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

[libertaad]

I would be interested to see information about bet sizes.  I understand you probably don't want to reveal it, or you would have done.  I'm interested to see if there are really people playing for 20 BTC per hand, or whether the majority of the action is in the microcoin area (where I tend to play).

Jon Matonis just published a great article where we reveal some of our numbers in more depth: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/01/22/bitcoin-casinos-release-2012-earnings/. It may answer some of your questions!

An hour well wasted! 

Congrats on the Royal! That's the 5th Royal Flush we've seen in Jacks Or Better. (Deuces Wild has already seen 51 Royals!, but only 1 Natural Royal).

[1714156823]

1714156823

[HotDiggityDawg]

An hour well wasted! 

And you only had the Ace and the Jack! That's incredible, congrats!

[petrescuerz]

Thanks! It is the only bet I've ever made of over 40,000 chips. It was my last chance to recoup my lost chips. I am even more excited now that my win is worth more than $500. Here's hoping it's worth $600 by next week!! 

[libertaad]

the site is broken now ...

cannot connect !!!

Sorry for the problems! We were having intermittent connectivity issues for the past few hours, but everything should be working now.

[dooglus]

I have a zero bitcoin balance.  When I go to bitzino.com, I see the 'welcome to craps!' popup, with a 'or, play with play money' link in its lower left corner.  I click that link, nothing happens for 3 seconds, then the popup fades out and fades back in again, and I'm back where I started.

The same thing happens for all 4 games; I'm unable to play for play money at all.

[dooglus]

Also, you might want to check this out:

  http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/17qthf/opinions_on_bitzino/

Is he on to something, or just had a weird run?

[libertaad]

I have a zero bitcoin balance.  When I go to bitzino.com, I see the 'welcome to craps!' popup, with a 'or, play with play money' link in its lower left corner.  I click that link, nothing happens for 3 seconds, then the popup fades out and fades back in again, and I'm back where I started.

The same thing happens for all 4 games; I'm unable to play for play money at all.

Yikes! It looks like this was a regression we introduced a few days ago in how we handle play money tables. It looks like we only properly tested it for logged-out users. This is now fixed, and we'll add some automated tests for logged-in users so that it doesn't happen again.

Thanks so much for the bug report! I've added a quarter-BTC to your account to show our appreciation.

Also, you might want to check this out:

  http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/17qthf/opinions_on_bitzino/

Is he on to something, or just had a weird run?

Thanks for the link! I don't think 4000 spins is really an adequate sample size for roulette. In our risk-of-ruin simulations, we found that we had to simulate 1.5 million spins per round in order to adequately ensure that we were ahead at the end of the round. Anything less than this, and we hadn't actually hit the "long-run" yet.

I'd also be happy to do a deeper dive into his specific spins. I'll follow up with him on the reddit thread.

[dooglus]

Thanks so much for the bug report! I've added a quarter-BTC to your account to show our appreciation.

You're welcome, and thanks. 

Thanks for the link! I don't think 4000 spins is really an adequate sample size for roulette. In our risk-of-ruin simulations, we found that we had to simulate 1.5 million spins per round in order to adequately ensure that we were ahead at the end of the round. Anything less than this, and we hadn't actually hit the "long-run" yet.

I'd also be happy to do a deeper dive into his specific spins. I'll follow up with him on the reddit thread.

I was wondering in particular if there's any way that network a network timeout on a spin could cause bitZino to repeat the previous spin somehow.  That's what he seems to be suggesting is happening, which would be an exploitable bug.

[libertaad]

Thanks so much for the bug report! I've added a quarter-BTC to your account to show our appreciation.

You're welcome, and thanks. 

Thanks for the link! I don't think 4000 spins is really an adequate sample size for roulette. In our risk-of-ruin simulations, we found that we had to simulate 1.5 million spins per round in order to adequately ensure that we were ahead at the end of the round. Anything less than this, and we hadn't actually hit the "long-run" yet.

I'd also be happy to do a deeper dive into his specific spins. I'll follow up with him on the reddit thread.

I was wondering in particular if there's any way that network a network timeout on a spin could cause bitZino to repeat the previous spin somehow.  That's what he seems to be suggesting is happening, which would be an exploitable bug.

Ah, I see. The system is designed to be resilient to networking issues. So, a given initial_shuffle will only ever be served once, and once the results of a wager are shown to a user, that shuffle will never be used again, even in the event of networking issues.

That said, bugs certainly are possible, so I wouldn't want to dismiss anything. We always keep a close eye on all our stats, and haven't seen deviations in yet. We'll definitely continue to keep an eye out though!

[libertaad]

We have raised the limits across our games once again!

We have made a large adjustment to Roulette, and now support wagers up to 100 BTC in total per spin, with a limit of 5 BTC per-number per-spin.

We have also made smaller adjustments to Blackjack and Craps: Blackjack now supports wagers up to 25 BTC per hand, and Craps now supports wagers up to 5 BTC per-bet-type per-roll.

We've kept video poker as-is with a maximum wager of 2 BTC per hand.

We've had a lot of requests for higher stakes action, so hopefully this should help quell that demand! As always though, we will keep our stakes low enough such that the house's risk-of-ruin is infinitesimal.

