Gambling by any other name

Has LL taken their eye off the ball where gambling is concerned? Every day now I see more adds for new games.The latest that caught my eye was called HUBO,I think.This proudly boasted WIN or BUST this is gambling or what?As a bloke who closed his small casino when the ban came in this irks.

You can always AR the offending object, if you feel so inclined.

And people think they have trouble getting their credit cards to accept LL charges *now*.

interesting!!

Just AR them, you know they'de do the same to you .............

Definitely AR. Then it becomes LL problem.

how do you play Hubo?is there any skill at all to it or is it all chance?

Good question Ceka, but the whole "skill" thing is kind of a joke in my opinion.
Apparently Zyngo is one of the games that is allowed under the "skill" classification.

Looking at a number in Box A and being able to determine if it matches a one of four numbers in Box B stops being considered a "skill" shortly after age 3.

Ah, but it does after a few beers and on some medications.

Have Linden really really checked this games?
Like Zyngo for example. To call Zyngo a skillgame is just a joke.

The creator of Zyngo calls people who question him, his games and all that for stupid, but really?....A skill game?

Were is the skill if you have 83 000 in score on round 17 and then the devils comes up 3 times in a row and you end up with 18 000. Is that Skill? Isn't that just pure bad luck, or gambling?
There are so many weird things about the whole Zyngo and its kinda funny/interesting that Linden never did anything against that

When the creator of Zyngo fooled everyone telling people that Linden had approved his project Zorkmid wish was a lie from the creators side obvious, he also changed zyngo to version 3.0
Since then Second life has been filled with places that has kept the older machine because they pay out less the places claim but they have lower scores on them. But the creator claims that he never changed anything in the gamecode on Zyngo. So are the places that have the old zyngo now then stupid and loose money like hell because they have to low scores. Or can it be that the creator lied?

I even asked once in chat and one of the friends to the creator also said that the machine goes in cycles. That they sometimes payout more and then not. That will explain how you can win 3 times in a row with no devils and then next time you come back you can play 11 times and see more devils in the machine then Linden saw on poor Watersims.

As you can see:

[3:00] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: Starting a new game of Zyngo on Zyngo 2500 POT 49888.
[3:00] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: The devil has stolen 30% of your score.
[3:00] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: The devil has stolen 20% of your score.
[3:00] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: The devil has stolen 50% of your score.
[3:00] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: The devil has stolen 30% of your score.
[3:00] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: The devil has stolen 40% of your score.
[3:01] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: The devil has stolen 40% of your score.
[3:01] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: Your scores are now all doubled!
[3:01] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: The devil has stolen 30% of your score.
[3:01] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888: Hurrah! You filled the pattern!
[3:01] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: The devil has stolen 20% of your score.
[3:01] Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 whispers: Zyngo 2500 POT 49888 game over.

Its fantastic what a "skillgame" can do

Yeah right

Maybe this shows how little I know but do gamblers just like winning at games or is it all about winning money? If someone put out some closed system where you don't pay anything in and don't get anything out but simply get points in a ranking would that be enough of a draw? Wouldn't something like that be better than nothing?

Linden Lab adopted it's gambling "policy" after the FBI had some questions about Second Life's compliance with internet gambling laws.

The internet gambling laws themselves do not really define what gambling is.

The legislators who passed the laws, and the FBI agents that enforce those laws, have in their heads what they think the "bad" gambling is. Poker, betting on the horses, things one sees in casinos.

That's mainly why Linden Lab's "policy" is a joke. Linden Lab just needs to keep the FBI happy. The FBI is happy as long as there is no poker or betting on the horses.

Besides, if the feds ever made a prosecution based on Zyngo, for example, such a prosecution would expose how vague and silly the internet gambling laws are.

I agree with what Amity mostly said.

But seriously now... all forms of Poker, especially Texas Hold' Em... are about skill.

And not to beat a dead horse... but the other irritating thing LL has claimed, is that the Linden holds no REAL monetary value. Oh really? Then why does it cost money to buy them? Why do we make money when we sell them?

Why are some people able to quit their day jobs and earn a REAL LIFE income via businesses on Second Life?! Time to get serious!

