Mathematical Proof that English Harbour is cheating

[spearmaster]

Originally Posted by Linus

They're our logs of our own play - which have already been recorded here. How does turning them over damn them?

Wouldn't refusing to turn them over be an admission of guilt?

Not turning them over would be very dubious at best.

Turning them over would "damn them" if they had intended to cheat players. What I'm trying to point out is that perhaps they are trying to be upfront and provide you with what you should be entitled to in the first place.

So if they give you the logs - knowing that the data in there may indeed expose an issue - then this is tantamount to acknowledging that there may be problems and that they will work with you to address them.

[spearmaster]

Dovmin - again, while I don't disagree with you - I have already asked twice that no more insinuations or accusations be thrown for the time being.

This is a final warning to everyone. Talk all you like but do NOT make any more accusations or insinuations because there are a number of parties already working on the issue. "Non-random" is okay. "Cheating" or "deliberate" is not.

[thelawnet]

Originally Posted by dovmin

I want to share my thoery of what happened with the English harbour group let me know what you all think.


Theory number one, I got response from my mathematician friend and he had to say and he is right. The chance of that kind of result happening is possible but the chance that this kind of result is happening exactly when this guy tested them is zero.

They absolutely cheated, you might say it was not deliberately but I doubt it.

Theory number 2: I see in their terms and condition that many games are excluded for bonuses.

I bet that many bonus whoring players came there and use the doubling figure to maximize their winnings building their balance up and only then play the games which carry a high house edge.

The casino understood they need to fix their doubling figure to eliminate that and that what he did.

I played there and I can say that according to my feeling only no calculations two games are rigged there.

One, their Roulette and second the doubling at any Videopoker.

I remember casino bar response to the Wizard of odds issue, I remember they mentioned the fact there is a lot of bonus abuse in the industry and this is very hard to manage a casino anyway. Casinobar implied that of the line that they cheated to overcome the bonus abusers and I believe this is the reason a casino want to cheat.

They don't need to cheat in order to win without bonuses.

They need the cheating figure to cope with the chargebacker and Bonus abuser.

I am not sure about the roulette. You present nothing to back this up, not even anecdotal 'evidence'.

However it does make some sense if you perceive that many players are making money from your bonus to attacke the game those players (whose business you do not want) will play. In that sense if I were operating a casino and wanted to attack the nonprofitable bonus players (given that other players are profitable because all casino games will offer a casino edge), I would fix the odds the game perceived most attractive by such players. As the expected loss on a video poker double is zero, this game is likely to be preferred by bonus-oriented players.

It is difficult to see how this has happened. It is clear that the game was not behaving fairly, and that the chance the game was fair is basically zero. The fact is that it appears the game suddenly now is playing fair where it wasn't before while the casino have said that the results were fair, even though that is statistically essentially impossible. I think there is only one conclusion that can be drawn from this evident change and early denial; the problem is for EH with logs available and being analysed, I believe that it will be extremely difficult for them to reconcile evidence showing bad odds changing to fair odds with the initial statement that effectively denied that they had changed anything

[MarcyW]

Originally Posted by dovmin

I want to share my thoery of what happened with the English harbour group let me know what you all think.


Theory number one, I got response from my mathematician friend and he had to say and he is right. The chance of that kind of result happening is possible but the chance that this kind of result is happening exactly when this guy tested them is zero.

They absolutely cheated, you might say it was not deliberately but I doubt it.

Theory number 2: I see in their terms and condition that many games are excluded for bonuses.

I bet that many bonus whoring players came there and use the doubling figure to maximize their winnings building their balance up and only then play the games which carry a high house edge.

The casino understood they need to fix their doubling figure to eliminate that and that what he did.

I played there and I can say that according to my feeling only no calculations two games are rigged there.

One, their Roulette and second the doubling at any Videopoker.

I remember casino bar response to the Wizard of odds issue, I remember they mentioned the fact there is a lot of bonus abuse in the industry and this is very hard to manage a casino anyway. Casinobar implied that of the line that they cheated to overcome the bonus abusers and I believe this is the reason a casino want to cheat.

They don't need to cheat in order to win without bonuses.

They need the cheating figure to cope with the chargebacker and Bonus abuser.

Unreal. A casino gives a bonus then needs to cheat so players can't win? Wow, I spit out my coffee on the keyboard I laughed so hard.

[Casinomeister]

Originally Posted by MarcyW

Unreal. A casino gives a bonus then needs to cheat so players can't win? Wow, I spit out my coffee on the keyboard I laughed so hard.

Spearmaster gave a warning against making any more comments such as this. Account suspended one week.

[soflat]

I'm confused as to what role OddsOn plays. Wizard said that OddsOn turned over the logs. Does Oddson own and operate the casino, or are they a software company that licenses the product to third parties? Do the games run from OddOn's servers?

[spearmaster]

OddsOn is the software provider. In theory, the operator should own the servers, but in many cases the software provider may provide all the related services as well.

[Webzcas]

In theory, the operator should own the servers, but in many cases the software provider may provide all the related services as well

One good example is the Prima Poker Network. Where all prima operators utilise the servers in Canada.

