Can we please have some clarification on wagering?

One big difference here with Tringo is that Tringo is DONATION .. meaning if a player chooses to pay they may . if not they may still play UNLESS it's set by the boards owner or host sets the game up to be a pay to play game. If the board is not set to pay to play and peopel choose not to pay into the pot that takes away the gambling aspect of it. BUT hosts cannot expect payment into the pot from anyone at any time or even an ammount back into the pot.

I really don't do much gambling apart from sploders, at my store we have over 6K worth in sploders and we just got them, so are they banned, I know they are chance but I want to be clear on this.

The problem is that lindens can be converted to cash. The US government is very protective of the lottery system. Hence it frowns on any form of gambling except:
Las Vegas, Government lotteries, Church bingo night.

Heres a perfectly legal idea under their policy--a hi-lo table not relying on chance or number generation to determine a winner as some have suggested, with payouts being trophies and trinkets as "prizes"-- no real world value but mysteriously the owner is willing to buy them back---oldest casino trick in the book to get around reported gambling winnings
Someone said this a while back (paraphrasing):


First Age play (they leave)- Check!
Then gaming (they leave) Check!
Then escorts (they and thier customers leave)
All other broadly offensive activities (all those avs leave)

Who is left? The builders and artists but no one to sell to and they leave to.

Im glad I finally sold my land, should have known from the way they handled real estate, an economy was way beyond their comprehension-- only had to take a L$15000 loss, guess that doesn't take luck or skill

The US Government tends to frown on independent economys being run inside its borders as well-- for example, California can you say() Class Action Lawsuit?

I Dont Gamble in SL but the fact this will get banned really makes me sad this doesnt make th e game any better thinking of the Sploder fun i hade i dont see why lindenlabs decided this
but hej the rules says we cant use linden dollars or real money so we just use tickets and then those can be exchanged for lindendollars LOL

You should be aware that this is not Lindens doing. It is a government interferance of your liberties. The Congress voted to place limits on internet gambling FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. That is their reason. There were members who believe that people who gambled on line were addicts, one and all. The only way to protect you was to make it illegal for citizens of the USA to gamble online, where funds are harder to track. It is much better that you go to the casinos in Vegas and on the reservations so you don't spend too much money... And the government gets thier cut. The pressure that LL is getting is from a nanny state government that thinks it knows how to run your life better than you and it is the Senate and Congress's job to legislate social morality. Do not beat up Linden Labs. They are stuck in a hard spot of trying to comply with a law that should not be in place. I admit i gamble on occasion but never more than I can afford to lose. $40 dollars was my normal amount. Some people dont put limits on thier gambling and have made mistakes. But is it the governments job to enact a law that takes away my ability, your ability, to perform an action that was legal and is still legal within the US because there are those people with poor desicion making abilities? If that is true then Las Vegas has to be bulldozed. It is a city FOUNDED on peoples poor decision making abilities. I find it annoying that some idiots drunk on power decides howIi should run my life because I and every other American voter out there is too stupid to run my own life and need them to make laws telling me how to live. Thats my rant.

relax, cybersex between peopleover 18 is not illegal. just because gambling and child porn are gone doesn't mean that other things are on the chopping block, it's not a puritanical purge it's just that LL must avoid lawsuits. The gambling industry has a lot of muscle and is not going to allow an unregulated way for people to make money with a legal loophole. Deal with it.

As far as I'm concerned the policy couldn't be clearer. It is simply this: LL must obey the law of the district that LL is located in.

Any questions or requests for clarification can just be passed onto a lawyer or you can read the statutes yourself.

Now, of course there are edge cases and grey areas but that as is the case with ANY law or rule. All these questions about Slingo and other games should be easy to answer by comparing it to the legality of othe similar games in RL like bingo.

Not to open a-whole-nother can of worms but the age play thing was exactly the same situation. LL must obey the law and can hardly be expected to do otherwise.

that may be so, but LL backed out on the age play crap... what a joke that was.

first of all it has never been legal to gamble on the internet or in RL in the state of california or new york and has been this way since the foundinging of SL, so i object to the imposition of immediate cessation regardless of the livelihoods involved.. Have you ever been been to a card room in San Fransisco, -----I have . A simple disclaimer that ll neither condones or endorses gambling of any kind would avoid any lawsuits. they are not set up to support gambling from a corporate perspective, the individual residents who allow it on theier property or set up gaming machines should be the ones held responsible. -- Lastly the ban on gambling much like many civil liberties revoked by the us government has nothing to do with the "protecting " the innocent " as some of stated but simply because they want a peice of the money and if they cant have it no one can !!

Even here it isn't clear - if an exploder ball is set to pay all, then strictly speaking "determining a winner" is not reliant on "chance or random numbers", as the determination of winners is deterministic - you pay, you win!

The random element here is in the determination of the winnings - you may win back less than you paid, but you still win something.

So under a strict interpretation of the wording, exploder balls set to pay out everyone who pays in do not fall under this policy.

