caruso

Discussed at Casinomeister.

http://www.casinomeister.com/forums...r-cheating.html

In summary: out of 1537 trials of video poker double up, only 522 wins were recorded. The probability of this in a fair game is approximately 1 in 2,016,352,813,782,491,278,292,828,543,127,849,349.

The casino response was to pull the fix out, then run their own "test" and claim that the overall results were fair. Testing the game once the fix was pulled out and using these results to dilute the cheating results is an obvious manipulation tactic on the part of a casino group desperate to get out of an impossible situation.

It didn't work.

The English Harbour casino group deals non-random video poker. The gaff they implement, however it's created, hugely disadvantages the player. Proven.

Avoid English Harbour at all costs.

bonuslover

What do they mean by 'pull the fix out'?
They actually admit certain parameters were indeed implemented to their software in order to produce a (approx.) 2:1 loss-win ratio?

Just my own opinion, back in the day when I still play at Odds On casinos, I knew 100% their BJ was rigged.

hhcfreebie

How exciting! A real cheater was spotted!!
Let’s see how they cover up with these mess.

eek

I played BJ once and didn't go back.
So how long was it before some genius spotted that a coin flip was running at 2 to 1 ??

5 years ?

Its all a good laff really.

caruso

I agree, it's a laugh. You have to love how the industry takes the p*ss out of the players with total impunity. In the face of impossible evidence, they couldn't even say "there was a software error, we've fixed it and we apologise". They just denied it.

It's a complete joke.

Bethug

English Harbour never been a place I trusted. Everytime people show data that proves a casino is fixed, you have people (shills) you never seen before trying to disprove it.

Public company dont mean nothing
Seals dont mean nothing
Audit dont mean nothing

We need a real neutral auditors.

nafanny29

I totally agree Bethug.

WizardOfOdds

As a professional mathematician, one of the services I provide is evaluation of the logs of online casinos to ensure fair play, though I stopped taking new clients for this service a few years ago. One of my existing clients is Odds On, which provides the software for English Harbour casino among others. On April 29, 2006, a player posted at CasinoMeister.com that he lost more frequently than expected on the double-up feature when playing video poker at English Harbour. This was brought to my attention on May 2 by both Bryan Bailey of CasinoMeister and English Harbor Management. As soon as I found out about this I immediately requested detailed logs from English Harbor in order to analyze them. In preparing the log files for me, Odds On themselves discovered anomalies in the double-up records. When I received the logs and analyzed them I was able to confirm that the double-up on video poker did indeed pay out less than it should have between April 13 and May 2. According to English Harbor problem was caused by a buggy software update on April 13, which was automatically corrected by a subsequent update on May 2.

Readers might understandably wonder how English Harbor can claim that I review their logs for fairness if a problem like this can arise without my knowing about it. The answer is that I do the analysis monthly, and though players noticed the problem in April, I would not normally see the April data until mid May. This underscores the important point that my auditing service can not guarantee that players will get a mathematically fair game at every given instant. I can only attest to the fairness and return percentages in the past.

Although both English Harbor and myself believe that April 13 to May 2 was the only period affected we will be scrutinizing earlier logs to make sure, and will be monitoring future play closely.

The following table shows the results of all double or nothing bets in real play mode from April 1 to May 3.


Apr 01: wins=1225, losses=1245, ties=177, win ratio=49.6%
Apr 02: wins=763, losses=794, ties=89, win ratio=49%
Apr 03: wins=588, losses=580, ties=74, win ratio=50.34%
Apr 04: wins=1293, losses=1232, ties=156, win ratio=51.21%
Apr 05: wins=951, losses=918, ties=108, win ratio=50.88%
Apr 06: wins=1015, losses=996, ties=119, win ratio=50.47%
Apr 07: wins=950, losses=989, ties=127, win ratio=48.99%
Apr 08: wins=759, losses=735, ties=90, win ratio=50.8%
Apr 09: wins=818, losses=862, ties=111, win ratio=48.69%
Apr 10: wins=1203, losses=1168, ties=152, win ratio=50.74%
Apr 11: wins=529, losses=524, ties=64, win ratio=50.24%
Apr 12: wins=1199, losses=1195, ties=121, win ratio=50.08%
Apr 13: wins=194, losses=266, ties=27, win ratio=42.17%
Apr 14: wins=212, losses=424, ties=43, win ratio=33.33%
Apr 15: wins=284, losses=607, ties=73, win ratio=31.87%
Apr 16: wins=314, losses=602, ties=98, win ratio=34.28%
Apr 17: wins=139, losses=304, ties=45, win ratio=31.38%
Apr 18: wins=143, losses=317, ties=29, win ratio=31.09%
Apr 19: wins=141, losses=307, ties=42, win ratio=31.47%
Apr 20: wins=89, losses=169, ties=28, win ratio=34.5%
Apr 21: wins=134, losses=295, ties=42, win ratio=31.24%
Apr 22: wins=72, losses=128, ties=23, win ratio=36%
Apr 23: wins=52, losses=112, ties=21, win ratio=31.71%
Apr 24: wins=138, losses=322, ties=41, win ratio=30%
Apr 25: wins=66, losses=121, ties=16, win ratio=35.29%
Apr 26: wins=75, losses=126, ties=18, win ratio=37.31%
Apr 27: wins=176, losses=399, ties=47, win ratio=30.61%
Apr 28: wins=93, losses=173, ties=24, win ratio=34.96%
Apr 29: wins=40, losses=81, ties=15, win ratio=33.06%
Apr 30: wins=96, losses=169, ties=25, win ratio=36.23%
May 01: wins=73, losses=86, ties=9, win ratio=45.91%
May 02: wins=95, losses=125, ties=17, win ratio=43.18%
May 03: wins=142, losses=158, ties=20, win ratio=47.33%

Win Ratio = ratio of wins to sum of wins and losses.

English Harbor management tells me that they plan to reimburse each and every player who made a double or nothing bet during the period affected with his/her net loss on those bets over affected period. This offer will apply to all casinos using Odds On software. In addition, as a show of their regret for this mistake, they will add 20% to each player's reimbursement.


Michael Shackleford, A.S.A.

WizardOfOdds.com

EH_host

First and foremost, the English Harbour Group would like to formally apologize for the error in the software release that caused this situation. We hold in high regard all our players and respect for the Internet Gaming industry. We feel it is important for players to understand what happened, what went on during the investigation, how it was resolved and our compensation to affected players.


The issue was caused by a bug in the software staging release on the later part of the day April 13 and went unnoticed. On May 2 we had a maintenance release that during the course of our investigation seemed to have corrected the problem. When we were alerted of the claim, we ran through several trials and also simulations. We checked randomness of the distribution of cards in the doubling game over different time periods and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. We then did an interim posting on Casinomeister. We continued the investigation and sought the audit services of Michael Shackleford. Michael asked for the log files and we fully complied to his request. As part of the delivery of the log files to Michael, we noticed an issue that seemed to have spanned the later two weeks of April. We mentioned this to Michael as we continued to work with him. Through Michael's investigation, he concurred with our observations and was able help quantify the variance in the odds.


Michael continues to be a key part of our governance and fair game play strategy.


We discussed player compensation with Michael and we will be refunding affected players on the net loss on the doubling game plus an additional 20% of their net loss. Players will be receiving an email as well as a message within the casino itself shortly.


The English Harbour Group would like to thank the Casinomeister forum members for bringing this issue to our attention and their patience while we dealt with this issue.


The English Harbour Group Management Team