Topic: House of Chance - a Game of Thrones inspired game with no house edge! (Read 4529 times)

Yeah Deb wrote a bunch of the best questions. Perfectly tailored to their difficulty level and also fun and sometimes kooky. I should note that people who submit trivia are rewarded with 1000 gold dragons (1mbtc) every time any of their submitted questions is accepted into the pool of trivia. Basically I've accepted every question - so long as they're interesting and understandable I want to encourage more trivia creation. Thanks to Deb for being such a great tester and user of that and other features.

Deb contributed a bunch of trivia questions too. I know, because earlier when I was playing it asked me a question I had no idea about, and said "question written by Deb" at the bottom. lol. I got it wrong.

really cool site ! well done, (music and graphics is great)

Thanks Doog, for the link and explanation. 

(Doog & Deb were also a great help in the early testing of the game. Any issues with the site are obviously my own fault however!)

people will still loose money because of the greed most people have it doesnt mater that theres no house edge

There are trivial questions that pop up when you win, and your win involved your house banner. Some of them ask about the sayings. I think one of the questions is "what is the (saying) for the house of Stark"... if you get it right, you win more than if you get it wrong, but if you get it wrong you still win something.

I just bet 1000, hit two triples in a row, including one set of my own house banners. I got the question right, and so won 4500, for a profit of 3500. My win didn't show up in the chat, although a couple of my smaller wins did.

Without a house edge, how do you guys plan on keeps this service alive since it isn't free to run a website

I love game of thrones.  lol.. I'll have to check this one out.  I like the house banners.  It would be cool to tie in all the sayings for the families too... like "winter is coming" and all that.  And more dragons... definitely more dragons!

You should link it:

  House of Chance

Some people won't be willing to click up to the first post to find the URL.

Hi friends, I hope you're enjoying Game of Thrones season 5 (I have been!). If you're not aware of it, please give House of Chance a try. It's the first bitcoin gaming site that incorporates both luck and knowledge - the more you know about Game of Thrones the better your odds. It's even possible to reduce the house edge to less than zero with knowledgeable play!

nice site theme. good luck with this project

Hi friends, with the imminent release of season 5 of Game of Thrones, I thought you might want to take another look at my Game of Thrones inspired bitcoin game Any feedback is appreciated

Service is back! Host came through with new server faster than I expected. It may take some time for DNS propagation and for the bitcoin daemon to catchup, but the game is back!

Hi guys, the House of Chance is currently under maintenance to upgrade the server. Hopefully should be back by tomorrow. All deposits are safe. Will report back when the site is back again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Sorry about that. If there's anything in particular confusing you, please let me know I'm happy to explain. Also the FAQ has some explanations of a few things I thought might not be immediately obvious to players:

https://houseofchance.net/faq


thanks for trying it out

Still don't understand this game and get confused just by going to the site...

Doog and Watoshi, I found the bug you both pointed out. It was quite small and has been fixed. The bug did not affect your payouts, but did show a confusing message about your balance not being high enough to make the next bet in the sequence of doubles that you were playing.

As thanks for helping me find this bug I have gifted you both 1000 gold Dragons which you're free to play with or to withdraw as you wish. Thanks to both of you.


* As an additional update, for folks who've played at the House of Chance before, please do a CTRL-F5 when you revisit the site. Some of the javascript has been updated so that the game will adjust its zoom level to the size of you screen (previously for small monitors it was cutting off some of the imagery).

* A second update is that player are now able to gift each other gold Dragons (which are directly convertible to bitcoins):

https://houseofchance.net/faq#a13_2

That would be so amazing, thank you! If anyone else has advice on the best way I can market to fans of Game of Thrones, I would love to hear from you. I think we have a great chance to reach out to other non technical people by building stuff for them that's exciting to use for other reasons than the one which is important to all of us (that bitcoin is awesome But I'm not very knowlegeable about marketing so any help is appreciated.

Sure thing, it's amazing. I was thinking about using it to introduce bitcoin to my sister who's in love with Game of Thrones.

Keep up the good work!

good to see that more and more people like this idea. I think there is a lot of potential in this work and with the help of the users it may get only better.

