Topic: What's wrong with Betcoin.ag? Here's a list. - page 4. (Read 19456 times)

So they are paying people to post in other languages paying them from the money that they stole from players by having an  inflated rake which twichy  found out...
Yes they seem to be desperate now it may be the  beginning of the end indeed.

Damn Twitchy, they are offering to buy your silence, they are paying randoms to post positive reviews in foreign languages, I'm starting to feel left out that I've never been approached with a shady offer.

In all seriousness, this really is starting to look like the beginning of the end.  I remember a couple of weeks ago people were talking about very long cashout delays.  Does anyone know what the current status is on cashouts?  If it's taking longer than a couple of hours in primetime...there's got to be a reason.  Maybe we can start tracking payout/payin addresses to get a clearer look at their finances?  With the blockchain technology there is very little to hide if you take the time to look.

Yesterday there were a couple new accounts making their first posts in Betcoins thread explaining why they enjoyed Betcoin.

This was after I outed Ftwbtc1 and Noobtc as shills when I noticed ftwbtc1 made a post on Betcoin forum that was almost identical to a post Noobtc made on BitcoinTalk within ~10 minutes of each other.

One of them was made by a player I was friendly with and staked a couple times in the past.  He was broke and made the post because Andrew offered him a ticket into their nightly .05 BTC buyin tournament.  It was all in spanish, here's the skype translation and screen shot.

On 11/30 (Tue/Wed) their 7 day average was 28 players with a 24 hour peak of 50 players.

2/19 (Thur/Fri) their 7 day average is 30 players with a 24 hour peak of 55 players.




Got a lovely pm from them recently:

Bots were never playing WPN tournaments (afaik), they were only at Betcoin cash games.

How would they identify bots if they don't even know what to look for. LOL
I don't know why the WPN allows these guys to share the tournament player base with all the crap that is going on.

I've been putting off the whole bot thing because its so hard to actually prove and most of the time when someone cries bot they are idiot fish - but that's what Mentats talking about.  

They used bots (and Mentat + a couple others) to keep action at the tables up until the day they started the 100% rakeback tablestarter promo.

He was getting 100% rakeback and basically just helped "start tables" by playing the bots heads up and short handed.  These were very Bots were very exploitable and never changed which resulted in some pretty insane bb/100

Someone gave me this document with info on all the different bot accounts, (Login name, Screen name, Account #, City etc...)  The easiest way to tell if you were playing a bot was to check and see if it registered on Jan 22 2015.

http://pastebin.com/UsfK4LTm

Personally, I don't have a problem with them putting losing bots out to keep the games going, its a lot different then the GTO bots that are a threatening holdem as we know it.  People would probably over react though (and they did anyway) So of course lying about it would be more convienient for Betcoin, so they did, without shame:





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Edit, throwing in some proof of over rake:


2/8/15 Edit: I now have hand histories of over raked pots going back to 10/31/15.  Hands before this appear to be capped properly.  I think we can conclude that the "mistake" happened around midnight UTC 10/30/15.

The Betcoin rake issue probably started off as an honest technical mistake on Betcoins part.  Any decent site would apologize immediately, figure out exactly how much they owed the players and pay them back in full plus little bit more to be sure they were made whole.


November 14th a couple players realized pots were being raked higher than the advertised cap and notified support right away. If Betcoin didn't know they were over raking pots before , they knew now.

Here is the earliest ahand posted from a 100 NL 6 max table.  
The advertised cap was 2 mbtc, they took 6 mbtc.

Update:  Earliest hand now 10/31 - 11/1
October 31 (EST):

Betcoin deleted posts in the main forum bringing attention to it and asked the players to submit a ticket.

They made no effort to inform or compensate players, fix the issue, or even reply to thos who had already complained for OVER THREE WEEKS.


December 8th I made THIS POST on BitcoinTalk, where they could not delete it,calling betcoin out for all of the above.


December 9th Betcoin Jessica STARTED A THREAD offering a 50 mbtc tournament ticket to players who test the rake and report back with "good feedback"  Players jumped on the chance at free money and posted how great the rake was and were thanked with free tickets.

(There were plenty of tables running at the time, why wouldn't they watch them, look over hand historys, data, etc.  Any other site would simply look at data, not player feedback.  The only logical reasons I can think for creating a thread like is because they thought the positive reaction to the rewards would help their image, or there were no employees available that understood how rake works.)

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Two hands from Sebtember 9th:

6 handed 100NL.  Rake should be 2.5% with a cap of 2 mbtc.  6 mbtc is actually raked.

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Heads Up 5000NL, Rake should be 2.5% with a 1 mbtc cap.  5 mbtc is actually raked.  At a table like this, Betcoin was taking 4 mbtc they weren't entitled to every time they saw a flop, for over 3 weeks.    (Tablestarter rakeback not offered on this table)





December 11th Betcoin makes the following statement:




Summary:

• Betcoin dealt over 588,000 hands between November 14th and December 9th. Each pot that reached the threshold was likely overcharged during this time.  I have yet to see a hand history suggest otherwise.

- Claimed:

and in the same sentence...

- Claimed that refunding players would be complicated and then ignored the issue (over three weeks ago now)  and refused to respond to comments LIKE THIS ONEfrom Dooglus.

- Seemed to be justifying their decision not to refund players by pointing out that some players (maximum of two per table) received 100% rake back for starting the table, they made affiliate payments based on the ammount they overcharged and also their rake is low compared to other sites.


Reality:  I believe that 20 BTC is a pretty conservative estimate for total rake that Betcoin took but wasn't entitled to between November 14th and December 9th, mostly from the higher stakes players, who are less likely to complain or even care.

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Here's a new one.

