bitZino - Bitcoin Casino - Blackjack, Roulette, 3 Card Poker, Slots and more!

[dooglus]

I never bothered to look at it (trust issues with new places), just remember reading that someone was working on it.
None the less, slots at bitzino would be a fun way to waste my time, and would certainly attract others as well

I played it once.  Won back exactly what I bet, and decided that was a good time to quit.

[libertaad]

Any chance of making slots? I think I remember seeing someone else trying a provably fair slot setup in here somewheres, I would be a happy camper if bitzino offered it.

Slots isn't on our immediate timeline. We're currently working on rolling out additional varieties of video poker. But, thanks for the feedback! Slots will come eventually, and if we get enough demand for it, it may come sooner rather than later And, like all of our games, it will definitely be provably fair. We also will make sure to do it in a way that correctly simulates true spinning reel slots.

Oh and can I get hooked up with an affiliate link please
Would like to introduce bitzino to some friends of mine

We don't have an affiliate program yet - another feature we're working on

[libertaad]

We're excited to announce the launch of five new varieties of video poker to our lineup! In addition to the classic Jacks or Better video poker variant, we now offer:

• Tens or Better
• Deuces Wild
• Bonus Poker
• Double Bonus Poker
• Double Double Bonus Poker

We have gone out of our way to ensure that we offer the best odds on all our games. We've tweaked the pay tables in order to ensure that all of our video poker variants have over 99% return-to-player.

Check it out, and let me know what you think!

https://bitzino.com/video_poker

[dooglus]

We have gone out of our way to ensure that we offer the best odds on all our games.

http://play.luckco.in/ offers the same paytable on jacks or better but with a progressive jackpot.  That makes their odds slightly better than yours.  Currently betting 0.005 and hitting a royal flush pays a little over 5 BTC which is a bit silly because it makes the RTP bigger than 100%.

On the other hand their game keeps going down due to programming errors, isn't provably fair, doesn't feel anywhere near as slick at bitzino, and is pretty slow.

The "more pay tables" element at bitzino looks like it will just expand that section of the gui, but it in fact opens a "modal" dialog.  While it's open I'm unable to edit my bet or start a new hand.  This would be clearer if opening the 'more pay tables' thing greyed out the rest of the interface, in the same way that being half-way through a hand greys out the "more pay tables" element.

Finally, I wonder if it would be worth making the 'held' marking less subtle.  I just played a bunch of hands, was dealt 2 pair, quickly clicked on the 4 cards I wanted to hold and clicked 'draw'.  It only held 3 of the cards, so I guess one of my clicks missed, but I didn't notice.  I think the little grey shadow that appears when I hover looks similar enough to the black 'held' that appears when I actually click that I was able to miss that fact that I had mis-clicked.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

How about introducing a no zero roulette? Have a 0.1 BTC max bet and a 0.01 BTC min bet. You would still make money over the long run as you introduce people to bitzino, and a lot of people tend to keep gambling till they lose them all.

[dooglus]

How about introducing a no zero roulette? Have a 0.1 BTC max bet and a 0.01 BTC min bet. You would still make money over the long run as you introduce people to bitzino, and a lot of people tend to keep gambling till they lose them all.

How does the maths work out for that?  Each bet has a 0% house edge, so you would think that the overall house edge for the game is also 0%.

But if you assume that each player quits once they go bust then that starts to sound like a winner for the house.

I expect for each player who goes bust, those profits are offset by another play who never goes bust, but instead makes a nice profit.

Also, running a 0% house edge roulette game would pretty much kill all the action on the existing 2.7% house edge roulette game, and so would be a pretty silly move.

[libertaad]

http://play.luckco.in/ offers the same paytable on jacks or better but with a progressive jackpot.  That makes their odds slightly better than yours.  Currently betting 0.005 and hitting a royal flush pays a little over 5 BTC which is a bit silly because it makes the RTP bigger than 100%.

On the other hand their game keeps going down due to programming errors, isn't provably fair, doesn't feel anywhere near as slick at bitzino, and is pretty slow.

Our Jacks or Better pay table is a standard "Full Pay" pay table, which offers 99.54% RTP under optimal play. The games where we made tweaks were Double Bonus Poker and Double Double Bonus Poker, where we increased the payout of Straight Flushes up to 60 for 1, and also increased the payout of "4 Aces with a 2-4" up to 460 (instead of the standard 400 for 1). These adjustments bring these pay table's RTP above 99% (to 99.48% and 99.46%, respectively).

