Casino City and Ecogra

[lanidar]

Lanidar, wherever you are ... there's a world outside and there are more languages than your language. Just stop to make fun at people who didn't grow up with English, okay?!

I really didn't wanna post in here anymore but this stuff makes me sick! Just go and try to learn another language ... then you'll know how hard it is, SICKO!

FIRST.....Thank You Caruso.
As you said, I was paying Chucho a compliment.
Chucho is a VERY good friend of mine.

SECOND...SPYBARBIE
WTF are you talking about?

[caruso]

Jetset's double standards are spectacular.

When portals he considers to be his "enemy" carry casinos he disapproves of, he jumps on the banner-waving bandwagon. Shame on these portals for daring to carry casinos that slow-pay players! (Grand Banks **hint hint**) Root them out and kill them off!

Now, we have a portal which 1) lists every rogue casino under the sun without a single disclaimer and 2) has done so for a LONG time and with an apparent absolute lack of any knowledge of the casino scene or the nature of the roguedom. This is however acceptable to Jetset because his casino interests are well served with this potential legal challenge to the DoJ and the subsequent free-flowing US gambling dollar.

Anything to turn a buck. I hope players can see through this sickening charade.

Where is the challenge to this portal to do its homework? Where is the responsible admonishment issued by ANY one person on the industry side for this lack of responsibility? You jump on your "enemies" quickly enough - how about a word or two to the wise for people carrying Windows, Crystal Palace, Net Gaming? Good grief.

Just spectacular, sickening double standards.

I hope this action fails. And considering the substance behind it, I'm optimistic.

[Vesuvio]

One poster was against rendering assistance in identifying rogue casinos a few posts back. How is that helping? In preference to posts like "XXXX is a rogue" and doing nothing further surely it would be better to take a few moments to assemble the reasons for the accusation and perhaps a link in support of it, and forward it to (in this case) CC? The time for accusations and insult is if that is not acted upon, not the moment the guy makes an appearance here.

That was me, I think.

Jetset, why should a player respond to an individual portal that carries dubious casinos? They earn money from this and seem to have sophisticated software that automates research on the internet (though I wonder if there's really no human interaction in the process - not even cross-checking of info?). It would take an afternoon for one person to go through the basic points of reference on the web and come up with a list of rogue casinos, assuming that's what they wanted to do.

Should I also write to all the other portals? Isn't it perhaps better if we do post on here (in one central place) and if the portals really do have a conscience they'll check here and find it?

The way I see this is that the guy (please read his posts again) came here prepared to enter into a dialogue and attend to the rogues on his site by taking down links to the casinos involved and identifying those where there was evidence of bad or dishonest conduct. Some of you have responded to this by showering him with insults, and in one case suggesting that helping to identify known rogues to him (or any other portalmaster for that matter) is not something experienced players should do.

I've no axe to grind with him - but he came here to post about the challenge to the DoJ and get some useful exposure for his website in the process. If the experience makes him rethink (or speed up) the exposure of rogue casinos, then great, but I don't see the need for a dialogue - there are a few casinos it's hard to place, but most of the rogues are obvious to anyone interested in identifying them.

But imo you do not resolve problems in this way, or by making the negative assumption that everyone has an ulterior motive in this industry and should be ridiculed or run out of town.

I don't see an ulterior motive - just the usual aim of making a profit that's behind any business. The action against the DoJ may be a good thing (I've no idea of the details), but I'm sure it's based on business calculations. There's nothing wrong with that, but the excessive praise from some quarters on here can only be explained by obvious relief that a bigger company is supporting their own interests.

One last point: I don't agree with your criticism of creating an 'us and them' situation, as that's just the way things are. Casinos have different interests to portal owners, who have different interests to players. Society as a whole also has its own interests, and I'm not sure an increase in the exposure of the on-line gambling industry is really one of them.

[Casino City]

Vesuvio:

You made a couple comments in your recent post that I would like to address:

why should a player respond to an individual portal that carries dubious casinos? They earn money from this and seem to have sophisticated software that automates research on the internet (though I wonder if there's really no human interaction in the process - not even cross-checking of info?).

In terms of players choosing casinos, I would be the first to say that at the present time using our information without also consulting other sources would not provide the well-rounded picture a player should want. However, I do want to repeat again it is not our desire or intention to earn money from dubious casinos. As as said in an earlier post, we have business relationships with perhaps 1% of the casinos in our directory, and receive no financial benefit from the others besides the indirect benefit we might receive as a result of providing a web resource that includes a comprehensive directory. In terms of human interaction in our research, we do plenty of that also. For example, we have thusfar called the top 1/3 of all gaming sites (around 700) to obtain ownership and other information. The process I was referencing as automated was the process of creating images of the home pages, and the construction of pages about individual casinos, not gathering data about individual casinos, which is done by real people.

