MG/playtech - how hard to implement wagering-statusbar?

[Zoozie]

With wagering-statusbar I mean some kind of way the player can see how much they have fullfilled a wagering requirement like the statusbar at intercasino.

Wagerlogic has it, even RTG has it (actually decent software, I got a suprise). But why does the two most used software providers not have it? I can only speculate since it would be very easy to implement. It would save a lot of support from the casino just by the players being able to see for the themself instead of asking and all the trouble when a player has misunderstood the TC and making a withdrawal that was credited back to account.

Actually I only have one explanation and that is MONEY, the casinoes can change the TC after players have used a bonus and provide false information to the users. Here are two examples I have experiences myself. I will not mention the casino names, since that is not the important.

1) A very big (and good reputation, at least formerly..) playtech casino(not casinomeister accredited) gave me a 100$ bonus (I won a competition) with a wagering requirement. Playtech has 'comp points' so I could check how much I had wagered for myself and I know all the games I played counted as 100% wager. When I made a withdrawal (I had won some more), the 100$ was instantly removed from my balance and the rest was withdrawn. The casino of course kept insisting I had not full-filled wagering and would not refund the missing bonus money. It turned out several other players with similar bonus found out it was a sticky-bonus, which was a mistake from the casino. And of course I am pretty sure that was also the case with my bonus.
I never got the money back from the casino. (but the affilate casino portal site actually refunded the money to me!) This also raises the question why players not are warned and given 'second chance' at playtech casinos like at MG casinoes where they normally just credit the money back to the account in case the wagering is not fullfilled.

2) This happened at two different MG casinos (one of them casinomeister accredited), and I kind of believe it was not intentional, but also due to the software not being able to handle the wagering requirements.
I get a first 100% deposit bonus by depositing 100$. I now have a 4000$ wagering requirement over my head. Then I go bust very fast and balance is zero after wagering 1000$, which should clear the wagering requirement. Some days later I make a second deposit of 100$ and lets say the casino has a similar second deposit bonus (!). I then wager 5000$ which is over
the requirement 4000$ and make a withdrawal. After 1 week I then
get an email from support telling I had not fillfulled wagering. I log on to the casino and live support tells me I have wagered 6000$ of the 8000$ wagering requirement. So it is pretty obvious the first deposit bonus was not cleared. The live support fix it make me able to withdraw. Case over.. Almost.. Because the first time this happened I actually believed the casino or maybe I had missed something in the TC. I then fullfill another horrible wagering requirment that was actually a mistake by the casino before I withdraw and in this extended wagering process I lost money as expected in average. And my payment was 1 week delayed also.


Zoozie...

[vinylweatherman]

MG casino support have a Playcheck add on that works out players WR at withdrawal time. This is automated, and often screws up in my experience. I too have had instances of going bust, logging off and playing in a new session to be "busted" by the casino support for underwagering from a busted bonus. When I complained a couple of times the casino found me to be correct and the system in the wrong.
Where I have asked for a figure prior to withdrawal I have often found their figures considerably adrift from mine.
One group (Fortune Lounge), gives NO second chance for underwagering, simply confiscating the bonus.
Interestingly, Casino Action have promised to implement a wagering status tool in the near future (their promises are often unfulfilled though). Grand Prive have actually implemented a wager tool with eZBonus, the first MG to do so I believe.

Hard, NO, but it looks like MG are more interested in releasing 4 new games a month than looking at this side of things. It took them months to sort out the problems caused by these rush releases last summer and autumn, and they only seemed to produce a fix when their excuses of it being the users fault/PC/internet/firewall got "busted" by the discovery by a "certain poster" here that the fault was with a "mupinfo" file being corrupt, and the updater being unable to unscramble the mess and fix the casino. From busting to fix took a little over one month, with help from 32red putting pressure on to MG.

If they give us the ability to retrieve playlogs as CSV I expect some of us can easily render our own software to calculate wager against WR. The current cut 'n' paste is no good if playing SLOTS!, especially if betting small with respect to WR.

[BrianC]

Here's a tip for this situation:
Most MG games now have a "STATS" button. When clicked, it shows
how many hands of vid poker or spins on a slot machine have been
played. You must click it BEFORE you leave your current game or it
will be reset. Jot down the total # of spins/hands then multiply by
your wager and you should be able to easily keep track.


Brian

[Zoozie]

If you switch games/change coins/play in different sessions this is still tedious... Why make it so hard for players?
Besides you could be playing a game that the casino decided do not count(unclear T&C) as wagering and loose it on withdrawal (Fortune Lounge).
So the only reason solution would be that the player can ask the software itself, if wagering is fullfilled.

[BrianC]

Yes, this is true. I have a feeling they don't want to make it
easy to keep track of

BTW: I play at the Vegas Casino's (Vegas7's, Vegas Country). I NEVER
have a problem with the bonuses. They make you just wager the amount
they credited x1. I have even cashed out a royal flush off $50 bonus money.
In VP, it's easy to meet the WR because of all the back/forth action you can
occassionally get.




Brian

[managra]

Sometime last year (summer?) the Prima pokerrooms finally added the raked hand counter on the main lobby screen. Most of them still don't have any sw to indicate a pending bonus and automatically releasing it to your acct once earned (there's one that has a tracking mechanism and automatic release of bonus once earned - is it Poker Rewards ???). The result is endless emails by tons of players to CS and it might take days before a bonus finally gets credited to a player's acct. Needless to say, also opportunity for lots of confusion and acrimony on the part of players.

Seems to me that it should be relatively easy to add a wagering status bar or log files, akin to the Crypto's. Also seems to me that casinos don't want to do this because players are likely to play way more than necessary when they are left in the dark. Consering the kazillion games MG has, you would figure they could spend some minimal programming effort to make their casinos more user-friendly if user-friendliness was of much concern to them. By the same token, it should be very easy to program in a player's choice to skip the Reverse Withdrawal and have the withdrawal processed straight away.

Yes, i religiously track my wagering via Stats. Reset it when i change my bets and have disciplined myself to copy the Stats number before switching games. Exactly as described in Brian's post. All in all, it's "work" that i just as well would like to do without. Particularly when at the eleventh hour i bust out anyway. Particulary, too, when i'm not running well and need to keep on changing games often to test whether any of them is hot. However, i am not just going to rely on a number given by CS because at several occasions they were dead wrong (in their favor) and thanks to my own tracking i managed to convince them of their error.

PS: and what really should be an easy fix for them is introduce the ability for a player to request subtotals/totals for x sessions or for start-end date criteria.