Topic: #1 RATINGS and REVIEWS of SPORTS BOOKS thread. Poster input appreciated. - page 17. (Read 89572 times)

no - it is not seeded - however, we have good contacts to some of our most active user and we incentivize them to do a market maker role.

Most exchanges are player vs. player. Some exchanges are seeded meaning that Fairly is putting up offers, not another player.

Yes - we are a "Bitcoin only" site. All amounts on our site are in mBTC.

What to you mean with "seeded"? Wether we received a seed funding? Yes we did.
Or do you mean something else?

Fairly - Are the offers that are up in Bitcoins or another currency? Is your market seeded?

Fairly- Welcome to the thread and feel free to post. The ratings aren't solely determined by the time in business. A rating cap is set for the amount of time in business. An opening rating will be given soon. Hopefully there will be some poster feedback. GL

We obviously like this concept very much.
We already are doing something like this for exchanges: https://www.fairlay.com/event/category/bitcoin/bad-news/
This are predictions wether a certain Bitcoin exchange will not be accessible for some time.

You already mentioned some of the problems - how is willing to take the other side and how could it be resolved objectively? What if a user claims that he did not get his funds?

Could we get added in this thread?

We are a prediction market but we offer predictions/(bets) on sport events as well.

We would start with a C since we are online since early 2014. Compare: http://blog.fairlay.com / http://blog.fairlay.com/2014/02/fairlay-beta-promo/

Actually we claim to offer the best odds on the internet.
The reason is that at our site user bet against wach other and we only take a 1% fee. In addition we limit the events according to the number of active users to make sure that there is a liquid market that result in VERY COMPETITIVE odds.

Let me give you a current example:

Brazil - Colombia (to qualify)
Cloudbet: 1.4 - 2.88
Fairlay: 1.45 - 3.128

https://sportsbook.cloudbet.com/?event=73825
https://www.fairlay.com/predict/registered/new/brazil-will-reach-the-next-round-against-colombia/

France - Germany (to qualify)
Cloudbet: 2.12 - 1.67
Fairlay: 2.351 - 1.714


https://sportsbook.cloudbet.com/?event=74133
https://www.fairlay.com/predict/registered/new/france-will-reach-the-next-round-against-germany/

Netherlands - Costa Rica (to qualify)

Cloudbet: 1.21 - 4.4
Fairlay: 1.25 - 4.704

https://sportsbook.cloudbet.com/?event=74005
https://www.fairlay.com/predict/registered/new/netherlands-will-reach-the-next-round-against-costa-rica/


Read about us on:
Coindesk:
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-predict-future

Cryptocoinnews
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/interview-fairlay-prediction-market-replace-bitcoin-bookies/2014/02/15

or Bitcoin.de: (German)
http://bitcoinblog.de/2014/06/30/mit-bitcoins-auf-wm-spiele-wetten/

If these markets are posted on a 3rd-party site or with trustworthy escrow Cointeller.eu will join in immediately.  It might make more sense to do this outside of any site geared toward casino / sports gambling (such as betting exchanges) if possible.

Would anyone be interested in chatting more about this and exploring options on irc, cryptocat, or some equivalent service?

Peeps what if we use the BetMoose servers/front-end for transparency (we could modify it a bit too to tag sportsbook deposits) but we create a multi-sig wallet with you also acting as the escrow? We could put it on a private page like trust.betmoose.com or betmoose.com/sportstrust or something.

Or we could re-invest the collateral to BTCjam if the operators want a % yield on storing money but then that adds a layer of risk.

Are you referring to "Liquid Nitrogen"?

That is a different company.

If you are referring to the sportsbook NitrogenSports, please provide a link - I couldn't find a thread at the Scam Accusations about them.

Nitrogensports misleads and has mislead a lot of people. There is a big discussion over at the scam accusastion sub-froum with some people talking about a law suit.

Some sort of 3rd party prediction market for existing sportsbooks and exchanges would be an incredibly forward-thinking way to build trust.  Cointeller would love to participate and heavily seed our side of the market. 

This could be a great way to build trust.  After all, if you don't trust us then bet against us!

New site

http://dogebetz.com/

the one problem that I see, if I'm understanding this completely, is that there is just another possibility of not being paid by enacting a program spelled out above.

You could put this up on BetMoose without any real involvement of us (the exchange). The host (you) will be responsible for the resolution. You get paid commissions for the 'bet' so you could take this up as a community effort. Also, you have flexibility for selecting any conditions and specific (to the minute) outcome times.

Feel free to to PM me and we can help set you up with a private/password protected contract if you're interested.

I for one would be interested in seeing how many of the 'legit' sportsbooks would be open to entering into such a collateral, and how many would outright oppose it.

