Are gambling items in world.....

Are gambling items in world safe to play?
IE are they truly random as say a Vegas casino game would be?
Has any one from second life IE linden lab inc. actually verified that the games in world are legit and not just stealing peoples money?

i for one would not give anything to a gambling machine un less i was assured by linden labs that they are in fact legitimate

LL doesnt put a seal on anything except when philip advertises peoples stuff which is unfair but it happens anyway.. they dont monitor any of that you put money in at your own risk.

Hi
Vegas casinos aren't random. They need to legally ensure a certain payout percentage in the 95%+ range. Whether you win on a slot machine or not has absolutely nothing to do with what buttons you press. It's all decided right after you put a coin into the slot, based on how many people have already won or lost at that game.
Gambling is stupid. You shouldnt do it whether or not you trust the machine owner.
I can tell you that MY games arent rigged. But you won't find them anywhere either.
I haven't seen the code behind Antagonistic Protagonist or Jack Digeridoo's games but they are fairly old and respected players, people that I trust implicitly.

I would also recommend Tony Tigereye's machines without reservation. I am particularly addicted to BingTris

I second that Eggy...hugs btw

I feel Texas Holdem isnt a risk but its not a machine.....I question some of the BlackJack tables tho...and I dig BlackJack....some tables seem to have the Dealer always come'n out over you just ahead...it seems when you have 20..dealer always has 21. Or even when you have 21...dealer has it also. I am not saying all...just some. I gamble often so I can say this first hand. If you have ever played BlackJack you know the cards come in waves...and something is fishy when you spend a few $1000 and you seldom if ever see at least half of what you gamble come back your way.

I am totally addicted to his Draw Poker machines. I can say that if you play smart you won't lose a whole lot of money and on some days, I have come out ahead. I am probably still L$2000 in to him, but I will get it back when I hit that Royal Flush with Max Credits bet!

I don't have the % payout on them, but I would totally trust Tony Tigereye's machines.

You don't want to use these to make money. They are strictly for fun. I have the Bicycle Casino CD for my PC with all of the games, and it is just more fun to play these games in SL.

I've made several casino games in SL. I've tried my best to make them as fair as possible. That is, if it were a traditional game (e.g. Blackjack--available at secondserver.net btw , it will mimic real casino odds. And if it were not, I tried to make sure that people could deduce the odds easily.

There is one caveat though. The oldest game I made that I've sold is called "Orb of Fortune" that is a simple win/lose game. This game has odds that are configurable by the owner. I have heard that some casino owners have abused it to make the player lose almost all the time. So I have very recently stopped selling this game.

I am currently working on a version that will announce the average payout of the orb. Once ready for release, I will issue a free exchange program for all who own all older versions.

I'd trust anything by Antagonistic Protagonist and I too am addicted to Tony Tigereye's blackjack. It never fails to come through for me when I'm down to under L$100 and need to upload a bunch of textures.

No, really!

Sometimes.
Sometimes - usually only when it's card games. Slot machines and such are often much worse.
No, and they likely never will, or they would be in the gambling business.

If SL gets big, I imagine you'll see a lot of closing of casinos because eventually someone from the IRS / gambling commision is going to figure out that this is an unregulated form of gambling.

the games in second life are not in any way shape or form to be trusted except on the word of some people here that i have absolutely no idea who you are and for all i know could be alt aves for the makers of said gaming machines.

i agree the games in Vegas are not completely random but they can be TRUSTED to be honest in the big casinos because they are regulated by the state.

there are no such regulations here and hence fourth the machines should not be trusted in any way shape or form

You need not be rude leanna, your lucky anyone even took the time to answer your post hun. My recommendation to you is not to gamble in secondlife go play on one of the online casino's that is based out of a basement in some 3rd world country that no laws govern.

Yes, except for the alt av part. They are solely devices for taking lindens from you. If you get real lucky, you might get some back.

billy darling i may be new here to second life but i am in no way rude nor stupid.
i asked a rational question. and my answer was that the games are not regulated. and if said games are not t regulated in any way then that alone says that they can not be trusted.
i like going to Vegas and i like going to AC. and i spend lots of money there because i know the games are at least regulated by the state and can be trusted to give you the odds that is expected.
and as i see it the games here are no different then the gaming sites you mentioned.
witch BTW i would never use anyway.

SO I WILL RESTATE THE ONLY ASSURANCES I CAN GET HERE IS FROM A FEW INDIVIDUALS WHO I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THEY ARE AND THAT I SHOULD TRUST THEIR WORD THAT THE GAMES ARE FAIR AND HONEST.

if this is not the case then please correct me.

