Casino Games, rigged?, and if so why?

the otherday I was at a casino and I was playing blackjack, same ole things hundreds of others do... now If I were to write a BJ game, I'd decided how many decks etc, write up object code, or atleast generate some lists etc... same boiler plate for any cardgame.

But As I was playing, I hit Black jack, Ah 10d... then dealer hit black jack Ah 10d...

What are the chances of that?

Isn't the whole point of a casino is that the house has a pretty much statistical advantage on almost every game. Now this isn't slots, and even those are usually capped at some percentage payback... why would the house make a rigged game? (if it was rigged and not just some statistical anomily... however I reserve judgement cause this game was winning, alot)

Should we demand some sort of gaming board? I am not a fan of beauracracy and in SL it's pretty much a cutthroat world, but should vendors of gaming be watched? This one hand really made a fun time of gambling just seem like a hoax. and I was the mark

feel free to msg me ingame with opinions.

They do it for money.. They probably stand to gain more (with the rate the game is growing in terms of players) to rig them completely in their favour than to slightly tip it towards the house and get people coming back..

Its pretty impossible to have regulations because (as I understand it) scripters own the copyright to all their scripts so Lindens aren't (as far as I know) allowed to look at them..

I can tell you why RL casinos aren't rigged... because most of the players bet their winnings.

In SL, it's different. One can exert better willpower over L$ than US$ because it doesn't mean so much. Perhaps this potential reduction in betting is a small factor in making some places allegedly rig their machines.

That's why it's called gambling.

BTW, Zap, nice new watery icon.

Awww TY! Its my PC background lol..

I think you understand wrong. give the TOS a going over



but the odds in gambling should be about the natural odds rather than gambling on whether the programmer wants to let you win this time

I pretty much expect it to be rigged. it's so easy to do, people loooooove money, and I doubt the lindens will do anything about rigged games, so everything's in favor of cheating here :/ really ruins the fun.....

the only good way to fix it I think would be built in LSL functions for gambling that

1 - are fair. real randomness, real odds.
2 - have full disclosure, so users can monitor that they're being used correctly and report abuse

for example, functions that create a deck of a certain size containing a certain range / set of cards, functions that manage the players, deal to them, etc. disclosure would be in the form of system messages that can't be faked (special color, logged in their own window, something...)

ie

then you outlaw making gambling games that don't use the built in functions and punish anyone trying to, which should be easy to catch.

of course i'm not recommending this NOW, users would hate the idea, and it's too far along, but that's how I would have done things, from the start

Quite possibly.. But even if they're allowed to, there are so many gambling scripts out there, it'd take too many man hours to number.. Plus they'd need to re-check for every edit or new version..

Another gambling regulation thread..

hmm. there are 4*4=16 Kings, Queens, Jacks, or tens and 4 aces.

The odds of the first blackjack would seem to be 16*4/(52*51) ~= 2%
The odds of the second black would seem to be 15*3/(50*49) ~= 2%

The odds of both occuring in a single draw are 16*15*4*3/(52*51*50*49) = 0.044 %

which is about 1 in 2,260 rounds, assuming you shuffle the deck between each hand.

Also it may be a bit more complicated than that depending on the order of the draw, but you get the idea.

So, not so rare that you wouldn't expect it to happen from time to time.

Also, from my game programming experience, sometimes the random function isn't very random, like, noticably. Just an idea.

Pym

Way back, out of curiousity I tested the output of llFrand using the DIEHARD suite. As the sims run on linux boxes that provide the /dev/random entropy pool, it is feasible and likely that llFrand is based around that.

While it may not keep the NSA out, according to DIEHARD, llFrand() is a pretty random random number generator (at least as of SL 1.3).

This is a very valid concern. Yes, some of the tables in SL are definitely rigged.

Which ones? That's up for debate. Can we stop it? Probably not, and if we could it would probably see the end of SL gambling.

It is true that the games are designed to favor the house and, in theory, the casino owners should not need to bother to rig their games. But there are a lot of other factors. It is very expensive to run a casino in SL and not as profitable as you would think (speaking as former owner of successful casino and casino game builder). People in SL not only lack the regulatory factor, but also as much of the moral factor as in RL. They are more emotionaly detached from their patrons. Basically, they desire money more than entertainment.

All that being said, I believe the more popular casino games in SL can be considered safe. If they wree rigged, they probably wouldn't be so popular. So maybe this is the route to take in this matter. Set up a system, most likely third-party, in which SL gamblers can rate and post comments on the different lines of games in SL. Just keep in mind that there are bound ot be players that go on a bad streak and swear that a table is rigged.

Gah. Now you people have got me wanting to build a craps table.

Like a real life casino game, the odds are slightly in favor of the house and we even have a roulette table.

