Bitcoin online gambling site Betcoin shut its poker room down on Christmas, but a month later it has announced that the poker room will soon reopen. Interestingly, the decision to rev things back up looks to be because of Betcoin’s bad beat jackpot.
Betcoin is one of the oldest sites to deal exclusively in Bitcoin and other cybercurrencies, having launched in 2014. Its ownership situation has been shrouded in mystery and when it made the announcement that it would be closing the poker room (the other parts of the business have continued to operate, the only reason given was “Betcoin.ag has been acquired.”
We don’t knew who acquired Betcoin and why the decision was made to close the poker room. It looks like player money was safe, so as unfortunate as the closing was, sometimes things happen.
A few days after Christmas, an apology post was published on Betcoin’s poker page.
“First and foremost, we would like to apologize to the great players that have played with Betcoin.ag over the past 4 years,” it started. “We apologize to you, because our research indicates that Betcoin.ag has not taken the very best care of you. We also apologize for not handling the Bad Beat Jackpot matter in the most expeditious and fair manner as possible for all of you great players.”
Betcoin then explained what it planned on doing with the bad beat jackpot money that it had collected without a winner:
Betcoin.ag is now committed to addressing your concerns in the most professional manner and immediately handling player concerns. We are very excited to be improving the overall culture. As our first matter, we believe it is necessary to distribute the Bad Beat Jackpot based on the percentages to players who have contributed to that Jackpot through the years. We will be calculating the totals over the next week to two weeks and expect that all distributions will be posted to player accounts by the second week of January 2018.
Alright, great. Everyone will get the money they contributed back. Seems fair, as the jackpot was never paid out. But last week, Betcoin said, “….it was determined that each contribution cannot be determined with 100% accuracy.”
“Without this 100% transparency and accuracy we believe the redistribution was unacceptable.”
So, what Betcoin has decided to do is reopen the poker room and gradually reduce the requirements for triggering the bad beat jackpot until it is hit. It seems like a strange solution; after all, there was a reason the new owners closed the poker room in the first place and I would be very surprised if that reason had to do with the bad beat jackpot. One would also assume that the poker room will remain open after the jackpot is hit (and the BBJ will be discontinued), so using the BBJ as the reason for the poker room’s revival is just perplexing. Perhaps spending more time figuring out everyone’s contribution would have been a better choice?
Betcoin has said that it will re-open the poker room the week of January 26th. Week naming conventions be damned, seeing as that’s a Friday, I’m guessing that’s the day it will happen.
