Mathematical Proof that English Harbour is cheating

[kengam]

I wonder if English Harbour is feverously working on the new so called double up game as it will be expected now that they are using that as a coverup for the cheating bug.

I wonder if they threw that program together in the couple of days they had so they could easily convince Spear that the missing subroutine was a work in progress. It seems to have worked. I do not believe a word of it.

[soflat]

I wonder if English Harbour is feverously working on the new so called double up game as it will be expected now that they are using that as a coverup for the cheating bug.

LOL. Yeah, I can't wait to play the new double-up game. I hear it's real exciting.

Maybe this whole thing was just a marketing strategy to gain interest in the new game.

[vinylweatherman]

I suspect EH and Odds On will end up being punished enough, whatever the eventual verdict (accident or deception). This has highlighted that the possibility of code that alters the game in the favour of the house can get past testing procedures, and take some considerable investigation to unravel whether or not players were simply unlucky or the victim of a bug.
I expect now that every time many players seem to have abnormal streaks of bad luck will be less inclined to believe that it is all down to bad luck. This highlights that, although the RNG is fair, the algorithms that convert this into game results may not be, whether by accident or deliberate weighting, such as in 3 reel slots (where this would be legitimate).
If the industry is to gain full credibility for fairness, then ALL the source code needs to be evaluated by an independent organisation, followed by a large test of the game outputs, and whether they comply with the rules as shown to the player.
A weighted double bonus game would be OK provided players were made fully aware that this was a slots type bonus game, and that it was not simply a means to fool the player into doubling with a weighted double game while believing he was still playing a 50/50 game but with fancy graphics.
Odds On should eventually release the completed version of this bonus game. This will indeed show that they had an accident during development. If no such game ever materialises, an explanation will be required as to what they were testing.
I doubt an error that produced a doubling game that swung the same amount in the PLAYER'S favour would merit a thread of this length so quickly, and there would be little pressure on the casino to clean up it's procedures and not give players this break ever again!
There have been errors like this that weight games in the player's favour, but players often only complain when the casino notices and takes the game away, such as the VP with a small edge to the player in Crypto and the nickel DW at Sci-Fi casino. Once too many players cottoned on, the games were put back to a house edge, and in the case of Crypto casinos, they bodged this by keeping the old paytable in display but paying on the new.

I have always believed that some software (MG) is designed to produce streaks by the way that the algorithms interpret the raw random numbers into output, and I have mentioned my "lock down" theory where the software just gets stuck into a prolonged spell of dealing duff cards to the player, and miracle beats for the dealer time and time again where a dealer is involved. Overall, the results end up being fair, but the streaks can make or break a player.

Spear's latest explanation looks like the doubling game was more or less dealing "seconds" when the player won the double. The data seems to fit this, and this has been mentioned by another poster. Even if the redraw was random, it only happened when the player won, so gave the dealer a 50/50 chance of beating the player again. If the cards were weighted in this second selection, I would have expected the performance to be even worse than experienced.

I can believe that such bugs get into programs, especially where release schedules are tight, giving little time for prolonged testing. programming by committee can also lead to such bugs. MG have a challenging program of releasing 4 games a month, but look at all the bugs they were (and still are) having. They are simply pluging new games into existing game engines for the most part, and bugs tend to be minor (wrong rules displayed on Harveys etc), but the major core upgrades when new classes of game arrive have caused all sorts of trouble, including killing off casinos on the player PCs.

EH and Odds On would have been better off by introducing a new game with which to first test, and then launch, this new bonus doubling game. At least if things went wrong only a single, and obviously new, game would be affected. This would have made the "accident" explanation far more believable, and would have done far less damage to their future than this will end up doing (there are too many casinos for players to continue playing where they doubt the fairness of the game, no matter that the doubt may be totally unjustified).
I would expect EH to show the same level of concern for fairness to players they inadvertently label as "fraud risks", as they are expecting the player community to show them over this terrible blunder that they have made, with out any intent to defraud the players; that we will see if we listen to them and not simply make our minds up and "ignore all further correspondence from them".

[Simmo!]

There have been errors like this that weight games in the player's favour, but players often only complain when the casino notices and takes the game away, such as the VP with a small edge to the player in Crypto... Once too many players cottoned on, the games were put back to a house edge, and in the case of Crypto casinos, they bodged this by keeping the old paytable in display but paying on the new.

