Finsoft/Spielo G2 Games Issue

[Jufo]

There is a another issue here that has been touched on but perhaps deserves to be more clearly flagged up, and that's the fact that the game behaves differently in free play compared to real play.

Even if Betfred are going to stick with the 'wrong help file' excuse, we're still left with a game that plays differently (i.e. fairly) in free play mode, and then cheats in real money mode - which is clearly deceptive behaviour.

I agree. The Fun mode vs. Real mode behaviour is something that still should be examined. If they are found to be different, ie. fun mode pays out 100% then this is another clear indication of deliberate deception. If the OP has logs of 9 hours playing this game in fun mode, then someone should look into the data. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to verify from the data whether the fun mode pays 96% or 100% based on the p-value from the data.

 

[thelawnet]

The results posted by the OP that claim this were not independently checked or duplicated. Moreover, there is no proof that the posted server request represents the full communication between player and server for the game event.

I have checked and can confirm indeed the post by the game in free play and real play are different.

I recorded this XML message at Bet365, in real money mode, betting on black:

<placebet signature="xxx" site="bet365" session="xxx" stamp="xxx" game_instance="xxx" mode="REAL" game="HILOGAMBLER" initialnumber="0"><bet id="0" payout="null" repeatcount="1" stake="5" state="0"><betselections><betselection savedstake="0" selection="HIGHLOW_BLACK" id="0" /></betselections></bet></placebet>

And the response:

<placebet game_instance="xxx" playduration="28" session="xxx" stamp="xxx"><bet bettype="ACS" id="xxx" isqualifiedforjackpot="false" payout="9.75" repeatcount="0" repeatssofar="1" stake="5.0" state="PLC"><betselections><betselection id="0" price="1.95" selectedvalue="" selection="HIGHLOW_BLACK" stake="0.0"><betoutcomes><betoutcome haswon="1" price="1.95" value="2"/></betoutcomes></betselection></betselections></bet><gamestate isover="0" isspecial="0" iswaitingstake="0" iswon="1" manuallypaidout="0" midbalance="xxx"><result number0="2"/></gamestate><account balance="xxx" country="GB" displaybalance="xxx" firstname="" language="1" lastname="" nonwithdrawablebalance="NaN" playabilityrolloverpercent="0.0" title="" username="xxx"><preferences mus="0" snd="0"/></account><notifications/></placebet>


And at Betfred in free play with the same bet:

<funplayrequests signature="xxx" site="BetFred" mode="FUN" game="HILOGAMBLER"><funplayrequest id="0" allowduplicates="true" count="1" rangehigh="12" rangelow="1" method="generaterandomnumbers" /></funplayrequests>

And the reply:
<funplayrequests><randomnumbers id="0">10</randomnumbers></funplayrequests>


My observations are:

* At Bet365 the game pays out 1.95, which is consistent with a fair 97.5% RTP game, but I haven't tested it for fairness.
* It is necessary for a real play game to send the bet at the time of requesting the result, so the message request in real mode is not inherently suspicious
* It is not unusual for a free play game to operate 'offline', for speed and to conserve server resources, albeit that technically no server request is required at all, since the random numbers can be generated client-side
* It is indeed correct, that if the real play game is adaptive to player's bet, that the free play game cannot be, since I can confirm that no message is sent to the server other than these that could contain the player's bet.

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

Thelawnet, thank you for your efforts on behalf of Free Play vs. Real Play. This now seems to be established.

 

[thelawnet]

I would note that the other sites could be tested in an expedient fashion using custom-authored automated software provided that you had a balance at the site (or were willing to deposit to do so).

There is some reason to believe that the software does not operate in the same manner on all sites, since the Bet365 has a paytable consistent with a fair, but casino-advantage, game, whereas Betfred does not.

It seems therefore that the game has both an adaptive setting to adjust RTP (which is cheating) and the option to adjust the paytable (which is not). Whether it is ever a fair game is not clear to me.

 

[dunover]

This is not relevant to the operation of the program. It's rogue programming and behavior was not based on stake size. The OP had long periods of the same stake, but did occasionally change stakes.

It shouldn't be but that is my point. If the game is not fair, and adheres tightly to an RTP significant rises in stake will weight an outcome against the player if the result would mean the player deviating too far from the variance allowed in the program. If you talk to players (I've never played one admittedly) who frequent the FOBT's that have similar games, this is common despite them allegedly being 'random'. I digress though from my point.
If this game uses weighting, which seems to be the consensus here, results can be slewed by varying the stake.

 

[katie91]

I'm pleased that others have been able to independently verify my results and have come to the same conclusions about these games.

