Q&A Ask Me Anything about Slots (AMA) 2020 with Trancemonkey

@trancemonkey I think this has been asked and answered, but what information do game providers get from the casino about customers? I thought it was very limited information but just read this on a casinos privacy policy

Casino game providers​

We use a number of different casino game providers, which are integrated to our websites. When playing these games, the service providers can access and process some of your personal data (such as your first name, last name, username, country, language, currency, IP address, contact details (phone or email) and your gender). You will be able to see the specific game provider when starting a specific game. You can find a list of current game providers below:

  • NetEnt
  • MicroGaming
  • Evolution Gaming
  • Play 'N GO
  • Yggdrasil
  • NYX Gaming
  • Quickspin
  • Scientific Games
  • Relax Gaming
  • No Limit City
  • Push Gaming
  • Big Time Gaming
  • Pragmatic Play
  • Thunderkick
  • Elk Studios
  • Blueprint
  • GIG Games
  • iSoftbet
  • Red Tiger Gaming
There's no real reason providers should be privy to that information. All the provider needs to do is complete the request by the end user when spin is pressed surely? All that's needed from the provider is an RNG result

I remember someone on here analysing the information that was sent when spin is pressed and I'm sure I remember them saying that info such as last withdrawal etc is sent too. Why?
 
When playing these games, the service providers can access and process some of your personal data (such as your first name, last name, username, country, language, currency, IP address, contact details (phone or email) and your gender)

This depends on the integration to the casino and what the casino wants to give out. No one that I know of gives out all the information you write. Normally its just ip (they get this indirectly since you talk to their servers), country, language, currency and a external id that identifies the player at the casino.

This is specially true for EU since the suppliers has to identify and state exactly why they need the information they gather because of GDPR. So a game supplier has no reason to gather first or last name and making a case as to why its critical for them to do so is difficult. All it does is put a liability for them in case of a data breach. The less specific information they know about a user the better for themselves.

Casinos also don't want to give out more data than needed about their players to suppliers for competitive reasons. Imagine a supplier that knows the exact details of all the whales at a large casino. That could be worth a fortune to a competitor.
 
This depends on the integration to the casino and what the casino wants to give out. No one that I know of gives out all the information you write. Normally its just ip (they get this indirectly since you talk to their servers), country, language, currency and a external id that identifies the player at the casino.

This is specially true for EU since the suppliers has to identify and state exactly why they need the information they gather because of GDPR. So a game supplier has no reason to gather first or last name and making a case as to why its critical for them to do so is difficult. All it does is put a liability for them in case of a data breach. The less specific information they know about a user the better for themselves.

Casinos also don't want to give out more data than needed about their players to suppliers for competitive reasons. Imagine a supplier that knows the exact details of all the whales at a large casino. That could be worth a fortune to a competitor.
Well yes thats what I thought, and I've never seen a provider gather all that information, but that was copied and pasted from a casinos privacy policy.
 
Well yes thats what I thought, and I've never seen a provider gather all that information, but that was copied and pasted from a casinos privacy policy.
They probably just add all they can think of in there to be on the safe side instead of missing something, a customer finding out and the fallout that would follow.
 
I just watched the video with NetEnt and letsgiveitaspin on the creation of DOA2..

Very interesting part with the NetEnt product owner (game designer) saying to get the rtp in testing before it gets sent to certification, they did 11 Trillion spins , to get the rtp to 2 decimal places, at 96.80

If they wanted 1 decimal place they would need nowhere near that amount of spins.

And 11 Trillion spins takes 4 weeks on a really good computer according to the NetEnt guy.

if they do different rtp’s on games it is 4 weeks testing per rtp.

@trancemonkey is your experience similar ?
 
Another interesting insight from the NetEnt guy in part 5 of the video is that the reels don’t change as the multipliers increase in the bonus ,

They believe in random mathematics, same as the really good BTG post states in the Wild Flower thread.

Only just noticed this.
 
