Nitrogen Sports: 7 Pros & Cons of Poker Room & Sportsbook

Nitrogen Sports has been one of the most renowned Bitcoin sports-betting sites for quite a while now, and it expanded its offerings with the launch of an online poker site in late 2014. It's beloved by players who like easy BTC funding, anonymous and speedy withdrawals, and the ability to play cards without installing a bulky poker client application. That's right; this poker room operates through your web browser rather than a dedicated download program. The benefit for most people is that they can play on whatever platform they wish as long as it has a modern web browser: Windows PC, Mac, cellphone, tablet, and more!

All gameplay is denominated in mBTC chips (1 chip = 1/1000 of a bitcoin) at this Bitcoin poker room and sportsbook. There are NO COUNTRY OR STATE RESTRICTIONS at Nitrogen Poker. All players, located anywhere on the face of the earth, are welcome here. The amount of player traffic is currently fairly small, but it has already eclipsed several of its competitors in the Bitcoin poker space, and we expect it to grow significantly going forward.

There's no Nitrogen Poker rakeback program at all, so we're afraid that this poker site isn't the place to go if regular RB payments are what you're after. You might wish to consult our list of rakeback poker rooms instead. What Nitrogen does provide to its players is a valuable loyalty program. As you play at the tables, you'll earn a set number of Loyalty Points based on your rake total and a variable amount of Nitro depending on your position in the program. This Nitro can be exchanged for bitcoins and free bets in the sportsbook, so it functions basically as a type of rakeback. You'll get between 10% and 100% cashback value depending on how much you can grind in a month.

Although you're reading this review because you're primarily interested in poker, there's a compelling argument for making Nitrogen your go-to destination for all your sports betting endeavors as well. It charges low juice on almost all markets – of which there's an extensive selection. Not only can you bet on prominent contests in MLB, NBA, NCAA, NFL, EPL, and other well-known leagues, but you can also put action on quite obscure events as well. Nitrogen does feature a casino section too, but there are only seven games.

The games at Nitrogen are divided into Cash, Sit & Go's, and Tournaments just like at almost every other poker room on the internet. Before taking a seat in any of these games, we strongly advise you to click the settings icon in the top-left of the lobby and adjust a couple of parameters first. Go to the "Tables & Themes" tab, and turn on "Open tables in a new window" and "Four color deck." This will prevent you from struggling to click back and forth in multiple tabs of your browser and will safeguard you against misreading your hand. The other settings involve backgrounds, sounds, avatars, and a few other elements that you can customize according to your tastes.

One unusual feature at Nitrogen is the site-wide chatbox, which shows the last message by default at the top of the poker lobby. You can expand it by clicking on this message, and then the box will open up, allowing you to see several lines at a time and type in your own comments. This feature is more annoying than useful, but it does create a feeling of community as people cheer for their favorite sports teams, brag about their winning bets, and whine about rigged poker hands (some things are the same at every site).

Cash Game Lobby at Nitrogen

The most popular game is No Limit Texas Hold'em, and you'll typically see around a dozen tables with cards being dealt from 0.01/0.02 to about 0.25/0.50. There are higher blinds offered, and in fact, the lobby lists up to 200/400, but there are hardly ever any players actually sitting at these stratospheric levels. You can play 9-handed, 6-max, or heads-up. Limit Hold'em and PLO can also be found, but there are usually no more than one or two active games running.

In December 2019, Nitrogen added Six-Plus Hold'em tables to its ring game roster. At present, there's only a single nine-handed table listed for 0.05/0.10 blinds. Nitrogen uses “Triton Rules,” which means that while a flush outranks a full house as is usual in 6+ Hold'em, a straight is better than a set, which is not the case for standard Six+ games.

There's one other type of poker present in the ring games: Crazy Hold'em. Veterans of the old Paradise Poker may recall playing this format, under the name "Crazy Pineapple." It's similar to Texas Hold'em, but you get three hole cards instead of two. After the flop round of betting, every player must choose one of their three cards and discard it. Crazy Hold'em leads to intriguing strategic implications and looser gameplay than traditional Hold'em, but unfortunately, these tables are usually deserted.

The biggest weekly events at Nitrogen Sports Poker are the 4.5 + 0.5 chip Saturday and Sunday tourneys that guarantee prize pools of at least 100 chips. Daily, you'll find a couple of 20 mBTC guaranteed tournaments that cost 1.08 + 0.12 to enter. There are also a few smaller tournaments every day mostly priced between 0.1 and 0.6 chips. There's a freeroll each day that awards MTT step satellite tickets. Sit-and-gos are present as well, up to 0.025 BTC buyins, but they seldom fill.

Tournaments on Offer at Nitrogen

Nitrogen also runs freerolls every day and week for users who can achieve certain rake targets in cash games. In total, there's more than 1.8 BTC up for grabs each week in these challenge freerolls.

