Bitcoin Forum

Title says it all... our 15 BTC Weekend Leaderboard returns this weekend with 9BTC, 4BTC and 2BTC prizes to the top winners over the weekend... details (and the leaderboard) are on our blog at https://strikesapphire.com

And, we've just introduced round-the-clock hourly freerolls for the month of July! $0.50 each, and only 3 players to start'em. Get started and make some free coins!

OK sounds good, I will take a break from sealswithclubs and come play poker at strikesapphire.
My gf and i love going in a free tournament.

If time permits, will hop online tonight about 8pm (+8 GMT).

I hope you don't share the same IP address, or live in the same province as each other!  ;)

What Dooglus means is that StrikeSapphire takes some measures to prevent poker collusion, which includes preventing players who share IP addresses from sitting at the same tables. This is pretty standard stuff at poker rooms. We make an exception to this rule for any table with the word "friends" in the name. If you're on the same IP with your buddy, you can start your own "friends" table or tournament, or join our nightly $0.40 Partners and Friends tournament. The point of this is to let players know if they're joining a table where there might be a higher probability of team play (we realize we can't prevent it totally, but we want to create as transparent an environment as possible).

Do you look at these instances in a case by case basis?  I just started playing some Bitcoin poker recently, and of course it is more fun to play against your friends, so I invited some of them to play as well.  How do you expect BTC poker to spread if I am now at risk of being banned for sharing BTC poker with them?

It looks like the measures against players sharing IP addresses are no longer working.  Did you relax the rule, or is it a bug?

There's an exceptional reason for this, and I don't want to fill up this thread with it; it's not actually a bug but a relaxation of certain constraints. If you contact me I'll explain.

There are about 7 hours left in our leaderboard tournament and no one's qualified to the +$25 mark yet. 100% up to 9BTC goes to the first place winner, with prizes for 2nd and third ( if anyone qualifies  ::) ).

Check it here: https://strikesapphire.com/blog

With $0.50 hourly poker freerolls and bigger tournaments starting over the next few hours, it might be possible to do this entirely in poker; OTOH you might have to spin the wheel a few times.

Except that to qualify you have to have bet over $100 in total, and so the freerolls don't help you pass that hurdle?

Start a poker table...those bets count.

Our tournament is final... Petrescuerz clears it in the last few minutes with a daring combination of Roulette and blackjack, for a $55.22 bonus. Job well done :)

I tried talking her out of it, telling her it wasn't worth the risk.  She doesn't have a silver star account, so can't bet more than $1 per number on roulette otherwise I would have worked out a stupidly risky martingale strategy for her.  :)

She insisted however, put $1 on number 17 and was determined to spin until it won.  Luckily for her it came up on the 5th spin, putting her in first place and over $25 on the leaderboard, but without having bet enough to qualify.

She switched to blackjack to rack up enough bets in the 20 minutes that were remaining, and made it with minutes to spare playing basic strategy, betting a flat $2 per hand.

A "how much have I bet this weekend" indicator would be useful - she had little idea how much she had played already so I recommended she just play $100 worth of blackjack to be on the safe side.

Oh, and when she got the email confirming she had won she hit the roof:


It might be worth changing the wording in that email:


It can apparently be quite upsetting...

It was a good play for low stakes (and a little luck never hurts).

There actually is an indicator now of how much you've bet, it's just not in a very obvious place; in the Player History window, where you can see your win/loss for the current or last weekend tournament, it now also shows the amount you've wagered. Bear in mind that this can lag by up to 5 minutes, just like the leaderboard.

I don't know why you guys like to wait until the last second... I didn't think anyone was going to make it. I was about to give out the 5 BTC no-one-qualified prize. We had a couple strong contenders this weekend who were high on the board at different times (notably warpman, who would have taken the 5BTC prize, and oceans1) ... but they were out of the running by the last few hours.

