Bitcoin Forum

Given the new rules on the forum (which I think are good) we're starting this as the official Sapphire thread. Future bonuses and announcements will be posted here, and reps will follow this thread to respond to any questions or comments.

Just a reminder, $1.10 NL Hold'em Freerolls are running 24/7. See ya here!

Josh Strike
Founder/CEO

America is banned, see the main board for details...
this doesn't affect any depositors. America's a rogue country, in defiance of WTO rules, and we're tired of their citizens consistently lying to us about their identity. We hope our Canadian, South American, Asian and European players will understand and appreciate our efforts toward increased legitimacy and legality, even if it costs us some play-cash action.

Don't know if you want this thread to be "clean" but I just wanted to say that I really like your craps table :)

It made me finally figure out the rules ...

Thanks for letting me know you liked it!!! It gets more fun with more players, too.
We did get three Craps players over the weekend, but no winners:

MolleX: -$5.54
Repro: -$4.50
Defxor: -$0.48

We'll have to run the Craps special again soon and get everyone on at the same time  ;D

About the thread, I'm just making sure to take out the old offers so I don't confuse people, but any player comments are always welcome.

Why would you list your user's (and amount they lost) in a thread, which is publicly viewable on the internet?

We were running a prize last weekend of +5 BTC to the player winning the most on Craps. These are the results. In case you didn't notice, those aren't their real names  ;)

Edit: I shouldn't add to this, since you seem to just be a competitor trolling for a fight, but: the purpose of showing the results was so that there would be no question that the tournament we offered was fair. Like pretty much every online casino, we reserve the right in our TOS to announce results, including large winnings, using a player's handle.

Definitely not trying to troll, I wasn't aware of your TOS nor the contest you were running, I just never have seen a casino publicly announcing losses of players online (even just their handles) before.

Not trying a turf war here, sorry for the banter.

Network notice - the site will be up and down for the next few hours as we change servers. Don't be alarmed =)

Update: 2:08 pm GMT. We should be back online for most European users already. Other parts of the world should be up and running shortly.

Can you please post a link to the "main board" mentioned above?

Are US Citizens living abroad allowed to play?
(I've been in Japan nearly 6 years now)

Hey MD.

For the record, here's the thread where we went from not taking US deposits to flat-out-blocking the US entirely:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=41368.0

Americans living abroad are welcome to play, as long as they log in from a country where it's legal.

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Josh,

I just read your piece at http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/blogs/jstrike/286-how-start-casino-lose-money.html

I don't think you should move to accepting more payment methods. Bitcoin is the competitive advantage WEDGE at this point. In my meetings with traditional online casino operators [mostly Gibraltar], they are reluctant to deploy bitcoin so they move slowly. When (and if) they choose to process in bitcoin, they will all tend to move together eliminating any first-mover advantage. Your time is now. See, http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2012/01/could-bitcoin-be-future-of-internet.html

Also, accepting politically-endorsed currency units could open up your casino to additional licensing requirements although I am not sure if it makes any difference in Costa Rica jurisdiction. For the moment, bitcoin is like gambling and trading with 'air guitars'.     ;-)

Matonis, for what it's worth, I agree with you and this is exactly what I've been thinking about lately. Technically there's nothing stopping us from taking other payment methods in Costa Rica now...I've been looking at it from every angle for almost a year. But I've been hesitant for a number of reasons, which are:
*Additional KYC overhead
*The danger of becoming a conduit between methods that have chargebacks, and only pay out once a month, and BTC which has to be paid instantly and has a lot of volatility
*The extremely high fees charged by processors which would force us to lower our paybacks and bonuses
*Unexpected delays in payment and rolling reserves held by the payment processors, which increase our risk
*High up-front overhead for banking introductions and additional legal fees in the countries we chose to land the funds in
*Becoming just a tiny, unaccredited casino in an ocean of big ones, forcing us to spend more to seek higher volume, raise minimum deposits, and rapidly pressing up our server infrastructure and ability to handle customer service before we actually see any profit. I've always been a fan of growing slowly and responsibly with this.

Of course, not taking other methods means we are really counting on a lot more regular gamblers from the general public turning to Bitcoin to play. That seems more likely in the US, where there aren't a lot of other methods available. It means our interests are very closely aligned with the spread of Bitcoin as a worldwide means of exchange, which is why I loved GoWest's idea of BitcoinsForChristmas, and we put our resources into building the site with him.

For that reason, it would be great for us if other casinos decided to start accepting Bitcoin en masse. I'm not worried about the competition, because I think our games are unique enough and our service is good enough to keep a growing niche of players loving our site and coming back to play -- like the 3dice model. Rather than having to deal with all the nastiness of the payment processors, a move by other casinos toward Bitcoin would bring in a flood of players who could suddenly cash out to BTC and try our slots and games for a unique experience. Rather than having to prove ourselves legitimate in a whole new arena, it would legitimize what we've been doing all along, and I think we'd have a better shot of licensing games and providing consultancy to the majors, having been one of the first in the arena. It might hurt our SEO pretty badly, but search only accounts for about 2% of how people find our site anyway.

I figure if we keep hammering away at maintaining a solid reputation, and just keep doing what we do, the world might just come to us. At least, that's what I think in my optimistic moments. So - you've voiced what I've been silently thinking for awhile, and it feels true. I hope it is.

I like your idea of 'licensing games' to the majors. And, I believe that is where it is ultimately headed. The nasty little secret in the online gaming business is that affiliates actually set the rules because affiliates and super-affiliates drive the traffic.

If you're in London and not already going to this, http://www.totallygaming.com/event/ice-2012-conferences/page/programme/monetising-social-gaming  then maybe you could loiter around the nearby pubs and make some contacts. This is how the bitcoin deals at the majors will likely happen. Unfortunately, I'm not attending but just let me know if you would like some intros. Cheers,

Sadly, I won't be near London for ICE.

Your point about affiliates and superaffiliates is well taken. I was fortunate enough to have some great advice and mentoring from industry insiders in the years I was building Sapphire. A lot of what I learned is that the larger & less nimble casinos today suffer from crippling inertia, inefficiency, and a serious lack of imagination when it comes to marketing and management structures. We don't actually have affiliates. We're built to rely much more on player referrals, which I think are more trustworthy and valuable. Sapphire's set up in a way that doesn't distinguish superaffiliates from managers; in fact, superaffiliates are mods who manage their region, with regional marketing just a small part of the job. They can set up local promotions and local tournaments, and draw marketing funds from the general treasury; but the focus is on loyalty, not new player acquisition. And they're on exclusive contract. This turns the traditional model on its head. To date, we haven't put it into full effect - we're not big enough to sustain it yet - but the software and business structure are there to support it. Roughly speaking, one of our chiefs with 1200 players in his country will have a full-time staff of two, a $10k marketing budget, and earn about $91k per year for an 8-hour workday. And I'm specifically not looking for people with previous affiliate experience. I actually don't believe in online marketing. More ad rotations, SEO, spam, offsite links...as far as I can see, all of that is a hugely inefficient way to get an audience. I'd rather put that money into customer service, loyalty programs, larger jackpots, and offline marketing. And I want our managers out meeting players at poker games and working from their phone at the racetrack, setting up local bar nights and player get-togethers; not spending all day on the internet figuring out new ways to spam.

Whether any of this will actually work is a completely open question, but we might soon get a chance to find out.

Do you guy's do a referral system? Couldn't find any info on the site.

Yup! Once you're logged in, check out the Rewards menu. We offer a 100% matching bonus for the first deposit of anyone you refer, up to $20.
Got your PM by the way, haven't had a chance to get back to you about that yet.