Over the past couple of years, I feel like I have started a lot of my posts with the phrase "I have to be honest with you". Maybe I am wrong, but in any event this is going to be another one of those posts.
When an online friend of mine said "hey, you should check out Bitsler online casino", I was a bit skeptical. I tend to be pretty frugal with my money. I was lucky enough to see little impact when Magic Dice and Steem Bet executed their exit scams on the STEEM blockchain. I did get burned a little however, I had delegated some SP to Magic Dice and I was hoping to eventually make some decent dividends.
Despite my misgivings, I hopped over to Bitsler and decided to give it a whirl. The first thing I noticed when I visited the site was the pop up telling me that based on my IP address, I live in an area where Bitsler is not allowed.
Luckily, you are given two options:
Option A - you verify yes that is my IP address and I assume it takes you away from the site
Option B - (Spoiler alert, I chose this one) you say "that's not my IP address" and it continues to load the site.
I quickly went through the process of creating and verifying my account. It was pretty easy, you pick a username and that gets you in the system. From there you can add an email address, password, two factor authentication, and email confirmation.
Again being honest, the biggest issue for me was getting the funds into the system. It's not that the process is hard, they actually make it very easy. It was the fact that I hold so few of the coins that they allow you to bet with. Due to my limited holdings my two best options were BTC and LTC to do some gaming with.
As we all know, BTC can take forever to process transactions so my initial deposit of about $5 in BTC is still awaiting confirmation on the blockchain. I quickly changed over to LTC and deposited some of that like I should have done to begin with.
The deposit process was super easy, I simply choose the currency I wanted to work with and clicked on the deposit button. I was given the option of having the system show me a QR code which I easily scanned with the wallet application on my phone and transferred the funds.
If you can see it from my first photo they accept about twenty eight different forms of cryptocurrency which I think is pretty awesome. If you have some Doge burning a hole in your pocket, they even accept that. It would be cool if they accepted STEEM, but given the way it has been dropping on CoinMarket Cap, I am not surprised they don't.
The system is based on four main games, Dice, Roulette, Color Wheel, and Cara y Cruz. I was pretty excited to see roulette as one of the options. It is probably my second favorite table game to play in the casino. It is very rare that I ever play it because I know the odds are pretty horrible in a traditional casino. The energy around a rowdy roulette table really can't be beat though.
The roulette game actually leads me to one of the biggest shortcomings I see with Bitsler. Like craps (my most favorite table game), roulette has a pretty robust set of rules, bets, and outcomes vs. other games of chance. If they can integrate roulette into an online casino game, why can't they give me a full version of craps.
It was cool when it first came out, but the traditional over/under game of dice seems antiquated to me now and I really feel like online casinos should be trying to up their game. Perhaps they don't because the house edge isn't as good, but I really think they could bring in more players if they offered some expanded versions of some of these games.
To be fair, the Cara y Cruz game may be totally awesome, but I didn't really understand the rules and I wanted to focus on some of the games that I was more familiar with. I could seriously spend a lot of money playing roulette for a decent amount of time.
The system allows you to place some pretty reasonable wagers to keep your gaming experience going for a good amount of time. I forgot to mention the multicolor wheel was a really fun game that offers some complex betting possibilities if you are a number nerd and choose to dive into it a little.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the experience I had on Bitsler. I think it has a lot of potential and it seems to be established enough that I considered it a safe place to do a little gaming. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone that was looking for a safe and easy way to spend a little time playing with their cryptocurrencies.
If you get a chance, I encourage you to visit the site and try your luck!
This post should not be construed as financial advice. The thoughts and opinions here are my own.