Re: the automatic bonus email; tell petrescuerz we're sorry for freaking her out. There's no WR on these leaderboard wins, of course. That's just the default email whenever a pit manager issues a direct bonus to a player, since no manager other than me is cleared to issue bonuses for more than a few bucks without wagering requirements. They can issue them, but I have to sign the warrant to clear the WR after the fact, which is what happened last night. We won't do that for the leaderboard wins anymore, and I'll payout and email the winners personally.

That's cool.  I hadn't noticed it before.


She had been playing on and off all weekend, within her comfort zone.  When she saw that it looked like nobody was going to win, she decided it would be worth betting more than she was comfortable with to have a chance of winning for once.  I think partly she just wanted to win because she hadn't before and I had - she's quite competitive with me - but it wouldn't have made much sense to take the scary risk earlier if oceans was going to end up $150 up or something.


Really?  I looked at the leaderboard quite a few times over the weekend and other than eddy with his Scuba Cube win I didn't see anyone overtake petrescuerz at any point.  I guess they didn't stay up there for long...


It doesn't matter to us now that we both know to ignore the email.  I just think it's off-putting for new winners to receive - they think they've just won $50 then they get an email saying they have to bet it 30 times over before they can have it - it kind of takes the edge off...

Since you logged in from the same IP as petrescuerz immediately after I logged her off to check her score, I'm sure you were directing the process.

Your last-minute strategy worked out well for her. But I don't think you and she were worried about Oceans. Oceans and Warp dropped off the board on Friday and Saturday, respectively. I think you were waiting to see if Eddy was coming back to top $25.  C'mon. She was already up about $165 on the house, all from freerolls & bonus play. She only ever deposited $20 once (and that was for a 200% bonus). I'm not sure why it'd be scary, even if someone else was qualified; even if she only got second or third place. Basically all of her bets are and have always been on our dime. The depth of her winnings already gave her a very good chance to win even if someone else had qualified; and this is without ever going into her own bankroll. At no point here are we talking about you or she betting your own money (heaven forbid) - we're talking about betting your free winnings, and only wanting to do so when the odds are stacked not just well in your favor, but exceptionally well in your favor.

Honestly, not being willing to risk freeroll winnings until you're guaranteed to be the only person competing for a prize? You have found, literally, every way to grind our system for bonuses, tournaments, freerolls, points and prizes; you've made a science out of it. You don't gamble. You sit on our site 24 hours a day and clip fucking coupons.

Anyway, I'm tired of the two of you hoovering up all our free stuff, whether you're the same person or not. That stuff is prizes for people who gamble. That stuff is what takes our house average 96% RTP and turns it into 98%. You've won the contest 7 or 8 times out of 11, right? Shit, you're basically the reason I stopped running it every week. I'm tired of giving you free shit. I want to give free shit to real players. And I'd like other people to win for a change.

You know, I was just going to be quiet about all this, but you had to have the last word in the forum, right? To celebrate your victory. Me stupid casino owner, falls for your multi-account, endless grinding bullshit, me smile and bow and thank you for winning by being so clever. You know what? I saw you take over Bitzino's thread, too. Leave my fuckin thread alone. Go over there and see how much he can take of your endless bullshit. Lucky for him he isn't giving away bonuses, so you probably won't be interested.

From now on, I'd prefer that you (plural) don't play. And if petrescuerz cashes out and you guys take your business elsewhere, that would be better for everybody. I don't want you or your friends around anymore.

Yes.  I was saying "don't bet on single roulette numbers, it's dumb; you'll probably lose more than $36 before your number comes up".  And she was ignoring me.


To be honest I had already given up on the tournament.  I lost what little balance I had left and was happy to leave it like that.  She came to me at around 11:30pm and asked me to recommend a martingale strategy to get up to $25.  I recommended she just forget about it, since she couldn't bet very big and she ignored me.  I don't know what her reasoning was for timing it like that and she's not currently online to ask.  If I had wanted to win I would have made a deposit on my account where I can bet much bigger.  This was all her.