We have taken great care to ensure our risk of ruin is minimal. As the player's edge increases, the risk of ruin for the house increases (when it's >= 100%, the risk of ruin for the house is guaranteed in the long run). So, in games where the RTP is above 100%, the player may think they're getting a good game, but in reality they're betting against the house going broke.

The "more pay tables" element at bitzino looks like it will just expand that section of the gui, but it in fact opens a "modal" dialog.  While it's open I'm unable to edit my bet or start a new hand.  This would be clearer if opening the 'more pay tables' thing greyed out the rest of the interface, in the same way that being half-way through a hand greys out the "more pay tables" element.

Good call! We have changed the UI so that there is a translucent overlay over the rest of the UI, so that it's more obvious that this is a modal box.

Finally, I wonder if it would be worth making the 'held' marking less subtle.  I just played a bunch of hands, was dealt 2 pair, quickly clicked on the 4 cards I wanted to hold and clicked 'draw'.  It only held 3 of the cards, so I guess one of my clicks missed, but I didn't notice.  I think the little grey shadow that appears when I hover looks similar enough to the black 'held' that appears when I actually click that I was able to miss that fact that I had mis-clicked.

We took your advice and made the UI slightly less subtle - we added a few pixels to the height of the 'Held' marker, and removed a few pixels from the grey shadow which appears on mouseover. We didn't want to change things too much, but hopefully the small changes help to make a larger differentiation between the two, and makes it clear which cards are held.

How about introducing a no zero roulette? Have a 0.1 BTC max bet and a 0.01 BTC min bet. You would still make money over the long run as you introduce people to bitzino, and a lot of people tend to keep gambling till they lose them all.

We have been considering doing something like this on a short-term basis in order to get users to try us out. However, we likely won't be offering anything like this on a permanent basis. Even at small limits, zero house edge games make the risk of ruin for the house guaranteed over a long enough timeframe (unless the games are Player vs Player, which is something we're planning on building).

[dooglus]

Our Jacks or Better pay table is a standard "Full Pay" pay table, which offers 99.54% RTP under optimal play.

Sure.  I was just commenting on your statement that "we offer the best odds on all our games".

We took your advice and made the UI slightly less subtle

Nice.

I wonder if you could find an unobtrusive way of offering "all" and "none" buttons to mark all and none of the cards as held.  Then when I get two pair I click 'all' then unhold the odd card.  Less clicks, less chance of operator error.

[dooglus]

I don't think I ever managed to split to 4 hands before.  It worked very smoothly. 

[dooglus]

Good call! We have changed the UI so that there is a translucent overlay over the rest of the UI, so that it's more obvious that this is a modal box.

I think your overlay is too translucent.  Making it more opaque would make it more obvious that the dialog is modal.  Look how dim the 'more play tables' thing goes when the 'draw' button is active, and compare that to how dim the x2, +1, etc. buttons go when I open the 'more pay tables' dialog.

[libertaad]

I wonder if you could find an unobtrusive way of offering "all" and "none" buttons to mark all and none of the cards as held.  Then when I get two pair I click 'all' then unhold the odd card.  Less clicks, less chance of operator error.

I like this idea! We'll see if we can work out a good UI for this.

Another feature that will help here is keyboard shortcuts. This has been on the back-burner for quite a while, but hopefully will be coming down the pipe soon.

I don't think I ever managed to split to 4 hands before.  It worked very smoothly. 

Nice! It's always good to know all the corner-cases hold up in the wild

I think your overlay is too translucent.  Making it more opaque would make it more obvious that the dialog is modal.  Look how dim the 'more play tables' thing goes when the 'draw' button is active, and compare that to how dim the x2, +1, etc. buttons go when I open the 'more pay tables' dialog.

Yeah, I agree with you. We've tweaked the overlay by adding a subtle pattern as well as making it more opaque. I think it looks much better now.

Thanks for all the valuable feedback! I've added 0.25 BTC to your account to thank you

[dooglus]

Yeah, I agree with you. We've tweaked the overlay by adding a subtle pattern as well as making it more opaque. I think it looks much better now.

