Before I get into detail, a few things to note:
* No reviews in this initial posting. This is to take comments and suggestions, and gauge interest. If no one cares (and a ton of you don't, and continue to gamble at, and trust, truly terrible sites) I won't bother. It's a lot of work.
* Speaking of work, I have about 15 full-time demands on my time. I'll do this as I can, and try my best, but if I go ghost for a month, it's only because I've gotten so busy I haven't had time.
* I will be editing this OP frequently. If there is info in the OP that should be kept, I'll re-post it a a reply in the thread. Any time there is new, pertinent information to be had, it will be in the OP and NOT in a reply. I may comment in replies, but anything you need to know will be here.
* For now, this thread is self-moderated. The ONLY reason is so that before this thread 'launches' with live information, I can clean it up, remove all the pre-launch comments that don't add to the discussion, etc. Once it goes 'live' I intend to either remove the self-moderation, or if that's not possible (I havent tried yet), start a new thread.
* I proposed this idea in the sawdice thread. Someone told me they already have a casino review thread. True. But NO ONE takes a look at the security and integrity of the provably fair systems. In that other thread, satoshidice is rated a C+ for "Trust" based mostly off of issues with the site and the op's personal opinion. I have no intention of offering any opinion based on conjecture in this thread. I'll be looking at the facts and presenting them as they are, and offering my opinion based on those facts. The severity with which a site fails to be provably fair says a lot about how likely they are to screw you.
* I intend to only focus on two main points:
1. The likelyhood that the site CAN cheat you. Any negative reviews I post will not have not a darn thing to do with my opinion on the trustworthiness of the site/owners to shut down and run off with your money. I'm here to report on the math behind their rolls and their claims, and to educate people on how it works, how they can cheat, and how a system is good, or bad. And just because I say a site claims to be provably fair, and they are not, does not mean they will or intend to cheat you. The good/honest sites will respond and fix the issue. If they do not, well, then, there's your answer.
2. To the best of my ability, to report on the quality of the site, code-wise. I see a lot of coinDice bashing here, because it got a bad rap a while back. I've looked at the newer (v3+ I believe) coinDice script and it's pretty solid. I could not find any holes in it. If a site is well coded, it gets a good score. If it's based off the beta coinDice script thats on github, well, the site won't last long because I'm sure that shortly after I report it, someone here will wipe them clean.
* I'm working on a scoring system, where sites get a 1-5 on various aspects, or alternately, a system where points are scored for positive traits (I'm leaning that way), so I can come up with a ranking of sites, the most trustworthy (in terms of cheating and cryptography) at the top.
* Yes I will throw a site under the bus. That's quite obvious if anyone reads my post history.
* Yes I will praise the good ones.
* I'm not sure if it's allowed in posts (I need to check the btctalk.org rules), but if it is, yes, I'll be honest and say I will post referral links in the hyperlinks to the sites. Doing this costs time. A lot of it. Time I could spend elsewhere, and I won't turn down a referral bonus or a tip. That being said, sites with poor ratings will not even have hyperlinks. So, no hypocrisy here. I will not ever direct someone to gamble at an untrustworthy site.
I think that's all I've got for now. I'll be updating this post, hopefully soon. Maybe, once it's in full bloom, it can even get a sticky.
One last thing. What the hell qualifies me to do this? I've been programming in a myriad of languages for longer than most of you have been walking. I love cryptography, and I understand how it works. Because I find PHP to be an easier language to tinker in (as opposed to write production code in something like C), to see the inner workings, I made a PHP implementation of the sha512 hash. Not "use hash('sha512', $whatever);" but wrote the code to compute the hash. 80 rounds, word expansion, blah blah. I've also gambled for years. I wouldn't say it's an addiction or problem - but when the mood strikes, I do love games of chance.
And the final reason? Because I got taken. Because I, like 99.9% of you (see what I did there?
), saw the site's "provably fair" label, gave it a glance, it looked and sounded kosher, so I made a massive mistake and TRUSTED them. And I lost about 80 BTC when all was said and done. Not years ago when it was a few bucks. Months ago when it was $250-$300. I reached the point of "no effing way could I statistically lose THIS much on a monumental losing streak", so I investigated the provably fair system and saw how the site could, with 100% deniability, cheat the living shit out of anyone they wanted to. And I don't want to see it happen to anyone else.
Hope to have initial reviews up soon. G'nite all.