Nice useage of alt accounts.

Which is exactly what any casino anywhere is.

Don't kid yourself into thinking otherwise. Nobody wins in a casino in the long run except the casino owners, in real life, second life, or the internet.

oh wow you caught it before i could trap it in with my post.. crucial armatage.

While I cannot vouch for other slot machines in Second Life I can verify the ones I developed about a year ago for WhiteStar Casino are exactly like Vegas slots.

When I set out to create the machines I felt that a certain player experience of the Vegas ones was missing from the existing Second Life slot machines and I was also making a fortune taking advantage of mathematical weaknesses in the design of many in world machines. I felt that in order to be fair, ensure playability, and not go broke at the same time I needed to do my homework.

I studied every piece of information and literature I could get my hands on about Nevada gaming laws, slot machine design, and the law of large numbers. I think the best source of information came from a thesis from the Nevada School of Gaming.

Vegas slot machines *ARE* random, or well, at least as random as a silicon can generate. The way that payout percentages are regulated is based on the reel design.

When you look at the physical reel of a slot machine, each reel, of which there are typically three of, have the symbols printed on them. Because of the physical size of the reels and size of the symbols, only so many can be printed on each reel. This is typically about 6 or 7 I believe, there is also white space dividing each one.

If you know a little bit about math, you can easily figure out that with 6 symbols per reel, that would come out to 6 * 6 * 6 possible combinations. That's only a total of 216. To garauntee the large jackpots that you typically see in Vegas now a days odds of 1/216 (1 in 216) of winning the jackpot would be insane. The casino would go broke in no time. That or they would simply have to lower the jackpot amount significantly. But then what would be the point of playing? Where's the excitment in winning 10 bucks?

So now we get to the real question of how to give us more realistic odds of say 1/64,000 for a jackpot without physically being able to print 40 symbols per reel (40 * 40 * 40 = 64,000). The answer is in virtual stops. A virtual stop is basically a remapping of a physical stop. For example, 1= 2, 2 = 4, 3 = 2, 4 = 1, 5 = 1, 6 = 2, 7 = 3, ... , 40 = 2. Don't forget that we also take the white spaces half way between the symbols as physical stops too.

Now that we have 3 reels capable of 40 different virtual stops each that gives us a total of 64,000 possible combinations that the machine can stop on. So request a random number generation between 1 - 64,000 (or larger with a MOD of 64,000) and you have your true (to the limitation of silicon again) randomness.

Now the way to control payout to be a certain pertentage rate is to regulate how many times each possible combination of symbols comes up through the mapping of the virtual stops. Let's say that triple cherry symbols always pays $20. If we have 1 physical cherry symbol per reel, but 40 virtual stops, and we map 6 of those virtual stops on the first reel to the physical cherry symbol, and 1 on the second, and 1 on the third reel, that means that triple cherries can come up 6 * 1 * 1 times, which is 6/64,000 or 6 spins out of every 64,000 spins.

Because we're using a truly random number though (again, to the limitations of silicon generated randomness) in actuality those triple cherries could come up 4, 10, 20, or even 4543 times in the first 64,000 spins. It doesn't matter. But because we know mathematically that its 6/64,000 odds the law of large numbers tells us that this will eventually average out. So in some arbriturarily large number, say over 1,000,000 spins every 6 in 64,000 spins on average will be triple wild cherries. The larger the number, the more even the average will become. This is what casinos bank on. Over the lifetime of a machine, their odds will come out, but it's still truely random, 10 people could win the jackpot in a row, or it may not be won for hundreds of thousands of spins, it doesn't matter, it will always average out, you just have to be the lucky person to hit it which could happen at any moment. It's not predetermined.

It gets more complicated when you figure in the winnings, but I'll stop short of that part to keep this article from boring you and just summarize it. But basically, figure out how many times each winning combination comes up and the amount won by each, with a lot of precise calcuations and you can create a machine that pays X% of the money paid into it back over the law of large numbers. Most Vegas machines are I believe around 97%. I forget the legal minimum off the top of my head, but it's somewhere in the low to mid 90 percentile.

A virtual reel with 40 stops is just my example too, in actuality as jackpots get bigger and bigger, and we have such complicated systems as globally networked progressive slots the odds of hitting the jackpot are becoming increasingly higher with machines that have well over 2,000,000 possible virtual stop combinations.