Thanks for the kind words Seymour. If there's enough interest from folks playing this game and requesting other themes I will definitely work on that. My main goal was to create a game that might appeal to folks outside the bitcoin community to help us grow our community larger. And also because I love Game of Thrones

Really sorry about that byteSized. The site was optimized for larger screens, which is definitely not fun for folks with smaller ones, or with mobile devices. This is something I'm going to have to fix. As a short term fix, you can press CTRL and - (minus character) at the same time in chrome to zoom out, which should allow you to see more of the screen.

See: https://houseofchance.net/faq#a20

A longer term fix will be to make the site more "responsive" and adapt it's look and feel based on the size of the screen. Right now everything is placed in a very particular way so that it looks the way it does. It needs to automatically customize itself. Would love advice from people here who are UI experts.

Thanks so much for checking out the site

Amazing site! Just one little problem. I can't see the whole chat bubble.

It stops like this.



Can't scroll up any higher. This is Google Chrome by the way.

Looks really fun!

Would love to see a 'fairgrounds' of some sort with more games. Like those medieval striped tents players can walk to and from whilst listening to renaissancefairmusic.

Hi guys, I'm back and now able to approve more Game of Thrones trivia if you would like to collect question bounties. Also a new feature has been added to the House of Chance which lets players gift money to each other in the chat window:

https://houseofchance.net/faq#a13_2

I will be using this feature to do a giveaway in the near future.

Hi friends - quick notice that I will be away for the next few days and will have only intermittent access to the House of Chance admin console, so won't be able to approve trivia to pay out question bounties. If you have any great trivia you would like to submit, please do so today so you can collect your question bounty.

Happy holidays and may you have the blessings of the Seven true Gods of Westeros!

Hi Watoshi - one thing which would really help me if you encounter this rendering bug again is to press the f key (or click the tick icon in the betting box) to bring up the fairness window, and take a screen shot. It should show the spins it's supposed to render in there. Thanks for your help

One player played over 800 times. He seems to be a big fan of the shows, has been doing really well on the trivia questions and has contributed several questions to the collection of trivia too.

I would love to read your thoughts on what ways the game could/should be simplified. My humble and subjective opinion is that it's simpler than dice games. At least it would be easier for folks outside the bitcoin gambling community to see it and quickly pick up what it's about. And that was my main goal. I'd really like to continue improving it so folks here also enjoy it and I really appreciate your feedback on ideas you think I should work on.

Thanks to everyone who has given it a try

the idea is very nice, but it seems the game got a bit overcomplicated to start with. Has anyone played longer to say that you need some time to learn and then things go smoothly?

Sorry that the explanations aren't adequate, WhatsBitcoin; that's definitely my fault. The FAQ goes deeper into explaining how to win:

https://houseofchance.net/faq#a3

And while you're playing the merchant speaks to you saying things like "You spun a double, spin two more to win". I would love to get your advice on how I might be able to create clearer messaging. I would really like to make it clear so that anyone could pick it up easily; especially folks who don't yet know about bitcoin.

This is exactly right. It was a conscious decision to make the game work this way rather than as a standard slot machine with independent slot reels. Imagine if you only had three slot reels and you got some kind of bonus for your house appearing three times. With 9 houses, the probability of that event is (1/9)^3. I.e., it would only happen once in 729 spins. I really wanted the game to be a fun mixture of gambling and knowledge, and unless I made it so that winning patterns occurred more frequently, the trivia nature of the site would almost never show up and really not play any factor at all in the edge the player has.

But this is an open question that I would love to get the community's feedback on: is the trivia part worth having at all? Some users seem to really love it. But if the slot machine was simply themed as a Game of Thrones slot machine with no trivia would it be as fun to play? If I built another one for a TV show or book series you really cared about - e.g., Sopranos or Breaking Bad or Lord of the Rings - would you care if it had trivia mixed in with luck, or would you only care that the graphics were nicely themed?

My thinking on this was that if I had only themed it, it would basically be like every other slot game and wouldn't be very interesting or fun. I really wanted to create something new, and something that I hoped would bring people from outside of our bitcoin community into it.