On the forums this weekend, the player "Mentat" claims that he was a prop for a while and in fact received house funds to play poker with.  He also claims that he was refused a cashout for "around 30 coins" but that he received "nearly that amount over time to keep the games going".

So, it seems like Betcoin is paying their house players 30 coins, refusing cashouts, and not announcing that they employ (or the identity of) house players.  Sorry for no screenshots, I'm on the run and if nobody grabs them by the time I'm home I'll edit with them.

$4K

Is that why they paid out the JP and then realize the guy did not win it?? LOL

Good work.  Another piece of information is that "ftwbtc" posts "daily sports locks" on the Betcoin forums.  He claims to wager 2-10BTC per bet, yet refuses to show any slips and is still in the Bronze 3 tier (the lowest tier).

In the interest of full disclosure, I personally haven't seen anything that would lead me to conclusively say that Noobtc/ftwbtc = Bitcoin Jessica.  I'm not saying that that isn't the case or even that I wouldn't put it past them to run their own shill accounts but I think we need to be very careful to lay everything out with as many facts as we can find.  Also, speaking of "her" I found it odd that she signed her full name to a recent email (the one about the freeroll and password reset). 

Seems they just awarded the BBJP after a hand that only had two players delt in which means it wasn't eligible.
they didn't

Show proof of this please.  From my experience playing cash games very VERY few players (far under 10%) take advantage of the 100% RB prop player programs.  So either you are lying or you have access to sensitive information (affiliates can't see if a player is on a deposit bonus or other bonus', like TSR).

So now I'm really curious.  Does Betcoin give you access to private information on it's customers, including those that aren't under your affiliate, or are you lying to try to protect Betcoin while they steal money from their customers?  Also, I'm curious how much of the stolen money found it's way into your pockets? 

For the record, Xiaoxiao also responded in a deceptive way to the BBJP issue.  To my knowledge, he has chosen not to respond to any other issues mentioned in OP.


It's true, the current BBJP is active.  I find his reply deceptive since in this context, his comment could easily be taken as "This issue has been solved" by trusting yet uninformed players.  

In fact, his comment is essentially irrelevant since he fails to address the 14 Bitcoins stolen from players who a) Were told by support that nothing extra was being taken and b) had no chance at winning the BBJP since it didn't exist at the time.

So after a few months, explanation from serious casino is: "The losses were small and we still have a lot customers" + screenshot.  

Ok, show me your calculations then, I've asked you for them many times.  I doubt you or Betcoin has even bothered to calculate anything.


This is far from reality.  Xiaoxiao has continually made derceptive comments like this and then refused to defend them in any way.

Betcoin has a table starter promotion offering 100% rakeback.  At MOST 2 players from any table are eligible, because of the requirements - there are often going to be 0 or 1 players receiving it.

Xiao has refused to comment on the fact that heads up cash tables are not eligible for this promotion and Betcoin was taking up to 4 extra mbtc every time a hand went to the flop.

At the mid to high stakes, I estimate Betcoin was taking around 280 mbtc per hour from 10/31 - 12/9.

(Easily 100+ hands per hour, seeing 70% of flops = 280 chips/hr per table in over charged rake)

I've proven the rake was collected wrong during this 5+ week period, this is Xiaos comment which he refuses to elaborate on:


 
This is just not true.  Many players were unaware they were stolen from, and recently have been asking for a refund.

There have been talks of a boycott recently by a group of players.  Here is an example of Betcoin handled one of the highest volume regulars on the site.

(read from bottom to top)


Dooglus summed up a great point on Betcoins forum by asking this question.  Rather than responding to him, Betcoin deleted it.


The only thing I agree with is the fact that Betcoin probably didn't do this on purpose.  Nearly every issue I've brought up has been a result of their incompetence.  If they would simply admit their mistakes, and fix them - this wouldn't be what it is today.

Betcoin banned me in November.  5 or 6 times I was unbanned for a few days, and then rebanned without explanation.

While ignoring me, they would tell players in public chat that I wasn't banned and was actually playing on Betcoin every day because of how much I loved Betcoin.

In private messages here, they told me they thanked me for all the new players I was helping bring to the site and said I deserved a bonus.

Right now it's been about a month since my account was disabled.

Here are all private messages received from Betcoin.ag

This will be my first and last post in this thread.

Regarding what Twitchy has posted; he's blown this thing out of proportion now, and a lot of his facts are wrong to begin with.  We've discussed this many times.  With that said, I admire Twitchy for trying to be a watchdog and his vigor, but his intentions now have become ego-driven.  

I had already admitted that Betcoin made a mistake due to their inexperience in poker room management (to their credit they are growing exponentially wiser as time goes on).  The reason Betcoin is not refunding people is because there is basically nothing to refund.  A lot of people were getting 100%+ rakeback so the higher the rake the more they gained.   You have to consider the amount paid back in VIP RB, 100% bonuses, 100% RB prop player programs, affiliate RB, tablestarter RB etc, all of which Twitchy failed to consider in his calculations.  A small percentage of players were effected negatively but it's so minute that it's barely noticeable which is why those people aren't complaining or don't care.  It's like would you camp outside of your local gas station demanding a 9/10 of a penny refund because you thought the price was $1.50/gallon and not $1.509/gallon.  This is similar to what Twitchy is doing right now.

Betcoin is not out for a "cash grab" or trying to steal; they have absolutely no incentive to do that.  They're owned/backed by WPN, one of the bigger poker networks out there.  

There's currently 67,000 members at Betcoin, and right now on a Tuesday morning, approx. 150-300 members are actively using the site as a means of work, entertainment, community and fellowship.  If they felt remotely close to the way Twitchy feels, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.  Assuming 3/4 of those members are multi-accounts trying to take advantage of site promo's and bonuses, that leaves us with 15,000 genuine members. Not even 1% of the genuine Betcoin members feels the same way as Twitchy.