of people, I noticed A LOT, really A LOT LOT LOT of times that users won from the same person multiple games in a row.

I'm really interested in the algorithm and I cannot really believe that it's pure randomization.

I noticed I don't win for a very long time and then win two in a row happens all the time

Pffff... the winners aren't random or streakey.
I JUST WIN EVERYTHING <3 <3 <3

View attached image.

One of my winners won 2 games within half an hour so yes it does happen.

I usually win nothing the entire week and then i win 2 or 3 GA's on 1 day usually on weekends

Sometimes I feel like I'm on the luckiest streak ever..

View attached image.

well, i once won a GA which ended in 20 secs... and once i won 2 GAs at the very same second and i entered them at about the same time too and the entries for both was 20...

For everyone that thinks something might be "wrong" with Steamgifts random algorithm:

THROW A COIN 1000 TIMES!!!

(or read the first page of this paper).

See those long streaks of Heads (or Tails) in a row, right there?

Yeah.

For 1000 flips of a fair coin, the expected value of the longest run is about 10.

I think overall the place is random (certainly I don't think anyone has a way to deliberately abuse the system). But I know when I was obsessed with Pokemon RNG abuse and manipulation was a thing and I sometimes suspect there are certain things going on here due to pseudorandom number generation rather than true random number generation. My own wins have come in clusters and anecdotal evidence suggests this is fairly common, and although I'm the first to admit that could simply be a matter of statistics and human tendencies to seek patterns rather than true anomalies, I have perhaps more significantly noticed serious issues with large trains I have made.

I have done some pretty big trains in forums and noticed multiple games going to various winners. With, for instance, 65 giveaways in a train and a limited number of people paying attention to the hidden link the chances of a multiple winner are pretty high. But I have often had several people winning several games in a single train, and as the sets of data from said trains were seemingly more manageable and suitable for mathematical statistical analysis I was able to sit down and start to determine some probabilities. And I'm pretty sure the chances of some of the specific clusters that occur here time and time again being genuinely random are pretty remote...

Streaky; normally I win a GA or two per week but I managed just recently to get two in one day!

I've entered 7294 giveaways. Won 61. It would be nice to be able to calculate the exact average number of entries, but I'd risk saying 0.836% is a fairly consistent result.

I have also won in streaks, but those are easily explained by either a large number of giveaways ending in a given day (e.g. christmas), or by having entered consecutive invite-only or group giveaways.

some necroposting.
Those streaks again, i won 2 games in a day(week ago) and after that. The streak of unluck of course. Over 200 hundred giveaways with less than 150 entries, 100 with less than 50, over 50 giveaways with less than 30 entries. And no aney luck.
I know, i'm just stupid shameless guy =_=. I just used to be lucky guy.
So, lil giveaway for people who suffered from reading my post.
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/LAdzX/knights-of-pen-and-paper-1-deluxier-edition

computers do have an algorythm for random numbers, unlike what a quantum computer would have.
In coding softwares I've encountered clusters of numbers being repeated in random number generators. I have no idea why it is so but for the most of the time it should not do that. It may also depend on the coding software being used.