Your overlay makes the rest of the screen brighter, not darker.  Isn't it usual to darken the inactive part of the screen?

Thanks for all the valuable feedback! I've added 0.25 BTC to your account to thank you

Thanks.  I managed to stop myself losing all of it on video poker.

[libertaad]

Your overlay makes the rest of the screen brighter, not darker.  Isn't it usual to darken the inactive part of the screen?

I've seen it go both ways, but you're right that it probably is more typical to darken. However, the rest of our interface is already so dark, making the overlay dark as well is just too much darkness. UI is hard :/

[dooglus]

I was just playing on a different video poker site.  One of the other players asked in the chat if anyone knew of other bitcoin video poker, so I pointed him your way:



The site he was on uses google accounts and openid to automatically register its players.  I suspect this guy didn't even realise he had "registered" using his google credentials, and so saw the site as being easier to use than bitzino.

I thought it was interesting that he was put off of bitzino by the need to register (which isn't even necessary for play money play anyway) and that it might be something you hadn't considered.

[libertaad]

I thought it was interesting that he was put off of bitzino by the need to register (which isn't even necessary for play money play anyway) and that it might be something you hadn't considered.

Thanks for the info! We have been considering adding the ability to play for BTC without registering for a while, but we just haven't really seen any demand so we've been focusing on other features. Now that I see some real demand for this in the wild, I think we'll prioritize this. Thanks!

[dooglus]

Thanks for the info! We have been considering adding the ability to play for BTC without registering for a while, but we just haven't really seen any demand so we've been focusing on other features. Now that I see some real demand for this in the wild, I think we'll prioritize this. Thanks!

https://bitcoinvideopoker.com/ has an interesting take on this.  When you go there for the first time, they redirect you to a secret URL which you bookmark.  That URL then acts as your credentials - you don't need a username or password.  This is exactly the same scheme as is used by https://instawallet.org/.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Thanks for the info! We have been considering adding the ability to play for BTC without registering for a while, but we just haven't really seen any demand so we've been focusing on other features. Now that I see some real demand for this in the wild, I think we'll prioritize this. Thanks!

https://bitcoinvideopoker.com/ has an interesting take on this.  When you go there for the first time, they redirect you to a secret URL which you bookmark.  That URL then acts as your credentials - you don't need a username or password.  This is exactly the same scheme as is used by https://instawallet.org/.

I would say it's a pretty bad one. People are using more and more devices - eg home PC, laptop, iPad, phone. Now of course you can use Chrome Sync or something, but the better way would be to have a guest AND registration option.

[libertaad]

Thanks for the info! We have been considering adding the ability to play for BTC without registering for a while, but we just haven't really seen any demand so we've been focusing on other features. Now that I see some real demand for this in the wild, I think we'll prioritize this. Thanks!

https://bitcoinvideopoker.com/ has an interesting take on this.  When you go there for the first time, they redirect you to a secret URL which you bookmark.  That URL then acts as your credentials - you don't need a username or password.  This is exactly the same scheme as is used by https://instawallet.org/.

I would say it's a pretty bad one. People are using more and more devices - eg home PC, laptop, iPad, phone. Now of course you can use Chrome Sync or something, but the better way would be to have a guest AND registration option.

Thanks for the feedback, both of you!

We definitely won't take away the option to register with a regular username/password combo. We will probably just add the additional ability to use a bookmarked URL as your security credentials.

I think we'll do something pretty similar to the instawallet approach, but we'll vary it slightly so that we still have a standard registration page, but on that page you have the option to either register the old fashioned way, or just bookmark a URL.

The cool thing about this model is that we'll also be able to allow people to upgrade their accounts to a username/password if they want additional security down the road. So, someone can get started really quickly with a small deposit, and then add on a password and possibly 2-factor auth to their account as they play more.

[dooglus]

So, someone can get started really quickly with a small deposit, and then add on a password and possibly 2-factor auth to their account as they play more.

Sounds good.

[dooglus]

Just to reiterate, here's another person impressed with being able to play without registation:

Very nice!
Not having to register makes if very easy for me to get my co-workers playing... I point them to the site, I bankroll them and they give me cash (I'll cash them out, too.)  If they get lucky, then I get to buy some bitcoin when I cash them out!