Thelawnet, would you mind also examining the requests for the following games in free play mode for an anomaly which we discovered when looking at HiLo Gambler:

Trail Blazer
Aladdin's Treasure
Hi Lo Shuffle

I believe they all show the behaviour of excluding the player's current number from the results of the next spin in free play mode only. This can be seen as an excludenumbers parameter in the request.

For a hi-lo game, landing on the same number is bad for the player as it will always cause them to lose. This causes the player's RTP to be much higher in free play than real play. In fact, it wouldn't be possible for the player to lose on a bet of 1 which would result in a > 100% RTP for this bet. I don't believe this happens in real money play.

For now I would prefer it if Betfred focussed their investigation on Reel Deal and Hi Lo Gambler as these are the deceptive and rigged games I played and lost money on. While they have Finsoft on the line they might as well clean up all their games and it does show that the free play and real play games can be configured differently with higher RTPs in free play.

 

[thelawnet]

Yes it does show the following:

<funplayrequests signature="xyz" site="BetFred" mode="FUN" game="TRAILBLAZER"><funplayrequest id="0" excludenumbers="20" allowduplicates="true" count="1" rangehigh="20" rangelow="1" method="generaterandomnumbers" /></funplayrequests>

where excludenumbers is the number displayed, so 20 in this case, but it could be anything from 1-20.

I conducted 100 trials and the same number never occurred twice in a row, which has a chance by random luck of only 0.5%, which given the nature of the excludenumbers parameter, which serves no purpose that I can see, other than to cheat, is sufficient for me to conclude that the freeplay mode on this game is rigged in that it induces the player to play by demonstrating a higher-than-actual chance of winning.

Therefore it seems that this company cheats as a matter of course and a reasonable response would be to pull all their games from the casinos they are offered on.

 

[katie91]

Aaron@Betfred, As you can see my overall experience at Betfred as a HiLo player has been disappointing. I hope you continue this investigation with Finsoft/Realistic Games to get to the bottom of why they are providing so many deceptive/rigged games and refund players where appropriate. I would hope that if Finsoft and Realistic Games cared about their reputation they would also want to make a statement about this. I certainly won't be playing any of their games again if they consider this kind of behaviour to be acceptable.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Aaron@Betfred, As you can see my overall experience at Betfred as a HiLo player has been disappointing. I hope you continue this investigation with Finsoft/Realistic Games to get to the bottom of why they are providing so many deceptive/rigged games and refund players where appropriate. I would hope that if Finsoft and Realistic Games cared about their reputation they would also want to make a statement about this. I certainly won't be playing any of their games again if they consider this kind of behaviour to be acceptable.

I have to say Katie, your language is very measured and reserved, considering what's been uncovered here.

I'd be going for stronger words than 'disappointing'

Kudos to you for bringing this whole matter to light, I think a lot of people are going to watching this whole affair very closely indeed.

 

[deucebag]

Surely, we're talking fraud here? It's clearly intentional.

 

[katie91]

Editor's note: this player opened an account at this casino using another person's identity, and misrepresented himself to the community and those who were trying to assist him. This does not negate the fact that there are serious issues with the software and how the regulatory commission and affected casinos are responding to this.

I was initially very angry with Betfred about this but I've had a couple of weeks to calm down since then. I guess for a lot of people they were waiting for Eliot / Betfred to complete their analysis so it's only just starting. For me I've known that my log files were genuine and if you've seen the game play as much as I have you would be convinced that it was not dealing a fair game.

It's a relief to get this all confirmed by other parties, collecting all the evidence and handling the investigation has been very stressful over the past few weeks (not to mention the money lost on these games). I think it's at the point now where it's about more than just one player (me) and possibly more than one casino and there are people much better qualified than me to lead at this point. I hope you get the answers from other casinos but personally I never want to see these games again.

I hope Aaron and Betfred pursue Finsoft to get the answers here and ultimately refund the players involved. They do seem to be making progress (slowly) with this but I think there's still a long way to go.

 

[Balthazar]

The problem is that the probabilities it uses are not the same ones displayed to the user. This game is like a roulette game, where the server draws a number between 0-40 instead of 0-36 and if the drawn number is between 37-40 then the server randomly chooses one of the numbers where the player didn't bet on. It's still completely random and the player CAN get ahead, it's just that there are extra outcomes added to increase the house edge.

AKA rigged and completely illegal. I don't know how people could see this any different than plain old rigged Blackjack.

 

[mattsgame]

This whole thing is becoming crazy, and I would have expected a better response from Betfred.


EDIT: Removed the rest of my post as I think I maybe a little mixed up.

Is this the

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

Betfred etc are talking about? The game is not actually listed on that site.

