Possible issue with BLR Tech casinos craps software

[bb28]

The points you make 4oak are sound, imho. For those countries lacking credible regulation and a credible watchdog agency, I do believe anything is possible. There isn't any way to know positively one way or the other in regards to rtg or rival or some of the other software that is less known.

 

[boymimbo]

Another thing I find interesting is when visiting and reading threads at the Wizard of Odds / Vegas, how endlessly the mathematicians and computer engineers trash online gaming, yet, the site promotes only one online casino which is Bodog. Just the fact that Bodog is willing to take illegal money transactions from the USA speaks volumes in itself about the promoter. If this same issue was casting doubts upon RTG software, one would have to wonder if M.S. (WOO) would have pursed the issue with the same vigor.

Even if a player recorded 5 million hands of BJ or Video Poker and fell 5% below expected RTP it would still be written off as just bad luck and expected variance without knowing every single bet made against the same game during that same time. Don’t think all computer software engineers are as stupid as BLR. The bigger online software providers are smart enough to provide quicker profits for the owners while completely avoiding issues like this one simply because they are smart enough and can with no regulation or enforcement.

Regardless, this thread should cast enough doubt for any online table player to run for the hills and bury their money where no online casino could find it until confirmed regulation and enforcement make an appearance.

One could only wonder why such a huge multi-billion industry can go on operating un-regulated like this for well over a decade.

Some thoughts. WoV / WoO doesn't trash online gaming, though many members have their doubts. The most frequent posters over there are not mathematicians nor computer engineers, though the site does feature many representatives of the gaming community. This site's sponsors feature many illegal gaming sites but it persists. The WOV/WOO receives legal advertising dollars and Bodog accepts US payments. Is that unethical? If you look at the reasons why he supports Bodog and only supports it, you'll see why he comes to that decision. However, my bet would be that if we found the same problem at Bodog, he would have posted the same warning and use his status within the industry to change its practices. 5 Dimes complied right away by removing their offending casino, but I am disappointed that they haven't refunded anyone's money, which would absolutely happen under US law (unless of course they declared bankruptcy).

All gaming is subject to statistical testing for normalness. Using statistics (available in Excel), anyone can compare their gaming sessions comparing their experience to expected and getting the probability that "this could have happened". In the case of game design, the closer to normalness you get in programming the game, the less detectable the loss would be. A crap game with 46% house advantage is noticeable after 100 hands. A crap game with a 5% HA is probably not noticeable for 10,000 hands.

In any case, unfortunately, online casinos are not regulated and are not subject to US regulation when it comes to gaming fairness. The US government has taken position that online gambling is illegal and therefore, of course, spending your money online at a casino is "buyer beware".

 

[Jufo]

All gaming is subject to statistical testing for normalness. Using statistics (available in Excel), anyone can compare their gaming sessions comparing their experience to expected and getting the probability that "this could have happened". In the case of game design, the closer to normalness you get in programming the game, the less detectable the loss would be. A crap game with 46% house advantage is noticeable after 100 hands. A crap game with a 5% HA is probably not noticeable for 10,000 hands.

True, but you are missing the fact that Eliot brought up a few posts back, that the mode with which the program cheats to deliver that 5% HA might fail some statistical test to a much larger extent than what you get by simply looking at the return percentage. For example you might have a casino software that delivers precisely the expected HA, but is STILL is biased so that it even though meeting the HA perfectly, the results are in fact completely non-random and this would get caught by some statistical test. The best case study of this is the previously mentioned

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where he was able to show impossible odds for dealer's bust rate, even though for the sample size in question, his overall return percentage was within normal statistical limits. Quote from that page:

"In a sample of 1245 hands the actual return will vary from the expected return by as much as 6.4 percentage points 95% of the time, so my actual return proves nor disproves anything."

So, if you have evidence that the software might cheat in some particular way, then it would be better to test that particular hypothesis than to measure the overall RTP only. In Craps it could be favouring some specific number when player bets certain way. Of course the problem is that if you don't know what to look for, you might have to test every hypothesis imaginable, and still find nothing.

If the game passes all possible statistical tests for 10,000 hands then this either supports that the game is likely random or the rigging is so advanced that it cheats while still appearing essentially random.

Many of the technicians and mathematicians over at the Wizard of Oz, also confirm that finding a consistent negative discrepancy of 3 to 5 percentages would not be enough grounds to declare foul play.

It can be grounds to declare foul play if the play data is large enough (and the standard deviation parameter for the game is low enough). However to prove it would require the following commitment from the player:

a) Persistence to play extremely large number of hands and to keep precise logs of each hand played. For more than 10,000 hands the task will be cumbersome.
b) Be prepared to put enough of their money in to go through with the "experiment" until a satisfying negative sigma value is reached. With 5% loss rate the experiment is going to be very costly for the player, especially if the bias seems to occur only with larger bets. And even if the player succeeds to prove the bias to enough sigmas, there is no quarantee he will get the money back he invested.

Few players have the capacity of going through with both a) and b) and thus proving 5% disparity in house edge is really really hard, but not impossible. It will be easier if many players participate collecting data together - in fact in another gambling forum such communal data gathering experiment was proposed for one particular software that was thought to be suspicious. Casinos could be banking on the fact that no one is ever able to successfully carry out such experiment, but they are taking a risk with that assumption.

 

[GrandMaster]

BLR has been around since 1998, how long do you think they were operating their craps game with a 46% HA (house advantage) before getting caught? Who has been auditing their software all this time? That answer is below off of the 5 Dimes web site:


Check out some examples of the payout difference between traditional casino games and the games found at our Bonus Casino. To ensure the fairness of all games, the 5Dimes Bonus Casino has been audited by two separate third party companies. The 5Dimes Bonus Casino has received the Certified Fair Gambling’s RTP Certification. Below are the payout percentages that were obtained from the Certified Fair Gambling’s fairness audit that was conducted on each of the Bonus Casino games.
Certified Fair Gambling

Blackjack: 98.802%
Table Games: 98.776%
Slots: 96.658%
Video Poker: 98.853%
Other: 96.968%
All Games: 98.729%

The Bonus Casino has also been audited by another third party to ensure statistical fairness. To get an even greater understanding, read an independent audit of our Bonus Casino software.