The poker software at Nitrogen is supplied by Cubeia, a Swedish developer that focuses solely on web-based gaming solutions and has been in the industry since 2007. While there's nothing amazing about this poker solution, particularly in comparison with download poker clients, it works smoothly and is easy to use. Undoubtedly, the decision to deliver up basic gameplay without a whole lot of frills was influenced by the need to remain compatible across a broad spectrum of devices.

0.02/0.04 NLHE Ring Game

You have a betslider, buttons for fractions of the pot, and a box to type in the exact size of your bets, which is good because the buttons allow you to make quick bets while still preserving the ability to tailor your betsizing more precisely when needed. One odd thing about the poker table interface is the fact that dealer messages (like the community cards dealt and the betting action) are presented at the bottom of the table in a separate tab from player chat. It's easy to switch between them, and there's nothing really wrong with doing it this way, but it does take some getting used to.

Because this is a Bitcoin-only site, all transactions are done exclusively in this cryptocurrency. Every customer has a Bitcoin address to which he or she can send funds, but it's possible to generate new addresses whenever you wish. When you send BTC to your Nitrogen account, the sum will show up in your balance within a few minutes, but you can't actually use it at the poker tables or in the sportsbook until there's at least one confirmation.

When requesting a cashout, the procedure is simple. Just enter the amount you wish to receive, the address of your Bitcoin wallet, and your password. Be aware that any amounts smaller than 0.00001 BTC will be rounded off, so you may have to leave a bit of spare change remaining in your balance. We initiated a test withdrawal from Nitrogen and are pleased to report that it took less than 2 hours from making the request until the coins were safely in our wallet.

As long as you've ever deposited at least 0.005 BTC to your Nitrogen account, you can get a free withdrawal every six days. Additional cashouts beyond the first within a six-day period incur small charges intended to offset the cost of Bitcoin miner's fees.

Although Nitrogen doesn't compete heavily for new business with big bonuses or headline-grabbing freebies, it does take care of its customers with the Nitro Rewards system.

For every 1 chip you rake in the poker room, you'll receive 2.5 Loyalty Points. These add up during the course of a month to determine your position in the ranks of the loyalty program for the next month. Every rewards tier comes with a multiplier, and you'll gain the spendable currency Nitro faster the higher you advance. The breakdown of the levels is as follows:

• Bronze: 0 points required, 1.0 multiplier
• Silver: 100 points required, 1.0 multiplier
• Gold: 500 points required, 1.5 multiplier
• Platinum: 2,500 points required, 2.0 multiplier
• Diamond: 7,500 points required, 2.5 multiplier

You can trade in your Nitro for either chips added to your account or free bets to use for sports betting on the matches of your choice. The smallest cash reward is 20 mBTC, which costs 500 Nitro, meaning you'd have to rake 200 chips at Bronze level to earn it, for a rakeback percentage of 10%. At Diamond level, you'd only have to rake 80, bumping your rate of return up to 25%. The least freebet amount, 2 chips, costs 24 Nitro corresponding to 9.6 rake at Bronze (21% RB) or 3.84 rake at Diamond (52% RB). This pattern of sports bets representing greater value holds true as we work up the ladder of exchange possibilities, so your best choice is to claim these free Bitcoin betting credits for use in the sportsbook. Here's a list of all the goodies available through the Nitro rewards program and their Nitrogen Poker rakeback equivalents:

The most sizeable freebet, for a whole 2 BTC, is priced at 12,000 Nitro. For Diamond players, this only takes 1.92 BTC worth of rake to achieve, so they're getting back more than they paid as long as they're willing to make a pick in the sportsbook! Of course, there's a lot of variance involved in making such large sports wagers, and there is a small vigorish that the book takes for itself. So this isn't quite the 104% cashback deal that it appears to be at first glance, but it's pretty damn close.

+   Maximizing Your Nitrogen Rakeback

As you can see from the chart above, the rakeback returns possible from the Nitrogen free bets tend to be superior to those of the straight cash rewards. However, this is only true if you employ the proper betting strategy.

Simply put, the way to get the most out of your freebets is by making selections that have long odds against them, i.e., heavy underdogs. For example, take a look at the lines for this basketball game between the Houston Rockets and the Cleveland Cavaliers:

We have outlined the bet with the heaviest odds in green. This is the moneyline bet on Cleveland to win outright. The odds are +500 or 6.001. This implies that the team is a 5-1 underdog or, to put it another way, they have a 16.67% chance of victory.

Let's run the math and see what happens if you use a 10 mBTC freebet to wager on Cleveland. Well, 16.67% of the time you will gain 50 mBTC, and the remaining 83.33% of the time, you will walk away with nothing. Multiplying 0.1667 * 50, we see that the total expected value of this play is 8.335 mBTC.

What happens if you bet on the other side? Well, Houston is displayed as -719 on the moneyline. This corresponds to roughly an 87.8% probability of victory, but when you win, you will only collect 1.4 mBTC. Your expected value is now 0.878 * 1.4 = 1.23 mBTC. The value of the freebet has been cut to less than one-sixth what it was when you bet on the underdog!

