Topic: StrikeSapphire - NEW Bonus - New $15 Blackjack - New 15 BTC in Weekend prizes! (Read 2963 times)

Couple of new features to report!

1. After many requests, we've finally gotten around to adding a 4-color poker deck option in Account > Preferences.

2. We've improved the No Limit / Pot Limit poker chip slider, so that clicking behind the chip stack ow will increase the stack by one raise increment. If you hold down shift and click, you can still get the old behavior that jumps the slider to the point you're clicking at.

More new stuff on the way 

There's a poker tournament at StrikeSapphire starting at noon PST, 8pm in the UK, which costs $0.75 to buy into, and has a guaranteed prize pool of $3.25.

I'm currently the only one signed up for it.  If someone else signs up, we have an expected win of $1.67 each - more than double our buy-in.

(All balances and bets are denominated in US dollars, but deposits and withdrawals are done using Bitcoin, converted to/from USD at the MtGox spot price at time of deposit/withdrawal).

Seems like a good deal to me, especially if it ends up just 2 players playing.

If you use my referral link then I get a bonus when you deposit at no extra cost to you.

You're going to have to chose one I'm afraid.  I suspect I'd be a lot less effective as a corpse.


I think part of the problem is that you encourage me.  You care about getting it right.  If you just said "that's how it is, accept it or sod off", that would an the end to it.  What's that?  You've said that several times already?  Oh, I don't know then.


I was going to post a question about it on the stackexchange gambling site.  But I couldn't find it.  I'm sure I've seen it before, but now there's no sign of it ever having existed.


That's where I got my basic strategy from.  And I follow it.  And I'm still losing 0.8% when the house edge is only 0.51%.  Wouldn't you think 11k hands would be enough for variance to take a back seat?  I do remember one night when I played drunk, early on in my "Sapphire career", and lost about $20 very quickly betting $5 per hand.  Perhaps that accounts for the difference.

Man, sometimes I don't know whether I want to hire you or kill you. I suspect a bit of both. As a programmer I respect your mind. As a casino owner I go crazy over accounting for house rules with this level of nit-picking detail. I won't deny that your winnings are a good bargain for me as payment for bug testing, and I would recommend you to other site operators on that score (actually, I have done).

In any case, your case is compelling and we'll take it under consideration to do away with the roulette hedging rule. I'll also ask around to other casino owners as to why they have this rule.

To answer your question, you've played 10,924 hands of blackjack. The expected RTP was arrived at by this calculator, BTW: http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/calculator/

I had a look around.  Lots have worse terms than Sapphire, some have better.

http://www.williamhillcasino.com/ has a 150% up to $100 bonus with a 20x deposit+bonus WR where roulette bets count for 25% and blackjack bets count for 20%.  That's an effective 80x and 100x playthrough respectively, compared to a 150x playthrough at Sapphire.

http://www.partycasino.com/promotions/welcome-bonus.html has a 50% up to $200 bonus with a 100x playthrough, but where blackjack and roulette bets count for 100%.  They also have a 100% up to $500, "recommended for Roulette players" bonus with a 50x playthrough where roulette bets count 100%.  That's a whole 3 times better than Sapphire's terms for roulette.

But you're right - most casinos say things like: "Classic Blackjacks, All aces Video pokers 2%
All Roulette, Sic Bo, Craps, Baccarat, Table Poker, Casino War, Red dog 0%"


Oh, OK.  Scratch the above then.


Fair enough.  The point I'm making though is that even if they do try to grind out the bonus by placing large bets, they still have a large negative expectation due to the playthrough requirements, and so it doesn't make sense to discourage them.  You're effectively turning away profit by doing so (assuming they can and bother to do the maths.  That's possibly a poor assumption).


That's right, of course.  It's about finding a reasonable balance for that risk to give the player a chance.


I do join them.  Look at your records from yesterday.  Other than the freerolls, how many buy-ins where there into poker tournaments?  Two.  Both from me.  Both were cancelled because nobody else bought in:


I'm losing 0.8% on blackjack when the house edge is only 0.51%?  How many hands is that over?

Your terms and conditions say:


I was considering the combined positive expectation of losing slowly at blackjack and winning bonuses and leaderboard competitions as a "mathematical advantage".  You're mad because I don't lose fast enough to counteract the bonuses you offer?  From the numbers you give above, it sounds like I'm around $300-$350 up overall.  I hate to think how many hours that has taken, or how much that works out as per bug I've helped you find, but I think it's got to be pretty cheap on both counts.


Nor should it.  They're friends whose business I sent your way.  I think you'll find them to be profitable for you.  Next time they deposit, they won't have the 200% bonus available.  Maybe they'll use the 50% bonus.  After that there are no more bonuses that I know of.  If you don't want people referring their friends, please make that clear.


