BetMGM refuses to pay $3 million won

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Quote: lilredrooster

you [wizard] administer a site and I believe you at one time were the owner of this site, and it is a site accepts a great deal of casino advertising as does WOO. I also believe that at certain times you had other financial dealings with casinos

Stop 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐬s𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 right now. Even if I *had* at one time worked for a casino, saying that I wouldn't view a case fairly is an insulting attack on my character. When you suggest the same thing about the Wizard, you attack his integrity as well. The Wizard has his faults, as we all do, especially me, but an unfair bias towards casinos is absolutely not one of them (for him or for me).

you are absolutely from another planet calling my posts "character assassinations"

I am sure Mr. Wizard doesn't believe I "assassinated" his character - and that being a highly intelligent and reasonable person he can understand my point of view

if I am associated with AMC movie theatres and I give an opinion that a great many movies today are really excellent then I would have no problem if people questioned my objectivity

this is a very common thing and it is outrageous to sensationalize what I posted in that manner

because of your outrageousness this will be that last time I respond to any of your quotes referring to my posts - although I may continue to criticize your posts freely if I choose to do so

you are not a person who is worth my time communicating with

have a nice day




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.......................

I want to repeat something I quoted earlier because I think it may have gotten lost and I think it's worth repeating


from the article:


"𝐀𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧'𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧, Michigan’s Lawful Internet Gaming Rules address voiding internet wagers.


The rule states: “An internet gaming operator or internet gaming platform provider 𝐌𝐀𝐘 𝐍𝐎𝐓 void a completed internet wager without board approval unless a void is necessary to resolve an internet gaming platform or internet game error or malfunction.”





the way I read that is that they did not have a right to void the wager under these rules because she had already completed her play and any resolution of the gaming platform or game error or malfunction could have proceeded - since she was no longer gaming

it was not necessary to void her wager - they could simply have taken the game off of their internet platform and no further glitch or malfunction could occur




if they improperly voided her wager - as it seems to me they did - this would seem likely to give strength to her suit and potentially add dollars if there is a further settlement offer


it is apparent to me that BetMGM did not act in good faith - and that fact is likely to count for something






https://www.playmichigan.com/michigan-woman-claims-betmgm-owes-3-million-luck-roulette-complaint-not-filed/

Quote: lilredrooster

.......................

I want to repeat something I quoted earlier because I think it may have gotten lost and I think it's worth repeating


from the article:


"𝐀𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧'𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧, Michigan’s Lawful Internet Gaming Rules address voiding internet wagers.


The rule states: “An internet gaming operator or internet gaming platform provider 𝐌𝐀𝐘 𝐍𝐎𝐓 void a completed internet wager without board approval unless a void is necessary to resolve an internet gaming platform or internet game error or malfunction.”





the way I read that is that they did not have a right to void the wager under these rules because she had already completed her play and any resolution of the gaming platform or game error or malfunction could have proceeded - since she was no longer gaming

it was not necessary to void her wager - they could simply have taken the game off of their internet platform and no further glitch or malfunction could occur




if they improperly voided her wager - as it seems to me they did - this would seem likely to give strength to her suit and potentially add dollars if there is a further settlement offer


it is apparent to me that BetMGM did not act in good faith - and that fact is likely to count for something






https://www.playmichigan.com/michigan-woman-claims-betmgm-owes-3-million-luck-roulette-complaint-not-filed/

Unfortunately the verbiage gives MGM the upper hand as evidenced in one or two other similar cases.

What would happen if your interpretation is recognized by the court is that the court will conclude the power is vested with the gaming board and send it to them.

The statute says the bets cannot be voided without board approval so bam, guess what happens when the courts send the matter to the board for a decision?

Quote: lilredrooster

you are absolutely from another planet...

So says the guy who can't figure out how to click the down arrow to go to the next page.

Quote: lilredrooster

you administer a site and I believe you at one time were the owner of this site, and it is a site accepts a great deal of casino advertising as does WOO

I also believe that at certain times you had other financial dealings with casinos

again, if I'm mistaken about this, I apologize in advance

but if I'm not mistaken - which I don't believe I am - than I have to consider the probability that your are not likely to be objective in assessing this issue

That is all true. I'll also admit to being an expert witness for the casino side in a similar case. So take my opinion with a grain of salt if you wish, I don't care.

