ThePOGG,
Another one of my patent pending, more-words-than-you-want-to-read posts that bears on the issue of monthly certifications, specifically as it relates to Certified Fair Gambling.
I've worked with Certified Fair Gambling (CFG) for over 3 years. I chose CFG over TST or eCOGRA specifically because, in addition to the financial RTP Percent calculation, CFG also runs an assortment of statistical tests on the game logs which I send them every month. (I, and others, have referenced this in several threads over the years.)
If you read a TST Monthly Game Payout Certification, you'll clearly see that Financial RTP Percent is all that is being certified. The same applies to an eCOGRA monthly report.
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From our Help files:
The Reported RTP is calculated by adding your winnings, or subtracting your losses, from your total bet amount, and dividing the result by your total bet amount.
I included this quote to exemplify exactly how simple a Financial RTP Percent calculation is - these monthly reports ain't rocket surgery.
Certified Fair Gambling (CFG), in addition to performing the Financial RTP Percent calculation above, also performs a number (a large number) of tests for the determination of statistical "fairness". (Again,
I and others have referenced this in several threads over the years.)
You can clearly see this by comparing the Monthly Certification documents of CFG, TST and eCOGRA. The CFG document includes the extremely significant statement
Audits were conducted on a subset of games using a variety of statistical tests for fairness.
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This one sentence makes the world of difference, and represents the reason that I chose CFG over TST and eCOGRA back in early 2009.
In additional to being a financial value, RTP is also a significant statistical value, of importance in a monthly report. However, though important, it is a relatively small part of the total CFG monthly audit, both in size and in impact.
An excellent example - a simple RTP analysis might possibly have missed the now infamous double-down Video Poker mess at English Harbour. (That is, if the double-down game count were not high enough to cause a 3-sigma drift in the game's total RTP, it would have simply slipped through the cracks.) However, just one of CFG's statistical tests would have captured the problem immediately, and without any doubt or question.
eCOGRA's 6-month RNG Certificates are simply Chi-squared analysis of the game output. Chi-squared analysis is also included in the monthly CFG analysis, but is again only a small part of the total testing. (It is also performed monthly, not twice a year, and is used against more than the 3 games which eCOGRA has chosen.) CFG also includes skip tests, run tests, streak tests, and a variety of others that are of importance to players and are based on CFG's extensive experience in statistical analysis as it relates to online gaming.
Obviously, I can't tell you to trust CFG. This is your choice, based (hopefully) on data and analysis (rather than conjecture and bias). However, CFG is our choice, and they receive not only our trust, but our reliance on their technical skills and experience.
I have only one comment that I believe I am allowed to make (without receiving excessive abuse) concerning the InterCasino Payout Percentage Information link which you provided. Going back, as they do, to what I am assuming is the beginning of 1998 (in total, 174 months), and providing, as they do, a certification report for just 1 of those months (May of 2010) would not cause me to reply "They already do this" to the statement "try to get them to release their auditing certification as well -- the monthly RTP results, the head, the tail, the whole damn thing."
Chris