 

[dunover]

I was initially very angry with Betfred about this but I've had a couple of weeks to calm down since then. I guess for a lot of people they were waiting for Eliot / Betfred to complete their analysis so it's only just starting. For me I've known that my log files were genuine and if you've seen the game play as much as I have you would be convinced that it was not dealing a fair game.

It's a relief to get this all confirmed by other parties, collecting all the evidence and handling the investigation has been very stressful over the past few weeks (not to mention the money lost on these games). I think it's at the point now where it's about more than just one player (me) and possibly more than one casino and there are people much better qualified than me to lead at this point. I hope you get the answers from other casinos but personally I never want to see these games again.

I hope Aaron and Betfred pursue Finsoft to get the answers here and ultimately refund the players involved. They do seem to be making progress (slowly) with this but I think there's still a long way to go.

Katie, I'm glad you initiated this thread for the benefit of all players. I would expect to see similar analysis of all similar games if possible from all providers. I would NOT expect this case to be unique, or this particular software supplier the only offender. I get the feeling this is endemic rather than unique. If only we could obtain this data for slots too, it would put to bed much conjecture and explain the rationale for many players' suspicions and opinions resulting solely from their experience.
Just one question. You played a significant number of coins on this game, and obviously lost badly. At what point did you suspect dubious software? I think it would have been obvious quite quickly you'd never win. I assume you chased and chased before realizing.

 

[katie91]

I guess when I was down by about 200 bets I suspected the game wasn't fair. I asked my brother to check the results the first time and he said we needed more spins before going public in case it was just bad luck. I then played another 10000 or so spins at minimum betsize over about 5 days.

I never got to the point where I was placing massive bets so I don't think I was really chasing losses. I could imagaine someone losing very badly on this game though if they thought it was fair and kept doubling up their bets to chase losses. The maximum bet on the game is £1000 so you could be cheated out of as much as £40/spin.

 

[dunover]

I guess when I was down by about 200 bets I suspected the game wasn't fair. I asked my brother to check the results the first time and he said we needed more spins before going public in case it was just bad luck. I then played another 10000 or so spins at minimum betsize over about 5 days.

I never got to the point where I was placing massive bets so I don't think I was really chasing losses. I could imagaine someone losing very badly on this game though if they thought it was fair and kept doubling up their bets to chase losses. The maximum bet on the game is £1000 so you could be cheated out of as much as £40/spin.

Good for that. It's clear that this software is reactive to players' stakes and choices and weights accordingly, and that making a sudden large stake to alleviate previous gradual losses on low stakes would be a disaster. It shouldn't do but I think we all know it would. It plays almost like people have described the FOBT's as playing. And they are appalling by all accounts.

 

[Casinomeister]

Just an FYI that I'll be getting involved with this tomorrow (Monday). As many of you may have guessed, I was out most of last week and the Christmas holidays.

In the meantime, if someone could post a list of casinos that use this software, I would surely appreciate it. Thanks!

 

[vinylweatherman]

It seems that Finsoft is part of the Boss Media group, which seems to have changed it's name a couple of times. Maybe Realistic Games is one of Finsoft's partners in game development. The games would then be produced by Realistic and other partners, but distributed by Finsoft. Finsoft have a small list of "blue chip" client companies on their site, which is a starting point to who might have these games. The list seems to be comprised of online bookies.

It is immune to cut & paste.

It also only shows 10 clients that have content in "different product areas", so is probably just an example list, not a full list of casinos having this game.


The way this is developing suggests that so far we have the "tip of the iceberg" with regard to games that "cheat" depending on what the player bets on, as well as being compensated, weighted, etc.

It also seems that the free play version does NOT "cheat", and so cannot be used as a means to check whether or not the real money version plays fair.

The only way forward would be to "mystery shop" these games by using real money accounts and gather enough data whilst using a betting pattern most likely to show up any adaptive behaviour, such as the OP's betting on one colour for thousands of wagers.

 

[katie91]

The casinos with the HiLo Gambler game that I could find are:

Betfred
Bet365
Nordic Bet
Sporting Bet
Stan James
Boylesports

There may be others I have missed.

 

[thelawnet]

There is a map here of the links between software:



Opnebet = Electracade (same company)

Finsoft is Gtech/Spielo G2, as is GTS.

The cheating (in free play mode at least) Aladdin's Treasure (from Finsoft) has an Electracade logo at bottom-right.

The format of the XML message sent by the Aladdin's Treasure game in free play mode is identical to the cheating-in-real-play Hi-Lo Gambler. However it seems that all Finsoft games use the same format for free play, and that it permits but does not necessarily encourage the individual developer to cheat.

