Topic: KUDOS to StrikeSapphire (Read 1258 times)

Thanks!!!!!

We're having another set of seven, $10 Freerolls this Wednesday, 5pm-Midnight GMT, for everybody who couldn't make it last week. Plus no-rake $0.10/0.20 games that night. Djao, you get a fresh start. Coins for all 

Another +1 to StrikeSapphire from me, played with them for a while now. Although not too much since there isn't much poker activity, but I've gotten some games.
The guy running the site seems like a nice & honest guy and the casino itself seems to have it's numbers correct, although the dealer seems to get an awful lot of blackjacks, but i guess that's just in my head heh.
Also was a bit sad to not see more players at the freerolls, it started out with ~3 players for the first few $10 freerolls, but then it got a little better and there were ~7 people.

Anyho, great casino and can't wait until more people finally starts playing there.

Indeed it was

(I of course made sure to lose any eventual winnings straight back to the casino. It's all about supporting the Bitcoin community, right? )

Not at all! I'm glad you asked.

Firstly, the rates for deposit and withdrawal are both locked in when you successfully submit a request. So even though we took a few hours to process it, we did actually do it at the rate our servers got from Tradehill when you made the request, which it looks like was $10.88 at 8:29am GMT. Now -- we do use the Tradehill "ask" rate for deposits and the "bid" rate for withdrawals...so it could be you noticed the "ask" rate in the deposit window (it changes when you change the menu to withdraw)...and it could be it was just a wide spread at the time. Also, the deposit/withdrawal doesn't update the rate live, it only gets it once from Tradehill when the window is opened. When we actually processed the morning withdrawals, the live rate was about $10.80, so we did save a little BTC over if you had withdrawn later in the day. If something other than what I'm describing actually happened, let me know...but when we process withdrawals, our servers don't check the rate again, so I'm pretty sure this is how it went down.

Which leads to your other question, about letting people play in Bitcoins. There's been a lot of interest in this from the BTC community. But the truth is, we're planning on branching out to other payment methods in coming months, and also trying to attract players who view Bitcoin as a short-term, in and out payment method, and aren't necessarily looking to keep their money in BTC. It would be a massive operation to try and convert the site's internal currency now that we're running, and we're not sure it makes sense for us. Initially we were thinking about spinning off a whole separate site that would only run in BTC, but it was too much operational overhead, and we didn't want to split the small crowd we were expecting in BTC from the 100-ish beta testers we already had on-site.

To your question about players using us as a de-facto bank or bond, it's a very good point, and there's been some talk about that among us recently since last week's earnings were basically wiped out over the last 2 days by the BTC drop. We're bullish on BTC, but being dollar-denominated, we move most of our cash to USD so that we aren't exposed to excessive currency risk. (Normal fluctuations in gambling revenue are bad enough ). We've had one guy just stick a bunch of bitcoins on the site and never play, which we're somewhat suspicious about, and we're considering a revision to the TOS that would basically tell people who do things like that, their money will be placed on reserve and may take a few days to withdraw because we're going to consider it out of play, discard it from our float amount and move it into a dollar-denominated account.

Right now, we maintain only between 2-3x total player holdings in BTC at any given time for immediate large paybacks. Behind that we have a buffer in USD on Tradehill, and behind that the other 90% or so of the casino's float is in banks, on PayPal, and in a forex basket of Euros and CHF. We've tried to spread the currency risk out so that no one calamity will bring us down.

Hope this answers some questions. We're still getting our feet and trying to deal with everything at once, so answering things like this actually helps me get a handle, in my own mind, on what our policies will be and how we'll respond to all kinds of things we haven't encountered before.

I couldn't have asked for a better response, so thank you for taking the time to answer another question you have probably come across dozens of times.

StrikeSapphire definately gets my vote.

I do have 1 suggestion though, as it might not affect your company either way, but it is definately a 'loophole' that may be exploited by some.

Your company does business in DOLLARS, doing a conversion to and from BTC at Deposit and Withdrawl, using market value.
Doesn't this give some 'Market Watchers' a bit of an advantage ?

For example; What if a few players made deposits during a HIGH BTC RATE (say, last month @ $15.00+), then withdrew when they felt the market took enough of a low turn (recently $10.00). With this method, they can completely sidestep the xchanges and FORCE a more favorable withrawl price, getting more BTC than they essentially deposited, just by using StrikeSapphire as an insta-exchange type of 'Bank'.

