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I wasn't sure where to post this, but I thought this territory probably had the most lurking gamblers. Over the years I have played around with this site for fun. In my younger days I enjoyed casino blackjack. I like the game, so this site serves for me as the time waster that others might use solitaire or free cell for.
The rules aren't great. No splitting, for instance. What I find most intriguing is that the game claims to be provably fair. Here's how it's done:

Provably Fair

Provably fair? Don't trust, verify! We can't cheat and we can prove this using the common 'provably fair' technique. Before a game begins, our server generates a random seed and already provides the hash of it to you. When starting each game, your browser will also generate a random clientseed. Now comes the fun part: when you concatenate these two together and take the SHA512 hash, this will tell you the order of the cards in the deck. To prove to you that we respect this random order each time, we show you the hash of our seed beforehand (before you send your clientseed, so we can not cherrypick). When the game is finished, we reveal our actual serverseed and you can hash it and compare it to the earlier sent hash.
Technical: the seeds and hash are shown in the console log. To create the hash that is used for the order of cards, do SHA512("satoshi" + serverseed + clientseed). Convert each 2 characters of this hex hash to decimal and each number will give you the index (0 - 207) of a 4-deck stack of cards. Note numbers higher than 207 are ignored, as well as any repeating number. The order of the decks are spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs, each from 1 to king, and this 4 times in a row.
This is beyond my abilities. Has anyone checked?

Alby Go Is A Perfect Match

@DarthCoin is always preaching that we should use many different lightning wallets for different purposes. I have tried many over the years on this site with mixed results. Alby Go turns out to be the perfect match for this game.