P.S: We are also 'real' and if this has enough volume behind it we could have a private information-share agreement, so that's not a big concern.

"One thing you can be sure of is that we will always put our customers first."

The treatment of your customers last night put them last, not first.


"The server upgrade was a big project (with a lot of moving parts) and was the cause of the downtime this morning."

So you had this downtime planned, yet made no mention of it in advance on the website or in this thread.

When it went down, you left your customers with their funds tied up in your book and unable to make bets at Nitrogen or elsewhere.

Numerous people attempted to contact you through this thread, emails, Twitter, Facebook, pm's, and there was ZERO response by anyone in your company for the FIVE HOURS the site was down despite constant attempts by many people to contact you.
(Actually, there was zero response until the above post of yours, 19 hours after the event, and only because I posted about it and you are responding to my post).

Numerous people worried that their funds were lost/stolen.

But it's all ok - because "One thing you can be sure of is that we will always put our customers first."

The hypocrisy of this comment makes it even more doubtful that I will be  doing any further business with NitrogenSports.

Hi CryptoVortex,

Why not try betting with the only licensed Bitcoin sportsbook out there and put your mind at ease? We are a transparent, licensed business and have been featured in the Wall Street Journal among others:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/06/12/for-the-world-cup-place-your-bitbets/

Kind regards,
BetVIP

Hey gogo,

We understand how you are feeling and share your frustrations.

A lot of things have happened over the last few weeks, one of which our user base has had a surge (especially since world cup) and we are definitely going through some growing pains due to this.

With so many new members, our website started to slow down during peak hours, which is why we recently did a hardware upgrade.

This upgrade has virtually eliminated the slowness issues, and should set us up to be able to more seamlessly handle growth. The server upgrade was a big project (with a lot of moving parts) and was the cause of the downtime this morning. We do our best to anticipate these types of issues and let our users know when we plan downtime. In the past we've been good with using twitter or the forums to let people know when we are offline (planned or unplanned) but we agree that this communication broke down today.

In addition to the scaling / user growth side of things, as we are getting more popular we are also having to deal more frequently with DDOS attacks.

This is a quote from our hosting company:

"The DDOS attack suffered was MASSIVE. Literally millions of IPs pointed at our network. We had to block several of our circuits completely to stop saturating the DC's backbone Internet connections "

International routing channels were actually switched over due to the size of this attack and several FIAT books in CR were also affected during the period.

DDOS attacks are another item that is on our radar, and unfortunately there is no "quick fix".

Again, we absolutely share your frustration, nothing is worse for us than the website going down and we are always working to bring it back up if/when these incidents occur.

One thing you can be sure of is that we will always put our customers first. While some of these things are out of our control, the team is planning to compensate our users for the downtime that's been experienced this last while as a show of good faith and our commitment to excellent customer service despite the recent outages. Stay checked into our thread for more information on that this week.

Thanks again for your message, and we hope our transparency has alleviated most of your concerns. If you need anything else, don't hesitate to ask us here, or through a support ticket or email.

Thanks

Peeps Place, or anyone else interested, do you think that we could use a prediction market to provide a measure of trust for bitcoin sportsbooks?  This would provide a means for skeptical bettors to hedge against the risk of fraud. 

One problem with this plan is whether anyone would be willing to bet that the book was not going to disappear (or whatever the contract specified).  At a minimum, the sportsbook itself should be willing to provide some bids to help build confidence.  After all, if they are legit, they would be betting on an outcome that they control.  The only excuse they would have to not do this is a desire not to tie up the capital.  However, they could roll this over as contracts expired.  Any sportsbook lacking the capital required to do this should be extremely worrisome for that reason alone.

An additional issue with this plan is, of course, the reliability of the prediction market itself.  There seem to be a few of these that have now emerged as fairly stable.  Some, such as Predictious, have also demonstrated a level of transparency that is, so far, unheard of among the sportsbooks themselves.  (At least they have an address, a verifiable company name and a legal jurisdiction!)  Ironically, some of the legal limitations that are a principal reason for both sportsbook owners and players to prefer anonymity might not apply to a bet on whether the sportsbook would "go Madoff".

The final challenge I see would be structuring the contract in an objective way, allowing verification without requiring the prediction market to launch a huge investigation.   This is an issue, but I think that it could be addressed.

A couple of near-term examples would be:

  "Nitrogensports / Anonibet to pay out 20 BTC World Cup contest bonus." 

Since these books have taken pains to provide transparency to these contests, it should be possible to verify these outcomes.  In effect, the bonus amount could be held in escrow by the market. Players participating in these contests could do so with confidence, and could hedge against the fraud risk, if desired.

Has this been suggested, or even tried, before?

I'll contact Nitrogen to see if they would like to address the problems that Gogo has listed.