Craps is included with the other table games, so no useful information about craps can be obtained from these numbers. There is a more thorough analysis in

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, but it is from 2003 and relates to XTECH software.

 

[jetset]

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BLR getting a wider bad press...

 

[jstrike]

This is why craps and roulette should always be multiplayer. The house can't cheat if there's someone on pass and someone on don't, or someone on Black+0 and someone on Red+00. If you have a multiplayer game, you and someone else can get online and take opposite sides.

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

The house can't cheat if there's someone on pass and someone on don't

A surplus of 12's on the come-out beats this pretty handily.

 

[4 of a kind]

A surplus of 12's on the come-out beats this pretty handily.

Really JStrike clear up a little here.

 

[jstrike]

A surplus of 12's on the come-out beats this pretty handily.

True, true. My point is in a multiplayer system something like that would be a lot more obvious. With four players, it would be impossible for the house to cheat in even one session unless the AI was so complicated and tricky, it could pull off screwing all four of them and making it seem like it wasn't cheating at the same time. Anyone that could program that would probably working for NASA or the CIA, so there's a limit. My site regularly gets outside of 1.5 standard deviations in a given day, and I know it's fair. But based on what I read here we're talking well beyond that. It's pretty easy to differentiate between something that's a coordinated effort to screw you, and a bad run of luck, when you're talking about 8+ standard deviations. I'm just saying that long-haul, multiplayer and crowd-sourced metrics are the best way to prove if a casino's on the level or not.

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

True, true. My point is in a multiplayer system something like that would be a lot more obvious. With four players, it would be impossible for the house to cheat in even one session unless the AI was so complicated and tricky, it could pull off screwing all four of them and making it seem like it wasn't cheating at the same time. Anyone that could program that would probably working for NASA or the CIA, so there's a limit.

It's actually very easy to program the game to cheat at a multi-player craps game. You simply compute the EV of each of the rolls based on the bets on the table, and weight the outcomes to favor the rolls with the lower player EV's. I could write this code in an afternoon. However, like all cheating software, it will leave a statistical trail. The key to game protection for the player is auditing and fairness testing of the software by an external auditing company, as well as audited monthly RTP reports. BLR had neither.

 

[jstrike]

It's actually very easy to program the game to cheat at a multi-player craps game. You simply compute the EV of each of the rolls based on the bets on the table, and weight the outcomes to favor the rolls with the lower player EV's. I could write this code in an afternoon. However, like all cheating software, it will leave a statistical trail. The key to game protection for the player is auditing and fairness testing of the software by an external auditing company, as well as audited monthly RTP reports. BLR had neither.

Yes -- you're right. It would be harder with a lot of players, but not impossible. But if the game was both multiplayer and the results of every roll were published on the site, that combination should solve the trust problem, right?

 

[DiamondGeezer]

Great thread guys and girls and it's humbling to see so many clever minds in action.

I've had an account at Legends and they are a very well run book with good lines and good bonuses. 5Dimes too has a good reputation but I don't personally have an account there.

The question I have is why would anyone do this? Why would these books offer a competitive sports product only to fleece customers in the casino? What exactly is the motivation for this behaviour? Perhaps the casino is outsourced with the casino operator keeping the profits. It's entirely possible Legends and 5Dimes have themselves been defrauded, at the operator level or perhaps even from their own staff. A more cynical view might be that a high proportion of sportsbetters using the casino would play craps and that heavy losses could put them into a tilt or chasing mode that could be highly profitible for the sportsbook. Hopefully it will come out in time and it will help a lot in detecting another fraud.

I do think this also has implications for any player using software not tested in the UK, Gibralter or Alderney. The elephant in the room will always be RTG, especially as Rival was found to have operator settings that could change the HA. I don't see how you can possibly be confident you are getting a fair game unless the software has gone through one of the major jurisdictions.

 

[jstrike]

Great thread guys and girls and it's humbling to see so many clever minds in action.

I've had an account at Legends and they are a very well run book with good lines and good bonuses. 5Dimes too has a good reputation but I don't personally have an account there.

The question I have is why would anyone do this? Why would these books offer a competitive sports product only to fleece customers in the casino? What exactly is the motivation for this behaviour? Perhaps the casino is outsourced with the casino operator keeping the profits. It's entirely possible Legends and 5Dimes have themselves been defrauded, at the operator level or perhaps even from their own staff. A more cynical view might be that a high proportion of sportsbetters using the casino would play craps and that heavy losses could put them into a tilt or chasing mode that could be highly profitible for the sportsbook. Hopefully it will come out in time and it will help a lot in detecting another fraud.

I do think this also has implications for any player using software not tested in the UK, Gibralter or Alderney. The elephant in the room will always be RTG, especially as Rival was found to have operator settings that could change the HA. I don't see how you can possibly be confident you are getting a fair game unless the software has gone through one of the major jurisdictions.

Slots, blackjack and roulette -- casino stuff's got far and away the best return on investment, and that's when it ain't rigged. I cant' cite the motivation for their behavior in one case, but most of the time the casinos for sportsbooks are run on completely separate software, outsourced to separate companies and people than the sportsbooks themselves. The books just make a cut on it, it's all off-site.

Far as licensing in the UK or other Anglo-dominated places, it's the most expensive way to license but it's a pretty weak standard. In this day and age, the only way to prove your credibility is to crowd source it, and put every bit of statistical info out there for everybody. Just like with cryptography, you don't trust someone unless the code and the data is public and everyone's had a chance to try and hack away at it until they prove it can't be broken. Why would you trust someone with your money if you didn't know them, or have proof that they were who they said they were?

Licensing means nothing, because the licensing regimes are corrupted and broken to the core. It'll be heartbreak again and again. The only trust is in hard numbers and the voice and approval of a huge crowd of people who can't be wrong. That's the beauty of this board, and that's the way I think systems in the future will be designed -- to prove it on a level that can't be disproven, or suffer the consequences.

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

Slots, blackjack and roulette -- casino stuff's got far and away the best return on investment, and that's when it ain't rigged.