No one comes to Sea Gardens cuz I don't have money chairs. I won't either, I want people to come to Sea Gardens to have fun, win some money and maybe dance upstairs on the aquarium dance floor.

My games are not rigged anymore than a rl casino. Come play, you'll see for yourself.

I did not buy any of the games out there, because I had seen what they do...and they pay the house too much. I'm about fun in sl, not ripping people off. Check it out...cuz it will be gone soon if no one comes by to see it.

i made my own blackjack table took me a few days and it seems to payout too much

gambling is gambling yes it shouldn't be rigged but you can guess it is so play for fun and if you susspect it's rigged move on.

I can think of lots of reasons to rig a game in SL.

1. Because you can. A large percentage of everything in SL is 'just because' or 'just for fun'.
2. By mistake. For instance, using a 52-card deck but forgetting to remove the cards already played, so it's possible to draw the same card twice.
3. To increase the odds for the house.

Those are pretty obvious to everyone. But some other ideas occur to me.

4. To make it more fun for players. For instance, if you've tracked a player's betting and he has lost a lot of money, give him a few dramatic wins.
5. To exploit systems. If you notice a player betting a doubling scheme 1,2,4,1,2,1,2,4,8,16,1,2... you can throw in a series of losses and feel very confident you'll take a large amount of money from him.
6. To guard against hackers. If you notice someone winning too much, the next hand is guaranteed to lose. And an additional check for someone winning too too much could detect someone must be hacking.
7. To detect suspicious behaviour. If you notice someone dramatically raising and lowering his bet, shut the machine down and email the owner to come check it out. I think I've actually seen some tables do that in SL.
8. To be vindictive. Have the machine listen for certain words like Bush, escort, furry, the names of competing casinos, or whatever you're biased against, and make people using those words lose. Or merely have their blackjacks pay double instead of triple.
9. To be selective. Have the machine listen for those words, but shut down for those players -- refuse to let them play.
10. To tempt players. For instance, if someone starts lowering his bet you could have the house start hitting 17s and 18s instead of 20s, or even feed him some wins... then if he raises his bets again let him start losing again.
11. To make it more exciting. For instance, if you've determined the player's going to lose, let him have a 20... and give the house 21 with lots of small cards. Then he feels like he's playing well and just got unlucky. BTW, even real-world slot machines do this a lot.

Notice that 4 and 6 go together... if a casino guaranteed that nobody would ever lose nor gain more than 10 percent of their total action, the players might like that. It limits losses just as much as it limits winnings.

Overall... there could be a *lot* going on you don't know about. Seeing a green table in the shape of a half-circle does NOT mean it's actually a blackjack table.

For reference, the slot odds in Vegas are scrupulously accurate over the casino floor as a whole. Within those contstraints, and as slot machines are all just special purpose network terminals, the house can make payouts however they like so long as the aggregate odds are work out at the end of the day.

Now that Vegas casinos are keen on having players jack-in and identify themselves, they diddle with the payouts to keep the players there and losing money but with enough "reward" to keep them from walking away.

On the other hand, casinos have a strong interest in keeping things like roulette wheels and craps dice as honest as possible, not because the gaming commission would get upset, but because the deck is stacked in their favor by the game design and a non-random wheel could perturb the odds away from favoring the house.

Of course none of this applies to SL where gambling is totally unregulated and need not follow any rules at all.

Indeed, I've often envied casino operators as being one of the last places that can experiment on humans without first going through a Human Subjects Review Panel and getting informed consent from the subjects. Anthropologists, Sociologists, and Psychologists are hamstrung by comparison.

I actually studied the making oand workings of slot machines quite thoroughly. They don't really contain any AI to mess with players. And if any do, they are probably not legal. I do a lot of research on the games I make to make them as realistic as possible.

What they DO set, to make the player feel as though they allllmost got it, is the physical stops on the drum closest to the bonus symbols are set more times on the virtual stops so they pop up more frequently. The total payout odds are set pretty standard though.

As far as the card games in SL: I think the biggest issue, other than the infrequent blatant rigging, is how the cards are dealt. It is part of natural strategy to base the odds of your card coming up on what's been dealt out so far in the shoe. Problem isn SL is that most BJ tables don't use a real shoe. They simply reshuffle a whole deck each hand. As far as I know I make the only true 6-deck shoe in SL (it's actually a little tricky due to memory issues). I believe Tony Tigereye's BJ tables use a true shoe (4 decks?). Other than that, most I have seen seem to reshuffle each hand.
I still believe a peer review system would be great for SL gaming.

Mine use a true 6-deck shoe.

I really have nothing of further value to add to this thread, as it seems almost everything that can be said about it has been said. If there were a third-party auditor that I felt I could actually trust with my scripts, I would definitely use them, but I do not see that day coming anytime soon.

