Sploders that secretly give the house a "percentage"?

I got invited to join in a sploder that was high pay in, high pay out. This sploder was at the Satin Dolls night club, and I had the 750 buy in so I figured I'd go anyway. No skin off my back if I lost it, and if I won I just went to bed a little happier. Went, paid in, and waited. Pot closed with 33k.

After it sploded, I noticed something odd. The biggest payouts were 12k and 4k, and the rest didn't hit 1k, with many being 12-18L. Quick math showed it didn't add up so I busted out the calculator. Sure enough...21,494. Big difference from 33k. I pointed this out in open, was banned immediately. After a conversation with the person who banned me, I came to find that they were taking a "cut" of the sploder's pot and keeping it, in this case almost 12k. The pot never showed this cut taken out, nor did it mention it in any way. Up until the payouts, there was no indication it would be any less.

Now, I know most random sploders are not allowed in SL anymore, but I'm curious how this one slipped by. As well, since when did people start making sploders that were misleading and gave cuts of the pot? Either way, I'm disappointed that there's a new way to sneak money out of people's pockets by misleading them in a way like this. Even if I won the big prize I probably would have been upset.

Thoughts? Should this be allowed?

People can put up illegal gambling devices in their joints as much as any other item. It's only when they get caught that it matters.

As for cheating gambling devices, welcome to SL. There's no regulation of gambling devices, so you are COMPLETELY at the mercy of the gambling machine operator. They can make them take cuts, cheat, or do anything they want. This has ALWAYS been the case, even before gambling was banned.

Of course, gambling in the first place is against the ToS, and can result in warnings, suspensions, and banishment.

I know that gambling and all that has been outlawed in SL, so to speak, and that some sploders have been "cleared" (which I believe to be bullshit 99% of the time) but this is my first time seeing a sploder that is so misleading like that, and if it's a very common thing now or if it's just this one club. I know the sides of "will they use it" vs "are they allowed to use it".

Um, yeah, that is one way that club owners who pay tier, salaries, etc. make money. Go see the "why don't clubs pay DJs more thread" and then ask yourself where the money comes from.

Meh, probably not reported, or the random reason of the day made it allowable at some point if it was reported.

It's really pretty common for sploders to give a cut to the house.

I dont know about it being a way to pay tier, I think it the means doesnt justify the end...if you can't afford to run a club, don't. Clubs are not money makers in any way so this hidden theft is not really justified. Along the lines of paying DJs, I used to DJ though, but stopped after most places were "tips only" or 100L an hour. Learn the conversion from L$ to USD and you start to realize whats worth it and what isn't.

Anyway, this was my first sploder in a while, and while most sploders say exactly what the cut is, it tends to only be 10% or so. 12k out of a 33k pot is huge, and if they're doing that much every night by the sounds of it, it's a little more than just "paying to stay alive". Too many people are trying to run clubs nowadays and there is no money in it. I just thought it was sad, really.

I'm not sure how any sneaking is going on, you pay the sploder, you hope to win a prize. The participant paid in, they haven't had any money sneaked from them.

Most sploders take a cute/used to take a cute. But somewhere between 5-10% was more normal. I used to splode when it was still allowed and I think hardly any sploder indicated what kind of a cut it was taking.

I made enough money back then to buy new clothes every day. You just had to be consistent about which sploders you wouldn't pay into. I never paid into anything that had less than double the money the people themselves had to put in. I.e. if there were 50 people with a minimum pay-in of L$10 each and just L$800 in the sploder, I didn't go for it. And I hardly ever lost money. I wouldn't participate in anything with a buy-in that's over L$50. L$500 buy-in or more is not at all normal.

The idea is that the pot is more than claimed. So if you're wanting to consider it, you're paying for less than you're getting. That's what I was saying with this. The "sneaked out" is in the return payment, not the pay in.

I think that should be something required (even though sploders are banned anyway, so god knows why they still exist everywhere...if clubs can have sploders, bring back the texas hold'em tables, damnit) that it shows the cut. The cut could be 50% and you'd never know until it was too late. In all honesty, not seeing it shows how much of a risk it truly can be, and seems very underhanded. Still, this is my first time paying into a sploder in over a year, so it wouldn't matter to me either way. I'm just speaking on the mindset of the average SL user, and how I'd view it.

would you have posted if you had won the 12,000 Lindens?