You never know when there is a malfunctioning piece of software, for whatever reason, unless you run statistical tests on it. I've found errors in software that's been online for years -- not malice, just bad coding, that wasn't spotted until I ran some statistical tests. Any program can be rigged. Any program can have a bug. What went wrong here was that apparently good companies used bad software and didn't bother having a reputable external auditor check out the product before they invested in it.

In this day and age, the only way to prove your credibility is to crowd source it, and put every bit of statistical info out there for everybody.

The assumption that making mass amounts of data public is going to give free auditing is misguided. Are you really asking players to risk their money to audit casino software, then go through the hassle of proving it, then the hassle of getting refunds?

Hiring an auditor and asking them to review your software is an absolute necessity, both to insure fairness for those who use the product, and to insure that you haven't missed an unintentional bug. Having the results of the audits public is also necessary. I have seen routine errors, like re-seeding on every RNG call, missed by top suppliers, leading to crazy distributions of results. I have seen Three Card Poker, where the player *lost* his Ante on a dealer non-qualifier, just an unintentional bug, nothing more. I've seen slots set at 45% RTP, purely by accident. I've seen a lot of stuff that manufacturers just missed, and that users never knew about. You need an auditing company that has experience with the industry and products, knows the sorts of things that go wrong, and knows how to design specific statistical tests based on that experience. Nothing less will do.

Licensing means nothing, because the licensing regimes are corrupted and broken to the core.

Licensing means everything. If those who license aren't doing a good job, then all efforts should be to improve the licensing. What is needed is better oversight, more regulation, and more auditing. What you are saying is that because you believe the "police are corrupt and incompetent" that we don't need police. That is just false.

I fully support those methods that have proven over and over again that they help good companies produce good products and help bring down the bad guys. Statistical auditing, regulatory oversight, licensing, public disclosure, media exposure and online communities are the key tools in this quest.

 

[jstrike]

You never know when there is a malfunctioning piece of software, for whatever reason, unless you run statistical tests on it. I've found errors in software that's been online for years -- not malice, just bad coding, that wasn't spotted until I ran some statistical tests. Any program can be rigged. Any program can have a bug. What went wrong here was that apparently good companies used bad software and didn't bother having a reputable external auditor check out the product before they invested in it.

The assumption that making mass amounts of data public is going to give free auditing is misguided. Are you really asking players to risk their money to audit casino software, then go through the hassle of proving it, then the hassle of getting refunds?

Hiring an auditor and asking them to review your software is an absolute necessity, both to insure fairness for those who use the product, and to insure that you haven't missed an unintentional bug. Having the results of the audits public is also necessary. I have seen routine errors, like re-seeding on every RNG call, missed by top suppliers, leading to crazy distributions of results. I have seen Three Card Poker, where the player *lost* his Ante on a dealer non-qualifier, just an unintentional bug, nothing more. I've seen slots set at 45% RTP, purely by accident. I've seen a lot of stuff that manufacturers just missed, and that users never knew about. You need an auditing company that has experience with the industry and products, knows the sorts of things that go wrong, and knows how to design specific statistical tests based on that experience. Nothing less will do.

Licensing means everything. If those who license aren't doing a good job, then all efforts should be to improve the licensing. What is needed is better oversight, more regulation, and more auditing. What you are saying is that because you believe the "police are corrupt and incompetent" that we don't need police. That is just false.

I fully support those methods that have proven over and over again that they help good companies produce good products and help bring down the bad guys. Statistical auditing, regulatory oversight, licensing, public disclosure, media exposure and online communities are the key tools in this quest.

Mr. Jacobson, I apologize. I'm in no way trying to undermine your raison d'etre. And I agree with you that A) bugs exist and need professional testing, B) investors with casino software can't be trusted to test them, even teams can't thoroughly test them enough and C) licensing in its ideal form does hold value.

Call me a crazy hacker or anarchist though, but I can imagine a day when your services are retained by something like a players' union, to test different casinos and measure all those publicly-accessible tables, and any casino that doesn't publish every stat would be automatically considered rogue. And where players wouldn't have to sift through all those results themselves, or rely on a possibly compromised licensing board to "certify" what they couldn't see for themselves, but could have those stats and see them analyzed right out in the open by other players, by specialists like yourself, government boards, even other competing casinos trying to find flaws.

All I'm saying is I don't think more transparency can be a bad thing. Of course you don't expect every player to run his own analysis, but if every respectable casino was expected to publish their daily card shoes in a standard format, you can be sure programs would be written and open sourced that let players compare them for themselves. And if those same players went and gambled and didn't see their hands show up in the records, they'd know right away that something wasn't right.

No system's ever going to be perfect. I'm just talking about how to make it better. I think someone with your stature could help lead the way towards setting those standards for openness, taking what we've learned from open software and open crypto, and applying it to casino fairness, knowing, as you pointed out, that closed systems with hidden and arbitrary processes will always be corruptible.

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

Mr. Jacobson

Close.

I looked at this site: Link Removed ( Old/Invalid) . The posted data is insufficient to conduct fairness audits. The posted data is insufficient to draw meaningful conclusions about the fairness of the games. Are you willing to provide me what I want?

 

[DiamondGeezer]

Slots, blackjack and roulette -- casino stuff's got far and away the best return on investment, and that's when it ain't rigged. I cant' cite the motivation for their behavior in one case, but most of the time the casinos for sportsbooks are run on completely separate software, outsourced to separate companies and people than the sportsbooks themselves. The books just make a cut on it, it's all off-site.

A bit off topic I know but I can't quite agree with that comment. The average HA of sportsbetting is around 7% which compares very well with casino stats. And right now the best ROI in gaming is in live betting which is the hot area of gaming right now. As far as the outsourcing is concerned well that would explain a lot.

Licensing means nothing, because the licensing regimes are corrupted and broken to the core. It'll be heartbreak again and again. The only trust is in hard numbers and the voice and approval of a huge crowd of people who can't be wrong. That's the beauty of this board, and that's the way I think systems in the future will be designed -- to prove it on a level that can't be disproven, or suffer the consequences.

