Your all-new, full custom Bitcoin casino is here ;)

[Newton]

Seriously, though, if you can't figure out how to submit/withdraw payments in Bitcoin when you are a player in restricted countries, that's an instant phail.

[foggyb]

Why is everyone still here and not on Sapphire?  I keep waiting for a table to play poker with and nobody is showing up!

Keep waiting...I will show up sooner or later. We are just 24 hrs after launch. I played a couple dozen hands with a guy called 'smokey' yesterday. I like the poker software, its wayyyy nicer than betco or whatever that site is called.


I want get in the $100 GTD tourney tomorrow.

[LeonGeeste]

Seriously, though, if you can't figure out how to submit/withdraw payments in Bitcoin when you are a player in restricted countries, that's an instant phail.

He said he verifies a person's nationality before they're allowed to participate.

[Newton]

Seriously, though, if you can't figure out how to submit/withdraw payments in Bitcoin when you are a player in restricted countries, that's an instant phail.

 
He said he verifies a person's nationality before they're allowed to participate.

The before part is key.  Makes it quite easy to give it a try hey?  Seems to work fairly well from "Canada" where I am...

[LeonGeeste]

He said he verifies a person's nationality before they're allowed to participate.

The before part is key.  Makes it quite easy to give it a try hey?  Seems to work fairly well from "Canada" where I am...

Still don't follow.  If you don't get an account until he verifies that you're Canadian, how exactly do you circumvent this?

[Newton]

Still don't follow.  If you don't get an account until he verifies that you're Canadian, how exactly do you circumvent this?

Well, its easy to try.  My login from Canada worked just fine with nothing further than name and address supplied on the form.  With PokerStars and FullTilt, they were cutoff by the centralized payment processors- Paypal/CC.  Bitcoin significantly changes this picture...

[ssaCEO]

Newton, were you able to deposit?

[ssaCEO]

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.

[ColdHardMetal]

Hi,

I was playing around with different games using play money yesterday. Nice interface. Everything worked really smoothly, the platform recovered well when it lost connections, etc. However when I had a play money roulette table going in the course of maybe 30 spins there where 2 0s, which isn't really that improbable, and 3 consecutive 9s, which I think we can all agree is really quite improbable, so you might want to look into the records and see if something was glitching at that moment.

[kookiekrak]

Hi,

I was playing around with different games using play money yesterday. Nice interface. Everything worked really smoothly, the platform recovered well when it lost connections, etc. However when I had a play money roulette table going in the course of maybe 30 spins there where 2 0s, which isn't really that improbable, and 3 consecutive 9s, which I think we can all agree is really quite improbable, so you might want to look into the records and see if something was glitching at that moment.

lol. you havent been playing enough roulette then.

ive seen a number hit 5 times in a row in a REAL casino.

[ssaCEO]

Hi,

I was playing around with different games using play money yesterday. Nice interface. Everything worked really smoothly, the platform recovered well when it lost connections, etc. However when I had a play money roulette table going in the course of maybe 30 spins there where 2 0s, which isn't really that improbable, and 3 consecutive 9s, which I think we can all agree is really quite improbable, so you might want to look into the records and see if something was glitching at that moment.

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...

[ColdHardMetal]

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...

Thank for looking into it. It's not my intention to imply anything shady is going on. I rarely play table games, but it seemed unusual enough to be worth reporting since you're at an early release stage. Although 1 in 50ish really isn't that unlikely when you put it in those terms.


On an unrelated note, would it be possible to hold account balances in BTC and only convert when you're looking to play? I mean I can do that myself by only depositing when I want to play and withdrawing my balance right away when finished, but it would be less cumbersome if the platform could do it itself.

[ssaCEO]

On an unrelated note, would it be possible to hold account balances in BTC and only convert when you're looking to play? I mean I can do that myself by only depositing when I want to play and withdrawing my balance right away when finished, but it would be less cumbersome if the platform could do it itself.

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...

[Newton]

Newton, were you able to deposit?

Yes, 5 bitcoins deposited smoothly.  I am actually Canadian however.

Ok you've changed my mind on this.  Clearly I believe the US attempt to block all online gambling is ill-conceived, and I also know that the centralized Visa/Paypal/CC systems have enabled the ban, leaving a huge vacuum that is pretty attractive for bitcoin.  The size of this economic footprint dwarfs anything bitoin has done to date.  My thoughts were win-win for bitcoin and a new casino player.