I like the idea you had about a sort of resident ratings system. Sure it's not perfect, but it's very much like ebay's rating system, which seems to be sufficient for most people.

I know of a technology (maybe it has been discussed before) to provide a cheat-proof table game. Players would be able to confirm that the blackjack, poker, roulette, craps, etc. table was playing fair and not biasing the "chance" outcomes. The table would basically use cryptography to prove after each hand that the outcome was kosher.

Do you think players would substantially prefer tables where they knew they could not be cheated? Would it be a draw for casino owners to offer tables with this technology? Would there be a good market for such machines?

I was looking at a blackjack game I found in a newbie box somewhere and it was pretty bad. No offense to the author, it is a nice starting point to learn about scripting a complicated game, but there are a lot of mistakes.

Worst of all, it CHEATS! When the player gets blackjack here is the code:

        if (playerscore == 21)
        {
            if (cardnum == 2)
            {
                llWhisper(0, playername + "; Black Jack! Let's see if the dealer can get 21!");
                playerBJ = TRUE;
                llMessageLinked(7, 0, "Card " + (string)rand_card, "");
                if (card_idvalue(rand_card) == 14)
                {
                    dealer1a == TRUE;
                    dealerscore += 11;
                    dealeraces += 1;
                }
                else if (card_idvalue(rand_card) > 10) dealerscore += 10;
                else dealerscore += card_idvalue(rand_card);
            }
            else
            {
                llWhisper(0, playername + "; You have " + (string)playerscore + ".");
            }
            dealer_play();
            return;
        }

rand_card is the player's most recent card. When he gets blackjack the game deals THAT SAME CARD as the dealer's first card, then runs dealer_play to get the other cards. That means that the dealer is guaranteed to have a 10 or an ace as one of his two cards whenever the player gets blackjack. That means there is a much greater chance than there should be that the dealer will tie the player and cheat the player out of his blackjack.

(You might think it would be a tip-off because the dealer should not have exactly the same card as the player, but not in this game because the cards are not removed from the "deck" when drawn.)

There are a lot of other things wrong with this game: the random numbers are messed up, the play out of blackjack is not right (the dealer keeps playing even if he doesn't have a matching BJ and if he gets 21, it's a tie!) (but this is made up by the fact that the table pays 3 to 1 for a player BJ if the dealer busts or doesn't get 21), there is a limit of 5 cards drawn (although I know some casinos in RL do this). And you have to "Pay" the machine explicitly for each bet.

I don't mind most of this as the game is free and like I said it is a good example. But I am worried that distributing a free game that CHEATS is not setting a good precedent for beginning scripters. Maybe they will get the impression that cheating in table games is the way things are supposed to go in SL.

If you are thinking of zero knowledge protocols. they are theorhetically interesting. If these rather complex algorithms could be implemented in LSL it is unlikely that any player would be interested in spending the time needed to engage in the proving dialog.

More importantly, the game could switch from "proving mode" to "cheating mode" as it saw fit. There is a reason card dealers do everything on top of the table. No SL script can do the analogous operation.

(I just wanted to post to say that this thread makes me giggle every time I see the title. Casino games, rigged? Never! Why would anybody do such a thing?!)

Any game that has lasted and still gets played by anyone is likely to be a fair game -- to the extent that any casino game is "fair". It is in a casino owner's best interest to run a clean shop so they will get repeat business. On most games the margins are pretty slim, so you need a lot of people playing to make any money. If you are cheating, you won't get repeat business.

And just a quick shameless plug -- my blackjack game is fully featured (double, split, insurance with correct payout, etc..) and only uses TWO decks. This means better odds for the player. I regularly receive IMs from players thanking me for a great play experience -- even from people who have lost money. I got into casino game developing in SL because I really like blackjack and wanted to provide a game for people who really know the game well and would appreciate a quality play experience. I am a big fan of Tony Tigereye's blackjack table and also the Sapphire Moon table. (Although I pay a little better odds ) High quality games.

I would be willing to submit to a code review of my game logic if some kind of trusted agency were created, but I'm also very skeptical of that ever coming to pass for a couple reasons: 1) it would be exceedingly difficult to create such an agency that anyone would trust. 2) you could submit scripts for review, but there would be no way to ensure that the script that was submitted is actually the script that is running in any given game.

I would never gamble in SL simply because it's unregulated. SL casinos can rip you off completely without recourse for the victim. There is not a RL casino in existence that offers any game with straight up odds. Any game that comes close has a rake. Long term every game will end with the house winning. SL it's just faster.

I'm surprised there are not some legal issues popping up from this. Seems nothing is preventing someone from starting a Sports Book in SL and cashing in RL. All is takes is a credit card and a $9.99 sign up fee and you can gamble away. hmm...