Dear Reader,

Another week goes by, another day closer to the ICE. For those of you unfamiliar with the International Casino Exhibition, it's one of the largest exhibitions in Europe that's held every year in January in London. Each year it's a bit bigger, and each year I have a blast. The best part is meeting the people involved with online casinos: casino managers, software providers, affiliate managers, and the other individuals, people like me, webmasters, and other persons who have certain interests in the industry. I also plan on checking out some of the booths, posing as an investor and asking pertinent questions to software providers, such as "Can Royal Flushes be turned to "off"? or "can your company guarantee that I will make a profit?" I guess I better hide my press pass.

The second best thing is city of London: restaurants, movies (Lord of the Rings: Twin Towers is on my agenda), the walking tours, the shops (Virgin records, here I come!) and cramming as many activities as possible in four days. And of course, you will hear of it all when I return.

Diligently yours,

Bryan

MY TRIP TO THE BAHAMAS
Part III of III

It's been over a month now that I've been back, and the memories linger. Some of the most memorable things that haven't been mentioned yet are the $100 Slot machines Ted Loh and I spied in the casino (no we didn't see anyone playing one), the immensity of fun things for kids and adults to do at the Atlantis hotel, and the bad attitudes of most of the locals.

But why three parts? Well I wanted to save room for the "Pirate Museum", another highlight of the trip. The Bahamas have a rich history, and one of the richest and intriguing aspects of their history are the legends and tales of Pirates.

Most of us have heard of "Blackbeard" or have certain images of "pirates" and how they scoured coastal villages raping, pillaging, and burning everything in their path. A true hollywood image, and purely fictional for that matter. According to the museum's historical research, most of the villages welcomed the "Pirates" as their own, giving them room and board since the pirates traded the merchandise that they stole at discounted prices. Fifty percent of the pirates were black. No one has ever been recorded "walking the plank" (Peter Pan myth). Blackbeard blockaded the Charleston harbor not for gold, but for medical supplies to treat his wounded men. Most chose piracy because it was exciting and had better pay and conditions then being on a regular merchant vessel, but of course their life expectancy wasn't long. Most were hung when caught by the British navy. There were several women pirate captains as well who were highly regarded by their crew and colleagues.

Interestingly enough, most pirates had a "code of conduct" which dealt with how they were to treat one another; cheating at gambling, stealing another mate's "loot", general disobedience, were dealt with harshly. One of the most severest sentences was "marooning". The culprit would be "marooned" on a desolate island with nothing but the clothes he wore, a knife, and a loaf of bread. He had to survive on his own and was not allowed to have any contact with anyone. If he was ever spotted in public in some local village, or wherever, he was put to death by his ex-crew mates.

But what I found most surprising was the last "code of conduct": any man who violates a woman without her consent will be put to death. This refuted one of my own prejudgements, and nullified all of these notions of rape, pillage, and burn.

So pirates got a bad rap, probably from a few bad apples. Apply this to online casinos and you can see the same thing happening. I thought that after nearly five years of watching this industry, things would change. Well, things haven't changed that much. It's still mostly unregulated. There are still the unscrupulous portals who send moronic spams, portal owners who cheat to get traffic, casinos who condone spam, casinos that take players' money and *poof* gone. Not many, but a few. But a few are too many. I vote for marooning. Check out the marooned "pirate" here.

OCA STATS GOOD FOR SOME
Worrying for others

Truegambler's Online Casino Analyser results have been keenly awaited by players for some time, and the initial stats on video poker at IGS-Cytech, Microgaming and Playtech powered casinos were the first to be released. In summary the three softwares were tested with varying numbers of hands Playtech (1.47 million hands), Microgaming (618 thousand hands) and Cytech (472 thousand hands) for their single line Jacks or Better game.

Although Truegambler avoided drawing conclusions and simply presented the numbers, readers were soon drawing their own conclusions although the software companies assessed remained mute as we went to press.

The analysis is carried out by using sophisticated technology resident on the testers' computers that mirrors all the game play to a central server. This collates the play from all beta testers and analyses the software fairness. By assembling and analysing the combined initial and next draw hands of large numbers of players who have been active at diverse venues since March last year a high volume sample was tested. A total of 2.5 million hands of video poker were played; the objective being to assess the likelihood of a random deal in the first deal and on the draw.

Microgaming has good results that show a 90 percent plulikelihoodod of fair play, especially on the first hand numbers which many believe are critical, but both Playtech and Aquaonline do not give results consistent with random deals from decks of cards. Playtech showed up the worst with a 99.4likelihoodod of being non-random, or as one expert described it "Playtech had a baaaad fit. 99.4% likely to be nonrandom. Which is to say, if you had a hundred Playtech software companies producing identical software with identical results, less than half of one of the companies is dealing fair video poker."

The project is ongoing, and will be analysing other softwares and other games - most anticipated being blackjack.
www.truegambler.com

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