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 -

Slotbot highscore at CashCrate

You already know that I love to play skill games online for change or free money. I also signed up with CashCrate some time again not to earn some cents for doing their surveys but to receive some money whenever I join and test a new browser game (which they also promote on CashCrate and give you money or points for).
I recently noticed that they also offer tourneys which can be played for those points (which is just a virtual currency that can be used to get vouchers and stuff). The games aren't as nice as on other skill game sites but that's alright. I figured I might have an edge playing those match-3 type of games as they are my bread and butter on other sites and I really love them. I played a couple of weekly tournaments (very few participants) and always gained some additional points. My highscore so far has been around 18.000 points and then the following game happend. Enjoy!

Already in the first level I hit a combo beating my previous highscore. So lot's of luck involved but I think I'll add this weekly tourney to my play list.

Edit: the video has currently been pulled by youtube...also I don't know why. Already complained about it as I don't see anything bad with it.

Back from gamescom 2011

I am back from the gamescom 2011 in Cologne, Germany. The final numbers are not out yet but it seems that the gamescom had another record year. A total of 550 different companys and agencies had stands. I have to admit I didn't count them but it were a whole lot of them. Including the major distributors (Blizzard, EA, Activision, Bethesda, Ubisoft,...) and console creators (sony, nintendo, microsoft) showing off their latest products.
Especially Blizzard and EA had huge stands and stages which seem to occupy a third of one of the halls each. Too bad that they choose to hide there latest titels inside their stands which meant that you had to get in line to see anything. For a peek at Battlefield 3 (EA) there was a line so long you had to wait 6 hours to get inside.


A gimplse through the exit door revealed that the lucky guys got to play a bit but I'm not sure for how long. My personal guess....Not worth six hours waiting.
The same can be said about Modern Warfare3 (Activision) and Diablo 3 (Blizzard). And sadly my own private favorite that I wanted to see: The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim (Bethesda). All had hours of waiting which frankly I did not sacrifice. I'm not sure if this was clever marketing by the big guys. Sure you can only give a few people the opportunity to actually test a game but showing so little to the masses seems like a bad move to me.
Sony did a good job to use the current hype about minecraft to promote their new Xperia Play. They had youtube 'celebs' Lewis and Simon sign funny little block heads from minecraft.


Not sure if it really help Sony to advertise for their new mobile gaming plattform but it sure looked like fun and spread the word even further about minecraft (if that's even possible).
My personal highlight was playing Jagged Alliance - Online and talking to one of the developers. It's really amazing what can be done with browser games today. It looks great, all movements are smooth and controls are simple. If you put it into full screen you won't notice it's a browser game. The game itself is free to play and is financed by premium content so it's worth a try.
Next year I need to make sure to go to gamescom on a day which is not open to the public. Not seeing anything of the big games was really frustrating.

Oh, last but not least I've got a gift code for the first to grab it. It's for another online game called Wizard101 which is also free to play. With this code you get 5000 gold coins and a special pet/ride to use for 7 days. So however uses it have fun with it and please leave a comment so others know that the code is already taken.
And the code is: 7NP57-42CJ-9DLD-UMJO