Another key aspect into a well designed slot machine is psychological payout. If you design a machine that pays a lot on winning spins but to meet your payout percentage those combinations come at greater odds then people will win a lot fewer spins and get bored easily. The key to a good slot machine is one that pays out a high jackpot, medium lower payouts, and frequent minimum payouts. This way a player is winning at least the minimum every few spins on average. Sticking to say your 95% payout ratio and paying them back that 95% on average as they continue to play.

To recreate this in SL I wrote a complex random number generator virtual stop to physical stop remapping script for my reels. Each reel has an array of the the virtual stops with their physical stop value.

You end up with something that looks like this for a reel with 64 virtual stops, 7 physical stops, 1 - 6 for symbols, and 0 for spaces. For 64 * 64 * 64, or 262,144 possible combinations.

reel1 = (integer)llGetSubString("0201050506010206030406020104020506050301060403503104330435036406", a, a);
reel2 = (integer)llGetSubString("0400050204000606050402010004060302010506050300010605000301030303", b, b);
reel3 = (integer)llGetSubString("0103000600060001000002000405060403000006050304060500030506030300", c, c);

The slot machines I created all have a payout ratio of about 94-98% depending on the game. They are truely random as described in this article and can be found lingering on the south western border of Chartreuse near where the WhiteStar Casino once was if you are curious to test out their designs.

I hope this article has been educational at the very least in understanding the design of true slot machines, re-establishing some faith in the entertaining value of Second Life slot machines, and hope that you can truely strike it rich on a well designed machine.

I however warn you to be at the least cautious of the machines you play, making sure that they are from a reputable source that you can trust. I cannot offer you any further proof into the integrity of my own designs, other than hope that this knowledge is burden of proof and at the very least I offer my word. Take that as you see fit. Use your better judgement and instinct and best of all, have fun.


Good luck,

Rathe Underthorn

Great bit of information and eplaination to everyone Rathe!

I took a similiar approach when I designed my Skunk Money game. I researched all I could find on how slot machines work, and the various gambling rules and regulations in efffect in RL. My machines are truly random, and have a configurable setting to modify the % payout by modifying the available tiles that combine to make a certain payout. It is certainly posible for the machine (like real slots) to pay big jackpots over a certain period of time, since they are truly random. Real slots, and my machine, do not have a magic system to enforce % payouts, but rely on proven statistics.

I make a lot of casino games in SL. First and foremost, gambling in SL is not regulated. So, no you can't "trust" anyone.

But, if you are looking at gambling as a method to make money - you are looking at it wrong. Gambling is entertainment. I take a lot of time to incorporate high quality textures, sounds, motion, particles and features that provide that entertainment. All of my games are set to payout upwards of 90% back to the player. In addition, most of the games have a low probability 'jackpot'. This gives the player the chance to 'hit it big' and walk away. Which I don't begrudge because I have figured it into the model.

What you want to avoid in SL gambling are the cheap low quality 'pick a color' / 'pick a number' type machines. First they aren't entertaining. Second the odds on those (even if they aren't rigged) are terrible. I always include, either on the game or in the notecard, the payout percentage. Look for 90% or better and you will get the most entertainment value for your Linden.

'Rigging' a game would actually be harder than just creating a fair odds game. As Rathe did, I also studied the internals of slot machines and used the virtual reel model. By using this model, you are seeing the exact same software mechanisms that Vegas slots use. I go as far as to review statistics after the games have been played for a while and adjust the virtual reel to ensure the payout percentage is what I had targeted. Here is a good link I used to base my slot machine from: How Slot Machines Work

Finally, if you look at a machine and it is obvious somebody put many hours of work into developing it, you can assume they aren't going to 'rig it' with poor odds. Players wouldn't play it. Casino owners wouldn't buy it.

Good work Sapphire. Yes, I did the same with mine, I ran tens of thousands of simulated runs (along with my low chance jackpot, in addition to the standard virtual reels) to verify that my odds calculations (payout percentages) were correct. (I wanted to double check as there is a very small amount of strategy involved in my type of game compared to a standard slot machine)

Since I allow people to modify the payout percentage of the machine, I intentionally programmed mine to not allow a payout percentage lower than 75% (which is the lowest you can have by law in the USA). I typically release my games at their default ~90% payout setting, though it's up to the casino owner to specify how they want their machines to work.

Then why bother asking this on forums...ask someone you know and trust;......jeesh


Peoples and their tudes...*rollzeyes*