I've been exploring some fresh clubs recently and lots of them have sploders. I didn't try any to see if they worked and most of the clubs in question were empty so there'd be no point anyway.

Back in the days when sploders were unquestionably legal, I always assumed that the owner got a cut of the pot. It would seem logical.

Owners have always got a split from sploders.. they also have the ability to set the amount. But most of them the max cut was 20% I think

Maybe I was just lucky but when I still visited clubs in my first few months on SL I never came across sploders where a cut was taken, it was there simply for fun (money raffles on the other hand did always take a cut).

More often than not if a club owner, manager or host was there they would actually seed the sploder far above the minium pay-in so they were a net loss for most places I went to rather than something to sneakily siphon money away from.

The most I ever got from a sploder back then was L$20k-ish with the money coming from the owner of a club who funded the lion's share of it several times that evening (as far as I remember nearly everyone was a good sport too and put 50%-ish back in after a big win). A few weeks later open sign-ups started and waves of NPIOFs destroyed the atmosphere in most clubs I went to.

Read:



Anyway, the one's I've seen that take a cut normally say "_____ has put in # into the sploder, with # amount going towards the pot." Most of them that I've seen don't even take a cut. So I guess I find it something that's extremely misleading when you don't even know how much is being taken out.

Considering that they are against the ToS, I don't think that you have much room to complain about being burned by participating in something against the ToS.

That's like complaining to the cops about getting gypped by a drug dealer. "He sold me a nickel bag for $10, honest, copper!". Umm, yeah.

LL isn't going to regulate something that they consider illegal in the first place, so I am not quite sure what you want done about it. Appealing to the good nature of people already breaking the rules?

just AR them as ya see them let linden sort them out.. maybe some will get banned and taught a lesson

If you want to play legal sploders, try Tmyclyk Dmytryk's LindenXploder network. The Xploder doesn't require a buy-in, so it's TOS-legal. There is a tracker website http://serv.tmyentertainment.com/xploders/trackerLight so you can easily see and TP to the highest pots.

I use Xploders and they have been a great traffic booster for my sim.

Isn't it nice that gambling is prohibited in Second Life?

strange
I visited this site just now and got a pop up alerting me to a trojan virus trying to be downloaded to my PC
(of course I moved to vault)

lol gambling is a big money industry, Linden Lab would love to bring it back. It's a shame that it was never legal in almost every jurisdiction in the world in the first place.

Google have just reintroduced gambling advertising in the UK, following the visit from The Queen. She owns some racehorses I wonder if she had a word!

However this is probably the reason for it:

"The bottom line really is it’s a lot of money," Hannah Kimuiu, from Greenlight, the advertising industry experts, said. "The gambling advertising industry is probably worth £100 million a year. A lot of advertisers have had to half their budgets in the past year. They’ve got to recover this money somewhere."

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4956603.ece

If Linden Lab can ever find a way to restrict gambling to countries like the UK then it will be back, but that's a big if.

Did the 'sploder claim that all the money paid in would be paid out? Were you coerced into playing?

Unless you were lied to, forced or coerced, you shouldn't complain. You had the money to risk and you risked it, apparently not considering that the odds could be heavily stacked against you. Any scripted item in SL can be loaded with fixes and backdoors for the benefit of the owner or builder. A 'sploder could theoretically pay out to anybody or nobody.

Yeah...I, um...pretty much assumed that's what they were for, from the perspective of a venue owner, especially one with a tight margin and limited revenue stream like a club. *shrug*

Well illegal as it is I guess club owners have to make money to keep running somehow seeing the average club goer is too tight-arsed to contribute money for their entertainment any other way. So by all means go on an AR Quest banning all the little guys and shutting down the clubs you like because they are trying to make a return for their efforts, just don't whine if you start running into yellow "pay to enter" banlines" at your favorite hangouts.

See....that doesn't necessarily make it right. If you can't figure out a legitimate business model, you're in the wrong business, no matter HOW badly you want to play at being The Venerated Club Owner of myth and lore. Figure it out or accept the loss, basically. It's survival of the fittest, which doesn't always mean the most poofers and business in a box lights and Best in LateXXX contests. It's a tough business but enough people seem to be able to make it work.

lol no way I'd open a club, I'm trying to point out the irony of the OP tryiing to shutdown one of their own hangouts because it doesn't operate to their standards
Yes some have sucessfull clubs but most do not