I've no axe to grind with him - but he came here to post about the challenge to the DoJ and get some useful exposure for his website in the process.

Actually, this is not true. Casinomeister posted the news of our lawsuit on his own, and without any prompting on the part of me or anyone involved in Casino City because he decided it was interesting news. I signed up and began making posts to respond to others on this board. A temporary but very embarrasing glitch on our site was exposed here relating to eCOGRA seals, which we addressed in minutes of being aware of that issue. This then turned into a discussion of our treatment of rogue casinos, which is an area I agree is very important for us to handle appropriately, and I am working to make sure we are responsible in this area as fast as humanly possible.

I don't see an ulterior motive - just the usual aim of making a profit that's behind any business. The action against the DoJ may be a good thing (I've no idea of the details), but I'm sure it's based on business calculations

I actually didn't make this decision based on a profit calculation. In fact, many on my staff questioned whether it was a good business decision. I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do, while feeling there was a reasonable change it was not a stupid business decision. Certainly I do hope it does not end up being a big mistake for the business - my wife and my staff don't exactly appreciate significant mistakes on that front.

[Vesuvio]

Casino City,

Thanks for your articulate reply. You're right about how you appeared on this website - I hadn't followed all the posts. I also hope the lawsuit doesn't turn out badly for your business as you do seem genuinely interested in doing the right thing!

In reply to the other points:

1) I didn't intend to say this time that you were earning money from the rogue casinos. I just meant that the directory's run to make money so it's reasonable if you spend a small proportion of that doing some research into how trustworthy the casinos are. I thought Jetset's suggestion of us all writing in was a bit strange & I'm sure you can easily get a grip on the issue without that.

2) I originally said you could be expected to investigate the casinos you listed as it wasn't just an automatically generated directory of the type you usually see on the internet - you then said it was a highly automated process (giving the example of screenshots). I was then probing to see if you did also manually generate the information for each casino. I see you do so obviously it does give you the chance to check the casinos a little more closely. From your posts I'm sure you will and it sounds as though your directory could become very useful for players in the future.

[amandajm]

So as it stands.

Those that have had a go at casinocity for advertising known rogues are trouble makers and poor agenda ridden souls who should be grateful?

Do pull the other one.

Hahaha.

Where Has The Original Mary Gone? Input and Data Needed.

[Casino City]

Vesuvio:

Thank you for your comments on my last post.

1. I agree that we should spend some of our resources tracking down bad casinos, and I hope I have made it clear that we will do that. However, we're only human, so will certainly appreciate input from others where they think we might have missed one.

2. We do have people working on the directory with very different skill levels, so it does happen to be the case that there are challenges for us here. The vast majority of our content development work is done by college students working as interns. While this skill set works well calling up casinos and clarifying information, it doesn't work to call up or e-mail a casino to ask if they are trustworthy. We also happen to have particular challenges in this area over the next few weeks because we have to complete a number of print publications that that are our bread and butter before the G2E conference at the beginning of October (we cannot afford not to have those new products ready at that time,) and because the senior person who directs the student interns in on vacation for two weeks starting in a few days. I don't mean these to be excuses - we can and should do a good job here, but it does mean I'm a bit more constrained than would otherwise be the case over the very near term.

3. Just so everyone knows, while Casino City has been around for a very long time (originally launced in 1995, and I believe the original gaming portal website), until recently our web content was primarily focused on land-based casino gaming, where I believe we do provide really outstanding content. Our current online casino site was only launched about three months ago, however, so is still really in its very early infancy. Obviously the site need to grow up in areas such as identifying good and bad casinos, and that will happen. Originally, I did not think we would have the problems we are having here. We build Version 1 of the site based on popularity rankings of websites. I assumed that sites that were popular would prove to be reputable since I did not think it would be possible to have a rogue site with very high usage levels. When it became clear that this premise was false a few weeks ago, we started to have discussions about how to address this issue of high traffic ranks for disreputable casinos. That discussion resulted in a great deal of internal debate about how to properly address the issue, and some amount of internal controversy about what level of evidence should be required to consider a casino to be rogue. I think some of the internal controversy was correct because there are a lot of shades of grey here. However, we will definitely continue plugging away until we have a clear philosophy that makes sense, that is responsible, and that is as consistently applied as possible.

[Casino City]

Amandajm:

Just to be clear, I don't mind at all people getting after us for not identifying rogue casinos earlier. I agree completely that we should be doing that, and hope that is clear to anyone who reads all of my posts on this thread. However, I would point out that I do not view listing casinos in the directory the same as advertising them. I don't think anyone would call our skull and crossbones treatment for windows casino an advertisement any more than they would say listing windows casino in the rogue casino section on the casinomeister website is advertising them.

