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

[dooglus]

Those were definitely some very bad bugs. Thank you for finding them! They have now been fixed. You are truly a bug finding master, Dooglus! I have added 1 BTC to your account to thank you.

Thanks.  I was thinking after I sent the bug report that it would have been smarter to have played some 1 BTC per game throws, waited until you paid out a few 2-2 and didn't pay out some 2-1 rolls, and then complained that the 2-1 winning rolls didn't get paid out.  You would have made good on them I'm sure, and the odds would have been in my favour.  Then I thought maybe others would do the same after seeing my bug report.  I hope it didn't cause you that kind of trouble.

The reason we made this error is really quite silly of us. All of our prop bets pay out 35 for X, where X is the number of possible outcomes. Of course, 35 for 2 does not equal 34 to 2, which is the error that we made. Unfortunately, we spent the majority of our QA testing the more complicated multi-roll wagers.

OK, so you don't need to see the screenshot I just made of being paid 8.75 for winning the "any craps" bet...  I played the hand before going out this morning and only just got back to screenshot it.  I expect you've fixed that one too now.

Thank you again for spotting this Dooglus, you really have helped so much in making bitZino a better site.

You're welcome.  It's refreshing to have my bug reports appreciated, acted upon, and rewarded.  Rather than having the site owners ban me (sapphire casino), or ask me to stop posting (btcdice).  A site that gets mad when you point out their errors rather than seeing it as an opportunity to improve isn't a site I want to be playing at.

I don't have time right now to lose the 1 BTC back to you, but hopefully soon I will...  

Edit: your post doesn't seem to explain why 2-2 was being treated as a winning roll when betting the 1-2 bet.  I guess that was just a typo, right?

[dooglus]

Another comment:

It looks ugly to me to see odds written as "7.5 to 1", especially when just below I see "33 to 2".  Fractional odds are traditionally written using integers.  So instead of "7.5 to 1", we write "15 to 2".  Or write everything as "x to 1", so "33 to 2" becomes "16.5 to 1".  Mixing the two different forms looks weird.

I don't know if your table is a bitmapped image, or whether you can update the text on the fly, but maybe it would be nice to allow the user to chose fractional or decimal odds.  I think different formats are common in different countries.  Probably the easiest to understand is "8.5x" rather than "15 to 2" - just writing the multiplier that is applied when you win.

[dooglus]

We did intentionally go with a serif font for the table. It's supposed to contrast somewhat with the rest of the site, and look a litlte more like a traditional craps table, which typically uses elegant serif fonts to display their bets. Although, I'm no typography expert, so maybe this is a faux pas.. I'm open to suggestions.

I'm no expert either, but I remember reading somewhere that you should never mix serif and sans-serif fonts.

Also - are you still using Chromium on Ubuntu? All of your screenshot's table layouts look like they are off by a few pixels, which is pretty ugly. I can't seem to replicate it on my linux Chromium install though.

Yes:

$ lsb_release -d
Description:   Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
$ dpkg -l chromium-browser | tail -1
ii  chromium-browser                    20.0.1132.47~r144678-0ubuntu0.12.04 Chromium browser

I'm also using XFCE4 rather than Unity as my desktop environment, in case that matters.  It seems unlikely though.

Also, did you change the odds in the last few hours?  Earlier I was getting 17 to 3 for "any seven" and now I'm getting 29 to 6.  That's a drop from 5.666 to 1 to 4.8333 to 1.  Ah, it's a 5 to 1 event.    I should have bet it more earlier when you were paying better than breakeven odds for it.  

Edit: Oh, I get it.  The bug you fixed wasn't that the payouts were wrong - it was that the quoted odds were wrong.  You were always paying out the right amount and only the odds printed on the table were incorrect.