This is also correct. You both did get the win_type 0 (and you can use the verification system to show how it derived this - please let me know if any clarification of how it works is needed). The problem was that it rendered the win_type of 0 in a way that was incorrect and confusing. I need to figure out if this is a corner case which only occurs when your balance is becoming low.

I do want to emphasize that this doesn't change the odds of the game at all or make it more in favor of the house. It means that on spins where you lose, it (occasionally) seems to render it in a confusing way. Really sorry you guys both experienced this. I want to get to the bottom of it

There is only no house edge if the player knows a lot about Game of Thrones. If the player knows a moderate amount, the house will have a slight edge over the player, which should be competitive with the edge used by most dice sites. If the player knows very little or nothing about Game of Thrones, the house will have a bigger edge. In a way you can think of it as a wealth transfer mechanism from people who don't care about game of thrones to people who are fans Although people who don't care about Game of Thrones at all probably won't be very interested in playing I'm guessing - although it would be cooler if the potential for a positive house edge inspired them to watch the TV series and/or read the books

Honestly just feel overwhelmed when I play this game. I'm so confused on how to win and the site doesn't explain in-game at all.

yes, I noticed that.


Yeah, you are right.
It seems the best explanation.


Well, anyway, I am sad since I lost it.
I was hoping it was a buggy win.

Thanks Doog, will look into this asap. Will try to have an answer by tomorrow.

The game is kind of weird in how it works. You might imagine that a game like this would randomly pick the symbols, and from that calculate whether you've won or not, but it's not like that here.

Here, the provably fair system works out your result first (quads, two trips, three doubles, or a loss) and then makes up the symbols to give you that result. It's kind of backwards.

The reasoning behind it makes sense: if the symbols were random you'd almost never see four-of-a-kind, and people would get bored of playing. So the game gives you relatively many wins, but pays you relatively little for them.

Sometimes when the provably fair system determines that you're due to lose, the game will show you a single triple, or two sets of doubles, which I'm guessing is what happened to us. It decided we were going to lose, but it was going to show us a single double first, and then a bug stopped it from letting us spin again and see our loss. But maybe I'm wrong, and we should have won. I don't know - but I'm sure we'll know soon enough...

yes, I had exactly the same experience.

Mine is the second last one I made. account: watoshi

Edit: I made the 15k bet, it showed up type 2, ie. two same houses. The text showed something like, you need 2 more doubles to win. I tried to play again, but it showed error on lack of balance.

It has not decided you had lost the second spin. The second spin was simply not made.

Edit2: Oh sorry, I get what you mean. There is no system to check each individual spin?

No, I think you're right.

I just bet 10k with a balance of 12k. My spin came up as a double, but when I went to respin (which should be free) it told me I didn't have enough in my balance.

Now I expect it had already decided that I had lost, but it should still let me make my 2nd and possibly 3rd spins and let me see the loss happen.

I'll stop playing, so the spin I'm talking about was the last one on the 'dooglus' account.

Sorry, I think the mistake is on my part. I thought I got a double. ie type 2.
But when I verified I got type 0.

Pretty boring and complicated site.

How are you going to profit if you have no house edge?

Yup, Doog is correct. If you have a lot of knowledge the house edge you can achieve is negative 1%. That is, you have an edge over the house, in your favor, and should win money in the long term. If you know quite a bit about the Game of Thrones but not everything, my estimation (it really depends on how much you know), is that the house edge is about 1%. If you know a moderate amount about the series (e.g., you've only watched the TV series), I think the house edge will be about 1.5% to 2%. If you know absolutely nothing about the Game of Thrones, the house edge will be quite a bit worse. For folks who know nothing about the Game of Thrones, I could potentially suggest that you shouldn't play at the House of Chance and find better odds elsewhere. However, I have a better suggestion: You should go watch the TV series and read the books. They are awesome!

May the odds be good!

If you get all the questions right I think the house edge is actually negative!

Never watched house of thrones. Assuming I never get any questions right, whats the house edge? Seems quite high.

