How come there aren't like... five million copycat sites of this yet? All I can think of is BTCDice and it doesn't even seem to work?
I think because it actually is harder to get it right than it seems. You need a deep understanding of the bitcoin protocol as most of the stuff you have to do is beyond the capabilites of the standard client. Besides BTCDice if I remember correctly I think there were one or two additional 1:1 copies that also went down quickly. And SDice will have forever the first-mover advantage, so any 1:1 copy will have a very hard time. If you want to compete with SDice you have to differentiate, not just copy (which is what I am trying with bitbattle.me
). Actually I don't think there's much of a first mover advantage, if a site copied SDice exactly (actually I prefer the old SDice interface, so copy that please), with a well known operator, has reasonable max bet (minimum 200 BTC at the top), and a slightly less house edge (like 1.7%). I'd switch to the new site in a heart beat.
There is one which is not a copy but an extrapolation based upon the basic principles of SD. The win cap is low because it has had only limited action and the code was maturing and the operator is an old forum member. I'm not saying what it is to avoid the shameless plug...