[libertaad]

Thanks.  I was thinking after I sent the bug report that it would have been smarter to have played some 1 BTC per game throws, waited until you paid out a few 2-2 and didn't pay out some 2-1 rolls, and then complained that the 2-1 winning rolls didn't get paid out.  You would have made good on them I'm sure, and the odds would have been in my favour.  Then I thought maybe others would do the same after seeing my bug report.  I hope it didn't cause you that kind of trouble.

Thank you for taking the white-hat approach

OK, so you don't need to see the screenshot I just made of being paid 8.75 for winning the "any craps" bet...  I played the hand before going out this morning and only just got back to screenshot it.  I expect you've fixed that one too now.

Yeah, we've fixed that wager too. The same issue was affecting all of our "Single Rolls" wagers, and we fixed them all.

You're welcome.  It's refreshing to have my bug reports appreciated, acted upon, and rewarded.

Your feedback has consistently been incredibly informed and very helpful. You're definitely an asset to the community, and an asset to anyone that listens to your feedback

Edit: your post doesn't seem to explain why 2-2 was being treated as a winning roll when betting the 1-2 bet.  I guess that was just a typo, right?

Yeah, that was just a bad typo. Our simulation testing didn't catch it, because the odds were still paying out what was expected, it was just paying out for the wrong rolls. Fortunately, no one had made any real-bitcoin bets on that wager since launch.

Another comment:

It looks ugly to me to see odds written as "7.5 to 1", especially when just below I see "33 to 2".  Fractional odds are traditionally written using integers.  So instead of "7.5 to 1", we write "15 to 2".  Or write everything as "x to 1", so "33 to 2" becomes "16.5 to 1".  Mixing the two different forms looks weird.

I don't know if your table is a bitmapped image, or whether you can update the text on the fly, but maybe it would be nice to allow the user to chose fractional or decimal odds.  I think different formats are common in different countries.  Probably the easiest to understand is "8.5x" rather than "15 to 2" - just writing the multiplier that is applied when you win.

Hm, yeah good point. We originally decided to show the hardways bets as 9.5 to 1 and 7.5 to 1 in order to contrast with the typical 9 to 1 and 7 to 1 payouts. 19 to 2 and 15 to 2 is probably more consistent with the rest of the table now though. I went ahead and updated this.

Fortunately, it's all in HTML, so it was an easy change

I'm no expert either, but I remember reading somewhere that you should never mix serif and sans-serif fonts.

I did a little more looking into this, and it seems that it is generally acceptable if you're trying to create a contrast between different elements - which is definitely what we're trying to do: contrasting the table against the rest of the webpage. So, for now, I think we'll keep it as-is.

Yes:

$ lsb_release -d
Description:   Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
$ dpkg -l chromium-browser | tail -1
ii  chromium-browser                    20.0.1132.47~r144678-0ubuntu0.12.04 Chromium browser

I'm also using XFCE4 rather than Unity as my desktop environment, in case that matters.  It seems unlikely though.

This is very strange. I have the exact same version of Chromium on linux and I can't replicate the issue in your screenshots. Is the Roulette table still doing a similar thing for you? I saw your Roulette screenshots, and I was able to replicate that and I think I fixed it: The issue was using decimals in the CSS for width and height, which Chromium rounded differently than other browsers. But, now we're not using decimals in the CSS anymore, so I can't figure out why a standards-compliant browser would be off by a few pixels in this way.

Also, did you change the odds in the last few hours?  Earlier I was getting 17 to 3 for "any seven" and now I'm getting 29 to 6.  That's a drop from 5.666 to 1 to 4.8333 to 1.  Ah, it's a 5 to 1 event.    I should have bet it more earlier when you were paying better than breakeven odds for it. 

Edit: Oh, I get it.  The bug you fixed wasn't that the payouts were wrong - it was that the quoted odds were wrong.  You were always paying out the right amount and only the odds printed on the table were incorrect.

Yeah - all the payouts were always 35 for X, where X is the number of possible winning rolls. We simply converted it into "Y to X" notation completely incorrectly.

