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English Harbour casino conclusively dealing non-random video poker

Friday, May 05, 2006


It was recently reported at Casinomeister that English Harbour casino was dealing a cheating video poker game:


Mathematical proof that English Harbour is cheating

I deposited and carefully recorded data for over an hour, doubling after every win, except I collected any large wins, and recording for each double the result, win, lose or push.

According to my data, it is 99.999% certain that English Harbour is not offering a fair doubling game in their Tens or Better video poker game.

Here are my results:
84 wins
151 losses
19 ties

By use of the binomial theorem in Excel, it appears that the chance of only 84 wins out of 235 trials with a fair (50/50) game is only 0.0000074.

Other forum members joined in the test, and the final result was a total of 1537 hands, with only 522 wins recorded.

This represents a probability of approximately one in 2,016,352,813,782,491,278,292,828,543,127,849,349.

By comparison, the probability of sitting down at a blackjack table and watching the dealer deal himself 27 consecutive blackjacks in about one in 305,473,160,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - which is actually somewhat LESS improbable!

Here is an extract from what English Harbour had to say in response to the allegation:


Randomness:

It's important that the frequency distribution of the cards in an adequate sample set are evenly distributed for each position in the doubling game. We have found, taking several sample sets over different and varying lengths of time, that they yield in our opinion, a non biased distribution of the cards.

In other words: Englsh Harbour ran their own test and could find nothing wrong.

Not a very convincing argument in the face of the evidence.

Michael Shakleford, the Wizard Of Odds, has now been called in to do an "audit", as he is apparently the official auditor for English Harbour:


English Harbour seal claim

All online games are produced using Vegas Technology and have been audited for fairness of play by an independent third party gaming expert, Mr. Michael Shackleford ASA, who's Gaming Audit practice is located in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Whatever Michael does or does not discover, the fact remains that the results of this test were far, far, far more conclusive than Michael's own test of Casino Bar in his Casino Bar experiment.

English Harbour are conclusively dealing non-random video poker.

English Harbour Non Randomness Extras
♠ English Harbour Casino Cheating At Video Poker (100% gambler)
♠ Statement on English Harbour Double-Up Bet Software Bug (wiz of odds)
Posted by the 100% Gambler

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