Warning

I'm not recommending that you gamble. I can spend hours on this site, trying out different betting strategies, and never lose more than a few hundred sats on a bad day. This is just for fun, unless you are a crazy degen like @Undisciplined.
I want to having an SN poker night at some point. Would you be interested?
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161 sats \ 5 replies \ @ek 21 Dec
Maybe we’ll have poker in the @saloon one day as @k00b mentioned on SNL
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This makes me think the saloon needs mini territories that refresh daily and we call them "Tables."
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I am in.
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That would be awesome.
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51 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 21 Dec
I’m getting new ideas for bots. Does SN need a blackjack bot?
Is this how we make stackers zap more? By tapping into their degenerate nature?
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Blackjack is probably easier than poker to do.
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Yes, but I never can tell who was the sucker at the table until I get home and look in the mirror.
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What if we did a poker night where 50% of pot went to Running Bitcoin https://secure.alsnetwork.org/site/TR?fr_id=1510&pg=entry
And the rest went to the winner or top 3 players, however we want to dole it out.
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Great idea. I'm all for it. How difficult would it be to set up and play? I can't envision it.
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My initial thought would be 8 players 25k sat buy in each for a total of 200k sats. 100k goes to the charity. Winner gets 100k or we can say top 3 split 100k maybe 50k to winner and two and three get their buy in back or something to that effect.
There is a lightning poker site. That would be ideal but we may need to use something that allows us to create a custom game.
Let me reach out to lnpoker and see if we can set something up.
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Have you seen this site. We could play here. No Rake on the lower stakes tables. Onbly 1% on the others.
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I've always wanted to play on that site, but it's usually empty. I'd be in to play some poker at some point if there's a group planning a "poker night".
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I played on there a couple years ago but every time I go to the site it is empty. Might be good for us in that case. Then we can have the run of the place.
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True, the fact it's empty may be favorable for a group to just show up and use a table. There used to be a site Blockchain.poker that was pretty great but I think they got scared of by the custodial aspect back when Alby/Phoenix and others did as well to avoid possible enforcement actions, so they shut down.
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I never used that one. I like this one alright. I went back recently for the first time in a while and I was pleasantly surprised to see I had some sats still sitting there. Good sign, for the integrity of the site I feel.
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This is what I was hoping to use.
I messaged them on Twitter to see if they could accommodate us. We could use it this way but a closed custom game would be better for us.
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I really like the simplicity. But it is so dead in there usually. But if we schedule something, I am in.
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This is just for fun, unless you are a crazy degen like @Undisciplined.
I don't think he's a degen. The other day when I asked him if I should bet all my idle sats (precisely 8500 on single event), he advised me to only go for 2000 he had mentioned in his RBOA post. I'd call him wise degen rather than just degen. Haha.
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That’s right!
Although, Siggy’s clearly just busting’ my balls. It’s how Italian Americans show affection.
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Now you're busting his balls, like we're playing some ball game here. Haha! Americans aren't Americans!
I'm in love with the sarcasm you guys bring out when you talk. When I was new at SN, I could hardly get it.
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You got that right
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Sorry I forgot to mention that apart from Cricket, the most played and most loved have been card games. However I don't know if our card games are similar to those of America's. Rummy is only one game that I think is similar in name and playing rules.
We have Lakdi, chokdi, teen patti, flash, teen do paanch and many others.
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I just assumed everyone played the same card games. I have to check these out.
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I believe there are many region specific games in cards. You won't find the ones I mentioned in US or Europe. They are very specific to Asia, more so for South East Asia.
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I just read about lakdi. It is supposedly like the western game called spades.
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Spades isn't exactly the same as lakdi. The thing about making points is similar though.
For example you can be a team in spades but in lakdi you can't.
In lakdi we have 3 or players, after the distribution of cards, every player will mention how many hands they'd make. Like this we note down everyone's hands. If someone made less or more (+ 2 hands) what he has told before the start of the round he gets a minus for the same hands.
Every player has to place higher card if he has.
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... and gambling is the worst way to spend your sats. You will regret it immensely later.
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I forgot to mention that this whole post would piss you off.
You know, some people (not me) might even use this site to transfer some sats, play a few hands, then move it to another wallet, kind of like the way some people (not me) played around with the old SN wallet.😀
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You start knowing me better.... The post is good, your intentions are really good (promote use of LN apps). My problem is only with people that are gambling sats. Is really disrespectful for the entire Bitcoin values. Throwing sats on useless gambling is like not knowing the true power of each sat...
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I think Mircea would disagree😀
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I'll ask him tomorrow.
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83 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 21 Dec
Some people gambling their sats brings balance to the force
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good meme hahahaha I will vote for it on monday memes.
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I too would join in a poker game. Not sure how that could be integrated with stacker news but...
I'm not a high roller at all, but playing with just a few sats (100) would be fun
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41 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 22 Dec
Played one game.. bet 5000 sats, won 10,000 sats.. withdrew. Really smooth with Alby!
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I've seen poker and Blackjack, but there is also a Lightning-Roulette.com that I've played quite a bit even though house edge on roulette is higher than other games. I like the game of chance.
I'll also add, gambling is not for everyone, so they should know when to quit and not chase losses, and also take breaks! Don't gamble every single day as it's addicting. If the house didn't have a statistical edge they wouldn't have these games to begin with.
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I have played on that site too.
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The github link on there is dead, and I don't see any statements regarding provable fairness.
How does provable fairness work with multi-player poker? In the blackjack case you can reproduce the cards based on the seed, but with poker, that's not sufficient (nor helpful, you don't want hands exposed after the game).
You'd need to prove that the server operator didn't collaborate with any player (simply telling a collaborator the hands of the other player), and that players don't collude (sockpuppets).
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Yeah, I'm up overall the past few weeks since I started dabbling, but sadly lost almost 200k+ sats the other day. Not the end of the world for me, but my precious!
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You're a high roller! I'm excited when I win 100 sats. Are you technically proficient enough to independently verify the "provably fair" thing?
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Not technically proficient enough to check the probably fair. Probably should learn as I've never tried. I have had to deal with the site runners/support over missing funds and they have been responsive and returned the sats. Doesn't prove the game is fair, but they have my trust in the fact they've returned money to me.
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Yes. The site owners seem very honorable.
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Not blackjack but nostr had coinflip bot, worked great for a while on Ln
The designer had a slight house edge to make it worthwhile
Ultimately shut it down
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I really enjoyed dice when it first came out. The site was called primedice, and then you couldnt use it anymore in the usa. People lost so many bitcoin, millions of dollars now.
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So you have been around a while? Did you ever visit satoshidice when it was bitcoin?
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I also remember that site. If l remember correctly they stayed in the usa longer than primedice.
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Isn't Blackjack the most played card game in casinos and overall?
I wish we has some card games attached to SN like wa have Chess.
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Site looks cool and interesting! Will try my hands on it!
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Always split 8s and Aces
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Nice. I a not much of a blackjack player but I have l played a bit of Texas Hold 'em here. https://lightning-poker.com/ for anyone that is interested.
Super straight forward, no login required. Often it's pretty empty though. Its nice being able to place with such low stakes and have a little fun without losing a lot.
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