Why would a casino ban a player from playing -EV video poker after he gets lucky and hits a Royal?

There is a thread on SBR which has me puzzled. The player was banned from playing video poker at Heritage sportsbook after hitting two royal flushes. He then signed up under his mothers name and after 50 deposits of losing hit another 2 royal flushes and wasn't paid winnings when Heritage found out it was the same player who previously had his account closed.
Here is the thread


It's a ridiculously long thread with no real answers to my question, why was the player banned in the first place? The only question that thread really focuses on is if the player should be paid the winnings or not.

The software is DGS which is used by many reputable online sportsbooks. There was some talk of possible bonus abuse in the form of a rebate on losses at Heritage but this still wouldn't be enough to make it +ev. The game was JOB and "heritage insider" makes some interesting comments in the thread but no clear answers to why the player would be banned from playing a -ev game only after hitting royal flushes and getting ahead on the casino. When you win big on a -ev game most casinos will do anything possible to keep you gambling in hopes of you losing it back. Why would Heritage do the opposite in this case?

Quote:

Cory - you have won at numerous sports books using the same software we use. To the best of our knowledge the pattern is always the same. You lose a significant amount of money and then hit a royal followed by multiple other royals in a short period of time. We barred you because we are not comfortable taking your play considering this pattern. A year and a half later a woman opens an account with us and loses a significant amount of money and then hits a royal followed by another royal a couple of days later. This woman turns out to be your mother and the play comes from the state you live in not the state she lives in.

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Cory beat us on 2 Royal Flushes a 1½ years ago. We paid him, closed his account and notified him that he could no longer play at Heritage.

MBENZ is right – we do not check losers but when there is a large win we need the approval of our Fraud Department before we send payment. This department uncovered a pattern that matched Cory’s previous play. When investigating further they found out the account holder was Cory’s mother.

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Durito-We did pay the winnings and closed the account-the first time!

A year and a half later, we see the same pattern of play and discover the account holder is the mother of Cory.

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We agree - if you take a bet you need to pay it. We have a long history of doing just that. We did it with Cory the first time he hit us.

The best I can come up with is that they think it looks like cheating, but they aren't sure how the cheating happened, and they're closing the account as protection until they can figure it out.


To not answer that first question,

IMO, the fact that the pattern repeated indicates there might be something to their suspicions. Maybe not, but maybe. And my opinion is that they shouldn't pay him.

Just because it's -EV for the player doesn't necessarily mean it's +EV for the casino. For a lot of these games, the comps are set at a level such that perfect play is a loser. A grinder might be getting enough vouchers to be making money. And that's before taking upkeep into account.

Heritage took over The Greek players after they left U.S. market. I have no first hand experience from either but all of my research shows that The Greek is a much higher grade book than Heritage. In this story (did not read these threads this time but I think this is same story) the player lost $20,000 between royals and they will not give it back. Maybe this is a different player.

SBR has some great information but I question some of their grades. They still give Betfair, a company guilty of some serious scams (I can say guilty because ASA has found them guilty of false advertising multiple times in relation to some of these although there was no serious punishment. They are also rogued at Casinomeister), an A-. BetOnline gets a B+ but you can find hundreds of thousands of dollars in complaints about them just in the SBR forum much less 2+2 where poker players have been the victim of countless BOL frauds.

As for the player mentioned in OP, he opened an account in his mother's name. I don't think any gaming site is going to pay up after that and I doubt many would cave on returning deposits. Why he got banned to begin with and whether it was legit? Who knows.

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To the best of our knowledge the pattern is always the same. You lose a significant amount of money and then hit a royal followed by multiple other royals in a short period of time.

This reads to me: Our hero has found a predictable pseudo-RNG in the software.
At least this is what I would do in this case: first you need a long play to calibrate the internal state of the RNG, then the second quick step is to exploit it.

Why do gamblers insist on thinking that casino administrators are going to be logical or sensible?

The Evil Empire once banned that Lion guy because he hit two Royals in one weekend but they rescinded it when cooler heads realized he was a whale.

This is why you reseed the RNG with the time, or keep it on a loop, rather than just generating a new number for each hand. Idiots.

It's also why I suspect BPP != P, but that's another story altogether.

Royals were on different machines. And teh ban would have kept him out of the WSOP too, but they sent him a retraction letter in about two days.

Even though rare combinations of big wins will likely be happening somewhere over time in gambling venues to a few people, casinos are suspicious if that event actually happens.

It's easier to believe that someone is cheating than a really rare event, I suppose. That's my theory.

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Member since: Jul 4, 2012
Threads: 13
Posts: 450
Just because it's -EV for the player doesn't necessarily mean it's +EV for the casino. For a lot of these games, the comps are set at a level such that perfect play is a loser. A grinder might be getting enough vouchers to be making money. And that's before taking upkeep into account.

If it wasn't +ev for the casino why would they let the player make 50+ deposits losing thousands of dollars and only having a problem when the player hits two royals in a short period of time??????

I love how your other post you are calling everyone else an idiot, maybe you should stick to bingo.