Hi Watoshi, I'm back and am looking into your problem. The bets and payouts seem correct to me. Is there a bet in particular you think didn't payout correctly? The bets are listed here:

https://houseofchance.net/bets

The payout table is here:

https://houseofchance.net/faq#a9_1

Also, if you want to verify the correctness of the spins that you saw, you can go to the main slot machine page and open up the fairness window by pressing 'f', or by pressing on the tick icon in the betting box. Then click "randomize" on the server seed. This will allow you to verify the correctness of all past sequence of spins that you saw.

I hope that helps, but if there is still confusion please let me know, I'm happy to help. And thanks so much for playing!

Hi Watoshi, apologies for the bad experience. I will look into what happened as soon as possible. I am away from my computer for a few hours today, but when I come back I will look into it first thing. I really want everyone who uses the site to have a good experience.

I have trouble with the game.
I made 15000 bet. I got double. My balance was around 19000. So, I can make just 1 spin?
It came, I don't have enough balance


EDIT: I checked. It is not so. At least in free play. You don't have to pay for additional spin on double. So, I think I lost it because a bug?

My balance didn't show up even after 1 conf. I relogged in. and it showed up.

My second bet:
Watoshi   2014-12-18 11:09:42   1088   3   true   true   200   10x   1800

lol, the thing is I don't know nothing about Game of thrones. Seriously.

x10 or x20 rollover is a condition you put on withdrawals for the no-deposit bonus, so that players don't abuse the system and they actually spend some time on the site and not just withdraw the bonus and run away. And I wasn't aware that you already had '1000 complimentary silver stags' and that users who contribute to trivia are given a little bonus, which for now I think is enough to test the site, so no need to do anything just yet. Slow and steady is good.

Awesome, thanks Phil! A Lannister always pays his debts 

Probably worth reading the FAQ on what makes a good question:

https://houseofchance.net/faq#a8

I should also mention that not only will you be rewarded with gold Dragons (i.e., bitcoins) for questions that are accepted, but you will be acknowledged every time your question is shown to other users. I want those who contribute to know that their questions will play an important part of what makes the site fun to use. It's really a crowd sourced game. I really appreciate everyone's contributions.

Thats a pretty good idea. Im gonna deposit, but, also make some trivia questions.

Winter is coming.!

With a x10 rollover, the user will need to first wager 10x the bonus before the amount can be withdrawn.
For example, if you give 10000 satoshi free credit to me, I will need to first gamble a total of 100000 satoshi in order to withdraw my account balance.

I hope you get lucky too activebiz! Btw, if you don't feel like making a deposit, you can sign up and create some Game of Thrones trivia. For each question that you create that's accepted in review you will get 1000 gold Dragons which you can play with or withdraw immediately.

The minimum amount you can bet is 0.000001 (1micro btc or 1 gold Dragon in the currency of Westeros). The minimum withdrawal amount is 0.001btc (i.e., 1mbtc or 1000 gold Dragons). A small fee of 0.1 mbtc is deducted from withdrawals to ensure fast delivery. Without putting in a miner's fee I've seen transactions take almost a day to get a confirmation, which is a pretty bad user experience. So I opted for adding the small miner fee to all withdrawals.

Thanks for trying it out

so whats the minimum to cash out in this game?

nice site. ill try a few rounds on this site. hope I'm lucky today

Heh, yeah, that was the most valuable bug fix - you really saved me finding that. It was only a one line fix, but if you hadn't pointed it out, I would have bankrupted myself within a day Can't say how much I appreciate that you were willing to look at my code, spend your time thinking about it and help out someone you've never even met. I hope I'll get to meet you in person some day, maybe at a bitcoin conference or something!

Sorry for my ignorance bitbaby, could you explain what you mean by an x10 rollover for withdrawals? I like the idea of paying users for tweets. Right now there is a payout for users who contribute trivia to the site, since the trivia is a big part of what makes the game unique and fun (in my opinion , so that lets anyone play for real money without having to acquire or own bitcoins. That was an important decision for me because I want to be able to attract people who don't yet know much about bitcoin but do love Game of Thrones.

