Mathematical Proof that English Harbour is cheating

[spearmaster]

GRR!

I had just completed a long reply which essentially agreed with Gamemaster except for his "boycott" position... but my session timed out on me and I lost the whole post.

Goes to show that shit happens... GRRRRR...

So this post is short since I have to go out.

I agree with Gamemaster - except that I don't agree nor disagree with the boycott position he takes and I will try to explain that when I get back.

Yes, I know what the ombudsmen do And no, I have no vested interest in anything except the truth.

[spearmaster]

ok... back... going to try this again.

Audit function - that's a good idea. Obviously they have nothing like this in action at present...

Knee jerk - definitely. Something they obviously regret and I hope in the end everything will show this to be nothing other than poor judgement.

Ombudsman - while this is obviously the case in many land-based jurisdictions, the fact remains that a malfunction of any sort would void all play. EH took action of their own to pay out not only all losses, but also ties, which were recorded during the period in question. Compare that to some other operations - winner.com for example - where some people are STILL negotiating settlements months after their own error caused many problems.

I have no vested interest in anything other than the truth.

People make mistakes. I don't know whether you program or not, I would guess that you do - so I assume you be able to tell the difference between a deliberate fix and a bonehead error. I have been programming for almost 30 years - nothing quite as critical though - and I make these types of errors all the time.

Forgiveness? Clinton denied knowing anything about a cigar - but when outed, he eventually tearfully admitted it. Does that mean he should not be forgiven?

I think that's got to be an individual choice. When all the facts are laid out on the table, everyone must decide for themselves what to do with these facts. My own personal objective is to get the facts out. I cannot tell people to support EH, or boycott EH, I can only try to get as many facts as they can and hopefully present them in an objective, unbiased manner, at least from my point of view (since I have to interpret code and intent).

[HKGambler]

Spear, you’ve made a few significant mistakes throughout. First of all, you’ve taken a wrong stance leaning too much towards EH.

You started out to neglect & seemingly laughed at the overwhelming mathematical evidence. In responding to a poster who reported a good result (59W vs 35L) on May 1, you said, “These aren't exactly normal results either... LOL...”

After the wiz confirmed the probability was way off the mark, and after EH had made the second statement to admit rigged games. You turned from disbelief of unfairness to a theory of possible software bugs. Well of course no one can argue about a glitch at any point of time.

Secondly, Caruso’s remarks which you deemed “biased, immature, impatient, negative, personal, proof-lack” annoyed you. You even granted him a 7-day vacation. And there at WOL, you also asked Max to extend his vacation on the same basis & with the same attitude. At what point an empty allegation can become a solid accusation? If such incredible & contradicting statements as those made by EH that cannot be condemned, called a cheat, what can? I actually thank Caruso for having spoken most of my mind.

And then you thought out excuses good for EH (bad for players). Your latest argument (post #314) which shocks me quite: “With all due respect, your sympathy is misplaced. Any other casino I know, online or off, would have invoked the ‘malfunction voids all plays’ clause." indicates that you did nothing but invited the majority to believe that you were helping EH at every corner, but of course you claimed you talked only of balance & impartiality.

Again, your analogies such as Bush-Iraq; plaintiff; Clinton’s cigar…. don’t look smart. They are either irrelevant or not to the point.

The problem this time is that you feel too much sympathy for EH. Perhaps because you don’t gamble yourself; or you had frequent communications & long relationship with the industry guys, and basically your income is built on the survival of the industry overall. No offense here you know. Therefore you are bound to be more in their shoes than the players are.

My advice: You should concentrate on your analysis of their source code. But then it is hard to convince the players anyhow for such a bug to have accidentally incurred. Stop speaking for EH for it isn’t worth the case.

[Vesuvio]

The more I think about this the more it looks like:

EH's programmers were playing around with code to rig the doubling game of their VP to give slot-like weighted results.

They introduced this new code in a bungled manner.

Their defence seems to be that they hadn't actually meant to implement the code yet, or at least not so as to give the casino quite such an advantage.

