Server time! Sorry, I missed this.  
The servers are adjusted to GMT, the logs are in GMT, but the times displayed in the lobbies are always in your local timezone (whatever your computer's clock is set to). So whatever time a tournament says it is, it's at that time locally for you.

@evoorhees and @mayabong... even though you're only depo'ing and withdrawing in BTC, we just don't want to take the risk of having US players. It could still be said that, if BTC is money (and we can't have it both ways...clearly it's money) then we're still using wires in the US to send it back and forth. I totally agree that the first casino to do it will make a fortune, but they'd also be inviting the hammer; the most likely candidates are the other CR-based casinos that are not run by American expatriates

edit to that: And it won't happen for a bit because everybody's on the mattresses right now since the FT/Stars shutdowns.

Thank you, Jafm.

If a player signs up, lies about his/her country and fakes an IP address, they're violating our TOS and committing fraud against the us (and likely the ISP or hosting company where their proxy is). We block VPNs, known proxies, tor, hosting center netblocks, cloud service providers, and other known threat points with several layers of filtering at the DNS level, at the server level, at the software level, and manually if necessary.

Other casinos have an easier time, because their payment providers do the heavy lifting to prevent US transactions (which, btw, is actually what the law is about: Payment transactions for gaming involving US financial instruments, not the gaming itself). With BTC, while it's arguable that our site never touches the US banking system, we think it's best for the currency and for the long-term survival of our site to do everything in our power to respect the spirit of US law, rather than trying to argue our way around it.

RE: Daniel ...that's rather weird, but let me know if anything crops up again. Also, password max length has been upped to 32 characters!

Lol. We're actually pretty happy with the start so far. Give it a couple weeks... there are a lot of regular players who still just need to get some Bitcoins. But we are trying to start building a poker game around Sunday evenings, so stop by...we'll have a few things going on.

About the question of private proxies, all we can do is assess the overall risk. You're a bitcoiner, which means you're probably in the 99.9th percentile of risk for actually having a private proxy out of the worldwide population, but we deal with it on a case-by-case basis (everyone in our system has a risk score based on factors you'd probably find surprising, separate from IP address). We reserve the right to request further ID verification at any time. In your case, the risk showed up as low, and I'm pretty sure our system was right. But if we messed up you can show us your American passport and we'll refund your original deposit... As it is, all players will have to show ID to use any payment method other than Bitcoin, and we've already been forced to tighten our checks on Canada to prevent cross-border traffic; all Canadians must now show ID, even if they score high against our system.

We're probably the only online casino in the world that performs verification checks against players prior to their first deposit, as opposed to their first withdrawal. We do it to speed up the withdrawal process and take care of good players faster. I personally find it repugnant for a casino to sit on your money right when you want to withdraw.

Yet it's funny that so many Americans find the time to try and trick a new gaming site into thinking they're from another country, trying to get us into trouble (we've caught about 20 cases in two days and counting), but they can't get their shit together to make their own supposedly democratic government legalize online poker. Maybe they're all feds. Some guy with a sense of humor just signed up with the username "NotAnFBIAgent" which is pretty funny if you think about it; I think technically we could take his bets based on such a sworn statement (hah), but the lawyers would likely disagree with me there. But what can you do, people want to play and live in a free country and be left alone...I get it. Not to sound callous but it turns out that they don't live in a free country, and I'm not sure why we should bear the responsibility for the US not being able to control its own citizens when we're trying everything we can to not break their laws. But enough of that. You were cleared, you're sitting on a normal DSL line in Sweden if I'm not mistaken? You would have been disconnected a lot more often...the games would have been unplayable if you were bouncing through that connection from the US.

The password thing is in the works and hopefully you got our email about the disconnect...if not, let me know. Thanks again, this is really the kind of serious, constructive feedback that will help us make the site work better.

Thanks for sending the feedback.

1. We'll look into why you were disconnected. There's no immediate evidence of it, although the first suspect is definitely connectivity, if it was a bug we'll try to track it down (if you remember the hand number that would help?)