Also, anyone can go to the site and start playing for free using the 1000 complimentary silver Stags that all users who don't have accounts are given. Silver Stags aren't convertible to bitcoins though, only gold Dragons. And users who don't create an account won't be asked trivia questions, which creates an extra incentive for users to create an account

Digging it. Nice design. Congratulations on the site!

You're very welcome. It was fun play-testing it, and good to see you addressing the issues we brought up. (Like the 50% edge in the player's favour that you accidentally started out with!)

Thanks for acknowledging that we don't and can't endorse the site. Some people don't seem to get that.

I say start from this forum itself in the Games and rounds section, a little no-deposit bonus to test the site with a x10 or x20 rollover for withdrawals and with it you can add that people either tweet or share a link on their facebook/twitter page or both to be eligible for the no-deposit bonus. And once you're done with that you can start a sig-campaign.

Thanks for the suggestion bitbaby. Would love advice on what kind of promotion I should use. What do you guys think would work best?

Site design looks excellent, couldn't play as I was a little short on time but made an account and will defo try it soon. All you need now is a small promotion to attract players. GL

Twitter handle has been setup for House of Chance. Follow updates here:

https://twitter.com/alequoadarys

Seven heavens! I can't tell you how grateful I am to read the kind words from you and others. As I mentioned a big part of my goal was to help grow our community by creating a game that appeals to folks who might not know much about bitcoin but love Game of Thrones. If you know people like that I would be so grateful if you could introduce them to the game. They can play for free, or even play for bitcoins without buying bitcoins by contributing trivia to the site.

I would also love to hear what features you guys would like to make the game more fun to play. I tried to make the odds very competitive with any other dice game. If you know anything about game of thrones you're probably going to get odds better than 1% house edge. If you know a lot about game of thrones you're going to have an edge in your favor and beat the house.


Please let me know anything I can do so that you guys can have a more enjoyable experience. If enough people like the site I might consider branching out and creating other themed games for shows or books that you guys love (e.g., Lord of the Rings or Sopranos or things like that).

nice one

Awesome site i love playing here and also enjoy submitting bonus questions.

Really nice site design. Gonna test it out with a little bit of coin

Also a huge fan of GoT 

Cool background pictures&animations, cool music and cool site! I liked it very much, thank you to introduce House of Chance!

May the odds be good!

haha, epic site for GoT fans

Thanks Mindtrust. I'm also a big fan of Game of Thrones, which is why I created the game

Btw, so far 5000 gold Dragons (which can be converted to btc or used to play on the site) have been awarded as bounties to players using the "create trivia" feature of the site to create new Game of Thrones trivia. I'm hoping folks here who enjoy game of thrones will consider contributing trivia so they can win these bounties too.

Question: What are the words of House Stark?

If you know the answer you should be playing at https://houseofchance.NET

Interesting, idea.

I like GoT either. so, win win.

Hi Joseph, sorry for confusing you. When you spin a three in a row, you must spin another immediately after to get a payout. There are three winning sequences of spins:

1. One quadruple (four houses in a row).
2. Two triples (three houses in a row, spun twice).
3. Three doubles (seeing two houses in a row in three consecutive spins).

If in any sequence of spins you hit four different houses that is a bust.

Please let me know if you would like any other clarification and thanks for playing at the House of Chance. I really appreciate your feedback

great idea and i like the music

Thank you, appreciate it

I have discovered something which looks like a bug.

I rolled 3 in a row, and the guy said "Three in a row! If you spin three in a row one more time you will win big!"
I did roll 3 in a row another time, and the same message appeared. I even rolled a 3 in a row some time later, and still no win.

Maybe you should fix this.

Nice idea ! you gonna hit a lot of Game of thrones fan like me !!!
I wish you the best for this !!!

good initiative ..
we will see the evolution of the site ..

I want to also say a big thank you to Deb and Dooglus, who were the first users of the House of Chance and gave me plenty of very helpful feedback (Doog even caught some important bugs for me). Deb was great at providing general usability feedback and creating some fantastic trivia for the site (I hope folks will play the game and get a chance to test their Game of Thrones knowledge against Deb's trivia).

Of course I want to emphasize that this is NOT an endorsement of the site by either of them and they are in no way associated with it. Any potential issues with the site are my own responsibility.