As defences go, it's not great. It looks about time to start calling a spade a spade...

[thelawnet]

After I made a statement about the software bug affecting the double-up feature at Odds On (the name of the software used by several casinos, including the English Harbour) casinos, players wanted to know how the bug occurred. This is an addendum to my statement to answer that question.

When players started asking for details about the bug I asked on Odds On for a copy of the source code, and they sent it to me immediately. The code is at a higher level than I write myself and Odds On made their programmer available to answer my questions in deciphering it. The problem was that the video poker double up bonus round was calling a second bonus routine that was still under development. This bonus routine is very similar to the bonus games found in their slot machines.

In slot machine bonus rounds the prizes are sometimes drawn from a pool, and the smaller prizes have a greater probability of being chosen than the larger ones. This is achieved by associating each prize with a weighting factor and is standard in bonus game designs. When married to the video poker game, the result was that the player had a greater probability of drawing the smaller cards. As I've mentioned before, this problem was automatically corrected in the software on May 2.

Based on what on Odds On has shared with me, their complete cooperation, and my six-year open and honest relationship with them, it is my firm opinion that indeed the problem was an accidental human error.

I absolutely do not believe that on Odds On would attempt to cheat their players in such a blatant manner, since it would be so quickly and easily discovered -- which is exactly what happened in this case. No professional casino willingly goes down that road. Besides the risk to their reputation, there is also the money they're out by paying a consolation prize to affected players on top of reimbursing their losses.

Although I have no doubt that the code they sent you performs as described, it's still hard to se how this can b justified.

Bottom line is they were selecting cards to display on scren. I still cannot see how even a bonus game could fairly select low cards more tha high ones. THere is no deceit in weighting lower prizes, e.g. by selecting four treasure chests with 10 coins and only one with 500.

BUt a card-based game as this bonus game appears to be can only be based on random cards, as the game undoubtedly was displaying cards, which the code must have been selectig.

Any bonus game that did not select the cards randomly would be cheating, as appearing to represent a random deck of cards while in fact cheating would be deceitful. The ONLY way casinos win with cards is by stacking payouts rather than rigging card turnups. E.g. casino war, losing ties; baccarat, paying less than true odds. So if this bonus game was to e done it could e.g. pay 11-1 for naming he rank ofthecard. That would be fair. This is not.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I cannot think of any game that could function as described and not be cheating.

Secondly, the claim that the cheating could not have been intentional is not proven. They were not caught for several weeks, and from their statement initially denied all knowledge, and seemed to believe things would even out. That they were caught could not have been known to them.

Thirdly, they knew that the code was broken because they claim they had scheduled it to be fixed. So why were they still offering the rigged game while the fix was pending? They needed to send out refunds and shut the game then, as they knew it to be broken.

Only responding after being publicly outed makes their claims somewhat dubious.

One can believe what one chooses, but their explanation that they were not cheating but accidentally put in code for a different cheating game is not a good one.

[nafanny29]

The more I think about this the more it looks like:

EH's programmers were playing around with code to rig the doubling game of their VP to give slot-like weighted results.

They introduced this new code in a bungled manner.

Their defence seems to be that they hadn't actually meant to implement the code yet, or at least not so as to give the casino quite such an advantage.

As defences go, it's not great. It looks about time to start calling a spade a spade...

I tend to agree here Vesuvio.

Wonder if the "new exciting double-up feature" will ever surface on their VP games.

This whole thing is rather like some online casinos blackjack. You KNOW its rigged but you just cant prove it

[spearmaster]

Welcome back HKGambler! Long time no see

First of all, let me clear up my stance - at the time of the first posts, there was certainly no leaning towards EH - those numbers being posted clearly pointed to a problem. The logs subsequently revealed a distinct bias which indicated that the results were non-random.

Nevertheless, non-random can be cheating, or can be unintentional. I did indeed find it hard to believe that EH could, or would, be so stupid as to deliberately introduce such a bias into their game. Bugs are equally as possible as code to unfairly fix a game - and I took what I believed to be a neutral stance but obviously it did not appear that way to others.