2. We actually just revamped the password / relogin process... the way this works, it doesn't change your password, but gives you a one-time-use entry key back into the site, where you can change your pass. Using the reminder tool triggers certain red flags in our system if done more than once...but a withdrawal freeze isn't a bad idea. We'll think about it.

3. We're trying to make it easy for players in legal countries to deposit. If there's any reason to think you're not where you put (there isn't) you won't be able to play until we verify your ID.

4. This password issue needs to be fixed and will be fixed shortly. It's an inconsistency between pieces of the software. We'll up the max length to 20.

5. ...we've just brought back $0.10/0.20 stakes and $2 buyin tournaments for the moment, with a $1 max rake. Just for NL Holdem, by request

We've added a regular heads-up Sit & Go for $10, under Cards > Poker > Tournaments. 8 Minute blinds up, 1-2 / $1000 stack to start, 5% rake on the pot, winner takes all.

Also, there's a big tournament Sunday and...if you want to get a crowd together, we're running a $100 guaranteed pot for 3-10 players every night at 8pm GMT. That one takes registration six hours in advance.

Quick note about the interface: If you're looking at poker tournaments, and select one in the list, then click the (?) below where the name of the tournament comes up. It shows you the payouts window. We know this is not obvious enough and need to make it clearer.

Thanks for clearing that up, Newton, it's very much appreciated. And for the record -- I'm pretty sure you're one of the people who went out of your way to call us, and everything about you was green lighted in our system, so you got the wave-through. We don't allow proxies, your IP was where you said you were, and basically nothing seemed out of order. My partners are fairly pissed that I did that, but I kind of went off gut instinct, and it was in the middle of launch chaos. From here on out we're definitely going to be a little more careful about ID'ing people...we didn't want to start doing that too much because we respect the general anonymity granted by Bitcoin and think it's a good thing, but if that's what it takes to keep the 800 lb. gorilla out of our business, we'll have to do it.

I do think we can thrive with non-US players, and I also think it's inevitable that the US will open the market in the next year or two, at least for poker. We also want to sell our systems and original games to in-state and in-house use in Vegas and AC. If we can remain 100% legitimate and keep a spotless record up to that point, there would be no reason to be denied a license.

Just one other thing, because I think I see what you were saying about signing up in Canada and then playing from the States... it should raise red flags. Even if you have cash in your account, you won't be able to sit at a real-money table if you're logged on from the US, and going through a proxy would trigger a different set of bells. The system is designed to be US-paranoid...because we're really paranoid about it. I'm not saying it can't be done, 'cause anything can be done. But we're really trying to make the maximum effort to prevent it.

Anyway, thank you for helping out and clearing that up. And thanks in advance for everyone's understanding of our delicate situation, and for getting behind us and not getting us nuked =)

That's an interesting idea, but right now our system can't do it. Because the games themselves are mostly multiplayer, we have to have them in a single currency, and we thought it would be too confusing for players to be converting in and out of bitcoin before sitting at each table, so we front-loaded it. What might happen, eventually, is we might just bail on USD and run the whole thing in Bitcoin. But that depends on how easy it becomes to move other currencies in and out... and we're planning to start taking other types of payments down the line as well.

The nice thing is that it doesn't cost anything and it's ultra-fast to move cash in and out. We've been processing withdrawals usually within minutes, always within 6 hours unless there's something wrong... so without the long waiting period that other casinos have, it's kind of like cashing out your chips at the end of the night

Having said that, though... there's kind of a conflict between the rewards packages we've been offering per-deposit and having players move money in and out on a daily basis. So we'll have to see how it goes, but we may need to limit rewards to first deposits only if we start to see patterns of players moving a lot of money in and out with little or no play. We're just figuring all of this out...

Hey ColdHardMetal... thanks for the compliments. It doesn't look like any error happened in roulette last night. The odds are 1444:1 against a number coming up three times in a row, about a 1 in 50 chance of it happening during any given 30-spin period (that's off the top of my head, don't hold me to it), but that's true for any three numbers in a row. The odds of any number like 0s coming up twice are about 50% in any given 26-27 spins, so that's about right.