Thanks Deb&Doog!

the idea looks very promising and the graphics is really impressive. Well done!

Thanks Sherbyspark I built the game partly to expand the audience of folks who might be interested in Bitcoin. I figure there are a lot of people who really love Game of Thrones (like me), but don't know much about bitcoin and probably wouldn't be able to figure out how to play at bitcoin dice sites. And I made it so I made the game simple and anyone can play even without deposting bitcoin. You can either play using complimentary silver Stags (1000 are given to you as soon as you visit the site), or if you want to play with real money but don't know how to acquire bitcoins, you can go to the site and create trivia, which gets you a payout in gold Dragons (which can then be converted back to bitcoins).

Nice music on the front page. Brings back old memories
I would just visit the site for the music

Lords and Ladies of Westeros. My name is Alequo Adarys and I have the pleasure of being the owner of the House of Chance (https://houseofchance.NET)

Located in Fleabottom, in the dinghy heart of King's Landing, the House of Chance has created a unique game combining both luck and knowledge. The first-of-its-kind game allows a player to achieve an astonishing 1% edge in their favor, with knowlegeable play. Built into the legendary Iron Throne of Aegon the Conqueror, the game is a slot machine where the slots represent the 9 great Houses of Westeros. Players at the House of Chance first choose which of the great Houses they belong to, and when a winning sequence of patterns includes their house, the player will be awarded a "House Bonus" payout on top of their normal winning payout. But the payout does not stop there. After a "House Bonus" the player will be presented with a question about the history and lore of Westeros, allowing them to win an even bigger "Question Bonus" payout. Questions range from easy to very hard and their difficulty depends on the type of patterns the player spun in the slot machine. An example question is shown below:


Notice that questions are in multiple choice format and that there is a timer which gives the player a limited amount of time to answer the question. The timer ensures that players with the knowledge of Maester will be able to answer the question, but those who wish to search the scrolls of the Citadel in search of the answer will not have enough time. The questions come from the largest online collection of Game of Thrones trivia. Players at the House of Chance may also contribute to the collection of trivia by creating their own questions. Any questions created by a player that are accepted into the collection of trivia will result in a "question bounty" of 1000 gold Dragons (the currency of Westeros) to the player who submitted it. Gold dragons may be converted to and from bitcoins at a rate of 1 bitcoin = 1 million gold Dragons. A player will also be acknowledged for creating a question whenever it is shown to other players in the House of Chance who obtain a House Bonus while playing the game.

With knowledgeable play, a player at the House of Chance can have an edge as high as 1% in their favor - so in the long term they should be able to beat the House. The more you know about Game of Thrones, the better you will be able to do. Fans of Game of Thrones will find that there is no other place in Westeros where wagering is more in their favor than at the House of Chance.

The game provides many great features, including:

• Variable House edge, up to 1% in the player's favor
• Largest collection of Game of Thrones trivia on the web
• The more you know about Game of Thrones, the better your odds
• Faucet feature: ability to create trivia for the site and be rewarded with 1000 gold Dragons (instantly convertible to btc) for each question you create that's accepted. You can submit an unlimited number of questions so long as they're well crafted
• 1 confirm deposits
• Instant withdrawals
• Chat feature so you can discuss Game of Thrones with other fans and players at the House of Chance
• Provably fair (https://houseofchance.net/faq#a9)
• Fund the bankroll and share in the profits*

The House of Chance also incorporates state of the art security practices to ensure the safety of player and investor funds, including:

• All traffic is over SSL
• Two factor authentication is available to secure player and investor accounts
• Rate limited login attempts
• Bcrypted passwords
• Built on top of a secure Linux architecture
• Majority of investor funds are kept in cold-storage
• Encrypted hot wallet

Without further ado I would like to welcome you all to the House of Chance, and may the odds be good!

https://houseofchance.NET


* Due to the recent and unfortunate spate of scammers and knaves making off with investor funds, the House of Chance funding-the-bankroll feature will only be available by invitation (send me a PM or email if you would like to try this feature, but please be aware of all the risks involved in using it)