Another interesting insight from the NetEnt guy in part 5 of the video is that the reels don’t change as the multipliers increase in the bonus ,

They believe in random mathematics, same as the really good BTG post states in the Wild Flower thread.

Only just noticed this.
I have to say that the game does NOT feel like this - it definitely feels like it changes once you get the +5 spins....
 
What you ”feel” is not relevant at all, is it? You if any should know better than bringing feelings to the discussion
I completely agree - which is why i was careful to say that it "feels" like it changes, and not that i "know" it changes ;)
That said, i'll get my coat...
 
Can i ask why a players ID and the casino's ID is being send in the URL ? They hide it using Base64. Apart from monitoring or logging purposes, what more can it provide or do without us knowing?

Second; how does the licensing of a game for a casino exactly work? And more important, how is the winning of this slot being 'distributed' ?

Is this,

A, The players playing by that casino on that particular game, their wagering or simply put play in hard cash is being distributed with the advertised RTP.

B, The players playing by that casino have no effect on where they come from, and the wins are being distributed randomly. More important on what factor is this distribution based?*

C, None of the above, the casino simply has a license for offering the game, and the RTP of the game is randomly distributed by the casino.

*I know that volume in a casino plays a very important role. Have a dozen of players and the activity and / or wins can be huge. Have just a few players and basicly you can be playing against yourself it seems.

I'm sorry i just dont understand one thing. Over the last 6 months ive bin playing in one particular casino. Ive posted about this before, but here it goes. Initially i won 6k or so, i spunked it. Over weeks of time i deposit around 1500 to 2000 euro and i get back to the now 7k. I spunk it. I was attempting a high limit session and i was'nt affraid to lose it. Nothing. Weeks pass, so do my deposits, this time i finally tap the 10k. It took less then 20 minutes really to blow this all out on again a high limit session. Apart from being sickened by the volatility some games have, i hit nothing but a losing streak in any game over the last week.

My assumption is is that its just a matter of time (and deposits) before i am back at the 10k level + extra that i depositted? How big is the chance that my winnings wont be that +/- then i'm depositting really?

You cant tell me that i lose 5k, i do 2k deposits on avg and jump right back at a 7k, lose it, do again 2.5k of deposits, and boom back at 9 to 10k again, to hit a extreme wall of iron that even after 20 bonus buys (!) woud'nt come down. Please folks do not attempt this, this is in the course of 5 months by now and not one day. This is the only solid pattern i have that i'm working with and the only thing random really is "when" it's going to drop in again.

I wrote the casino in particular a few questions, just out of honesty, see if they are eager to answer them correctly. I wrote also that it will be my last time as well, because for me the fun kinds of stops when you know your walling things in a very artificial way. How else can i explain it. "All slots are told to be random" yet after a big win everything is dead. Like it's just sucking you up till the next deposit.

how many times people here attemped to 50 autoplay spins any game, woud'nt hit, and suddenly after your deposit it's right back at it. It's designed to keep you playing; to keep you depositting; next deposit it's going to be ok. If people dont understand how gambling online technically is designed, you won't break it. That's for sure.

If anyone remembers bandit winning 100k; after his withdrawl, he knew that it was going to be a loss streak. He attempted to do quite a few vids on low stakes. Pretty much all the luck was gone at that point. In every stream to be seen (powerup slots). Rocknrolla admitted to spunk 80 to 90k at one casino. Yet he won 90k back in december. Exactly what he poured in in a way. Stick long enough and you might record your own next win.

Perhaps a casino is just a reversed bank these days. You can stall it with certain uncertainty about when your going to get your investment minus interest back.
 
Can i ask why a players ID and the casino's ID is being send in the URL ? They hide it using Base64. Apart from monitoring or logging purposes, what more can it provide or do without us knowing?

Second; how does the licensing of a game for a casino exactly work? And more important, how is the winning of this slot being 'distributed' ?

Is this,

A, The players playing by that casino on that particular game, their wagering or simply put play in hard cash is being distributed with the advertised RTP.