If you check out https://strikesapphire.com/reports/ you can see the actual number of spins for each number on the roulette wheel since we started recording... this is added up the day after the play, so right now 9's are pretty much dead center with 10 hits, and after yours show up they'll be up to 13 hits...still within the expected range that's indicated by the green zone. We have a rock-solid random number generator that's independent of network lag, so I don't think it was a bug (early in alpha testing, we did have a guy win $500 or so because we left the Craps game in test mode rolling all 7's...that was funny...and led to us rewriting the TOS...but no sign of it here).

Anyway, thanks for enjoying the games and I hope this clears it up...

Okay folks, I'm back.

It's been a pretty wild 24 hours here, and now that I can take a deep breath, I just want to thank everyone for trying out the site, as well as the positive reviews! Yes, we're still in Beta, but it's a pretty cool thing to be able to jump ahead of the big guys on Bitcoin...it feels like being part of history

I can see a bunch of people figured out the referral program...marketing isn't our big thing, we really do believe in "word of mouth" and in giving maximum rewards to loyal players. Foggyb, I like your initiative with the banner! I think we'll come out with some of our own soon, our resident artist is working on it.

Next up: We'll be starting things rolling this week with a $100 NL Holdem Freeroll (Sunday, 8pm GMT). Small, I know, but we've only got about six players who qualify so far, so we'll see where we are by Sunday, and plan accordingly for the next week. Max signup is 20 players, and minimum to start will be 5. The cost of entry is 200 player points -- you can see these in the Account > History menu at the top. They're earned by playing most real-money games; details in the TOS and help sections. Hopefully this will get the poker ball rolling at least one day a week...we'll take it from there.

Now a very important word about Canadians, "Canadians", and "Southern Canadians":
Unlike most online casinos we really do take this US thing seriously. This isn't just a strongly worded statement for appearance's sake, and we'd like to ask the Bitcoin community to please cooperate with our wishes here and not try to fake out our system. We are certainly going to face scrutiny as the first BTC casino, and it doesn't help anybody who's holding coins to put us in a position where we draw more heat from officials to the currency.

That said, there seem to be more scare-quote "Canadians" walking around than we have Canadians who've actually deposited. Which makes me wonder what's going on, and whether there's some disinfo/psy-ops at work here to discredit us.

So far, to our knowledge, we haven't taken any bets from the US...the one player who claims to be Canadian who's walking around in Michigan hasn't deposited, and can't. The other extremely-close-to-the-border player, on the Canadian side ...is this Newton? We seem to have taken your $1.37 deposit by accident. You've been de-verified. Please provide a BTC address where we can return your money.

Canadian depositors will now have to go through a somewhat tighter verification process. I'm really sorry to all the actual Canadians out there, I wish we could just run this on some basic code of chivalry, but we're trying to balance ease of use with safety for everyone involved.

To Americans who are not federal agents: The best way you can stand up for Bitcoin is by not doing something that will endanger our young site. To those who are federal agents: We refuse to service your trade, and we are making every good-faith effort possible to remain completely closed to gaming in the US. If you want to keep trying to "trick" our system against all our efforts to prevent that, and by lying on our forms, it's likely entrapment and won't stand up in court.

//end rant. Sorry for being a hardass about this, but we really do mean it; it's not just for show.

Newton, were you able to deposit?

Not yet, unfortunately ...
http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/payment-processing-issues/poll-393-a.html
but the way things are going I think it's inevitable. My personal Bitcoin conversion has been a hard road to travel...we could have launched this thing a month ago, but held off... and I gotta say I'm glad we didn't do it right before the mtgox collapse. We're throwing our full support behind Tradehill, and have spoken with them about making sure we don't have any tie-ups in the process, which made us a lot more comfortable about starting things up this way -- the TH guys are very sharp and responsive and understand what it requires to run something like this on our end.