It was 99.94% originally. Their bodge IMO, well Inter's anyway, was more about trying to pass it off as an "upgrade" and giving the impression that they don't necessarily see their players as that intelligent

[Vesuvio]

Keep in mind the player is given a choice of whether to play the game or not, and that this was to occur randomly AFTER a doubling win and does not otherwise modify the standard doubling routine. It does not replace the doubling routine at all.

It still seems a bizarre idea for a variation on video poker. Are we supposed to assume that if they'd introduced this game they'd have made it absolutely clear to the player that it was dealing weighted cards? Even if they explained the mechanism surely it would (understandably) reduce players' confidence in all the other card games they offer (including video poker itself). Commercial madness, I'd have thought.

[erp1]

The Holy Grail for fairness in a card game is that each not exposed card has exactly the same probability to be the next exposed card.

We should not focus on regrettable but inevitable programming errors. We ought to focus on system errors.

According to the information we have now, the bonus game that apparently caused the biased result produced those biased results exactly because the game was meant to deal the cards weighted. We still don’t know exactly how and why the code for the bonus game in test mode influenced the doubling feature for games played in production mode.

What stands is that Spearmaster in detail has exposed that they deliberately were manipulating with the Holy Grail for fairness in a card game.

Add to that an unbelievably break of some of the fundamental guidelines for programming.

I think we should all thank Spearmaster – not attack him. He has helped us to gain a reasonably balanced insight in the events. We can now discuss and interpret based on facts.

Thanks to Spearmaster we now know that the biased outcome of the doubling facility in the second half of April is the consequence of a combination of inevitable bad programming praxis and manipulation with the Holy Grail for fairness in a card game.

[thelawnet]

1. The bonus game issue is NOT to replace the doubling routine at any time - it is supposed to be an additional bonus game which occurs randomly, and the player is supposed to be given a choice of whether or not they wish to play this bonus game, since some players would obviously prefer to stick to doubling only.

2. See point 1. The player is supposed to always have the choice to not play the bonus game when it occurs randomly after a doubling win.

But you still haven't answered how anybody could develop a card-based game that is weighted (i.e. cheating the player). Regardless of whether the game is +ve for the casino (which is fine), using rigged games is absolutely unacceptable.

I cannot understand why you are being so generous to them.

[thelawnet]

The Holy Grail for fairness in a card game is that each not exposed card has exactly the same probability to be the next exposed card.

We should not focus on regrettable but inevitable programming errors. We ought to focus on system errors.

According to the information we have now, the bonus game that apparently caused the biased result produced those biased results exactly because the game was meant to deal the cards weighted. We still don’t know exactly how and why the code for the bonus game in test mode influenced the doubling feature for games played in production mode.

What stands is that Spearmaster in detail has exposed that they deliberately were manipulating with the Holy Grail for fairness in a card game.

Add to that an unbelievably break of some of the fundamental guidelines for programming.

I think we should all thank Spearmaster – not attack him. He has helped us to gain a reasonably balanced insight in the events. We can now discuss and interpret based on facts.

Thanks to Spearmaster we now know that the biased outcome of the doubling facility in the second half of April is the consequence of a combination of inevitable bad programming praxis and manipulation with the Holy Grail for fairness in a card game.

It is not so much a Holy Grail as a founding principle.

There is randomness, and then there is cheating. What has been described is a cheating game. A broken cheating game, stuck in by mistake, yes, but still a cheating game.

[spearmaster]

I wonder if English Harbour is feverously working on the new so called double up game as it will be expected now that they are using that as a coverup for the cheating bug.

I wonder if they threw that program together in the couple of days they had so they could easily convince Spear that the missing subroutine was a work in progress. It seems to have worked. I do not believe a word of it.

You are obviously not a programmer - so please do not assume that stuff can be put together in an instant to suit one's whims. Neither are you qualified to make any assumption about my knowledge of programming or my ability to tell the difference between fact and fiction.

Got something constructive to add, or are you only intent on trying to damage my reputation?

[spearmaster]

It still seems a bizarre idea for a variation on video poker. Are we supposed to assume that if they'd introduced this game they'd have made it absolutely clear to the player that it was dealing weighted cards? Even if they explained the mechanism surely it would (understandably) reduce players' confidence in all the other card games they offer (including video poker itself). Commercial madness, I'd have thought.

The weighting would have only been on the bonus game. The doubling game itself would still have been normal.