[wizard]

As a professional mathematician, one of the services I provide is evaluation of the logs of online casinos to ensure fair play, though I stopped taking new clients for this service a few years ago. One of my existing clients is Odds On, which provides the software for English Harbour casino among others. On April 29, 2006, a player posted at CasinoMeister.com that he lost more frequently than expected on the double-up feature when playing video poker at English Harbour. This was brought to my attention on May 2 by both Bryan Bailey of CasinoMeister and English Harbor Management. As soon as I found out about this I immediately requested detailed logs from English Harbor in order to analyze them. In preparing the log files for me, Odds On themselves discovered anomalies in the double-up records. When I received the logs and analyzed them I was able to confirm that the double-up on video poker did indeed pay out less than it should have between April 13 and May 2. According to English Harbor problem was caused by a buggy software update on April 13, which was automatically corrected by a subsequent update on May 2.

Readers might understandably wonder how English Harbor can claim that I review their logs for fairness if a problem like this can arise without my knowing about it. The answer is that I do the analysis monthly, and though players noticed the problem in April, I would not normally see the April data until mid May. This underscores the important point that my auditing service can not guarantee that players will get a mathematically fair game at every given instant. I can only attest to the fairness and return percentages in the past.

Although both English Harbor and myself believe that April 13 to May 2 was the only period affected we will be scrutinizing earlier logs to make sure, and will be monitoring future play closely.

The following table shows the results of all double or nothing bets in real play mode from April 1 to May 3.


Apr 01: wins=1225, losses=1245, ties=177, win ratio=49.6%
Apr 02: wins=763, losses=794, ties=89, win ratio=49%
Apr 03: wins=588, losses=580, ties=74, win ratio=50.34%
Apr 04: wins=1293, losses=1232, ties=156, win ratio=51.21%
Apr 05: wins=951, losses=918, ties=108, win ratio=50.88%
Apr 06: wins=1015, losses=996, ties=119, win ratio=50.47%
Apr 07: wins=950, losses=989, ties=127, win ratio=48.99%
Apr 08: wins=759, losses=735, ties=90, win ratio=50.8%
Apr 09: wins=818, losses=862, ties=111, win ratio=48.69%
Apr 10: wins=1203, losses=1168, ties=152, win ratio=50.74%
Apr 11: wins=529, losses=524, ties=64, win ratio=50.24%
Apr 12: wins=1199, losses=1195, ties=121, win ratio=50.08%
Apr 13: wins=194, losses=266, ties=27, win ratio=42.17%
Apr 14: wins=212, losses=424, ties=43, win ratio=33.33%
Apr 15: wins=284, losses=607, ties=73, win ratio=31.87%
Apr 16: wins=314, losses=602, ties=98, win ratio=34.28%
Apr 17: wins=139, losses=304, ties=45, win ratio=31.38%
Apr 18: wins=143, losses=317, ties=29, win ratio=31.09%
Apr 19: wins=141, losses=307, ties=42, win ratio=31.47%
Apr 20: wins=89, losses=169, ties=28, win ratio=34.5%
Apr 21: wins=134, losses=295, ties=42, win ratio=31.24%
Apr 22: wins=72, losses=128, ties=23, win ratio=36%
Apr 23: wins=52, losses=112, ties=21, win ratio=31.71%
Apr 24: wins=138, losses=322, ties=41, win ratio=30%
Apr 25: wins=66, losses=121, ties=16, win ratio=35.29%
Apr 26: wins=75, losses=126, ties=18, win ratio=37.31%
Apr 27: wins=176, losses=399, ties=47, win ratio=30.61%
Apr 28: wins=93, losses=173, ties=24, win ratio=34.96%
Apr 29: wins=40, losses=81, ties=15, win ratio=33.06%
Apr 30: wins=96, losses=169, ties=25, win ratio=36.23%
May 01: wins=73, losses=86, ties=9, win ratio=45.91%
May 02: wins=95, losses=125, ties=17, win ratio=43.18%
May 03: wins=142, losses=158, ties=20, win ratio=47.33%

Win Ratio = ratio of wins to sum of wins and losses.

English Harbor management tells me that they plan to reimburse each and every player who made a double or nothing bet during the period affected with his/her net loss on those bets over affected period. This offer will apply to all casinos using Odds On software. In addition, as a show of their regret for this mistake, they will add 20% to each player's reimbursement.

Michael Shackleford, A.S.A.

WizardOfOdds.com

[Casinomeister]

This just in from English Harbour:

First and foremost, the English Harbour Group would like to formally apologize for the error in the software release that caused this situation. We hold in high regard all our players and respect for the Internet Gaming industry. We feel it is important for players to understand what happened, what went on during the investigation, how it was resolved and our compensation to affected players.

The issue was caused by a bug in the software staging release on the later part of the day April 13 and went unnoticed. On May 2 we had a maintenance release that during the course of our investigation seemed to have corrected the problem. When we were alerted of the claim, we ran through several trials and also simulations. We checked randomness of the distribution of cards in the doubling game over different time periods and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. We then did an interim posting on Casinomeister. We continued the investigation and sought the audit services of Michael Shackleford. Michael asked for the log files and we fully complied to his request. As part of the delivery of the log files to Michael, we noticed an issue that seemed to have spanned the later two weeks of April. We mentioned this to Michael as we continued to work with him. Through Michael's investigation, he concurred with our observations and was able help quantify the variance in the odds.

Michael continues to be a key part of our governance and fair game play strategy.

We discussed player compensation with Michael and we will be refunding affected players on the net loss on the doubling game plus an additional 20% of their net loss. Players will be receiving an email as well as a message within the casino itself shortly.

The English Harbour Group would like to thank the Casinomeister forum members for bringing this issue to our attention and their patience while we dealt with this issue.

The English Harbour Group Management Team