Bottom line, myself and more than a few of the people I talk with have come around to believing that Bitcoin will ultimately be as mainstream and as impossible to control as torrents, and we happen to be in a position to be the first ones to get behind it and grow with it. So it's a combination of having a good product and seizing an opportunity when you see one. Or being in the right place at the right time. And the CM crowd will see it too, I think, once we start making some waves

Yeah, I felt a little odd about that myself. But just because I worked on the death star doesn't mean I support the empire...

Hey Lemonginger, I knew your name sounded really familiar. I'm jstrike on the CM board... I've been writing about my project there since the get-go. And yeah, of course I want to open the books to any and all kinds of checking. And you're right, Kahnawake and Alderney don't do anything to verify the casinos. But with what I've built, literally everything is open. No secrets. And to me, writing the software was the fun part, that's why I did this...it's not just an odd project, it's something I've been working on for a few years and the whole point was really to come up with lots of new games and new ideas no one had tried before. Like the Mayan Gold multiplayer progressive slot, and the rolling WR for bonuses. I'm seriously into taking everything prescribed by the CM and putting it into action. And it's not just about saving money by not leasing software, I really think that my software's got some advantages over the "big boys" stuff, at least in terms of playability and new games.
My plan is to roll out a totally new game every month or so, once I spend a month or two making sure this is up and running smoothly. My heroes are Enzo and the 3dice guys... that's exactly how I think of this project, even if Enzo doesn't think too much of me. Maybe he will later?
Bitcoin, to tell you the truth, is more the vehicle right now because my interests (like, opening this thing before I grow a 40-foot beard) and the Bitcoin community's interests coincide, and I knew that the big guys were too scared of this market to lay anything on the line with BTC. There are reps right now from MG and Playtech, and a bunch of other providers & operators, who are watching this thread and my site and waiting to see what happens, because Bitcoin is a live wire. They'll come in and dominate the market, but that's ok, because either way I got here first, and I know there's always gonna be something new for me.
BTW, I didn't announce this on CM yet because, after I did that poll where no one knew what bitcoin was, I sort of thought I should wait until we had a second deposit method before I mentioned it over there. Not saying you shouldn't, as it's definitely up to the standards I think Bryan wants to see in anything new like this, and I'm proud of it, but I'm holding off for myself 'til we get past the first few days...

edit: Also I forgot to say, I'm listed as a rep on CM but I'm also going to apply us toward a baptism as soon as we have enough players and volume to make it make sense.

Yup 
Right now, there's a guaranteed $100 tournament if 3 players join, single table, every evening at 8pm GMT... but we're going to add more as soon as we have the volume, and I'd say if you think you've got an idea for a good time to run one and want to bring some players in, we'll make it rake-free the first couple weeks and get it going. We can run tournaments up to about 20 tables right now if you got enough players to make it fun

You can play for playcash, it's just that no one's playing yet. Give it a couple days
We have Holdem, 7 card stud, mississippi and omaha, in NL, PL and Limit varieties (no NL for stud and no Limit games for Mississippi). The stakes go from $0.25/$0.50 up to $250/$500, and the rake structure is listed here:

https://strikesapphire.com/rakes.html

Let me know if you need more info!

Try again on skype man...we're online.

@GoWest -- Thanks, I take that as a compliment  

@BitVapes. We do plan on offering promotions based on both player points accrued (see the terms of service for details), and also ongoing for high-rolling players through the Silver and Gold-star preferred customer plans.

Aside from that, we've got a choice of referral programs that will give you 20% on your friends' deposits, or a larger first-time bonus, however those are subject to wagering requirements like most other bonuses.

We're a small house and offer relatively small stakes; we also offer a very personal atmosphere where you can get to know us and your fellow players. The vast majority of bonuses out there are absolute BS, designed to suck you in but never pay out. When we give you a bonus with 30x wagering requirements, you can withdraw your winnings instantly, and you can withdraw the first $1 of the bonus instantly if you've played $30. No other casino does that. More than that, our games are extremely, flawlessly fair, and we pride ourselves on it. We're the only casino that shows you the full shoe of every blackjack hand you played -- maybe the only casino that actually deals a whole show, because we're not sure how Microgaming does it, but they're clearly full of crap.