While I am in favour of the licensing model the authorities do seem to be highly opaque and they have no understanding of communication especially to players. My belief in Alderney for example is like a religious faith. I have no proof whatsoever they test any of these softwares in a meaningful way but I am so desperate to believe it I cannot bear to think of the alternative. I like to think of them in a secure bunker like the ones occupied by the good folk who defend the backbone of the internet. Inside will be a small but brilliant team very much in the Bletchley Park tradition, headed up by an eccentric who looks like Dr Who. There will be a couple of attractive Ms Jacobson's thrown in too.

The open source idea is an excellent one and needen't be mutually exclusive. Poker has operated that way for years with Pokertracker and suchlike programs recording hands from a variety of platforms. How hard would it be to throw together a basic auditor for card and table games? Not saying it would have to be definitive but it would be useful as a starting point for more detailed testing. It would be a defence against the more blatant forms of cheating and bugs at least.

I also like the idea of an independent site funded by the industry with a remit to investigate and constantly test. Not like the dreadful eGogra (hideous name for a start!) but somewhere with credibility like the Wizard, SBR, this site, the affiliate forum site for example. I don't think industry funding need be a problem if it was accross all interests and softwares. To me it seems incredible this hasn't happened. The lack of effective communication with players had held back the industry as much as the US pulling out IMO.

 

[DiamondGeezer]

Close.

I looked at this site: Link Removed ( Old/Invalid) . The posted data is insufficient to conduct fairness audits. The posted data is insufficient to draw meaningful conclusions about the fairness of the games. Are you willing to provide me what I want?

Sorry Doctor . You can still stay in my Alderney boffin bunker though

 

[jstrike]

Close.

I looked at this site: Link Removed ( Old/Invalid) . The posted data is insufficient to conduct fairness audits. The posted data is insufficient to draw meaningful conclusions about the fairness of the games. Are you willing to provide me what I want?

Of course. What else would you want to see?

 

[4 of a kind]

Doctor Jacobson,

Since you are recognized as one of the world’s top experts on casino table games and casino game mathematics, and obviously one of the good guys; maybe you might have more insight into the future with reference to real gaming regulations and enforcement being put in place.

Of course the USA is on its own agenda, but what about the rest of the world?

Since you obviously associate with online casinos, are casino owners and software providers in favor of strict gaming regulations being put in place, or happier to leave things just the way they are and retain the powers of self regulation?

Since it appears that the USA will eventually come onboard and of course if it did would be subject to real regulation and enforcement with the big casino names and owners; are existing operators even concerned about possibly losing their market share to a USA regulated platform?

It behooves me why the present operators and providers don’t rally for regulated enforcement since for over a decade all they’ve done was verbally brag about how honest they are. What are they afraid of when it comes to proving their honesty to legitimate regulators, or is the problem that no real gaming regulator even exists to submit anything to in the first place?

Of course I understand that gaming regulation comes with an expense, but it’s obvious this burden will simply be on the players back. Do you agree that with confirmed regulation there would be a massive increase in customers (to include many more high rollers) and revenues?

Exactly what is your view concerning this topic and your discussions with the present inner circle of online gaming owners and providers you have associated with?

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

Of course. What else would you want to see?

Thanks!

I am most interested in auditing "Jacks or Better" video poker. I would like a CSV file, with 1 row of data per game, with the following columns:

timestamp
amount wagered
amount won
initial 5 cards (one column per card)
final 5 cards (one column per card) after draws are made
final hand type

A total of 14 columns of data.

I would like this file to contain the play data for as many rounds as you can provide based on easily accessible log files.

Also, I would like a test account so that I can play the game.

Additionally, I would like a test file that has one million (1,000,000) consecutive calls to your RNG from the game of roulette. Run it so that the RNG calls are made under the same conditions as it would operate under real game conditions. If 1M is not possible, then I'll take what you can give me. I would like the file to have sequential data, 1 call per line.

Finally, I would like you to agree that I can post a summary of my audit results here.

I am not up for doing a complete audit of all your games for free, but I will audit this information and report back.

I will set up an FTP account on my server if you need it, if the JOB file is too large to email to me.

Kind regards.

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

Four-of-a-Kind, I'm going to pass on answering your questions.

 

[4 of a kind]

Four-of-a-Kind, I'm going to pass on answering your questions.

No problem, I completly understand.

 

[jstrike]

Love it! Love the challenge, and I'm honored that you'd consider it. Who knows, one of these days I might be able to afford a real audit. Hopefully it's clean, but I'm not afraid to admit I was wrong if it helps me improve my work.

Here's what I've got:

1. I uploaded a CSV like you requested at Link Removed ( Old/Invalid) ...I made it public, 'cause why not.

There might be one hitch here. My games don't keep cards horizontally in a single database row. They start life as a full deck, which is a blob in a single column on the "hands" table. Once they're dealt off the top of the deck, they go in order temporarily to the "tablecards" table, where they each get a card id, seat number, table id, value and suit -- there's one row for each live card in the whole casino in tablecards. They're added and ID'd in the order they're dealt, and that's the same order they're given to the players in, and the same order they're replaced in. However, when the software records them into the hand history log, we just group_concat the player's cards from that table, unsorted for speed, dump it into a comma-limited string, and ship it off to the backup server. Same with the redeal, after which that table/seat combination of cards are flushed from tablecards forever.

Point being, if you use mysql you know that group_concat doesn't order things in any particular way. So the raw log doesn't show the order they were dealt in; for that you'd have to correlate it with the snapshot we stored of the original deck. So I've put them into five columns for you the way they were concatenated, but you'll see that held cards float from one column to another on the redeal, and neither one can be assumed to have been the card's true location. Their order as shown is arbitrary, I think based on mysql's paging at the moment it was recorded although who knows -- even mysql experts seem unable to explain how unordered concats end up being ordered. It's easy enough to read a hand and see what happened, what the player held and what they didn't, but this might not be enough for your purposes. If it won't work, I can write a much more complicated program that would cross-check each hand with the initial deck we recorded and put them in the actual order they were dealt by column, but that'll take a lot longer to code (and forever to run, because instead of one database call it'll be 60,000).