Thanks again for all your help!

[dooglus]

Is the Roulette table still doing a similar thing for you?

I don't really know what problem you're seeing in my screenshots, since I don't know how it's meant to look.

I often don't have pages at 100% zoom.  Could that be the issue?  Try zooming in or out and see if you can reproduce the problem.

Here's how roulette currently looks at my current zoom level:



Here's craps at my current zoom level (110%):



And here's the same craps table at 100% zoom:

[dooglus]

Another comment:

In craps, certain bets aren't allowed at certain times.  For instance you're not allowed to make a 'come' bet as your first bet.  You should disable the mouse hover function for bets that aren't currently allowed.  Otherwise when I hover over 'come', it lights up.  I click it, see the stake box pop up, but am unable to interact with it.

[Stephen Gornick]

You should disable the mouse hover function for bets that aren't currently allowed.  Otherwise when I hover over 'come', it lights up.  I click it, see the stake box pop up, but am unable to interact with it.

Same for the Pass Line after the come-out roll, I can't add or change that bet but bitZino shows the stake box, with no further interaction though.

[dooglus]

When I roll 6-6 on the 'no pass', it's a push.  The result is shown as "win: 1".  I think "push: 1" would be better, to make it clear that 6-6 on 'no-pass' is a push, not a win.

I'd also like to see "lose: 1" when I lose.  At the moment there seems to be no way I can tell how much I lost when I lose once the bet amount has faded out.  That makes it hard to drink and martingale bet at the same time. 

[ryanAC]

I'm pretty sure there is a problem here...
When the button is 'Off', you shouldn't lose your come bets if you roll a 7. Right?  I also don't think you would lose your place bets either.  In vegas I recall you have to ask for them to be 'working' if you actually want those bets to play on a coming out roll...

[libertaad]

I don't really know what problem you're seeing in my screenshots, since I don't know how it's meant to look.

I often don't have pages at 100% zoom.  Could that be the issue?  Try zooming in or out and see if you can reproduce the problem.

Ah, that is definitely the issue! It's not a huge issue, since it seems you can't even see the specific problem - but the issue is that all of the wagers have a few pixels of spacing between them, where they should be flush with each other. We'll see if we can fix it so that it looks good at all zoom levels.

Another comment:

In craps, certain bets aren't allowed at certain times.  For instance you're not allowed to make a 'come' bet as your first bet.  You should disable the mouse hover function for bets that aren't currently allowed.  Otherwise when I hover over 'come', it lights up.  I click it, see the stake box pop up, but am unable to interact with it.

Same for the Pass Line after the come-out roll, I can't add or change that bet but bitZino shows the stake box, with no further interaction though.

This is actually intentional, since we want to allow the user to click and see what the odds of that bet are, and also potentially click and see exactly how much they have wagered. However, I see that this may not be the most intuitive UI - it may be better at least not to highlight the area on hover. I'll play around with the UI here...

I'm pretty sure there is a problem here...
When the button is 'Off', you shouldn't lose your come bets if you roll a 7. Right?  I also don't think you would lose your place bets either.  In vegas I recall you have to ask for them to be 'working' if you actually want those bets to play on a coming out roll...

Each casino typically does things slightly differently with regard to whether bets are automatically 'working' on the come-out roll. We decided to go with the least confusing option, and always have all visible bets working. From our survey, this is consistent with how other online casinos handle it. Compared to a brick-and-mortar craps game, it's just much easier to quickly remove and re-add your wagers, so it's not really even worth it to have a concept of 'working'. Maybe it would help to have some UI elements to make it clear that all bets are always working though...?

[libertaad]

When I roll 6-6 on the 'no pass', it's a push.  The result is shown as "win: 1".  I think "push: 1" would be better, to make it clear that 6-6 on 'no-pass' is a push, not a win.

I'd also like to see "lose: 1" when I lose.  At the moment there seems to be no way I can tell how much I lost when I lose once the bet amount has faded out.  That makes it hard to drink and martingale bet at the same time. 