I do take offense at you attacking Michael Bluejay. He is among the most honest people I have ever met.

Anyway, I suggest you two agree to disagree and go your separate ways and not respond to each other. Please be mindful of the rule against personal insults. You may criticize the writing, but not the writer.

...............

thank you for your response

and thanks for not considering what I said regarding you to be insulting as I know you know that it wasn't intended to be that way





*

Quote: Wizard

If I were the MGM, I would threaten to countersue for the $100,000 back. Based on what I know, if I were on the jury, I would probably side with the MGM.

The MGM could sue for it anyway, based on the breach of the NDA, but I wouldn't do so in their shoes.

Why? How hard would it be just to have someone play test the product that goes live to players to also look for glitches?

It’d be one thing if players would get paid on self-reported (by the casino) errors that are in the casino’s favor, but that ain’t happening, so they should pay her on this one.

They wrote the software, they provide the product, they could have play tested the product and they’re only ever going to make these, ‘Issues,’ known to players if it’s to their benefit to do so.

I say the responsibility is 100% on the side of BETMGM to ensure they are offering a product that is working correctly and I find in favor of the Plaintiff.

I take it we still dont know exactly what the glitch was?

"resulted in certain win amounts being multiplied when transferred from the onscreen balance to the patron’s wallet."

I'm not sure I'm buying that description. That makes it sound as if the winnings were only due to an error in the transfer amount and not actually winning, but that doesn't add up when you factor in her increased betting.

Quote: Mission146

Why? How hard would it be just to have someone play test the product that goes live to players to also look for glitches?

It’d be one thing if players would get paid on self-reported (by the casino) errors that are in the casino’s favor, but that ain’t happening, so they should pay her on this one.

They wrote the software, they provide the product, they could have play tested the product and they’re only ever going to make these, ‘Issues,’ known to players if it’s to their benefit to do so.

I say the responsibility is 100% on the side of BETMGM to ensure they are offering a product that is working correctly and I find in favor of the Plaintiff.

The casino will argue they did pay her to the tune of $100,000.

They will argue this was a courtesy and they were well within their rights to ask for the money back.

There is a non-gambling legal definition called "Unjust Enrichment" by which a company or individual can argue a defendant received money in error and needs to pay it back. Again, that's not a gambling specific legal term. It can apply to any situation.

I'm not pro-casino but I am aware of what tactics they will use in a courtroom. Legally, with malfunction or glitches, the law weighs heaviest towards the Casinos IMO.

EDIT: For Unjust Enrichment, it needs to be proven that money was transferred to an individual AND that the amount was over the "Just and fair remuneration" normally paid.

Believe it or not I had one Casino threaten to sue me under this for taking freeplay on multi-carding and I laughed and pointed out good luck explaining to the Judge why the casino should be remunerated for handing out free stuff. The very definition of free is that you don't have to pay for it

They told me, don't worry they were consulting with their attorneys. Guess what? They never sued. Guess their attorneys understand what handing out free stuff means!

Quote: Mission146

Why? How hard would it be just to have someone play test the product that goes live to players to also look for glitches?

The glitch might only happen with an unusual combination of bets or a rare event. For example, what if a video poker game incorrectly paid players 10x too much on a royal flush in video poker. Do you expect the tester to play long enough to get a royal?

Quote: Wizard

The glitch might only happen with an unusual combination of bets or a rare event. For example, what if a video poker game incorrectly paid players 10x too much on a royal flush in video poker. Do you expect the tester to play long enough to get a royal?

Could a program be designed to simulate a billion hands of play as if it were a player?

Quote: Mission146

Could a program be designed to simulate a billion hands of play as if it were a player?

Without knowing where a glitch is, the casino trying to find one would be a needle in a haystack.

B&M casinos operate thousands of games. Online Casinos can operate even more.

If you were the glitch tester and you showed up to work with the order to test thousands of games for accuracy every night, how successful would you be?