2. Most of the video poker hands were recorded during beta testing from 2009 on. I launched the site on 2011-07-19. There may be oddities from testers (or me) trying weird stuff, especially in the first year.

3. Prior to 2011-01-23, I was just using a microsecond seed on a twister, reseeded every three to six full shuffles. After that date, the new central randomness pool went into place which is what's in use now. This data should really be split between those two epochs.

4. Next: I ground out a million roulette spins for you (took almost two hours, btw). I haven't reviewed the results myself, so this'll be interesting. Who knows, my system could be horribly f*'d up. Looks good on paper and the results so far seem acceptable, but there's always a chance. There were only one to three people on the server for most of the time this was running, so it should be pretty straight in terms of what one player would see if he could spin the wheel about 100-150 times per second. The compressed results are here: Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)

5. I'll PM you details of a testing account.

Thanks again!!!

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

Love it! Love the challenge,

Excellent. I downloaded your log files. They are exactly what I needed. I also got your PM. You'll hear back soon.

 

[bb28]

Kudo's to you, jstrike for willing to be so open and transparent!

 

[jstrike]

Kudo's to you, jstrike for willing to be so open and transparent!

Lol. Better hold that thought. Don't think I've been this nervous in years

See, I designed this system from the ground up...I know it's not crooked, so I'm not afraid of some bias showing against the player, but I don't have the Doctor's tools and I really don't know at the end of the day if it's balanced, or if he'll find something predictable about these random numbers that's not visible to the naked eye, something that's less-than-random because of some screwup in my programming. I racked my brains for days when I was building this thing, trying to think of everything to make sure it would be balanced, but full disclosure here, I never took a statistics class, and this is why they say you shouldn't try to design your own RNG or encryption, because someone smarter than you will eventually come along and figure out a way to crack it with something you never thought of.

Which is why I think total openness is the best policy, because if it's gonna be cracked, it's better if it's cracked by someone who'll tell you about it. But it's still scary!

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

The video poker file appears to have instances of duplicate rows of initial cards with the same hand ID, but different resolutions of the hands. Maybe this was just in the SQL. Here are the three examples I found since the casino opened in July.

27811 7/7/2011 0:37 7/7/2011 0:37 4H TC 9S 3S 7C 8H KC AH QS 5H
27811 7/7/2011 0:37 7/7/2011 0:37 4H TC 9S 3S 7C JD QC QD 6H 9C

28414 7/20/2011 0:00 7/20/2011 0:01 8D 7D 4H AH 3S 7S 3D 4C 9D QD
28414 7/20/2011 0:00 7/20/2011 0:01 8D 7D 4H AH 3S 8H 7C TH 5D TC

41430 7/30/2011 21:54 7/30/2011 21:54 7S QS KS 3C JS KS 7S JS QS QC
41430 7/30/2011 21:54 7/30/2011 21:54 7S QS KS 3C JS AC 5H QH 2D 9H

Can you help with this?

Thanks.

 

[bb28]

Lol. Better hold that thought. Don't think I've been this nervous in years

See, I designed this system from the ground up...I know it's not crooked, so I'm not afraid of some bias showing against the player, but I don't have the Doctor's tools and I really don't know at the end of the day if it's balanced, or if he'll find something predictable about these random numbers that's not visible to the naked eye, something that's less-than-random because of some screwup in my programming. I racked my brains for days when I was building this thing, trying to think of everything to make sure it would be balanced, but full disclosure here, I never took a statistics class, and this is why they say you shouldn't try to design your own RNG or encryption, because someone smarter than you will eventually come along and figure out a way to crack it with something you never thought of.

Which is why I think total openness is the best policy, because if it's gonna be cracked, it's better if it's cracked by someone who'll tell you about it. But it's still scary!

My compliment still stands, Obviously you aren't trying to hide anything and that's a great thing. Even if he finds an error, it will be a learning experience for you and hey if he does it won't be the end of the world.

Anyway......I hope he reports back that all is well for you.

 

[jstrike]

The video poker file appears to have instances of duplicate rows of initial cards with the same hand ID, but different resolutions of the hands. Maybe this was just in the SQL. Here are the three examples I found since the casino opened in July.

41430 7/30/2011 21:54 7/30/2011 21:54 7S QS KS 3C JS KS 7S JS QS QC
41430 7/30/2011 21:54 7/30/2011 21:54 7S QS KS 3C JS AC 5H QH 2D 9H

28414 7/20/2011 0:00 7/20/2011 0:01 8D 7D 4H AH 3S 7S 3D 4C 9D QD
28414 7/20/2011 0:00 7/20/2011 0:01 8D 7D 4H AH 3S 8H 7C TH 5D TC

27811 7/7/2011 0:37 7/7/2011 0:37 4H TC 9S 3S 7C 8H KC AH QS 5H
27811 7/7/2011 0:37 7/7/2011 0:37 4H TC 9S 3S 7C JD QC QD 6H 9C


Thanks.

Ooohh. That's weird. That looks like a bug in the game. Are you seeing a lot more of these?

The hand resolution that you see recorded on the later hand, is actually the original deal of the next hand, which I see is missing in all three cases from the CSV. Here's how the next hands were dealt:

41431 AC 5H QH 2D 9H 7S AC AD QH 9C $0.05 $0.05
28415 8H 7C 10H 5D 10C 5S 10C 7D 9D 10H $0.25 $0.00
27812 JD QC QD 6H 9C 3H QC 7S QD JD $1.25 $1.25

But there's something screwier happening. What I'm seeing in these cases is that the shuffle triggered after the next deal, but before the re-deal. So the first cards dealt in 41431 were dealt from what was in the deck after 41430 was done, but the resolution came from a new deck. This could have led to players getting two of the same card. I'm trying to figure out how that could have happened; basically it looks like the game gave the OK to run the next hand asynchronously, but the shuffle got delayed somehow (must have been delayed for a few seconds...maybe a freeze on the server). Maybe -- maybe that could have made a user's button get lit a little early and they clicked at just the right moment before the new deck was finished being prepared.

Time to start hacking I guess...it's gonna be a long night...