Though the specific numbers will vary, this general principle holds true that free bets are worth more when you commit them to an outcome that has a slim chance of occurring. Counterintuitive, yes, but this is what the math suggests and what savvy sharps have known for quite a while.

While buying freebets and employing the correct strategy offers returns well superior to what you could achieve had you opted to exchange your Nitro points for a direct mBTC payout instead, the reverse is the case if you bet foolishly by putting your money on the favorite.

Note that the sum of the implied probabilities in the bet we discussed is more than 104%: a clear impossibility because the true odds must, of necessity, add up to 100%. This is called the overround and represents the bookmaker's edge or “vigorish.”

What this means is that the expected values we calculated are really slight overestimations. Nevertheless, the general principle we have explained holds true: Back the underdog with your free bets if you want to maximize your returns.

Sports wagering is Nitrogen's main product, which it has been offering since 2012, a couple of years before it started dealing poker games. The broad selection of markets, reduced juice odds, and easy-to-use interface has kept bettors loyal to this book, which is regarded as the premier Bitcoin bookmaker online.

When you log into your Nitrogen account, you'll see a list of sports along the left of the screen. Clicking on any of them opens up a submenu containing the various leagues and special betting possibilities available. Most major athletic leagues are present, like Major League Baseball and English Premier League soccer. You might be surprised by the extensive palette of more niche organizations listed as well, like Korea Professional Baseball and the Bolivia Primera Division.

After you select the type of match/wager you wish to place, all the upcoming lines for that selection will appear in the middle of your screen. You'll see the odds of each side of every contest along with the betting limit. The maximum possible bet varies wildly, but for the most popular games, it tends to be between about half a bitcoin and 2 bitcoins. Clicking a blue arrow next to a betting option will add it to your betslip.

The Interface for Betting on Sports at Nitrogen

Within the betslip, you can enter the amount you wish to put at risk, and the system will calculate and display the sum you stand to win. You can place straight wagers, parlays that depend on the results of multiple happenings, and teasers that allow you to shift the points spread in football and basketball contests to your advantage.

When you're ready to book your wager, click on “Place Wager.” You will then be asked to “Confirm Wager,” after which your bet will be accepted by the system and will be considered officially placed.

Nitrogen In-Play Live

Nitrogen's In-Play Live section permits you to place additional wagers even after sports competitions have already begun. This is a feature that has become more prevalent online as time passes, and it's now fairly standard at every modern sports-betting site. Unfortunately, there are usually only a few games listed in the In-Play Live area of the sportsbook, so if you're a really big fan of live betting, Nitrogen might not be able to satisfy you in this department.

Nitrogen Sports Promos

There are tons of sportsbook promos at Nitrogen. The most famous is probably the monthly Parlay Jackpot competition. Three leaderboards (classified by amount staked) each reward the seven users with the highest parlay paydays during the month. Even if a parlay loses by a single leg, it still qualifies for the Parlay Jackpot. The top prize is often more than 1 bitcoin!

Time-sensitive offers, geared around specific sporting events, abound. Examples include complimentary credits for successful NCAA March Madness bracket predictions, free bets for placing parlays on certain games, and rewards for correctly guessing who will win the most medals in the Olympics. Almost all of these specials are not advertised on the Nitrogen main site, so you'll have to keep an eye on the Nitrogen Sports blog and Twitter to participate.

The Nitrogen Casino promises a diverting break from the sports and poker action. The games are provably fair, and the titles appear to have been custom-developed for Nitrogen, meaning that you won't find similar games elsewhere. Yet, there are only seven of them for you to enjoy:

• Dice
• Baccarat
• Blackjack One Deck
• Blackjack Two Deck
• Blackjack Eight Deck
• Three Card Poker
• Knockout Slot

This very limited game selection would be forgivable if the gameplay was stunning with top-notch graphics and a wealth of bonus features. Sadly, this is not the case. The Dice interface looks like some kind of wacky '60s B movie, the Blackjack tables use weird, six-sided cards, the flow of the Baccarat game is almost incomprehensible to the newcomer, and the single slot machine is an old-school, three-reel, single payline affair.

Nitrogen's Single Slot Title: Knockout

If you're an online casino enthusiast, then Nitrogen's product will most likely not measure up to your standards. You might want to check out our list of the best internet casinos for USA players to get some more ideas on where to play.

Support concerned about user safety and responded in under 30 minutes.

Through a "Help" link at the bottom of the website, you can receive assistance with any problems you encounter at Nitrogen Poker. The in-house ticketing system is the fastest method you can use with replies typically arriving within a couple of hours and in many cases, mere minutes. You can also send an email to support[at]nitrogensports.eu if you prefer. There are sometimes support personnel watching the global chatbox too, and they may answer your questions in that forum as well.