[Casinomeister]

Just want to point out a couple of things…

What may have initiated some of the furor over this whole listing thing is that perhaps there is a misunderstanding on the the difference between a portal that is an affiliate and a portal that is providing information as an directory. There are some major differences.

Affiliate sites are those that receive a cut in player losses - and some of these sites understandably come under fire when it's seems they are receiving a "cut" from roguish enterprises. These sites want you to play at these casinos (intent) because they gain from the profits they make bcause of this direct linking.

Directories gain profit from the ability to provide a wealth of information. Normally, they are not receiving profit from individual links (in most cases).

The problem is that directories may "direct" a player to a casino that is ethically challenged, simply because it is listed there. There really is no intent involved. Casino City is faces this challenge and hopefully they will serve as an example for other directories to follow.

I also want to point out the complexity of defining "rogue". Sometimes it’s quite easy: xyz casino makes untruthful and deceptive statements to players and does not act to correct this = rogue. xyz casino has cheating software = rogue. xyz casino fails to pay its players = rogue, are just some examples.

And then there is the degree of rogueness, (intensity, number of players affected, intent, ethics involved, etc.) weighed against how the casinos react to player “rogue awareness". Some casinos remain aloof, some throw lawyers at you, some try to make amends.

You also need to be aware what your sources are when collecting information for any rogue section. Forums are problematic since many players use the forums as a means of blackmail – so it’s extremely important to consider the source. Another way to collect rogue information is to deal directly with the casinos to assist players – but this is demanding and sucks up a lot of time and resources. And then you can make investigations yourself.

I applaud Casino City’s efforts in weeding through the emotional outbursts and using the comments make here constructively; I will be assisting them in providing information for their “skull and crossbones”/delinking efforts.

As an endnote to this post, I really hope for the day when we can all be a bit more constructive – and not so destructive. I tire of the unnecessary freaking out and negativity that in some threads is so predictable. These are bad vibes which are really stressing some of you out. Let’s try not to let these “bad vibes” get the best of us, eh?

[jetset]

Jetset's double standards are spectacular.

When portals he considers to be his "enemy" carry casinos he disapproves of, he jumps on the banner-waving bandwagon. Shame on these portals for daring to carry casinos that slow-pay players! (Grand Banks **hint hint**) Root them out and kill them off!

Now, we have a portal which 1) lists every rogue casino under the sun without a single disclaimer and 2) has done so for a LONG time and with an apparent absolute lack of any knowledge of the casino scene or the nature of the roguedom. This is however acceptable to Jetset because his casino interests are well served with this potential legal challenge to the DoJ and the subsequent free-flowing US gambling dollar.

Anything to turn a buck. I hope players can see through this sickening charade.

Where is the challenge to this portal to do its homework? Where is the responsible admonishment issued by ANY one person on the industry side for this lack of responsibility? You jump on your "enemies" quickly enough - how about a word or two to the wise for people carrying Windows, Crystal Palace, Net Gaming? Good grief.

Just spectacular, sickening double standards.

I hope this action fails. And considering the substance behind it, I'm optimistic.

Caruso, where do you come off making these offensive allegations in this typically vitriolic and unsubstantiated manner. What "casino interests" are you claiming I have that subjugate my integrity to "The pursuit of the Almighty Dollar" you are so fond of ascribing to everyone that disagrees with you?

For years and despite occasional threats, my news service has posted cautions regarding known rogue behaviour in this industry, and challenged those operations beyond yelling on the fora. We may not accompany those cautions with your trademark histrionics, but we make the challenge objectively and without the shield of anonymity, and we produce evidence. Your specific comparison here of my cautions regarding Grand Banks with CC is totally erroneous - one has been ripping off players for years and has been repeatedly contacted by myself and others in protest, and the other (CC) is actually here making an attempt to right the wrongs on his site despite your unreasonable ranting and stamping. And btw I rarely go the huffing a puffing route you employ in your extreme posturing to "root out" evil.

I think that CC has probably given the lie to the rest of your diatribe, albeit in a considerably more reasonable and controlled presentation.

Vesuvio I have to congratulate you on responding to CC in a more civilised manner to pursue your debate with him. I think more can come from a combination of discussion and genuine intent than is achieved through hostility and ridicule.

It looks as if CC has addressed many of the points you have raised but one - your suggestion that I expect you to contact every portal out there. That is patently impractical for a player, but I do think that where you see (as in this case) obvious but unidentified rogues on a site where someone appears to be making an effort, a little help can benefit all concerned. As I said before - that is your choice.

Bryan...as usual, well said.