Opinions on where to go with Blackjack complaint

Hi all,

You may remember the issue I had awhile back regarding the online casino I felt might be cheating. See this thread for more.

Well, I finally got fed up and decided to file a complaint through SBR. They seem to have ruled it has no merit, and I would just be curious to get other people's opinions. Am I out of line here, or do I have a legit complaint?

See the discussion around my formal complaint here.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JTF2j0OWUi8

Says it all.

Quote: Boz

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JTF2j0OWUi8

Says it all.

Lol, appreciate the humour.

Quote: Johnboy85

Lol, appreciate the humour.

Without seeing the rules of the game, you originally came up witha 0.4% player advantage. The Wizard published your rules at -0.01% while you claim a -.1% HA. Wizard stated that with the HA of -0.01% that the odds of bad luck was about 1 in 378.

The question I have about your strategy is whether it is adjusted for the house advantage. The fact that you now have your hand history and that you've opened a complaint should allow a professional to analyze your play and the true house advantage of the game. You should probably go down this route. Otherwise the casino will just state that you played hands poorly or misunderstood the rules of the game.

You need backup.

Quote: boymimbo

Without seeing the rules of the game, you originally came up witha 0.4% player advantage. The Wizard published your rules at -0.01% while you claim a -.1% HA. Wizard stated that with the HA of -0.01% that the odds of bad luck was about 1 in 378.

The question I have about your strategy is whether it is adjusted for the house advantage. The fact that you now have your hand history and that you've opened a complaint should allow a professional to analyze your play and the true house advantage of the game. You should probably go down this route. Otherwise the casino will just state that you played hands poorly or misunderstood the rules of the game.

You need backup.

Thanks for your reply.

My assertion of 0.4% player advantage was based on baking in the rebate amount of 0.3% per wager and a difference in game rule calculations based on the house edge calculator I originally used. Wizard came up with 0.01% player edge without taking into account the rebate. So in effect, he said the game had a 0.31% player edge, but calculated the odds of my results based on the 0.01% edge since the rebate amounts were baked into my losses. For Wizard's calculations, he obviously used his own calculator.

My strategy was to play perfect strategy according to the rules in front of me. I had the equivalent of a strategy card for the game. Did I play 100% perfect for 350k+ hands? Of course not - I'm not a robot. But I definitely wasn't making serious enough errors to negate a 0.31% edge. If someone knows an easy way to look at the hand history given the format it's in, I'd be happy to let them analyze how much of an edge I may have given back due to player error. My feeling is that it's negligible. And frankly, it's not even the crux of the case. The point is that Pinnacle's RNG may have been returning a range of results based on a different set of rules than the ones I was playing with.

One thing the casino cannot do is say I misunderstood the game. The rules as I originally described them are clear as day in the hand history if you go digging. The obvious game changer being the early surrender which is easy to spot since it happens so frequently. Furthermore, they changed the gameplay rules to eliminate surrender completely, and then took away the rebate program for that specific game a week after Wizard posted results on this forum. Pure coincidence? Probably not. I had gone almost a year and half without them noticing up that point. It's suspicious to say the least.

Also keep in mind, the Wizard's assertion of 1 in 378 odds were his best guess based on what he could ascertain from the log file. He used a formula based on me telling him that I played two hands "most of the time". Does that mean his formula assumed I played 2 hands all the time, 75% of the time, 50% of the time? I don't know. I do know that it has a pretty big impact on the overall SD. I definitely know that I didn't play 2 hands all of the time. So there could be a discrepancy there as well which might mean my actual results were even MORE unlikely than what he calculated them to be.

John

A few things.

If the casino is cheating you could dissect it to the hand history and show the distribution of the casino's cards or the distribution of the hands made and do Chi-Squared analysis of all the hands to get an idea of the probability of distribution on blackjack hands, cards dealt, or pretty much any aspect of the hand distribution. In that sense with that amount of data you would get to the detail to figure out exactly how the casino cheated you. For example, if the casino dealt itself a much higher distribution of 10 ups than normal you would be able to see that pretty easily over 350,000 hands.

It would also allow us to analyze your hand history and prove that you are playing basic strategy and that the advantage is correct.

The bet history would allow one to come up with exact standard deviations though the exact card distribution would likely be enough depending on how sophisticated the cheat was.

And unfortunately 4 SDs is not cheating. It's just highly unlikely.

And if the online casino is reading this site then it's probably best that you don't post anything except generalities while the case is ongoing. But I would hire an expert to help you out. 40k is alot of money.

Quote: boymimbo

A few things.

If the casino is cheating you could dissect it to the hand history and show the distribution of the casino's cards or the distribution of the hands made and do Chi-Squared analysis of all the hands to get an idea of the probability of distribution on blackjack hands, cards dealt, or pretty much any aspect of the hand distribution. In that sense with that amount of data you would get to the detail to figure out exactly how the casino cheated you. For example, if the casino dealt itself a much higher distribution of 10 ups than normal you would be able to see that pretty easily over 350,000 hands.

You may be right, but I'm not mathematically inclined, and wouldn't know the first thing about writing a formula or script to run such an analysis. I wouldn't even know what I'd be looking for tbh.

Quote: boymimbo

And if the online casino is reading this site then it's probably best that you don't post anything except generalities while the case is ongoing. But I would hire an expert to help you out. 40k is alot of money.

It's too late for that. They've already changed their gameplay and rebate rules to negate the player edge, and I already tried filing a complaint both directly with them, and through an intermediary (SBR), and they didn't think it was worthy of a complaint. Only other way to get it out there was to go public at this point.

What I can't understand is why someone would throw so much at such a small edge online?
Even if one knew it was 100% random, it's still a fairly slim advantage. Especially online the many risks VS the reward must always be considered. My advantage needs to be fairly high for me to play online.

I assume you had some doubts about online RNG's before you even started?
Here we have a situation where they have made a mistake and may not pay even if you do win.

Quote: AxelWolf

What I can't understand is why someone would throw so much at such a small edge online?
Even if one knew it was 100% random, it's still a fairly slim advantage. Especially online the many risks VS the reward must always be considered. My advantage needs to be fairly high for me to play online.

I assume you had some doubts about online RNG's before you even started?
Here we have a situation where they have made a mistake and may not pay even if you do win.

There aren't many (if any) games that offer a player advantage online without even having to count cards. With proper bankroll mgmt, it could have been a very lucrative game for a long time.

Did I have doubts? I don't know. Not really. I've never had something like this happen. Btw, this is Pinnacle Casino - the most reputable sportsbook online. Why would I doubt the integrity of their game?