[dooglus]

We have officially launched support for 2-Factor Auth for withdrawals! We utilize Google Authenticator, and allow you to set up your account to require an OTP before every withdrawal request.

I'm not sure, but I think you're accepting the same code twice.  So if an attacker is logging my keystrokes and is quick enough (ie. within the same 30 second window), he can use the same OTP as I just used to log in to my account.

You should make sure an OTP can only be used One Time.... 

[Junko]

Yup! We have a rewards program in the works which I'm really excited about. We've got a lot of long-time loyal players, and we want to make sure to reward you all for playing with us.

Any update on this?

[libertaad]

I'm not sure, but I think you're accepting the same code twice.  So if an attacker is logging my keystrokes and is quick enough (ie. within the same 30 second window), he can use the same OTP as I just used to log in to my account.

You should make sure an OTP can only be used One Time.... 

Good catch! This was indeed an issue with the way we implemented 2-factor auth. Although it would have been very difficult for an attacker to exploit this, it was definitely still worth fixing promptly. We have remedied this issue, so now OTP's are truly one-time use. I've also comped your account with another quarter-BTC bonus. Keep the bug reports coming!

Yup! We have a rewards program in the works which I'm really excited about. We've got a lot of long-time loyal players, and we want to make sure to reward you all for playing with us.

Any update on this?

I'm glad your excited about the reward program! We're working hard on it, but we want to make sure we do it right. It can get quite complicated to make sure the right players get rewarded, while also not attracting bonus-abusers. The rough timeline as of now, is that we'll be launching another game shortly, and then be launching the rewards program after that.

[dooglus]

Good catch! This was indeed an issue with the way we implemented 2-factor auth. Although it would have been very difficult for an attacker to exploit this, it was definitely still worth fixing promptly. We have remedied this issue, so now OTP's are truly one-time use. I've also comped your account with another quarter-BTC bonus. Keep the bug reports coming!

Thanks for the bonus.

I just tried logging in with a OTP and saw the following:



My 6 digit code was only 4 digits: 7709

Do I have to type the leading zeroes?

Oh, I tried again with a 6 digit code, but get the same error code.  I'm now completely unable to log in.

[libertaad]

Good catch! This was indeed an issue with the way we implemented 2-factor auth. Although it would have been very difficult for an attacker to exploit this, it was definitely still worth fixing promptly. We have remedied this issue, so now OTP's are truly one-time use. I've also comped your account with another quarter-BTC bonus. Keep the bug reports coming!

Thanks for the bonus.

I just tried logging in with a OTP and saw the following:



My 6 digit code was only 4 digits: 7709

Do I have to type the leading zeroes?

Oh, I tried again with a 6 digit code, but get the same error code.  I'm now completely unable to log in.

I saw the errors coming in. It should be fixed now - sorry about that!

And, yes, you do have to type in the leading zeros.

[dooglus]

I saw the errors coming in. It should be fixed now - sorry about that!

And, yes, you do have to type in the leading zeros.

No problem.  It is fine again now.

Just had an unusual bunch of spins.  4 zeroes!

[dooglus]

I found another problem with the two-factor auth stuff:



The QR code is squished on the left - compare the square in the top left with the one in the top right; it's taller than it is wide, which isn't a desirable property of squares.

As a result I can't scan the code.

If I change the zoom factor (in Chromium) then it fixes itself, but at certain zoom factors I'm not able to scan it.

This is for a dummy account which I never use by the way and so the QR code is worthless.

[libertaad]

The QR code is squished on the left - compare the square in the top left with the one in the top right; it's taller than it is wide, which isn't a desirable property of squares.

As a result I can't scan the code.

If I change the zoom factor (in Chromium) then it fixes itself, but at certain zoom factors I'm not able to scan it.

Thanks for the bug report! It looks like this was an issue with all of our QR codes due to the way we were generating them. We were using an HTML table, and styling the table with CSS - however, this doesn't work that well when you use the browser's resize feature.

We have improved the method we use for generating QR codes - we now generate an image instead of relying on HTML.

Thanks, as always for the bug report Dooglus! You'll find another quarter BTC in your account

[dooglus]

We have improved the method we use for generating QR codes - we now generate an image instead of relying on HTML.

It still doesn't look great.  Take a look at what I see when I zoom in on my deposit QR code:



The 'pixels' are all different shapes and sizes.  Even at 100% zoom it looks rough.  The concentric squares in the corners are meant to be symmetrical aren't they?



I wonder if you're using some non-integer pixel size, and we're seeing the effects of anti-aliasing?

Edit: Oh, and thanks for the tip!  By rewarding my bug-reporting habit you're only reinforcing it...

[libertaad]

We have improved the method we use for generating QR codes - we now generate an image instead of relying on HTML.

It still doesn't look great.  Take a look at what I see when I zoom in on my deposit QR code:

The 'pixels' are all different shapes and sizes.  Even at 100% zoom it looks rough.  The concentric squares in the corners are meant to be symmetrical aren't they?

I wonder if you're using some non-integer pixel size, and we're seeing the effects of anti-aliasing?

Good catch! They didn't quite look right. I was able to make them look a little better by tweaking the sizes by a few pixels. They still don't look perfect, but it seems this may just be a trade-off to using an image instead of an HTML table.

Most importantly, all the QR codes do scan, and they work properly even when zooming.