So the bottom line is that our bonuses are going to be small, and it'll be up to you whether you want to chase a bonus with a huge provider like MG, or just sit down and play a fair game (and maybe earn a few points on the side) with us.

I agree -- it's goin' on the top of the list.

Hi lemonginger, let me answer your questions since you've hit a lot of interesting points and hopefully this will explain things further:

1) We are incorporated in Costa Rica as an information processing entity, granting us the legal right to run the casino under international law. We're discussing acquiring licensing in a larger jurisdiction, and we understand the reservations some players may have about CR-based casinos. For this reason, we are going to extreme lengths to show transparency, including daily publishing every complete card shoe, roulette spin and craps roll on the site. We expect players to scour these numbers, and we also expect players to win much more than they would in, say, Vegas, because our games are 100% fair.
2) We are reserving 200% of player funds on a rolling basis to cover daily payouts.
3) This software has been four years in the making. To (legitimately) lease a Microgaming license, for instance, comes to around $100k per month if you're doing any kind of serious business. The way this started was, about 3-4 years ago I came up with an idea to make a different kind of casino, all in-browser, all in Flash, and at that time the world was a different place. The nice thing about it is that we have a lot of really different, really original games that the big guys would be scared to death to actually put into practice ("when will we get our investment back?!" and that kind of thing). So we're a little startup with a lot more flexibility, and that's actually how we were able to move so quickly toward taking Bitcoin. Because no other casino will be accepting it for quite awhile, from what we've been able to ascertain.
4) The people involved in this project are mostly new to the industry, but we have some excellent advisors who have worked (and do work) on gambling sites you would have heard of. One of our managers was a producer on the top-selling videogame of all time; another has long-term experience in the London land-based casino market. That's all I can say to the question. I'm personally an open book, if you want to look me up, it's joshstrike.com, and you can always get a hold of me there.
5) You're not being harsh; these are great questions. If you'd like more explanation, just keep askin

I'm proud to announce that StrikeSapphire.com has become the first full-featured casino to support the Bitcoin currency and community! Our private-membership, one of a kind casino & poker room is now processing deposits and near-instant withdrawals in BTC.

VERY IMPORTANT: We can't accept players in the United States, France or Italy. I wish we could, but we're a responsible club and bound by law. We verify all members' nation of residence prior to their first deposit, and we are limiting signups to 50 new depositors per month.

Once you're a member, you can deposit Bitcoin instantly on the site. BTC is converted to USD in your Sapphire account at the live Tradehill buy rate. We normally process withdrawals within the hour, converted back to BTC at the Tradehill sell rate that was live at the time you requested the withdrawal.

StrikeSapphire SA has developed our very own, very original software. It's all multi-player, multi-table, and plays directly in any browser on Windows, Mac and Linux. We feature a lot of original games, self-structured odds, and a beautiful interface that lets you play six tables at a time in a single window. We're a software company incorporated in Costa Rica. Bitcoin is our club's first deposit method, and our player's club will remain private. We're primarily committed to continued game development and licensing our platform to full-scale operators.

StrikeSapphire offers our players a unique club experience with extended play time for your Coin. We think of our club as an off-strip Vegas casino for locals in the know. Many of our original games allow combinations with RTP exceeding 97.5%, and we maintain low stakes for longer play -- as low as 1¢-$5 Roulette, 10¢-$5 Blackjack, and 10¢-$1 Craps... all multiplayer and also available in private rooms.

StrikeSapphire is committed to extreme transparency, and publishes the results of real money hands, spins and rolls on our Transparency page, linked at the bottom of our site. Please enjoy our games responsibly, and we look forward to being your hosts.

Josh Strike
Founder/CEO
StrikeSapphire SA
https://strikesapphire.com
help@strikesapphire.com