Until a glitch is discovered during play there is no way of zeroing in on say just the Luck o the roulette game. You wouldn't even know which game to start with.

Quote: Mission146

Could a program be designed to simulate a billion hands of play as if it were a player?

Of course - AI normally starts out learning and will make the mistakes that humans make until it learns optimal strategy and of course once it learns optimal it could "degrade" itself to appear more human by making mistakes

Ive heard of poker bots being designed to play really badly - simply for the exchange or "cleansing" of money (aka money laundering
)

Quote: Wizard

The glitch might only happen with an unusual combination of bets or a rare event. For example, what if a video poker game incorrectly paid players 10x too much on a royal flush in video poker. Do you expect the tester to play long enough to get a royal?

Its highly unlikely that a computer would miss any of the combos that might make the program "glitch" - although its possible

Quote: Mission146

Could a program be designed to simulate a billion hands of play as if it were a player?

Could a test protocol be designed and implemented to systematically validate payoffs on each winning result? Yeah.

Going back to royal flushes, there are what... 480 different royals, and 120 ways to get to each one of them? Pretty easy to test all the ways.

Roulette is nowhere near that complicated. There are 37, 38, or 39 possible outcomes, and simply validate that the wagers are settled correctly for each possible case.

As for moving money from one accounting bucket to another (current game balance to player account balance), my understanding is that this has been a solved problem for a few hundred years. If they haven't figured out how to do it reliably, perhaps this is a good motivation to learn.

Quote: Mission146

Could a program be designed to simulate a billion hands of play as if it were a player?

Absolutely!

Another method, which could be either more effective or less effective vs. a simulation depending on the circumstances, would be to put a new game on the site in fake-money mode for a month, and, assuming it gets enough play, see whether the result is an overall player win or overall player loss.

Doing both methods might cover situations which one or the other methods missed.

Quote: Mission146

Could a program be designed to simulate a billion hands of play as if it were a player?

It could, but maybe it wouldn't replicate the bug of the actual game.

Finally had the free time to read thru this thread as well as the linked background material and, while there have been a number of good points made, I think an important aspect of the situation has been overlooked. Specifically, everyone is looking at this from the perspective of a woman playing an on-line game provided by MGM. True but that is not the entire story. She is also an end-user of a service that [1] is offered by BetMGM of Michigan and [2] is being implemented by a multi-user distributed system. These factors have relevance to both the technical and legal aspects of the case.

.

I'll take the 2nd point (i.e., it's a distributed system) first since that helps address a lot of the questions regarding terms like glitch, malfunction, and authentication. My apology upfront for getting long-winded and technical in what follows. Definitely TD;DR

"Multi-user distributed system" is techie for "lots of people simultaneously using a system with lots of components doing various inter-related things while running on multiple computers scattered all over the country". A user invokes a service (e.g., logging in) but to provide that service a sequence of sub-services are required (i.e. verify user-id and password, verify user's geo-location, retrieve current account status, identify version of BetMGM app user is running and authenticate it, scan and validate platform user is running the app on, etc.). This is called service orchestration. Every time a bet is placed service orchestration takes place. Ditto when a bet is won or lost. Keep in mind that each module that performs one of these micro-services is getting multiple (possibly thousands) of simultaneous service requests that it has to keep track of and not confuse with the other requests it's handling at the same time. This is referred to as multi-threading.

The last point to note about the system is that all these components are owned and operated by a whole slew of companies and not just BetMGM. One provides the Geo-location identification, another does cybersec, a 3rd provides AI analytics that detect fraud, etc.

Why all This Matters:

Quote: Wizard

The glitch might only happen with an unusual combination of bets or a rare event. For example, what if a video poker game incorrectly paid players 10x too much on a royal flush in video poker. Do you expect the tester to play long enough to get a royal?