B, The players playing by that casino have no effect on where they come from, and the wins are being distributed randomly. More important on what factor is this distribution based?*

C, None of the above, the casino simply has a license for offering the game, and the RTP of the game is randomly distributed by the casino.

*I know that volume in a casino plays a very important role. Have a dozen of players and the activity and / or wins can be huge. Have just a few players and basicly you can be playing against yourself it seems.

I'm sorry i just dont understand one thing. Over the last 6 months ive bin playing in one particular casino. Ive posted about this before, but here it goes. Initially i won 6k or so, i spunked it. Over weeks of time i deposit around 1500 to 2000 euro and i get back to the now 7k. I spunk it. I was attempting a high limit session and i was'nt affraid to lose it. Nothing. Weeks pass, so do my deposits, this time i finally tap the 10k. It took less then 20 minutes really to blow this all out on again a high limit session. Apart from being sickened by the volatility some games have, i hit nothing but a losing streak in any game over the last week.

My assumption is is that its just a matter of time (and deposits) before i am back at the 10k level + extra that i depositted? How big is the chance that my winnings wont be that +/- then i'm depositting really?

You cant tell me that i lose 5k, i do 2k deposits on avg and jump right back at a 7k, lose it, do again 2.5k of deposits, and boom back at 9 to 10k again, to hit a extreme wall of iron that even after 20 bonus buys (!) woud'nt come down. Please folks do not attempt this, this is in the course of 5 months by now and not one day. This is the only solid pattern i have that i'm working with and the only thing random really is "when" it's going to drop in again.

I wrote the casino in particular a few questions, just out of honesty, see if they are eager to answer them correctly. I wrote also that it will be my last time as well, because for me the fun kinds of stops when you know your walling things in a very artificial way. How else can i explain it. "All slots are told to be random" yet after a big win everything is dead. Like it's just sucking you up till the next deposit.

how many times people here attemped to 50 autoplay spins any game, woud'nt hit, and suddenly after your deposit it's right back at it. It's designed to keep you playing; to keep you depositting; next deposit it's going to be ok. If people dont understand how gambling online technically is designed, you won't break it. That's for sure.

If anyone remembers bandit winning 100k; after his withdrawl, he knew that it was going to be a loss streak. He attempted to do quite a few vids on low stakes. Pretty much all the luck was gone at that point. In every stream to be seen (powerup slots). Rocknrolla admitted to spunk 80 to 90k at one casino. Yet he won 90k back in december. Exactly what he poured in in a way. Stick long enough and you might record your own next win.

Perhaps a casino is just a reversed bank these days. You can stall it with certain uncertainty about when your going to get your investment minus interest back.
I'll have a stab haha

Most game providers host all the game logic and also all of the back end services like reporting, bonusing, blocking of players etc. For this kind of functionality, you need to know the Casino a request came from (as you will likely be integrated to multiple) and you need to know the player who is playing. Certainly on the game server my company provided, I could sit there and watch a live report of an individual players play (and did so on occasions where big roulette winners were playing 1k a spin). We also held player location details for regulatory and language/currency purposes (different regulations require different game implementations, so knowing a players location is needed to know if they need bonus buy on/off, spin limits, autoplay on off etc).

So there are tonnes of reasons why player information is passed to the game provider. None of them are nefarious (note, they COULD be, anything is possible. All the information COULD be used to rig anything you wanted. The point is, it's not, because that comes back to the whole conspiracy of the fact that rigging slots is pointless for the Casino's when they already make plenty of money legally).

On to the RTP question. None of your scenarios are correct, as they are based on a missunderstanding of RTP. RTP is not a 'pot' that is distributed. It is an outcome of the mathamatical model the slot is based on. Think of a coin. Odds are 50/50 for heads/tails. The coin isn't thinking 'I'm going to be heads for this guy and tails for the next one'. It's just statistics based on the possible outcomes. Slots are the same principal.