Here's how that went down.  Bijoux contacted me, completely confused about how to deposit onto Sapphire.  I offered to help her deposit, and did so.  I told her about the bonus too.  Is it meant to be a secret?  She suggested funding her boyfriend's account too.  I didn't suggest an amount, she chose $20 each, since that's the bonus limit.  I would expect that you got a lot of $20 deposits from people taking advantage of the $20 bonus...

This happened a couple of hours before the weekend leaderboard competition ended, and I could have done without the interruption to be honest.  At the time I had completely forgotten about referral bonuses, and only remembered later.  Anyway, here's the chat log:


She's the one who referred me to your site.  I believe you met her on Seals and told her about your casino.  So in the end it's all her fault.  That's what I reckon.


I am scientific by nature.  I tend to play the games which have the best expectation for me.  The tagline: "Strike Sapphire - Intelligent Entertainment for the Thinking Player" lead me to believe that this would be OK.  I don't think I'm exploiting loopholes.  I'm taking advantage of the generous bonuses and competitions that you offer.  "Loopholes" makes it sound like I've found things you didn't intend.


That's fair enough.

Just out of interest, I plotted the probability distribution functions of the profit when clearing a $20+$40 bonus on roulette with the new 20% rule (x-axis = final balance, y-axis = probability):



This assumes the player plays through the 60x WR to the end, win or lose, and has infinite bankroll.  Notice the green line is the "hedger", betting max-bet on red and black.  He does worst of all, with a tiny fraction of a chance of ending up with $60.  The guy with the best chance of coming out on top is the one who bets max-bet on red every spin.  All 3 players can expect to lose $60.00 * 30 * 5 * 2/38 = $473.68, but the $50-on-red guy has big enough variance that he has a decent chance of ending up positive.

Oh, and now I've missed the $0.75 buy-in $3.25 guaranteed poker tournament, damn it.

The thing is: Previously Roulette, Craps and VP5 didn't count at all towards WR. Now they do, at 20%. If you check terms at other casinos you'll find they don't do that. Those games don't usually count at all.

The math isn't really the relevant thing here; someone who's fully hedging roulette bets on a bonus isn't trying to win at Roulette, they're trying to grind out the bonus. So basically it's an issue we would have with the attitude of someone was trying to do that. I don't believe "spirit of the bonus" clauses are enforceable, but we do want to set clear rules that will discourage bonus hunters, because they're not the kind of players we want. The point of the bonus isn't that you necessarily walk away with the whole bonus plus winnings. It's that it gives you depth in your bankroll to go back up if you take a loss. It's completely optional. You can always leave with the cleared portion of the bonus while you're ahead, but in order to do that there has to be some risk to your capital involved or else we wouldn't be in business.

If you're wondering why I'm angry, we want players who come to gamble. Live poker bets and tournament buyins (excluding freerolls, obviously) still count 100% towards WR... but you won't join them. You find a lot of issues but you gamble in a way that's always exactly calibrated only to clear bonuses and win leaderboards with a minimum of risk. For poker you join freerolls but no real games - even the ones where there's a guaranteed pot twice the size of what players have put into it. In total, you've won about $89 in poker, almost exclusively from freerolls. You're up about $20 on roulette, down about $39 in blackjack, even though your blackjack RTP is 99.2%. Meanwhile, you've collected $273.75 in bonuses, referrals and leaderboard wins. This doesn't even include the other accounts associated with you or which we've had questions about being associated with you, e.g. bijoux and gettin_luck, who just collected deposit bonuses on which you then got referral bonuses - not surprisingly, in exactly the amount that would maximize everyone's bonuses and not a penny more. Petrescuerz is up another $50 or so in freerolls +$40 in bonuses. In other words, while you have deposited to claim bonuses, you've never actually played with your own money. It wouldn't be going too far to say that you have literally made a science out of finding loopholes in our system that would get you more free stuff. And being the generally good-natured guy I am (haha), I've basically just continued to watch this for months now despite a player complaint about possible collusion and the fact that you've slowly driven both me and FragileJD nuts. But if nothing else, since this is exactly the kind of thing we'd like to discourage, it's helped me shape policies that will lower the incentive for other people to come looking for loopholes and bonus-hunting; and if that drives away some set of players, then that's what it's designed to do.

I'm not trying to haggle.  I don't even play much roulette.  I've been trying to reach an understanding of the mathematics involved.  You were under the impression that by betting big a player would have an advantage playing 30x deposit+bonus at 5% house edge roulette, but I didn't think that was the case.  Whenever I see something that seems wrong to me, I try to understand it, and point it out.  Sometimes you find that helpful, other times you get mad, and I have a hard time knowing which of the two will happen until it does.