Openbet have been involved in several previous scandals of incompetent came configuration, such as https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/sky-vegas-confiscates-big-wins-on-their-new-slot.48633/ and others.

 

[mattsgame]

Hi all,

In the meantime we will be removing the game, but let me stress that all data requested will be made available to all relevant parties.

Kind regards,

Aaron
Betfred

The HiLo Gambler game is still on the site? or was this only Real Deal?

 

[ThePOGG]

Ok - i'm coming to the party late on this one. I've been conscious of this thread for about a week but delaying reading it as i've been updating all the casino reviews and wanted to wait until i got to Betfred before getting bogged down.

As i see it this game has been confirmed to not be offering true odds (i.e. odds reflective of an actual game of cards). Help files really have NOTHING to do with the problem here. Weighting outcomes in games that mimic cards, dice, wheels ect is absolutely deceptive and unethical. Realistic in this instance have programmed a game to do just that. As such they've broken an ethical standard in what would be acceptable if this industry was properly regulated.

Is any of the above wrong?

If i've picked this up right, if a casino were caught rigging there blackjack games you wouldn't continue to play with them and just not play blackjack, you'd avoid them completely. Similarly, if i caught a software platform offering a intentionally rigged game i'd blacklist the entire software platform, not just the game i caught the rig on. Following this line of thought, as Realistic have been caught offering unethical games any casino property that is interested in protecting their reputation should pull ALL games from this provider. They can no longer be trusted to audit their own games or in fact program fair games to begin with.

Eliot - i'd be happy to help apply pressure to any parties that you want response from and have contacts within most of the casinos listed offering these games. Anything i can do, just drop me a PM.

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

Is any of the above wrong?

What you've stated is consistent with my opinion.

Eliot - i'd be happy to help apply pressure to any parties that you want response from and have contacts within most of the casinos listed offering these games.

I've done what I am willing to do here. This is much bigger than Realistic Games. It involves multiple parties at many levels and is still in the discovery phase. Betfred has been almost entirely non-cooperative. Every other party has been entirely non-cooperative.

At this point, there is a growing list of major online casinos that should be considered as potential rogues. None have come forward to address this issue. The one casino caught in the crosshairs (Betfred) has at best directly implicated itself in this fraud. There is a software company that is definitely rogue. There is a software distributor that may be rogue. There is a governmental regulatory agency that is claiming no reponsibility in its oversight obligations. And so on.

There is almost too much here to keep track of. None of these parites is cooperating with my inquiries, so I have dropped out as an active investigator. I simply have no leverage.

 

[Seventh777]

What you've stated is consistent with my opinion.

I've done what I am willing to do here. This is much bigger than Realistic Games. It involves multiple parties at many levels and is still in the discovery phase. Betfred has been almost entirely non-cooperative. Every other party has been entirely non-cooperative.

At this point, there is a growing list of major online casinos that should be considered as potential rogues. None have come forward to address this issue. The one casino caught in the crosshairs (Betfred) has at best directly implicated itself in this fraud. There is a software company that is definitely rogue. There is a software distributor that may be rogue. There is a governmental regulatory agency that is claiming no reponsibility in its oversight obligations. And so on.

There is almost too much here to keep track of. None of these parites is cooperating with my inquiries, so I have dropped out as an active investigator. I simply have no leverage.

Bloody hell, about time that some form of regulatory agency stepped in and did take responsibility, beggars belief that in these times of regulations etc that the only people involved in exposing it are completely independent entities with absolutely no leverage whatsoever (no disrespect intended).

 

[ThePOGG]

What you've stated is consistent with my opinion.

I've done what I am willing to do here. This is much bigger than Realistic Games. It involves multiple parties at many levels and is still in the discovery phase. Betfred has been almost entirely non-cooperative. Every other party has been entirely non-cooperative.

At this point, there is a growing list of major online casinos that should be considered as potential rogues. None have come forward to address this issue. The one casino caught in the crosshairs (Betfred) has at best directly implicated itself in this fraud. There is a software company that is definitely rogue. There is a software distributor that may be rogue. There is a governmental regulatory agency that is claiming no reponsibility in its oversight obligations. And so on.

There is almost too much here to keep track of. None of these parites is cooperating with my inquiries, so I have dropped out as an active investigator. I simply have no leverage.

In that case i will be contacting each of my AM's at the various affected casinos asap, contacting the UKGC to discuss the licensing of Realistic Games, contacting other major portals owners who i have a realtionship with directly and posting about this on a few affiliate directed forums to encourage as many other webmasters as possible to apply pressure. This is an extremely serious issue and i can understand your frustration.