Mathematical Proof that English Harbour is cheating

[caruso]

I also recall the Playcheck-style logs from when I last played OddsOn.

All players who participated should now email in requests for copies of their play logs. For the most part the play was very brief, so these should be easily provided.

[Linus]

Originally Posted by thelawnet

I believe this fatal damage to reputation will prove much more expensive to them in the long term than the money they made from their unfair doubling game (although of course nobody knows how much that is - it could be substatnial).

There's no reason to think doubling was the only fixed game at English Harbour.

How long would it take to show Royal flushes weren't being dealt fairly?

I'm guessing you'd go broke long before you could determine it.

[wizard]

Yesterday, May 2, I was made aware of the issue possible irregularities in the doubling feature of Odds On software. Let me assure you that the Odds On management and myself are taking this very seriously. As soon as possible I plan to conduct an analysis of all double or nothing bets made since January 1. If necessary, Odds On will hire a third party to conduct the same study. Until we have had a chance to review the log files we can neither confirm nor deny the accusations.

I will say now that indeed I have auditing most of the Odds On casinos, including the English Harbour. Also, I agree with the original post that the probability of 84 or fewer wins in 235 resolved bets is 1 in 135929.

[Flavio4321]

just a question, is the user "wizard", michael shackelford aka "the wizard of odds"?

[spearmaster]

My apologies, I guess the Wiz is still on the job At least now we know that a proper review will take place by one or more parties.

I would suggest that until this has taken place, members of the forum kindly refrain from any accusations or insinuations as to what happened.

Flavio - yes, that's the Wizard of Odds.

[gfkostas]

Originally Posted by spearmaster

My apologies, I guess the Wiz is still on the job At least now we know that a proper review will take place by one or more parties.

I would suggest that until this has taken place, members of the forum kindly refrain from any accusations or insinuations as to what happened.

Though it might be already late for an investigation if they have 'fixed' their game back to normal should that be possible.

[JohnGalt]

Originally Posted by gfkostas

Though it might be already late for an investigation if they have 'fixed' their game back to normal should that be possible.

He's retroactively checking all the doubling since January 1. He should be able to tell if they've altered the logs by comparing the results on this site against the results they've recorded, if that becomes necessary (He might have to collect some usernames to do this but hopefully it won't come to that).

[thelawnet]

Originally Posted by wizard

Yesterday, May 2, I was made aware of the issue possible irregularities in the doubling feature of Odds On software. Let me assure you that the Odds On management and myself are taking this very seriously. As soon as possible I plan to conduct an analysis of all double or nothing bets made since January 1. If necessary, Odds On will hire a third party to conduct the same study. Until we have had a chance to review the log files we can neither confirm nor deny the accusations.

I guess in the event that the software was at one time fair, you will be able to identify when it stopped being fair by analysing data from each day (and depending on the amount of data that you actually have), as although it is clear that the software was behaving unfairly for a period on and before April 30 2006, it was not necessarily unfair on say January 1: otherwise it might have been noticed then. I think it reasonable to assume that this has been going on for a few weeks but not necessarily months.

I'm also interested that the Hot Pepper and Fire and Ice casinos, outside of the EH group of casinos, althought not as thoroughly tested as EH, did not appear to have aberrant (and indeed abhorrent) doubling results.

I am somewhat surprised at English Harbour's early statement about the results being consistent with a fair game as it is quite clear that the game was not fair (not withstanding that results indicate that they clearly changed the game early on 1 May, although their carefully worded statement did not explicitly denied that they had not) , and that statement is now looking premature with analysis to be conducted here.

[thelawnet]

Originally Posted by dirk_dangerous

Lawnet, you should contact the Wizard of Odds with your results. If he agrees, this problem will get more attention.

Cheating by Odds On does not surprise me.

And yes, if the double down feature is not 50/50, the game is cheating.

I did email him on 29/04

[caruso]

It's extremely important that the figures are not just grouped together from some distant date. I doubt the gaff was in place on January 1st since, as already noted, it'd have been picked up on most likely. Assuming it was in place no earlier than (say) early April, those earlier fair results will dilute the the effect of the cheating results, with the extent dependent on how recently the gaff was put in place.

In order for this not to happen, the results need to be looked at on a daily basis at least.

Even then, there is still risk of diluting the effect, since we don't know how the gaff was set up - overall, individual accounts or whatever.

The Casino Bar experiment was conducted over less hands, if I recall correctly, and the probability was MUCH, much less - I think somewhere in the trillions. As such, I'm curious to know exactly why these results, far worse in terms of probability, are not immediate evidence of rigging, where the Casino Bar experiment results were. The only difference is that the Casino Bar test was set up in the correct manner, whereas here we're selectively looking backwards at data which fits the contention. Other than that, the results here are far, far worse than anything Casino Bar ever did.