[EDIT]
I'm showing four times it happened since opening. Hands # 27811/2, 28414/5, 41430/1 and 75420/1. That last one, weirdly enough, happened today, to me, since I posted these results when I was messing around on the site. And this hasn't happened since late July. (Any other duplicate hand numbers you see in the 20000's range are from a brief switch-over to a backup server, with a different numbering system, and they're completely separate hands).

[RE-EDIT]
I've confirmed the problem was that in a rare case, the game dispatched a fresh "deal" button to the player at a moment when the database froze up and the newly shuffled deck hadn't been recorded yet. This only affected video poker jacks & 5 hand video poker. As it was, there are no recorded cases in the 5-hand version, probably because it offers bonus rounds and so it takes a second longer to reset the "deal" button for the player.

Thank you for catching it.

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

Early on there were triplet examples that spanned multiple days, like this:

692 3/8/2009 10:55 3/8/2009 10:56 2C 4S 4H 6C 8C 4S 6S 4H TC 8S
692 3/8/2009 10:55 3/21/2009 0:26 2C 4S 4H 6C 8C 4H TC 7H TD 5D
692 3/8/2009 10:55 3/21/2009 0:26 2C 4S 4H 6C 8C TD 9S TC 2D 5H

Around the time the casino came on line, there were additional triplet examples:

28014 6/3/2011 14:35 6/3/2011 14:35 7D AH 5H 9C 9H 9C 2H 9H 2C 8C
28014 6/3/2011 14:35 7/16/2011 2:28 7D AH 5H 9C 9H JD TC 9C 8S AH
28014 6/3/2011 14:35 7/16/2011 2:28 7D AH 5H 9C 9H TC TS 9C JD 8S

Then there were the three examples that I presented above, with data exclusively after 07/01/2011.

I can work with the log files and just delete those data lines, they have very little impact on the overall statistical analysis. But, if you want to fix the log file and create a fresh version without duplicates, containing data just since the site opened, I would appreciate that. Either way, I'm done for the day.

Best regards.

 

[jstrike]

No problem -- here's the list since opening, with the four duplicate hands removed.
Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)
Not a huge sample source I guess...

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

I've done about as much auditing as I feel like doing on JOB video poker and the 1M roulette spins. I conducted quite a few statistical tests on each. A couple of things to note:

On JOB, I assume that most players play a game that is reasonably close to optimal, though very few will play optimally. Based on that, I looked at the distribution of final hands for the players and compared those to expectation. With two exceptions, these results were statistically normal. The number of expected straights was 59.94, the actual number was 85. This is 3.26 standard deviations above normal, making it about a 1-in-2000 shot. The other exception is in the RTP of the data. At RTP = 88%, it is well below the expected 96% to 97%. If I were to conduct ongoing audits, I would pay attention to these things, but for this audit, it is not a big deal. My conclusion is that JOB is operating normally. Finally, I mentioned above that there was a bug in the log files with repeated lines. I believe you figured it out and it is now fixed.

For the roulette spins, I conducted statistical tests until I couldn't stand in any more. Everything came back normal.

A couple of comments about game returns. For JOB, you have the 8/5 pay table, which returns 97.3% with optimal play. You offer double-0 roulette, with it's 5.26% house edge. These are on the low end for competitive online casinos. Many casinos offer 9/6 on JOB, and single-0 roulette. You may want to consider up-leveling your returns on these games to be competitive as a newcomer.

By comparison, you offer better than the best standard returns on your Three Card Poker. This surprised me, in light of JOB and RO. The Ante Bonus is 1/4/6, and the Pair Plus is 1/4/6/30/40. I wonder if there is a typo on the return for the Ante Bonus, it is usually 1/4/5. I ask this because 1/4/6 is a non-standard pay table, it isn't even listed on wizardofodds.com. I'd like to hear more about how you decided on the 1/4/6 pay table for the Ante Bonus on 3CP.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

[jstrike]

Wow. You're good. I mean man you're good. I can see why you get paid the big bucks. I can't believe you spotted that in three card poker

It's not a typo, what happened was when I started writing the code I cribbed my pay table from

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. Later on I realized it was better than average, but I'd already almost finished, and I decided to go with it. I know the payouts are relatively low on most non-skill games for the site. I'm trying to draw a market of skill players in games like ScubaCube and SapphireRummy (no luck yet, btw). But the goal in the end is to raise the video poker tables up to 8-6 and then to 9-6 when we've got a wider margin to play with and are comfortable raising the game stakes at the same time. One thing about the Bitcoin market is, there's not much competition. Not much play either, for that matter. As far as Roulette, the weeks it would take to rebuild it as a European style table might not be worth it while I'm still working on new games; but I did develop a 36:1 / 17.49:1 / 8.24:1 etc. (inside) American roulette wheel that can be played for a 1¢ minimum, (2¢ if you want to take better odds on edges, 4¢ to make better odds on corners -- that's why the odds are rounded down) that I'm thinking about deploying when the time is right. The idea was suggested by someone on this board, but some Roulette purists I've talked to have been bitterly opposed to it, I guess on the grounds of tradition.

As far as why there are 58% more straights while actual RTP is lower than expected, I can only guess... I get to watch live hands, and I've seen a fair number of VP players who don't play perfect strategy. Most of them that I've witnessed have some weaknesses. I've spotted a certain kind of player who'll almost always hold any three cards to a straight or a flush, especially late at night, when they're drunk I guess. Players chasing straights might explain those results. I'm not sure. I even watched one guy throw out a pat flush with three picture cards (it was something like JQA43) to chase a royal... that was on the 5-hand table, so it's not the worst bet I've ever seen (he had something like a 10% chance of hitting one for a pretty good payout), but still a little crazy.

Anyway, thank you for the time and energy you put into this... I really wish I could make it up to you. I'm sure this was a pain in the ass and not what you like to do on a Sunday (unless you're like me, lol). But the hell with iTech -- I want the Jacobson seal on my site as soon as I can afford it... and in the meanwhile, I might go for some consultation on my newer games (scubacube, mayan gold) where I've only been able to simulate the odds but still don't really know if I might've screwed up the calculations. You have a great eye for detail. And, you're a mensch. Thank you.

