Primedice - play dice with bitcoin

So do you want to test a simple betting strategy in a real life environment without any programming ? Just head to Primedice and make a free account. Primedice is a "online casino" which only overs one game. Sounds like a game of dice but it's more of a coin flip where you can select the chance of winning and the casino will adjust the odds. There is always a house edge of 1%. Funny thing is that they offer automated betting. Which let's you play martingale for example. So double your bet after every loss and see how long you last until it wipes you out. Remember you can change the chance of winning to be more than 50% but the payoff will be adjusted too.

I thought I found a bug in there system when I discovered that the payout for a bet of 0.00000005 and 90% was still 0.00000001. But the problem was that the displayed value was already rounded while the internal system uses at least one more digit to calculate your actual winnings. So no easy money there...I'm still checking out various betting sizes and win chances to test for rounding errors which might lead to +EV situations.

But never the less you'll get some free bitcoins (well actually fractions of bitcoins) ever time your account runs dry. If you want to start and test your strategies with more the 500 satoshi (smallest fraction of BTC) that Primedice gives you you can also get free BTC from bitcoin faucets .


I'll use this post to keep track of my Primedice account level and faucet payouts:

Level 1 - faucet pays 500 - 539  - claim every 3 minutes
Level 2 - faucet pays 540 - 579    claim every 3 minutes
Level 3 - faucet pays 580 -
Level 4 - faucet pays 640 -
Level 5 - faucet pays 780 -
Level 6 - faucet pays 840 -
Level 7 - faucet pays 900 -
Level 8 - faucet pays 980 -

One year of MyVegas on facebook

It's now a little bit over one year that I started playing the MyVegas App on facebook. So what has happend in all that time. Well first of all rewards have gotten more "expensive" or in other words the free loyalty points (LP) aren't worth as much as in the beginning. I guess that's just natural when everyone wants to get more free stuff. The good news is that the site is still around and giving away free stuff for your next trip to Las Vegas.

After playing on and off for roughly one year (without any friends added - which would increase my daily coins) I am at level 98 and have a total of 221,390 LP. Those LPs would currently buy me:

• Two weekend nights at New York New York (101,500 LP each)
• or Two tickets to KA (208,000 LP)
• or 4 nights at the Mirage (52,500 LP per night)

Currently I just log in to collect all coins and LP from my strip each day (about 22k coins and 150 LP - without the daily spin) and only play if there's a promotion that gives away additional loyalty points. There is normally one every second week. So build up coins and only use them to play then.

Facebook and myVegas for free Las Vegas rewards

I just created a Facebook page for this blog because there is a new App giving away real life rewards for virtual play. Yes, it's true you'll get rewards from Las Vegas casinos like Aria, Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Mirage, Monte Carlo, NY NY, Luxor, Excalibur and last but not least Circus Circus. The Prices you can get range from a pair of dice to show tickets and suites.
As I said all of this you can get by playing free playmoney games. You don't have to gamble a cent to earn it. Just like playing in Vegas you'll receive Loyalty Points for playing different casino games. Right now they offer different slots and Black Jack. All of these games are played for virtual coins. Don't worry once you run out of coins (it's still casino games so don't expect to win longterm) you either can buy new ones for real money, but you don't have to because you'll receive new coins every day. Actually you can receive new coins every couple of hours by collecting them from your virtual strip that you build will playing aswell.

I guess the actual value is pretty low but just like my play at gameduell.de
it's fun anyway and the free "money" is just the cherry on top.
If you are going to give the myVegas App a try I'd by happy to add my Facebook page to your list and maybe give it a Like, even if it's ugly as hell ;-)

Stealing on and offline

BLR technologies cheats at online craps

According to a post from the wizard of odds and other sources BLR technologies is cheating at their online craps game. The win rate over a sample of 328 rolls was only 24.7% (while it should be 49.29% for betting on the pass line). This expectation for such a event over this sample size is 1 in 3,940,183,270,432,190,000. So if you don't like losing (even more than you normally should expect to) don't play at online casinos using the BLR technologies software. This includes the following casinos:

• Legends Sports
• World Wide Wagering

And the second news is from the offline world but also features being robbed:

6000 copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 stolen

The demand for this new game seems to be quite high. On their way to retailers two different trucks with the game have been stopped and robbed of their delivery. The first delivery was crashed by a robbed car and as soon as the drivers wanted to check out the damage they were robbed be masked gangsters.
About one hour later a second truck was stopped by a parked car and armed robbers stole their load too. A total damage of about 800.000€. And lots and lots of unhappy gamers who now have to wait even longer until they receive their copy of their game.
But the bad guys should be pretty issue to spot when 6000 origin accounts send their data to the homebase ;-)

So if you what to be safe from online cheating, spyware and brutal force in real life make sure to buy Skyrim. The latest release of The elder scrolls series (aka the reason why I went to gamescom 2011).

Winning at roulette

I’m going to tell you a sure way to win at roulette…for free. All you have to do is double your bet every time you lose until you win. You properly heard this before. The only problem is that it is not working over a long time. It might fool you because you will win small amounts for some time but sooner or later you’ll lose it all back and then some. The only sure way to win long term is to be the casino.
So let’s take a closer look at this strategy. First of all it’s called Martingale and has been played properly as long as roulette itself. It has just a few very simple rules:
• Start with one betting unit (e.g. 10$)
• If you win => pocket the win and start over again
• If you lose => double your bet (going from 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32….)
That’s it ! This will win you one betting unit most of the time. And give you a false sense of security. Until you hit that one big losing streak which will erase all wins.


The above table shows all possible combinations after five rounds (without the fatal green zero(s)). Without the green zeros the chance to hit red or black is fifty percent each. Now analyze the possible outcomes if you bet on red every time following the rules above:


As you can see in the above tables you will bust once out of 32 times. When you do you will lose a total of 31 units. The other 31 times you will win one unit each. This results in an expected value (EV) of:
(31/32 * 1) + (1/32 * -31) = 0
So you are not making a profit…but you are also not losing like I said before. This is because, as already mentioned above, we neglected the zero(s) which is making the roulette unprofitable. But showing no profit if the rules are not as bad as in the casino should already demonstrate that the method is not working as advertised.
If we include the green zeros into the above tables the chance to win is getting smaller (lower than fifty percent). Hitting the correct color has a chance of 18/37 = ~48.6% (single zero) or 18/38 = ~47.4 (double zero). This results in a negative EV for this betting system which is called Martingale.