True.  Maybe it wasn't scary for her, I'm probably projecting.  I really don't like losing, whether it's money I've won or money I've earned.  It just feels bad.  I asked her before she started the $1 roulette spins "how much are you prepared to lose at this?" and she said "[$89] - it's not my money anyway".  So I guess she sees it the same way as you do.


petrescuerz got lucky with a roulette spin.  That's all.  Nothing clever about it.  I guess I was just excited for her and said too much here as a result.  I keep forgetting about how you sometimes react and it always catches me by surprise.  If you look at what happened on the Bitzino thread (https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=87656), libertaad was very receptive to my suggestions, and thanked me for them.  I also "took over" the MyriadCoins thread (https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=86620), and again my suggestions were appreciated and acted upon.  In both cases the site owners were polite; neither one called me an asshole or banned me from their site at any point!


If you're serious, I can avoid playing at Sapphire.  I don't know if petrescuerz has seen any of this yet, so she may play until I tell her about it.  I expect she'll be upset by it, but probably not too surprised either.

Okay. Clever, not clever - personally I think you're the cleverest guy in the casino, if that's what you want to hear. Either that or you just have more time on your hands than anybody else. You've found every bonus we ever advertised, on any website, and found ways to use each one twice, sometimes more, while collecting referral fees for your friends and raking in all the prizes and freerolls we have. I'm just tired of the aggravation. Tired of your little network. Would I let you stick around and build up another $600 worth of freeroll and bonus wins? Probably, if you didn't keep prodding me in the forums, like you've done in this thread. Go prod someone else. The other casinos haven't been in business that long. They don't know you like I do. They don't pay your rent yet. It's a free market, just go down the street.

People can decide if I'm an asshole, I don't care. Let it be known StrikeSapphire bans people for annoying us to death. Did we ever fail to pay your winnings? No. Is there a law that says I have to keep giving you free shit while dealing with this trolling and 16 emails a week from you at the same time? No. So, take the money and go play somewhere else. What petrescuerz does is her business but we're ready and eager to pay her out.

I found one on casino-deposit and one in a forum thread.  Is that really all of them?  I used each of them once only.  I didn't know it was possible to use them more than once.  I only ever collected two referral fees, and as soon as I did, you upped the wagering requirements from 30x to 150x so I was unable to collect them.


You've always paid out quickly and reliably.  The vast majority of my emails to you have been bug reports.  You reward bug reports with "player points" which lead me to believe you wanted them.

Like I say, I'll have no problem staying away from your casino.  Sorry it ended like this.

This is copy/pasted from an email, hence the weird line-lengths.

Okay. You want to see the nuts?

Petrescuerz doesn't exist. I pretend she exists, so I can be nice and I don't have to explicitly say I think you're a liar. But I think you're a liar. And therefore I can't be a dick to her, because she is you. And I can't be a dick to you, because I'm just telling you the truth. And the truth is I think you're a liar. So now that we've let you do this routine for a long time, it's over. You can call me a dick and tell all your :friends: not to play on our site.

I told you it's not about you winning, it's about the the amount of shit you've given me, and this last BS email from your supposed girlfriend is just another example of your ridiculous dual personality shenanigans.

I'm a nice guy. But you think I'm going to humiliate myself by writing an apology letter to your imaginary friend? Piss off.

That is nuts!

Do you remember when you asked us to Skype with you, and you talked to both of us?  Was that me putting on voices?  Or did I have a hooker on 24/7 standby in case you checked up on me?

We'll both stop playing, don't worry about that.  But know that you're wrong, and incredibly insulting.  Maybe you should look into getting someone more stable to do the customer facing stuff.  This can't be good for business.

omg pet is real! i miss her plse tell her i said hi!   i was thinking of checking out strike sapphire bc i like to play poker and gamble and such but the owner is obviously a real tool.  He actually posted a clients deposit history somewhere in the back of those threads. I mean wtf is that?  if you start offering freerolls and promotions on a casino site and expect that they aren't going to be exploited then you were born yesterday, and without internet access.  Seriously, if of all the scammers and exploiters in the btc world you pick out dooglus and pet, who are seriously decent ppl, you are gonna get eaten alive.