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

It's not a typo, what happened was when I started writing the code I cribbed my pay table from

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. Later on I realized it was better than average

From what I can tell, the pay table referenced through the link you gave is 1/4/5 on the Ante Bonus, not the 1/4/6 you have.

I'm sure this was ... not what you like to do on a Sunday

I enjoy this type of work. I like to invent new tests for data. I like trying to find something wrong with data -- to try and break it somehow. So this was no problem.

 

[binary128]

Wow. You're good. I mean man you're good.

I agree. Galewind has relied on Eliot for almost 3 years. IMO, there's no one better.

Chris

 

[jetset]

Back to BLR, guys.

I found this comment from Gambling911 interesting in the BLR context.

"Rachel Miller, General Manager of Legends, said less than 10 percent of Legends' 7,500 active gamblers use the casino.

"She said Legends continues to use BLR, in part, because the software works so well with the site's main function of handling sports bets. Miller insisted that from an operations standpoint, none of Legends players would have been adversely affected by the BLR setup. She said the company has invested thousands of dollars in new random number generators to work with the BLR software."

I guess you better not be one of the 10 percent with that sort of approach....

 

[binary128]

Back to BLR, guys.

I confess that I was confused, and remain confused, by this "new random number generators" statement from Legends. We are talking about an online Sportsbook that has achieved a

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, which is NOT an easy thing to do. I think that the starting position for an investigation into such a highly rated company should be one of respect. However ...

1.) The problem report started in

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on Oct. 28.

2.) Mike published his

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test results on Oct. 31.

3.) Eliot published his

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"too many 7s" test results on Oct. 31.

4.) Eliot started this Casinomeister thread on Oct. 31.

5.) boymimbo started

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, and then a

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, on Nov. 1, and wound up feeding extensively into a

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started Nov. 2. (My hat is off to boymimbo for "Service Above and Beyond".)

6.) And finally, The Wizard of Odds site published the

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on Nov. 2.


(Yes, there are a lot of links here, but that's because the documentation and data trail is huge.)


It has been repeatedly stated, on ALL of these forums, that the problem has nothing to do with the RNG.

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the problem is the software "working around" the RNG, perhaps by simply calling for numbers until it gets one that it "wants", rather than working with the first one that it gets. (IMO, Eliot's "too many 7s" test is definitive here.)

As best I can determine, Legends first made their "new random number generators" reference on Nov. 2, several days after the RNG had been removed as a variable from the equation. However, I think it is fair to say that they made this statement before they were fully up to speed on the details of the issue.

But to then repeat that statement within the article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review column of Nov. 18, a full 2 weeks later ... confusion runs rampant.

 

[vinylweatherman]

They would rather carry on cheating the 10% of players that use the casino, rather than throw away all the money and effort they have spent on integrating BLR software into their platform, as well as having to spend even more money finding and integrating a new casino software.

They must know by now that the new RNG makes no difference, but are trying to "whitewash" the issue by pretending that they have dealt with the problem, and the casino software is now working fairly.

The one thing that could bring them to justice is to repeat the tests on the new RNG implementation, and prove that the cheating still takes place as before.

Any operator that takes the attitude that running gaffed software is OK because it "affects only 10% of our players" does not deserve a premium A+ rating, even though the cheating has nothing to do with the sportsbook product. The problem being that they may take the same attitude if another problem emerges that only cheats a small minority of players, yet is disproportionately expensive to fix or to pull the product altogether.

If it is only 10% of players, why not pull BLR altogether, and forget about spending money just for those 10% of players, who can just as easily sign up to a casino. It can only mean that this 10% of players are generating a significant amount of profit through their casino play, more so than normal, because they are being cheated at the craps table.

 

[Westland Bowl]

It's ironic I discover this post with many things I've been saying for the past two years until after I gave an ultimatum post six weeks ago. I'm bored of my government auditing job. I now want to audit online casinos!!! I know where to look for these hidden manipulations of game results.

 

[The Dude]

Back to BLR, guys.

I found this comment from Gambling911 interesting in the BLR context.

"Rachel Miller, General Manager of Legends, said less than 10 percent of Legends' 7,500 active gamblers use the casino.

"She said Legends continues to use BLR, in part, because the software works so well with the site's main function of handling sports bets. Miller insisted that from an operations standpoint, none of Legends players would have been adversely affected by the BLR setup. She said the company has invested thousands of dollars in new random number generators to work with the BLR software."

I guess you better not be one of the 10 percent with that sort of approach....

Pure roguish in my opinion. If merely one player is allowed to play on cheating software, they should be drummed out of the business.

 

[Mousey]

Pure roguish in my opinion. If merely one player is allowed to play on cheating software, they should be drummed out of the business.

Where the heck is the 'regulation' and player protection? Looks like it would be illegal for regulated casinos and bookies to knowingly and willingly use gaffed software??

 

[Eliot Jacobson]

Pure roguish in my opinion. If merely one player is allowed to play on cheating software, they should be drummed out of the business.

I made this post at SBR in an attempt to have them downgrade their rating of Legends -- copy here:

It is outrageous that Legends defends its use of the corrupt BLR casino software.

First, the RNG has nothing to do with rigging the software. It may be that they opted out of using the feature that allows the results to be rigged, if such a feature exists. However, the way the software cheats is that the software weights the outcomes of craps in such a way that it guarantees a huge winning edge for the casino. If the RNG chooses a number according to that weighting, it makes no difference that a new RNG is used. It makes no difference how the random number is chosen, if it is already determined that a "7" is rolled over 50% of the time.

Second, Legends continues to use software that they know has the potential to be rigged, and has been used to offer rigged games at other casinos. They continue to use a rogue product offered and supported by a rogue company. They continue to accept real money wagers on a product that is known to have cheated people at other casinos and may be cheating people at their own casino.

Third, giving Rachel Miller the benefit of the doubt is no better. If she is not technically savvy and simply does not understand the issue, but insists that changing the RNG fixed the problem, then the implication is that Legends knew the software was rogue. It means that Legends was aware that the software is able to cheat players, and that Legends made an attempt to disable that feature. They may call that fixing the RNG or whatever, but it makes no difference. They went through the trouble to fix the RNG because they knew that the off-the-shelf product could be used to cheat players.