If the Linden dollar truly held no monetary value, a gambling ban would not have had to be put into place.

and about chance.

LL's idea that games of skill are not gambling is good. Poker and such contain skill but they also contain a great deal of chance, so they are gambling. I don't know Zingo but, if it's just matching numbers and winning if you have the highest score, it's a game of skill - miniscule skill, but skill just the same. How does HUBO work?

By the way, anyone who is really fascinated with internet gambling should take a look at this fairly good break-down of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

http://www.ncalg.org/Library/internet/IG%20Law%20booklet.pdf

(And that fact sheet is provided by the web site for the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling; but despite the organization's obvious bias in the issue, I still find the fact sheet to be fairly objective and informative overall.)

Linden Lab has a silly gambling "policy." I don't blame Linden Lab though; the laws with which they are trying to comply are silly. Their "policy" is really a matter of doing the best they can with a bad situation.

If you hate Linden Lab's gambling policy, here's your challenge: Read the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 yourself and see if you could devise a better policy. (I couldn't.)

It's Zyngo.....

It's like a slot machine and Bingo (hence Zyngo ) only that it puts random numbers on a line that you match to your numbers in a grid.

Seems to me that this is the definition of "random" or "chance" unless there is a winning combination for every game. And we know that is hardly the case!

That's a misconception about the TOS. It never says they have no real monetary value. It says that they're not redeemable from Linden Labs for any monetary value. In other words, LL has no obligation to give you anything of value in exchange for your Lindens, but that doesn't mean that nobody else will.

exactly

many folks think they are buying and selling the lindens to Linden Lab via the Lindex.
That is not the case, you are actually buying and selling from and to other players via the Lindex.

This is what confuses a lot of new players.

That's certainly true, including the confusion.

On the flip side, the line about "Linden Labs says the Linden $ has no value" has taken on the proportions of an urban myth. It's so widespread that people keep repeating it, no matter how many times it's corrected here. Nevertheless, we must correct it every time it appears.

Well, I'm an educated person who has tried to do her research on the SL "economy." And now I'm a bit confused.

I know that, primarily, the Lindex is used to match up buy orders and sell orders between residents for Linden dollars.

However, doesn't Linden Lab also provide a constant supply of new Linden dollars (the "Supply Linden" about which I read so much)? So when one is buying Linden dollars, isn't there a good chance that one is getting fresh new Linden dollars from Linden Lab rather than getting them from another resident?

Since I'm guessing that demand for Linden dollars is always higher than supply, as long as the resident base keeps growing, residents who sell off their Linden dollars are easily matched with residents looking to buy.

But the upshot is, in my understanding, when one buys Linden dollars on the Lindex, one might be getting Linden dollars from another player, but there would be a good chance that one is getting fresh new Linden dollars from Linden Lab directly.

Of course, this is a myth that Linden Lab is happy to perpetuate.

If Linden Lab ever does anything to screw you out of your Linden dollars, they want you believing that you have lost nothing of monetary value; otherwise you might be tempted to sue them to recover what you lost in monetary value.

Zyngo is no more skill-based than poker.

Poker:

1) You get dealt random cards. (chance part)
2) You select a subset of cards to replace (skill part 1)
3) You strategize your betting / behavior to get other players to "fold". (skill part 2)

Zyngo:

1) You are given random numbers and random symbols (the "Devil". (chance part)
2) You select which random numbers match other random numbers to increase your score, which is mitigated by the random symbols (skill part).

I don't really see the difference. Since Zyngo is played against the machine, there isn't even the "bluffing skill element".

Yes, but that is MENTAL AGE 3 and therefore it is still a challenge to the majority.

You're not confused, you're absolutely right. But it may be easier to explain the Lindex by describing it as buying and selling with other avatars, with Supply Linden sometimes being one of the sellers but never a buyer.

From what I gather it's the feeling they get when there is a chance of winning and a risk of losing. As soon as each round is over - of whatever the game is - they need to play again to get the feeling back. It doesn't matter whether they win or not. But I think it does matter that something is at stake.