However, you are correct (at least for bitcoin) the last thing we need is US pressure.  That seems to be bitcoins kryptonite, shady business tainting it and preventing major legitimate business from touching it.

Your casino should still thrive on international $$'s, if not as rapidly!

If anything this should be a great example for bitcoin.  A major business accepts bitcoin, but still follows the rules of US law.  Proving that it can be the business, and not the currency, which dictates legality.  

[ssaCEO]

Newton, were you able to deposit?

Yes, 5 bitcoins deposited smoothly.  I am actually Canadian however.

Ok you've changed my mind on this.  Clearly I believe the US attempt to block all online gambling is ill-conceived, and I also know that the centralized Visa/Paypal/CC systems have enabled the ban, leaving a huge vacuum that is pretty attractive for bitcoin.  The size of this economic footprint dwarfs anything bitoin has done to date.  My thoughts were win-win for bitcoin and a new casino player.


However, you are correct (at least for bitcoin) the last thing we need is US pressure.  That seems to be bitcoins kryptonite, shady business tainting it and preventing major legitimate business from touching it.

Your casino should still thrive on international $$'s, if not as rapidly!

If anything this should be a great example for bitcoin.  A major business accepts bitcoin, but still follows the rules of US law.  Proving that it can be the business, and not the currency, which dictates legality.  

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 =)

[alkhdaniel]

Depositing worked great, no players yet though

Maybe we should set up a time that some people will agree to play at to get any game started until there is some more activity?

Also support responded fast, typed the wrong email and contacted ssaCEO about it and it was changed within a few hours.

This thread probably belongs in the gambling forum though.

Edit:
If anyone is interested in playing some hold 'em please join me tomorrow (Friday) 6pm GMT (http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/), will sadly only play low bets (0.25, 0.50) to start with though.

[ssaCEO]

Edit:
If anyone is interested in playing some hold 'em please join me tomorrow (Friday) 6pm GMT (http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/), will sadly only play low bets (0.25, 0.50) to start with though.

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.

[alkhdaniel]

1. Got disconnected while playing a hand, not really sure why. Was unable to login on the site after that which was strange, reloaded the site and it put me right back at the table again though, i don't think it was connectivity issues but some kind of glitch that might be worth looking into (was using the chat at the same time that i got disconnected)

2. Requesting to get your password back sends you an email with a link in it, clicking this link will automatically log you in to the site no questions asked, might want to consider freezing withdraws for 3 days or so after to prevent someone getting their money stolen (or only accept withdraws to an address that was used for depositing).

3. Haven't ID'd myself yet but was still able to deposit, i remember reading something about that ID's are required before depositing/playing? Is there any other way but webcam/fax?

Sorry for the bad structuring but i hope what i wrote made sense.

~Daniel.

Edit: 4. During signup i was able to use more than 12 characters for my password (there was a "warning" saying you can only have 6-12 characters but it went through just fine), now when attempting to change password it won't let me have 20char pass. What is the reason for not allowing over 12 chars to begin with and why was i able to register with more than 12 chars?

5. Please lower the minimum buy in for tournaments, $5 is quite a lot to experiment & trying out your site with. $.25/$.50 isn't quite as bad but i don't think $.10/$.20 would hurt.

[ssaCEO]

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

[alkhdaniel]

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

Ah thanks

About 1: Not sure which hand it was, but it was the hold 'em room with the 2 (1) bots in it, there was some other guy in the same room when i disconnected, he was gone when i came back ~1min after though. It might not be something serious though, can report it if it happens again.

2. I totally forgot that most other sites actually can grant access to someone who forgot their pass by email only haha (So i guess my account on any site isn't more secure than my email, damn. One could get seriously fucked up for getting their email pass stolen)

3. Just thought it was kind of strange, wouldn't it be very easy to play through a private proxy that only oneself has access to? (EU/SWE here, just as i put) I guess your "security" isn't worse than any other place though, with the only difference being that a credit card is a semi-good ID and is required to deposit on any other place.

4. Why stop at 20 There might be people who want >20 chars, i don't think anyone would really complain at 20, but even 32 or higher would probably ensure that everyone is happy.

5. Thanks, now the only thing missing is players.

If anyone wants to play a $2 tournament feel free to check tomorrow (Friday) at 6pm GMT, will most likely create a table at that time (http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/) - or just send me a message and maybe we'll set up a time to play a few hands.