I'm sorry if by arguing the point I upset you.

Dooglus: Then don't take the bonus and gamble with your own money.

We are in the business of providing a place to risk and win/lose, not a bitcoin faucet. Your contributions to bug-testing the site have been significant and are appreciated; but ultimately this is not a platform for you to spend 24 hours a day trying to figure out ways to get one over on us.

So: If you want to come and gamble, you know what the RTP is and that our games are fair. If you want to find a place to milk for bonuses and referral fees and haggle with, go somewhere else. That's the point of the new rule.

I don't know if my argument is right, and I don't know what you should do.  I just don't see any reason to not allow 100% of roulette bets to count towards WR.  It doesn't affect me, since I play very little roulette, but I like things to be right, and since roulette has a high house edge it doesn't seem right to make roulette bets count less than other games.

If there's a good reason why they need to count less, I'd like to learn of it, but asking for 150 times playthough with 5% edge (ie. a 750% expected loss) seems to me like the player has about a 0% chance of clearing their bonus before losing their deposit.

Huh. I'm gonna let FragileJD read through this. He's better with the math than I am, and I'm already over my head. I saw something going sideways and brought our WR in line with other casinos. AFAIK no online casinos qualify roulette for wagering requirements, and it has to do with how quickly it can be cleared by hedging; but I'm gonna play a dummy card here and tell you: I don't see why they do that, or why your argument is wrong. Just to clarify: Your contention is that based on the house edge in roulette we shouldn't care about hedging and we should make Roulette qualify for 100% of WR. Right?

It's 14%, not 27%.


Even if we assume the player wins 27%, I think the house still wins:

The player either loses his deposit (-20, 73% of the time) or keeps the bonus (+40, 27% of the time).  You can't count the $20 deposit as "winnings".

Expected profit for player = 40*.27 - 20*.73 = -$3.80.  That is, the player can expect to lose 19% of his deposit.

But in the scenario you proposed, where the player is betting $25*2 each spin to get through the WR without losing, when the player loses they lose $50, not $20.  They're betting $25 on both red and black.  You win $50 73 times and the player wins $40 27 times.

Then the expected profit for the player is 40*.27 - 50*.73 = -$25.70, ie. he can expect to lose 128.5% of his deposit.

Now if we use the real value, 14.28%, the expected profit is 40*.1428 - 50*.8572 = -$37.18, or 185.7% of the deposit.  If the player played all 36 spins, you would expect him to lose more, but he's going to stop playing and forget about the bonus as soon as a zero comes up.

Note that the player could bet $50 on red and black and get through the WR in just 18 spins, with 37.79% chance of success, but a 62.21% chance of losing $100.  The expected profit then is 40*.3779 - 100*.6221 = -$47.094 or 235.5% of initial deposit.

In no situation is allowing 100% of roulette bets to count towards WR going to be a net loser for the house (unless you're comparing it to the current situation, of course).  There's no getting away from the >5% house edge, which when multiplied by 30 gives >150%.


So 0.6% would work too?  Anything over 0.51% means you end up more than tripling your deposit.  I was confused about the 0.71% - it seems like of arbitrary, so why write it to 2 decimal places...

The reason for the roulette restriction (as with craps) is that given a significant stack and playing on a $50 roulette table, a player could clear a bonus by betting both ways within 36 spins. The probability of no 0/00 coming up in those is (36/38)^36, or 27%. Meaning that with a 200% bonus which is what we've been offering (e.g. $40 bonus on a $20 deposit) the house would be taking a ~73% chance on a bet that only pays 30%. If we win the player's $20 exactly 73 times, and the player nets $60 exactly 27 times, that's an EV+ 109.8% expected RTP from the bonus.


It just means your blackjack needs to average (100-0.51)+0.71 = 100.2% to clear the complete bonus (aside from what you net yourself). The bonus gives you depth on your deposit which means you have substantially more of a chance to come back from a loss and be ahead of the house, whether the whole bonus is cleared or not.

And to be clear about this - StrikeSapphire allows you to take your winnings and any bonus you've cleared so far at any time if you're willing to void the uncleared remainder of the bonus. The point of the bonus is ultimately to provide you with a margin on your play, as opposed to capital that you're gunning for directly.

I've never understood the problem with hedging.  If I bet red and black, I lose 2 units every 38 spins (when the two green zeroes come up).  That gives a house edge of 5.26%, the same as if I was only playing red (where I win 18 units and lose 20 units every 38 spins).  I can expect to lose the exact same amount whether I play red every spin, or red and black every spin.  Is it the reduced variance that you don't like?  I'd have thought that the reduced variance works in your favour.  Losing over 5% on each of 30 playthroughs means the player loses 150% with high probability - ie. is very likely to lose the whole bonus and more before clearing it.  Only counting 20% of bets towards wagering requirements means the player will likely lose over 750% of their bonus before clearing it.