I did not ask Max to extend a vacation to Caruso - I have no influence there and would not exert any pressure on anyone there. I did say that Caruso was lucky that Max didn't ban him there - and that was my opinion - but in no way would I ask Max to ban him either publicly or privately - that is not my choice.

By the time we got to post #314 in this thread - the "malfunction voids all plays" post, as it were, I had already studied the code and the numbers and it was apparent to me that the likelihood of a bug rather than a fix was much, much greater. At this point I do not blame anyone for thinking that I was leaning towards EH, because it is obvious now that, with more information in hand, it looks like a bungled piece of code.

I feel no sympathy for EH - if only you could have heard that first phone call I had with them, it was very direct and I belittled them severely for introducing such a bug without any error-checking procedures. I believe that, unintentional or not, they deserved to be challenged by the players and I told them that the ONLY way they could escape this was to show someone the code - and both Wiz and I have looked at this code. I had already received pseudo (sample) code by the time this first call occurred so there would have been zero opportunity for them to fix the code after the fact because it would have stuck out like a sore thumb to me and you know fully well that I will always call it as I see it.

Keep in mind that I do not make income from EH, nor have I done so for at least two years, if not three. I do not expect to get paid for my efforts by any party and certainly will not accept any such thing now or in the future.

I always appreciate your comments, however - I know that you too will call it as you see it and it becomes apparent that perhaps the perception of my involvement in this issue is not quite what I believed it to be.

Nevertheless, I will say it again one more time - the facts that I lay out later shall speak for themselves - each of you can then choose to believe or disbelieve these facts and proceed accordingly.

Vesuvio is pretty close in his last analysis - and one cannot argue the fact that the explanation of a weighted doubling game does indeed look strange because it deviates from a standard that we all know.

Thelawnet - I think I will have to explain how each of these things took place from my viewpoint - but I won't elaborate until I have the last bits of information I need.

No matter how unbelieveable the situation is, I believe it deserves to be aired in full - and then once you have all of this information in hand, you make a decision for yourselves. I am only here to make sure that all of us have as much information as possible. I won't be making any recommendations as to what players should do - I will, however, render a personal opinion as to what I believe took place.

[spearmaster]

nafanny, your post came while I was replying... LOL...

I'm in Detroit waiting for my connection to Montreal - the wireless here sucks, but at least I have a net connection...

I thought I should point out that any admission of a weighted distribution of cards MUST necessarily be pretty damning without a knowledge of the situation under which it was accidentally introduced - and again I don't blame anyone for taking this view.

But honestly - in your minds - how could anyone believe that we would reveal the presence of new code introducing weighting unless we were trying to establish the truth? If we were going to be part of a coverup I think it should also be pretty obvious that we would never make mention of something like this...

[ergopro]

I may be totally wrong here, but isn't a source code in an industry this big supposed to be ran thru a "test-bench" numerous times just to find any bugs and irregularities before being launched? Sorry, if I'm wrong...it just sounds strange that the code happened to be buggy. Of course bugs can occur...but it's kinda weird that it was so precise

[HKGambler]

Spear, nice to know you understand I did not question your integrity or motive; the stance thing only.

I had already received pseudo (sample) code by the time this first call occurred so there would have been zero opportunity for them to fix the code after the fact ....

That really was a good move that showed some kind of sincerity by EH, to say the least.

I am anticipating your summary although I don’t know what to expect from it, frankly. I only know that takes a lot of your time & energy.

In order for any conclusion that the bug was unintentional to be valid, it will have to fully explain:

How did the problem auto-correct itself when nobody even knew there was a problem until the initial results came to light?

So we are left thus: this bonus round "routine" found its way into a game it would have no place being in even if it wasn't "under development" all by itself; having found its way in all by itself, it then found its way out all by itself; having found its way out all by itself on May 2nd, it somehow magically retroactively de-applied itself to play on May 1st, when results normalised. This impossible time-loop effect also happened with a game frequented by bonus players taking advantage of the zero house edge on the double up feature. This is pure coincidence.