We've pushed a fix for this, so now it shows a much more informative status message, including how much was won, lost and pushed on the last roll. Hopefully this make it easier to drink and gamble

We also added a subtle indication as to which wagers are active, and which ones aren't: the inactive wagers have a less dark background on mouseover.

Additionally, we've added the fact that all bets are always working to the rules dropdown.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone, keep it coming!

[dooglus]

We also added a subtle indication as to which wagers are active, and which ones aren't: the inactive wagers have a less dark background on mouseover.

I notice that the "don't pass odds" and "pass odds" buttons are completely inactive when I first play.  No "less dark background" - just a dead UI element.  Seems a little inconsistent, since the "don't come odds" and "come odds" buttons are always at least slightly active...

[dooglus]

We've pushed a fix for this, so now it shows a much more informative status message, including how much was won, lost and pushed on the last roll. Hopefully this make it easier to drink and gamble

Thanks!

It's just a nit-pick, but I'd prefer the status message to appear earlier, before the losing bets start fading, and persist longer, while I'm placing the next bet.

As soon as I click to place my first bet, the status vanishes, and I have to remember the amount for up to 2 seconds!

[libertaad]

I notice that the "don't pass odds" and "pass odds" buttons are completely inactive when I first play.  No "less dark background" - just a dead UI element.  Seems a little inconsistent, since the "don't come odds" and "come odds" buttons are always at least slightly active...

The "pass odds" and "don't pass odds" wagers don't have any popups associated with them when there isn't a point established. This is because it yet to be determined what the payout of that wager will be. But, I kinda agree that this is confusing. Maybe we should just show a popup and not show any payout information before the point is established.

It's just a nit-pick, but I'd prefer the status message to appear earlier, before the losing bets start fading, and persist longer, while I'm placing the next bet.

As soon as I click to place my first bet, the status vanishes, and I have to remember the amount for up to 2 seconds!

Your wish is my command You're right though, the status message was showing up too late, and going away too quickly. We've pushed a fix for this.

[dooglus]

Your wish is my command You're right though, the status message was showing up too late, and going away too quickly. We've pushed a fix for this.

Here's a funny/cool/interesting one:

If I type my bet amount rather than using the mouse, I can't enter any amount that begins with an 8 or a 9.  I can type amounts with 8s and 9s in them, just not at the start.

It's hard to imagine what's special about 8 and 9 that would cause this bug.  I can type 4 then 2x to get 8, or type 7 then +1, but I can't type just 8.

This happens in both craps and roulette, and for both play money and bitcoin play.

[dooglus]

A niggle:

I was just playing craps for uBTC.  I cashed out, then went to buy back in.  I hadn't noticed that the units had switched back to uBTC automatically.

I typed "100000" into the amount box and clicked 'Buy in', thinking it was still in uBTC units, not noticing it had been changed on me.  It automatically changed the 100000 to 100 (which is my whole mBTC balance) and bought in for that amount.  I could easily have started playing thinking I was playing for uBTC not mBTC since it (a) changed the units automatically and (b) reduced the amount I asked to buy it for without warning me that it was more than I had.

So I guess I'd prefer it to remember the units I select, until I change them again.  I'm not sure what would be better than automatically fixing the buy-in amount.  Maybe leave it as typed, and just give an error if the user clicks 'buy-in' with an invalid amount in the text field.

Edit: oh, and I don't see a way to change the units back from uBTC to mBTC.  I guess since it defaults to mBTC each time I play, it's not needed the way things are currently set up.

[dooglus]

Almost everywhere I click on your site gives instant feedback of some kind, so I know the click registered.  But I just clicked the 'cash out' link in the top right and had to wait a few seconds without knowing whether my click had registered or not.  Maybe darken the text as soon as it's clicked, so I know the click 'worked'?