Matthew

Of course that is how llFrand works - it isn't a real random number generator just a pseudo-random generator picking the next number in a very long deterministic sequence. Indeed the LL LSL wiki states "the pseudo random number generation is not suitable for any application which requires completely predictable or completely unpredictable results"

So given the policy states "random number" rather than "pseudo random numbers" - does this mean (pedantically at least) that this policy does not apply to anything which relies on llFrand to determine a winner?

Matthew

So, if you pay L$100 and win L$10, then you didn't "win" did you? You LOST L$90.

Oops. Xploders are gamling, Q.E.D.

I may have lost money overall - but I still won L$10! There is nothing in the definition of winning nor in the wording of LL's policy which states that the value of what I win must always exceed the value of what I put in!

Let us say I bought 100 raffle tickets in RL at $10 each and I won first prize - however it turned out the first prize was only worth $500, I would have lost $500 overall - however that would not change the fact that I was a winner and that I won first prize!

Likewise some of the prizes given out by a sploder are less than you may have paid in, but you still have won a prize, and the determination of whether you win a prize or not is not based on chance (the determination of the prize itself is based on chance).

I agree that sploders are gambling, but that is not what I am arguing against. What I am arguing is that under a *strict* interpretation of the *precise* wording of LL's policy sploders are not affected by the ban since chance is *not* used to determine who wins a prize, merely the value of that prize.

Matthew

On that argument, I'm going to make a slot machine that always pays out at least L$1 (cost to play: L$3). Yet, even by that definition I've still created something that's gambling, and understood as such very clearly, by everyone.

The first thing to note is that the policy does no ban all activities which can be described as gambling, only those relying on chance or RL sporting events.

Support I create a chess game which costs L$10 for each of the two players to play. The winner gets L$18 (and I get a 10% cut ).

This is still gambling by anyone's understanding, however, it is clearly not affected by the policy since the winner is determined by the skill of the players.

The ban does not ban all gambling, only gamlbing when the winner it determined by chance (or RL sport) and the prize has value.

There is nothing in the policy saying that to be a winner you must win a prize of greater value than you paid in.

So there are gambling activities not banned by the policy, and if your game is such that you always win a prize if you enter but the choice of prize is determined by chance, then under a strict interpretation of the wording of the policy it isn't banned.

I do realise that this is pedantry - but if LL decides to take a more woolly interpretation of the policy and ban things which aren't covered by the definition in the policy on the basis "yes, but they are still gambling"

a) there wasn't much point in giving this definition in the first place - they may as well said "anything which would be contrued as gambling".

b) they then run the issue that almost any transaction in SL can be construed as gambling under woolly interpretations of the policy

Matthew

RL gambling is allowed in CA in the form of horse racing and lotteries. New York has Horse Racing, Lotteries, and there are Casinos run by variuos Indian Tribes. Also there is a form of On line gambling in you can bet on Horses online through OTB.

Im not sure people should intrepret the ban so litterally.

Its ignoring the LL can do whatever the hell it wants idea.

any gambling that isnt banned will only remain unbanned until some snitch turns it in and the Linden reading the AR decides its gambling.

Whether it follows the letter of this new rule, or not.

Yes, well LL needs to move on from that idea if it hopes SL will survive:

a) it won't attract much serious participation from RL companies (beyond spending a few pennies from the advertising budget just to dip toes in)
b) it is a legally tenuous position already being challenged in the courts.

Anyway as mentioned it is a bit silly (both in terms of common sense and from a legal perspective) to come up with a more precise policy statement than "gambling in banned" only to ignore it when they come to implement it.

Matthew

could be - but which version fits how they enforce other rules?

1.) Ignore rules violations until some apherently random time when they use a Torch and Burn enforcement. Influenced largely by the opinion of those who complain.

-OR-

2.) Celar, consistant, unbiased and non-reactionary enforcing of very clear easy to understand rules. Policies and enforcement are not influenced by the personal feelings of those who complain.

My money is on #1 ( )

Unfortunately I suspect you are right.

Pity as it will be another dent in LL's credibility and yet further errosion of customer loyalty which will be important when a SL competitor comes along (which I suspect is just a matter of time).

Matthew

So basically if I make any kind of gambling activity as listed in the banned list but make a minimum payout, then hike the price of the bet by the same amount (such that even the loser gets some money back) I can get around the rules?

No. I can't. Your argment is flawed.

No, my argument is sound, logically derived from LL's policy.

It is LL's definition of a gambling device as one which determines a winner by chance/RL sporting event which is flawed! Which is the point, I'm trying to make - not that your scenario isn't gambling, but that LL's policy is not particularly good!

As Collete pointed out, LL will probably ban this activity anyway - however, they will be doing so on different criteria from the stated ones (namely some gut/intuitive feeling...)

Matthew

Does this include things like exploders? Where people can put money into a pot and the money then is given out randomly to everyone who put money in?