These three points make the continued use of BLR software indefensible for Legends.

 

[jetset]

Pure roguish in my opinion. If merely one player is allowed to play on cheating software, they should be drummed out of the business.

I couldn't agree more - knowingly allowing one player to run the risk of being cheated is completely unacceptable....standing by and being prepared to watch 750 casino players use suspect software even more so, if that was possible.

To me, this speaks to a lack of care, professionalism and integrity.

 

[boymimbo]

I couldn't agree more - knowingly allowing one player to run the risk of being cheated is completely unacceptable....standing by and being prepared to watch 750 casino players use suspect software even more so, if that was possible.

To me, this speaks to a lack of care, professionalism and integrity.

the way I see it, World Wide and 5 Dimes was using the rogue software with the same results, meaning that the software provider (BLR) was at fault, not the sportsbook. Legends makes a claim that they have a different RNG. The only way to prove the issue is to do a test at Legends and see what the results are.

 

[binary128]

I made this post at SBR in an attempt to have them downgrade their rating of Legends

For those that are interested, the post to which Eliot refers

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.

Sadly, that forum's Administrator lumped Eliot (and apparently the article in the Pittsburgh Tribune, as well as the Wizard of Odds) into the "all online Casinos are rigged" crowd.

This "all online Casinos are rigged" kind of post is all too common on the SBR forum, which I think goes to explain this administrator's rather aggressive response.

Also true is that this speaks to the "wall of awareness" between Sportsbooks and Casinos (or vice versa). SBR has a quality reputation for dealing with Sportsbook-related issues. Casinomeister has a quality reputation for dealing with Casino-related issues. Casinos that are part of a Sportsbook fall into a kind of "nether region".

Again, kudos are due to boymimbo for once again stepping into the fray and trying to bring the SBR discussion around to the available hard data that is available.

Personally, I hope that his efforts are fruitful, and that the data, which IMO is conclusive, causes this forum to address the facts, rather than merely abusing the messengers.

Any Casinomeister members who are also on SBR would, I think, do well to assist boymimbo in his efforts.

It also continues to astound me - NO ONE is complaining about the RNG. The RNG has NO PART in this problem. Why does anyone questioning this issue's applicability to Legends KEEP TALKING about the RNG? I'm stunned. I'm just stunned. I'm usually pretty good at coming up with analogies, but for this one, an analogy simply escapes me.

 

[jstrike]

It also continues to astound me - NO ONE is complaining about the RNG. The RNG has NO PART in this problem. Why does anyone questioning this issue's applicability to Legends KEEP TALKING about the RNG? I'm stunned. I'm just stunned. I'm usually pretty good at coming up with analogies, but for this one, an analogy simply escapes me.

I think the difference between a corrupt RNG and corrupt middleware, or a corrupt game client for that matter, is basically meaningless to anyone who isn't a programmer. We understand that if any of those things were crooked, the game would be just-as-crooked as if all of them were corrupt. I don't think most players realize how RNG numbers get processed into the spins or cards they're actually seeing, any more than most McRib lovers think about what succulent part of a pig they're biting. What basically matters to the consumer is: (A) is it FDA approved? (B) Do I personally know anyone who got ill from eating this, and (C) how many calories. Everything else you can or can't say about it is bullshit, but just like fast food, the casino industry has chosen a few little tag-words that everyone can latch onto, so as long as those things "sound okay", the marketing goes, the product must be good for you.

Trans Fats, low cholesterol, "organic", "natural ingredients" -- whatever the hell that means =
Expected RTP, an expensive RNG, "Flash", "secure", etc.

But the point is, I'll eat a sausage McMuffin for breakfast and not trouble myself about how it was made, basically 'cause I know no one else is dying from it. I don't care about how they got that into a bag for me this morning. I just want to know everyone's getting the same shit and it's not poison.

This is why I advocate publishing hand results. The industry gets mileage out of this RNG ridiculousness, which doesn't mean anything; and at this point it's a placebo that rogue casinos can use to calm players down, so let's do away with it. All RNG's out there now are random enough that unless you're a 3rd degree ninja hacker, you're probably not going to win or lose because the RNG's "off". We should be talking about whether the sausage is edible, not whether the ingredients are "natural".

 

[Nifty29]

It's ironic I discover this post with many things I've been saying for the past two years until after I gave an ultimatum post six weeks ago. I'm bored of my government auditing job. I now want to audit online casinos!!! I know where to look for these hidden manipulations of game results.

Quick aside here....

Given your return after the passion and drama of your "close my account" post....are you now saying that you have changed your mind, or do you still believe that "all casinos cheat"?

 

[Westland Bowl]

Quick aside here....

Given your return after the passion and drama of your "close my account" post....are you now saying that you have changed your mind, or do you still believe that "all casinos cheat"?

How about "all US-FACING online casinos cheat"?? Yes, I still post here as my Casinomeister account wasn't closed but I still do not bet online anymore. Well, I take that back, Sports Book Review forum gives out free points each day to use in their DGS casino so I once in a while see if I can out-smart that rigged casino with a new strategy. As I use various different strategies with brick-and-mortar casinos as I have with online casinos, I do not wish to reveal how I play. However, I can tell you that if you knew my strategy, you will readily see how these online casinos are soooo adaptive to it and it was very noticeable to me since November 2009. I wouldn't say that these online casinos go as far as BLR has but they do so in varying degrees but it is still all the same b.s.

 

[Jasminebed]

No disrespect Westland, but Heroes Casino that you "cheated" by employing a system was BS, and Galewind (i.e. Binary) stepped up to the plate and said their software didn't cheat, only non-random software could be beat LONG TERM (emphasis mine), and truly stepped up to the plate by yanking their licence and paying you out of their own pockets.

For those members not familiar, you can find that thread here: https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/heroes-casino-blackjack-issues-slow-pay.28007/

IMO systems can help you lose slower, cashout more often OR larger, or keep you more entertained by employing them. Almost anything that slows your play will limit your loses including calculating systems, or kissing your lucky troll doll, or getting out of your chair and circling three times counterclockwise.