I'll tell her you said hi.

Josh is OK most of the time, but occasionally he flips out like this.  I've heard it suggested that his weird behaviour may be alcohol related, but that's really no excuse.

Thanks for the support.  Now I'll fuck off out of this thread, as requested.

Ah, another of your fake personalities comes out of the woodwork just in time to say something that sounds suspiciously like you wrote it. Like that time you accidentally typed "NH Dooglus" from your own chat window instead of petrescuerz's window, and the entire room called you on it. How many of these you got? How do you keep 'em straight? I don't need an excuse to shut you down.


That made me laugh.

@Crosby, ask our real customers. Our service is immediate, responsive and personal. As is our security. Our only mistake was letting dooglus' many personalities in the door in the first place. Seals can have 'em.

I am a customer of yours. Albeit not a paying customer at this time, but will not definitely not be returning after seeing this behavior from you.

You logged in once to our site. In January.

Run a site like this and you'll find out who the scammers are quickly. Bitcoin may be rife with them, but Dooglus's multiple personalities stand out on every one of our reports. As you can see they've aggravated me to the point of falling for this fucking ongoing troll bait.

Anyone who thinks I'm wrong for doing it doesn't have to use our site. Prizes in the future will go to legit players.

After a lot more email from Dooglus & Co., this is our final word on this subject:

We do not know, and cannot know, the full truth about the dooglus / petrescuerz situation. We do not believe that petrescuerz is an imaginary person, but we also don't believe that she has always been in control of that account. Dooglus has asked me to retract the post calling him a liar, and her imaginary. I'll say that she is not imaginary. Whether she's the person who was playing on his computer is impossible to know. Beyond that, I'm reluctant to alter the history of this thread and would prefer it to be removed completely, as he and I have both asked the mods to do.

No player at StrikeSapphire will ever face arbitrary removal without the incident(s) being discussed between us and that player. There have been well over 50 emails between myself and Dooglus over the past six months, and many situations over that time which have caused problems between us. Against my better judgement I have been extremely believing even when things simply did not add up and other people were urging me not to be. At times I think I've been gullible. My feelings about Dooglus's behavior - and commentary - have been boiling for a very long time, and he has been aware of that.

Since we don't know for certain, I don't want to make false accusations. Nor is it my intent to "libel" him as he's accused me of doing. We have not taken his funds; we have paid him, petrescuerz and their friends. We have asked him to leave, and he's elected to take his friends, referrals, et. al. with him and send a lot of emails and chats to people criticizing me, which is his right.

I apologize for losing my temper in this thread. This is not however an invitation to keep trolling this thread, or an apology for what I've written here. Nor is this an invitation for anyone to come back to the site. He is simply not invited anymore, and we won't change our mind on the subject.

Dooglus would like this thread removed. I have no objection to that, and I have asked the moderators to do so if that's within their power.

Here Dooglus. I unlocked the thread. Beat your brains out. But I'm done responding to this.

Thanks.  I tried replying before when I noticed the thread was unlocked, but you locked it again before I could finish typing.  I ended up posting my reply here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67931.msg1023884#msg1023884), but now I'll put it here where it belongs.


So to be clear you're not retracting the part about me being a liar?


I have asked for no such thing.  Where do you get this stuff from?


I didn't elect to take them with me, you asked me to.  Remember the following?


I contacted my friends, giving them a link to this thread so they could see what was going on.  I agree that it makes you look bad, but I don't think any of that is my doing.



I don't want the thread removed.  I want it to stand as a warning to potential customers to the type of treatment they can expect to receive from your company.

It's quite incredible how badly you have managed this.  If you had any doubts about the identity of the players at your site you should have spoken to them.  I'm sure they would have been happy to video chat with you, send you copies of passports, driving licenses, or whatever.

To post an attacking rant like you did is simply unprofessional and offensive.