Here is a video where I explain RTP and even do a practical example of a slot showing how it works:



As for the rest, that is basically what you'd expect. If an RTP is 96%, then statistically, if you put in 100k you will get 96k back. Obviously there is variance around this, but broadly that is the point of the games. Big wins are rare, losses are common. So you may get lucky and get two big wins in a row (my wife has had back to back bonuses on Safari Megaways for instance), but more likely is you will get a big win and then a big run of losses or small wins. Again using a practical example, if you roll a 6 on a dice, then don't roll a 6 for a few rolls, you don't think the dice is rigged, you just know your chance of hitting lots of 6's is low.
 
Can i ask why a players ID and the casino's ID is being send in the URL ? They hide it using Base64. Apart from monitoring or logging purposes, what more can it provide or do without us knowing?

Second; how does the licensing of a game for a casino exactly work? And more important, how is the winning of this slot being 'distributed' ?

Is this,

A, The players playing by that casino on that particular game, their wagering or simply put play in hard cash is being distributed with the advertised RTP.

B, The players playing by that casino have no effect on where they come from, and the wins are being distributed randomly. More important on what factor is this distribution based?*

C, None of the above, the casino simply has a license for offering the game, and the RTP of the game is randomly distributed by the casino.

*I know that volume in a casino plays a very important role. Have a dozen of players and the activity and / or wins can be huge. Have just a few players and basicly you can be playing against yourself it seems.

I'm sorry i just dont understand one thing. Over the last 6 months ive bin playing in one particular casino. Ive posted about this before, but here it goes. Initially i won 6k or so, i spunked it. Over weeks of time i deposit around 1500 to 2000 euro and i get back to the now 7k. I spunk it. I was attempting a high limit session and i was'nt affraid to lose it. Nothing. Weeks pass, so do my deposits, this time i finally tap the 10k. It took less then 20 minutes really to blow this all out on again a high limit session. Apart from being sickened by the volatility some games have, i hit nothing but a losing streak in any game over the last week.

My assumption is is that its just a matter of time (and deposits) before i am back at the 10k level + extra that i depositted? How big is the chance that my winnings wont be that +/- then i'm depositting really?

You cant tell me that i lose 5k, i do 2k deposits on avg and jump right back at a 7k, lose it, do again 2.5k of deposits, and boom back at 9 to 10k again, to hit a extreme wall of iron that even after 20 bonus buys (!) woud'nt come down. Please folks do not attempt this, this is in the course of 5 months by now and not one day. This is the only solid pattern i have that i'm working with and the only thing random really is "when" it's going to drop in again.

I wrote the casino in particular a few questions, just out of honesty, see if they are eager to answer them correctly. I wrote also that it will be my last time as well, because for me the fun kinds of stops when you know your walling things in a very artificial way. How else can i explain it. "All slots are told to be random" yet after a big win everything is dead. Like it's just sucking you up till the next deposit.

how many times people here attemped to 50 autoplay spins any game, woud'nt hit, and suddenly after your deposit it's right back at it. It's designed to keep you playing; to keep you depositting; next deposit it's going to be ok. If people dont understand how gambling online technically is designed, you won't break it. That's for sure.

If anyone remembers bandit winning 100k; after his withdrawl, he knew that it was going to be a loss streak. He attempted to do quite a few vids on low stakes. Pretty much all the luck was gone at that point. In every stream to be seen (powerup slots). Rocknrolla admitted to spunk 80 to 90k at one casino. Yet he won 90k back in december. Exactly what he poured in in a way. Stick long enough and you might record your own next win.

Perhaps a casino is just a reversed bank these days. You can stall it with certain uncertainty about when your going to get your investment minus interest back.
Oh, I forgot to address licensing.

This varies wildly. There are 3 parties involved who all get a cut of profits. The Casino, The Game Platform, The Game Provider. Game Platforms that have more Game Providers available can cut better deals. Game Providers who have the most popular content can also cut better deals.

Roughly though, in the deals we used to sign, the Game Provider would get around 5% of monthly profits, the Platform Provider would get around 12% and the Casino takes the rest. If a game makes no profit in a month, then no one gets paid (this does happen more often than you think).