Doesn't that depend on which bonus they are trying to clear?  And I'm not sure what "beating the house edge by 0.71%" means.

Do you mean "reducing the house edge by 0.71% of 0.51 to give 0.506379%?  Or "subtracting 0.71% from 0.51% to give -0.2%"?  I don't see where 0.71 comes from in either case; I guess it depends upon an arbitrary value for "significant".

Just a quick note, we've amended our wagering requirement rules for bonuses and referral rewards. The full terms are on the site at https://strikesapphire.com/tos.html but the major changes are these:

1. Previously, Roulette, Craps and 5 Hand Video Poker play did not count toward meeting wagering requirements. The reason was that Roulette and Craps are obviously very easy to make hedge bets on, and 5 Hand VP has a bonus round with three chances to double or quadruple each win, which are zero-house-edge. However, this led to a lot of Roulette players switching up to Blackjack to clear bonuses. So, while we're still going to monitor for hedge-betting and will revoke bonuses if we see e.g. a player betting red and black at the same time just to clear them, we're now letting bets in these three games count at 20% toward wagering requirements. In other words a $1 bet clears $0.20 of the WR.

2. We've acknowledged the wisdom of other casinos as far as Blackjack qualifying toward wagering requirements. Most casinos only allow only 2% to 10% of classic Blackjack bets to count towards bonus wagering requirements. Previously we were allowing 100% of them to count toward clearing WR. With our rules (6-deck shoe, dealer hits soft 17, player can hit or double on split aces, no re-splitting), our house edge in Blackjack is only 0.51%. Given this it was a certainty that even a very bad player would make up to a 200% profit by slowly grinding his stack and claiming the bonus. At least one player built a bot just for that. Underlying our philosophy of handing out lots of bonuses is the idea that they should be a perk, and give the player more chances to have fun with while still gambling; we're not in the business of just handing out free money with no risk (I'm not sure what website is). So in line with our other games, and still twice as good as other casinos, Blackjack bets now count only 20% toward clearing WR. This means a player only needs to beat the house edge by 0.71% to clear the bonus on top of winning a significant amount from his deposit, but it also means players will have to gamble their bonus rather than try to grind it.

All other bets in the house - including any bet called in live poker, poker tournament buyins, VP, keno, all of our slots, three card poker, Sapphire Rummy, Scuba Cube, ChipWars and Mayan Gold - continue to qualify for 100% toward wagering requirements.

Tournament ends at midnight tonight. Current qualifiers on the leaderboard:

oceans1 : +$142.50
petrescuerz : +$31.17
digger : +$29.35

Just 3 winning hands at our $15 blackjack table could still land second place for a 50% bonus... not a bad bet!

This weekend's tournament is up and rolling! Check the live stats at https://strikesapphire.com/blog

If you're a member of StrikeSapphire you are automatically entered into the contest. All you have to do is win $25 or more for the weekend, and beat out the other players on the leaderboard.

First place: An additional 100% of your weekend winnings up to 9 BTC.
Second place: +50% up to 4 BTC.
Third place: +25% up to 2 BTC.

See you there!

Yes, thanks.

I was thrown off by the phrase "weekend balance".  The word 'balance' made me think of account balance, not weekend profit/loss.

Glad you asked. As with the previous tournament, the leaderboard starts at $0 for everybody at the beginning of the weekend (00:00 GMT Friday morning). From that point on, it shows the total sum of your gains from that point until 00:00 Monday morning (GMT), when the tournament becomes final.

You must have $25 or more on the leaderboard when the tournament is *final* to qualify for a prize. We don't care how you get there - freerolls count, for example. Withdrawals don't count against you. Deposits don't count for you. We don't care how much you have in your account... this isn't about your account balance, just about how much you win over the weekend. You must be up at least $25 at the end of that 72-hour span to qualify for a prize.

The leaderboard itself shows all players who have played real-money games over the weekend, excluding any players who are too far down the list (i.e. more than $10 negative). No one is disqualified for dropping below $25 at some point; the only thing that matters is the final score on the leaderboard.

Hope that answers your questions...

Can you please clarify what this means exactly?


Does it mean that if I hit $25 at any point during the weekend I qualify?
Or that I must be over $25 all weekend, and if I drop below then I'm disqualified?
Or that I must start the weekend with at least $25?
Or end it with at least $25?
Or something else?

Will the leaderboard show players who aren't qualified such that I may find myself trying to catch someone who isn't really even in the game?

So many questions! 

Nice, also if you need any help with German or Spanish feel free to contact me.