In my experience running bars and poker games IRL, it's better to do this out in the open. You & petrescuerz have walked with $715.49, a majority of that in bonuses and free prizes. You've been paid out. This is not a mind-bending amount of money we're talking about, but you certainly can't say we haven't been a nice spot for you to play at. We are simply asking you to leave now because we don't like how your various accounts are set up, and how they interact. I'm not gonna get back into the details of the things we think you did. We paid you, we're square, now go somewhere else.

While the thread is unlocked, I wish to call you, ssaCEO a liar.

I've logged in more then once and referred friends there. Thanks

I'm not disputing that you paid us.  Thanks a lot for the free money, and it has been mostly a very pleasant experience playing at your casino and interacting with the other players.

What I could have done without was the string of false accusations from the CEO.  My friends and I aren't the only targets of your paranoia; I've been at a poker table before watched as you accused JoeyMajik of being an undercover cop come to catch you in the act of letting USA players gamble, and the Portuguese players have also had their own share of trouble for daring to want to play poker together.

I understand you need to be cautious in your position because people will try to scam you but you can't go throwing your weight around willy nilly like you do, or you'll scare all your players away.

And if you do feel you have reasonable doubt about people's identities, instead of "you're a liar, your girlfriend is imaginary and you have multiple personalities", it might be better to say "could you and your girlfriend please send me copies of your ID documents?"

Or carry on as you are.  Makes no difference to me now.

Now I realize what is happening.... :(

Where is Dooglus Petres who waited, helped and supported the smooth running of the casino and the poker tables when everything was on trial and when we were the experimental group?! Now are the same person?! Is Dooglus the 75R or PM akordeon too?! I got an identity crisis while reading this conversation ... I was also shy and thoughtful ...

I can not understand ... josh, as you shared your idea, you could also share all the facts and evidence that led you to expel the Dooglus and Petres! It would be interesting to see this farce and can give you reason, do not you think?! Tell us the true! we want to know and see the evidence ... I want to know what kind of friends I made in poker sapphire strike ...

I did not like this ... I am sorry but I had to tell my opinion ... wtf...

75R,

A large number of red flags came up from the dooglus and petrescuerz accounts over a long period of time. We were very forgiving of these. We were in an experimental phase and we allowed a lot of things to pass.

When the new security came into effect, you and PM were understanding about it. Dooglus clearly has a personal problem with our security rules, based on his comment earlier in this thread


That's a reflection of his attitude, and he's carried out an agenda against our site with the same level of passion. He's a deterrent to other people playing on our site. And that's not something we need. With all of these things, it wasn't a tough call.

She asked for "facts and evidence".  Not vague hand-waving.  "Red flags"?  Come on...

I have no agenda against your site at all.  I see you doing things that are likely to put people off playing there, including being too heavy-handed with your suspicions about friends colluding.  You've said before that you thought Doug and I were the same person because we both had "British Columbia IPs".  The province of British Columbia is a big place, bigger than France, hence my silly "I hope you're not in the same province as your girlfriend" quip.

ok ... I can not agree with facts not proven ... I continue to believe the two parties, friends in poker (dooglus & Petres) and moderation of the strike sapphire ... but I can not believe that is the Petres Dooglus or any other player. The fact that the Dooglus win many leaders, in my opinion, only proves that he is good player, the best so far in sapphire strike. this is reality. I loved that it was cleared up, ONCE AGAIN, to have their company in the poker sapphire strike, just that.
I am very sad about this situation, I love you all and did not realize how good people can misunderstand this way :(

The main reason I was able to win the leaderboards was that I discovered that it was possible to win at Sapphire's blackjack game by counting cards (that, and lots of luck at roulette).  Josh knew I was doing it, and seemed to be OK with it too.  Then one day the penetration reduced from 65% to 13% and the profitability of the technique dropped right off.  I've not won a leaderboard tournament since, and am down around $100 since the shuffling became more frequent.

The other reason was just that I was prepared to make big last-minute bets to try to take 1st place.  Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't - like the weekend you won.  :)

Edit: I'm going to stop posting here.  I think everything's been said.  Sorry for continuing to fill up the Sapphire thread with my nonsense.  It's time to move on.  I hope it all works out for you Josh.