There are all sorts of commercial models though. Flat fees for exclusives, bigger/smaller percentages. Carryover of losses against future months, brown bags full of money when something goes wrong (not kidding).
 
I'll have a stab haha

Most game providers host all the game logic and also all of the back end services like reporting, bonusing, blocking of players etc. For this kind of functionality, you need to know the Casino a request came from (as you will likely be integrated to multiple) and you need to know the player who is playing. Certainly on the game server my company provided, I could sit there and watch a live report of an individual players play (and did so on occasions where big roulette winners were playing 1k a spin). We also held player location details for regulatory and language/currency purposes (different regulations require different game implementations, so knowing a players location is needed to know if they need bonus buy on/off, spin limits, autoplay on off etc).

So there are tonnes of reasons why player information is passed to the game provider. None of them are nefarious (note, they COULD be, anything is possible. All the information COULD be used to rig anything you wanted. The point is, it's not, because that comes back to the whole conspiracy of the fact that rigging slots is pointless for the Casino's when they already make plenty of money legally).

On to the RTP question. None of your scenarios are correct, as they are based on a missunderstanding of RTP. RTP is not a 'pot' that is distributed. It is an outcome of the mathamatical model the slot is based on. Think of a coin. Odds are 50/50 for heads/tails. The coin isn't thinking 'I'm going to be heads for this guy and tails for the next one'. It's just statistics based on the possible outcomes. Slots are the same principal.

Here is a video where I explain RTP and even do a practical example of a slot showing how it works:



As for the rest, that is basically what you'd expect. If an RTP is 96%, then statistically, if you put in 100k you will get 96k back. Obviously there is variance around this, but broadly that is the point of the games. Big wins are rare, losses are common. So you may get lucky and get two big wins in a row (my wife has had back to back bonuses on Safari Megaways for instance), but more likely is you will get a big win and then a big run of losses or small wins. Again using a practical example, if you roll a 6 on a dice, then don't roll a 6 for a few rolls, you don't think the dice is rigged, you just know your chance of hitting lots of 6's is low.


Thanks for the answer @The Reel Story - you've basically written exactly what i would have said.

Humans are pattern recognition machines - this is a scientific fact; it's why we see animals / faces in clouds, or why we see a picture of jesus in a dog poo. So when we see "patterns" to things, it is just our brain trying to make sense of what it sees, and because we can't comprehend true randomness, we assume it HAS to be doing something nefarious. I make these day in, day out, and even i sit here playing one of my own games saying to myself "this is in a foul mood at the moment", and if i didn't know it was just luck, i would swear blind it had decided to financially rape me.
 
Oh, I forgot to address licensing.

This varies wildly. There are 3 parties involved who all get a cut of profits. The Casino, The Game Platform, The Game Provider. Game Platforms that have more Game Providers available can cut better deals. Game Providers who have the most popular content can also cut better deals.

Roughly though, in the deals we used to sign, the Game Provider would get around 5% of monthly profits, the Platform Provider would get around 12% and the Casino takes the rest. If a game makes no profit in a month, then no one gets paid (this does happen more often than you think).

There are all sorts of commercial models though. Flat fees for exclusives, bigger/smaller percentages. Carryover of losses against future months, brown bags full of money when something goes wrong (not kidding).
We tag-teaming on this thread now then ;)
 
We tag-teaming on this thread now then ;)
I try to take a bit of the load off you where I can hehe. Your industry knowledge is far more up to date than mine though! I've been out of it for about 7 years at this point.

Also I, like you, sit there and swear at games. I literally have to say to myself 'You know this isn't screwing you on purpose.... but it's still BS' :p None of us are immune to it, and I can easily see how people who don't have detailed knowledge just get convinced it's all a sham.
 
A question not related to games being rigged:

How much access do frontline support staff have to sensitive systems/documents?
I'm sure at the bigger reputable casinos it's probably limited, but I can't help think that at the smaller, dodgier casinos "Mike" in the live chat is selling our ID documents to the Russian Mafia and filling his friends accounts up with free money each Friday night...
 

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