(and I'm starting to feel like this is too much nit-picking - let me know when the level of my reports becomes annoying please)

[dooglus]

I don't know if it's just my eyes, but I find it quite hard to read the green text on a grey background at the top of the screen after withdrawing:

[mem]

yikes, I was smashed hard on video poker and blackjack, enough for tonight

[libertaad]

Thanks for all the feedback Dooglus! This stuff really helps us make bitZino a better website.

Here's a funny/cool/interesting one:

If I type my bet amount rather than using the mouse, I can't enter any amount that begins with an 8 or a 9.  I can type amounts with 8s and 9s in them, just not at the start.

It's hard to imagine what's special about 8 and 9 that would cause this bug.  I can type 4 then 2x to get 8, or type 7 then +1, but I can't type just 8.

This happens in both craps and roulette, and for both play money and bitcoin play.

This was one pretty bizarre! It turns out it was due to the way parseInt is implemented in javascript. We were calling parseInt without the optional second argument (which is the base of the number), and so javascript was trying to parse '08', and couldn't automatically figure out the base of the number. If you just pass the second argument (which is the correct defensive way to code it anyway), then the string is parsed correctly.

We've fixed all our javascript to call parseInt with the correct number of arguments.

A niggle:

I was just playing craps for uBTC.  I cashed out, then went to buy back in.  I hadn't noticed that the units had switched back to uBTC automatically.

I typed "100000" into the amount box and clicked 'Buy in', thinking it was still in uBTC units, not noticing it had been changed on me.  It automatically changed the 100000 to 100 (which is my whole mBTC balance) and bought in for that amount.  I could easily have started playing thinking I was playing for uBTC not mBTC since it (a) changed the units automatically and (b) reduced the amount I asked to buy it for without warning me that it was more than I had.

So I guess I'd prefer it to remember the units I select, until I change them again.  I'm not sure what would be better than automatically fixing the buy-in amount.  Maybe leave it as typed, and just give an error if the user clicks 'buy-in' with an invalid amount in the text field.

Edit: oh, and I don't see a way to change the units back from uBTC to mBTC.  I guess since it defaults to mBTC each time I play, it's not needed the way things are currently set up.

Thanks for catching this! We definitely don't want people to accidentally wager for more than they were wanting to.

We've changed the behavior here to just disable the "Cash in" button if the value you entered is invalid. So, now we will never automatically change the value on you.

The default minimum bet on a table will always be the value of your account's "Base currency" (which you can set in your account edit page). I think it may be confusing if we remembered the minimum bet of the last table you cashed out from, rather than using the value you set for your account. I hope that the new behavior of disabling the button should also help to make it clear what's going on.

We don't have the option to increase the maximum bet of an in-progress table, since this would result in a lot of corner-cases usability-wise.

We are still looking at getting rid of the whole concept of "Base currency" though, and possibly having users just always enter the minimum bet when they cash in to a new table. There are just many corner cases and usability issues to consider when making this type of change.

[/quote]

Almost everywhere I click on your site gives instant feedback of some kind, so I know the click registered.  But I just clicked the 'cash out' link in the top right and had to wait a few seconds without knowing whether my click had registered or not.  Maybe darken the text as soon as it's clicked, so I know the click 'worked'?

Good catch! We fixed this button so that it greys out when you click it.

I don't know if it's just my eyes, but I find it quite hard to read the green text on a grey background at the top of the screen after withdrawing:

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about the notification messages style. I changed the background here to be darker, and also changed the location so that it's not right at the top of the page.

This should make it somewhat better, but we'll probably give the notifications a more comprehensive UI adjustment soon.

(and I'm starting to feel like this is too much nit-picking - let me know when the level of my reports becomes annoying please)

I will never get annoyed with anyone's feedback! Keep it coming!

I've added another quarter-BTC to your account, Dooglus to thank you for all the feedback. We highly value useful feedback, so that offer is good for anyone else too!