Notice: I am not affiliated with any of these sites; gambling kills, and I am not responsible if you lose your life savings like a degen.That being said, I love gambling, and I've gone through many gambling sites in my (albeit short) lifetime. Every time I find a star, I'll do my best to add it here, or I'll add something whenever I have time. For now, enjoy my brief reviews/mentions of my favourite gambling sites...
1. bustabit.com
A brilliant idea and the first of its kind. A multiplier goes up each round, you can cash out at any time, and at any time, the game may go bust. When you cash out, you get your bet multiplied by that multiplier. The game may go bust at 1.2x, or you could catch something like
this. The game mechanics are smooth and the site does not lag, at least for me. I really appreciate the auto mode (there are some good scripts already present, such as the Sniper which lets you follow any player you want) and the Martingale script (lol), and what I love the most is the ability to create your own script and run it with ease. Withdrawals happen instantly (yes, literally within the second, which astounds me).
The people in the chat are really great to talk to (Ryan, the ex-owner of the site and creator of the script, gave me a bunch of cool tips and information about some unrelated stuff I was doing). I also happened to be online when a whale was playing - he made ~70 BTC in an hour and tipped me 0.01 (really warmed my heart and made my day). This site is lots of good fun, just don't play too much because the odds will always be against you!
2. satoshimines.com
A provably fair mines game with adjustable odds. You get a 3x3 square of mines and click on random squares to make money. If you click on a mine, you lose your bet! There are games with 1 mine, 3 mines, 5 mines, and 24 mines, so if you're really feeling lucky, you can go all in. I find that playing in 3 mines can really be consistently profitable as long as you manage your risk and bet sizes properly. They used to be 0-conf (which was great), but now they make you wait for 1 confirmation (which is alright, still the standard). On the bright side, there are no withdrawal fees - even when fees were at $80-100, they paid for it all, which is great. Support is enormously helpful (I lost my game link a number of times and they returned it each time after a proper IP address and identity verification). Love, love, love this site. Protip: Do not use a VPN on this site, and definitely not a free one, because anyone with the same IP address can recover your funds by emailing the admin (if you haven't set a password)
3. etherhell.com
A first of its kind - a "reverse" Ponzi scheme. In this, investors throw in money into a pot, and as the pot size grows, the minimum investment (which is 0.5% of the pot) keeps increasing, thus increasing the barrier to entry as the round progresses. The last person who bids becomes the "leader", and at every bid, a timer starts and begins to count down to zero. If the timer hits zero (and nobody else has bid),
half of the pot is sent to the winner, and the game restarts. This is a very new idea (initially, the concept was that the pot will keep growing and growing forever) but that is clearly not the case - it went from 1 ETH to 7 ETH to 20 ETH to 10 ETH to 7 ETH to 3 ETH and so on. It's a fascinating theoretical experiment, even if you don't make money.
I personally made around 1.5 ETH plus from this, but don't expect to have the same luck. (This is a review for the "Deluxe" game, a new version is to be released soon.)
There are two things I love most about this game. Firstly, it's all in the form of a decentralized smart contract built on Ethereum (even if the actual site goes down, you can still interact with the contract via etherscan or some other block explorer). The code is immutable, and I have personally audited it and deem it to be completely provably fair, unlike other sites, where you never know what backend they're running or when they might steal your coins. In this game, your winnings are
always accessable by you and can never be touched, even by the contract creator. The second thing I love is the concept of "dividends". In normal betting sites, when you lose, you lose. But here, even if you don't win, you get a "share" of the pot, and as the pot grows, your share increases. At any point, you can cashout - which makes it possible to recover multiple times your initial investment even if you don't win the actual game. It's a very novel idea that makes the incentive to play a lot higher.
The main drawbacks to this game is, since it's all on the Ethereum blockchain and not on a site ledger, bids and withdrawals can be painfully slow, even with a high gas fee. The counter may be at 10 mins and you want to snipe bid someone, but the transaction doesn't go through fast enough. Also, sometimes, you bet the minimum, and since it arrives super late (and by that time the minimum has increased since the pot is larger), you end up losing your deposit and you don't even get a share. Still love the concept though, and I think great things will come from this. Also, check out jackpot.getforge.io (win that $0.01 pot!)
edit: Ether Hell has released a new variant called "Faucet". Here, you get 10% of your deposit in earnings every 5 minutes. If you last as the leader for 55 minutes, you make a 10% ROI! On top of that, if you bet above the maximum bid, then you get shares - and as the game continues, the shares grow in value. Unlike Deluxe, shares can
only increase in value, and not decrease, thus, the earlier you buy shares, the better.
4. cryptobust.io
This is a licensed version of bustabit (with the same "crash" game mechanic). I prefer the UI of this site (I like black), and another great thing is how clean the graph of each player's games are. You can send a link to your friends and show off your gains (or lack thereof) to your friends in a pretty neat manner. It doesn't get too crowded either - it's a nice cosy chatroom, with no distractions while you play. Deposits/withdrawals are speedy.
Some problems: since this is a smaller site, the minimum profit is only ~0.29 BTC at the time of writing (per game). Sufficient for most, but a whale can come in and take the whole BR. Also, I don't like the tipping system - to tip another player, you have to open another window, click "transfer" (which isn't intuitive), and that's how it's done, which is a bit cumbersome compared to other sites. Other than that, I would highly recommend this game - I can verify that it is
not rigged (I won a hell lot) and the site has game hashes which show that it's provably fair. Also, they have these really lit competitions (I won 0.03 BTC for losing money, can you believe it?) which is a superb concept and is a lovely way to bring in more players.
