Facts:
1. Pseudo random numbers will produce hole cards, flops turns and rivers which over a reasonable sample size will show the expected distribution. I would bet 10BTC against the idea that analysis of enough data from hands at seals would show abnormal distribution. If someone is interested in this I will detail ,y terms.
2. SWC stands to make shittons of money even charging as reasonable a rake as they do. It is in their best interest to provide the fairest environment possible to their regulars and recreational players. Nothing is really more important than trust for them. The client etc all come in second at best.
3. There are surely many many thousands of dollars (possible understatement) being held in wallets by seals. If they wanted an unethical payday they would disappear with that money. They have not done this.
As a player at seals for well over a year, I can vouch for the quality of the people running it. They have earned my trust. And as I said... To my analysis the distribution of cards is absolutely normal.
I fully agree.
Actually, one thing that worries me, (after what happened to Slush and bitcoin-central), is that even very reliable site could get hacked. Of course, I trust your capabilities and I assume you have done very good job minimising the risk and possible losses. Actualy, I feel quite safe regarding seals. Slush and BC minimized ther losses and I believe you do as good job as they did.
However, I would feel safest, if I could send the BTC to the site before starting to play and then send my wallet back after I stop. I think it is almost impossibe to make it completely work like that, transactions should be immediate to make it happen.
I assume you make manual transactions as a final step to prevent cheaters from withdrawaling the chips and possibly preventing some unwanted accidents. That's good. But how about adding some kind of credit to the system? Let's say, a player has a roll of 2k. He has 2k on the site and makes a 'conditional withdrawal' for that. That request is manually accepted just like normal withdrawal. However, after that, a player has a 'credit' for 2k, so before session, he can send the 2k back to the site, then play and afterwards make *immediate* withdrawal for max 2k. That would make possible to keep roll on player's own wallet instead of the site.
Actually, initial 'credit' could be the deposit amount.
i can imagine one way of abusing it; if player loses all his roll and after that gets the same amount of chips by cheating. Then he could withdrawal the cheated chips without manual intervention.
When I was thinking about how slush and BC was hacked, another idea came to my mind; some kind of emergency transaction, which, when triggered, would send the hot wallet to an offline wallet. So when the site is rebooted unintentionally, or something otherwise weird happens (you know better what could be suspicious), the online wallet would be immediately emptied to an offline wallet, leaving the thief empty handed. Of course, the best would be to have no online wallet (I think it would be possible, if very carefully designed).
Btw, do you have a 'dead mans switch', which would send all player's money to their withdrawal addresses if FBI knocks on your door ;-) ?
That credit system sounds complicated to me, I don't quite understand.
Not having instant withdrawals protects users and the site. If you give someone else your credentials you are playing with fire and we can't make any promises, but we do help when the situation is clear and we can. Delayed and manually checked withdrawals have saved several players a substantial amount. In almost two years of manual checking we've never found anything like magic chips being withdrawn, but I still think it is very much worth it not to have anything going out without a real brain approving it.
We are probably going to stick with all manual, it may get faster than our current 12 hours max time though. It was really nice when we could (in the sense that we took a risk and got away with it) accept zero confirm deposits. I'd like to bring that back in a limited capacity. Probably it would be set up where each individual account has a limit for what will be credited immediately. It would need to be clear that 0-conf transactions are not deposits, they just trigger a loan that will be paid back automatically when a confirmation comes in. Seals would have to specifically have funds for this purpose. We can't put chips in play that don't have corresponding bitcoins backing them up. And we can't use 0-confs to pay winners, so they don't count. (I'm aware that you can send 0-confs, it just isn't right to pay winners with them).
I have thought a lot about a panic switch distribution. I'm reluctant for a few reasons. Even those who understand that they should use an address that they will own 'forever' might stick something in there that they control now, lose control at some point and not think to update. It's also hard to foresee every complication and there is no practicing for this. Also, all funds ought not be one button click away from distributed so it doesn't really work in most panic situations. An orderly shutdown of play and deposits etc, would be required first in addition to moving the funds to a position where they can be sent.
In an emergency it might take longer without a system like this in place, but I'm confident that whenever we'd be able to execute a panic button successfully we'd also be able to do a slower shutdown successfully.