With this being a BTC Casino, wouldn't it be less of a risk for StrikeSapphire's bottom line to keep everything (including gameplay) in BTC to avoid unwanted 'Marketplay' ?

The only reason I even bring this up is, early this morning, during my first withdrawl, my expectations (due to your advertised market rates) were 1 total, yet I received LESS by the time it was processed hours later. It only affected me by about 0.2 BTC...and trust me, I'm not complaining, because it was a nice profit, but it just got me thinking that if it could work 1 way, it could also work the other way.......

Sorry for laying this out here. I am more than willing to delete this post if I have overstepped any boundries.

Like I said, I am HAPPY with StrikeSapphire

Every spin, deal, etc. on Sapphire comes from a constantly running random number generator and has no relationship with who's playing, how much they bet, or any other game data. Card shoes are published the following day; if we did anything like what you're talking about, those shoes wouldn't come out with an even or random distribution of cards. The data is available to all at https://strikesapphire.com/reports/ and you'll be able to find your blackjack shoes in there.

I'm always a little stunned when I hear this kind of question, it's par for the course I guess. Let me lay it out:

We don't believe in cheating or screwing anybody. This is our reputation on the line here, and pulling that kind of crap on our players would just be stupid. Players come to gamble and be entertained, and on the whole players lose over time. We're in for the long haul. I spent 3+ years building this software, not just to run a small BTC casino but to license it out and make 1000x what it's making right now.

But you have to know, we're in business to make money. We just do it the old fashioned way. By having the odds in our favor

Someone wins, someone loses, we get our percentage. It's a mathematical certainty. People who don't believe in individual luck assume something's rigged when they lose, or it's planning to scam them when they win. But luck exists. It runs in streaks. I see it constantly. And by "luck" I mean, in the course of a day, random blind chance will put together streaks of winnings for some and streaks of losses for others, and sometimes you just watch a guy and you see it's hot for him, and other times you see it's cold. Sometimes the whole casino gets hot or cold.

So, no guarantees your luck will hold, but you've done pretty well so far. Advice from this casino owner? The most important thing is having a good time, so enjoy it. Don't play anything you can't comfortably afford to lose, and always quit while you're ahead (easier said than done). Just remember, like they say, Vegas ain't Vegas because gamblers usually win.

Hey, thanks for such a great site ...... unfortunately I just had to make another withdrawl

I do have a question though:

Will a player's or Game's Odds be affected by Player luck/skill/past performance/stats etc ?

I guess what I am asking is, is the system 'Getting to know me' ?

Hey, this just made my day! As it happens, we processed this morning's withdrawals about an hour ago. Congratulations on the win, and thanks for the stellar review!!!

You should have joined the free-rolls yesterday. It was fun, free and you could have won real cash (not me actually, as I suck at poker and don't have much luck either, but anyways). I think next week there will be free-rolls again ...

If anyone wants to sign up, you may consider using my referral link: https://strikesapphire.com/?afc=kbGpsrDVI6
(hint: US citizens are not allowed to deposit and play for real cash)

So, being a bit hesitant trying an online Casino for the first time, I decided to sign up for a 'Play Money' account @ StrikeSapphire - www.StrikeSapphire.com

I figure I gave it a good 3 day run with my Casino-provided 'Play Money' to test the waters out and get a good idea of Payouts, as well as luck on my part.

My biggest concern was that the FREE PLAY would have had definate odds in favor of the User, just to suck you in, then BOOM, the minute you deposite and begin playing with Real Money/BitCoin, it would bleed you dry.

Well, I can say for certain that the FREE ODDS ARE THE SAME AS THE 'REAL MONEY' ODDS and I couldn't be happier.....or more impressed.

I am neither employed by, affiliated with, nor compensated in any way, shape or form by StrikeSapphire. I just really enjoy the service and was pleasantly surprised to find FAIR ONLINE GAMING.

Good Job to StrikeSapphire !

Top Notch Interface, High Quality Gaming Experience.....
I will definately be back....providing my withdrawl goes smoothly tonight that is

This was about the most fun 60-odd minutes I experienced today.

Cheers,
Allan (Bitlane)