System like this are a bitch to to test. On the plus side, much of the testing will be automated but on the other hand the test tools are looking for the obvious causes of bugs. Rare events such as a royal flush, which can be created by the test tools, are less of a problem to catch than unusual combinations. As example, I once wrote some software that was intended to forecast power demand for Egypt's national power grid. Everything worked fine except when Ramadan started on a Saturday and the high temperature for the day was greater than 100. Who the hell would think of testing for something a specific as that? So in regards to Heatmap's comment

Quote: heatmap

Its highly unlikely that a computer would miss any of the combos that might make the program "glitch" - although its possible

it's very likely. Keep in mind that in the worst case scenario the "combos" may involve actions taken by multiple users simultaneously playing multiple games. According to the lawyer MichaelBluejay talked to:

Quote: MichaelBluejay

The nature of the glitch. He said MGM didn't provide much info, only that it was based on a "combination of bets".

Nothing in that statement limits the bets to only those of Ms Davis. It's very likely that only her bets were the trigger but without knowing more I wouldn't rule out a more complicated scenario.

Quote: lilredrooster

"According to the complaint, BetMGM’s Jeremy N. Kolman wrote April 12 that the malfunction “resulted in certain win amounts being multiplied when transferred from the onscreen balance to the patron’s wallet. This resulted in an inaccurate and inflated amount being awarded to Ms. Davis’s wallet despite Ms. Davis not actually winning that amount in the game.”'

Somebody responded with the comment "how hard can it be to transfer funds?". The answer is that given the characteristics of the system (i.e., multiple user, multiple sub-systems) doing so in a reliable and secure manner is not a trivial undertaking.

OK, so something went wrong somewhere. SO who is on the hook to report it......

Quote: darkoz

Quote: MichaelBluejay

If MGM did indeed sit on the malfunction, then they did break the rules, because, as I just found, MGM *does* have a duty to report malfunctions, not just authentication failures:

Quote: Michigan 432.632b

An internet gaming operator...must immediately notify the board, in writing, of any defects or malfunctions of the internet gaming platform, any component of the internet gaming platform, an internet game, or an internet game component that adversely affects the integrity or conduct of internet wagering or proper reporting of adjusted gross receipts, or that materially affects the operation or safety of, or wagering on, any internet gaming platform, any component of the internet gaming platform, any internet game, or any component of an internet game that has been approved by the board and is utilized by the internet gaming operator or internet gaming operator license applicant.

Michigan statutes

But unlike the authentication clause, which requires reporting within 24 hours, this one just says "immediately". It seems like it took MGM a few days to report. Does that qualify as "immediately"? The law is vague.

What is the trigger for initiating the requirement to report "immediately"? Is it when they detect something the warrants looking into or is it when they actually confirm that a problem exists within a specific sub-sytem? I'm not sure what the norm is here but I'm seeing a big loophole in that the wording of the law Michael quotes talks about IDing specific components, which takes time, and determining that it adversely affects the integrity or conduct of internet wagering which also takes time

A final minor observation on the tech issues...

Quote: TomG

From what I know about betmgm and their accounts, I am guessing it was a simple mistake that was overlooked by someone making $12 per hour..

Going rate for backend software developers is roughly $60 to $100 per hour.

I've got some other observations regarding certain legal aspects when using software services but for now I'll have to save them for another post

Quote: darkoz

Without knowing where a glitch is, the casino trying to find one would be a needle in a haystack.

B&M casinos operate thousands of games. Online Casinos can operate even more.

If you were the glitch tester and you showed up to work with the order to test thousands of games for accuracy every night, how successful would you be?

Until a glitch is discovered during play there is no way of zeroing in on say just the Luck o the roulette game. You wouldn't even know which game to start with.

Proper software engineering methodology should catch this kind of thing. The primary way this kind of glitch is found is with automated unit tests, rather than human QA mashing buttons.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing

Quote: gamerfreak

Proper software engineering methodology should catch this kind of thing. The primary way this kind of glitch is found is with automated unit tests, rather than human QA mashing buttons.

Automated unit tests help and proper software engineering methodology should catch minimize this kind of thing. the unfortunate reality is that some bugs always surface after deployment.

Interesting that there was discussion about two (or more) things happening at the same time (Ramadan, Saturday, being very hot). Great care is required in real-time processing to ensure there aren't locking issues.

To give a simple example, suppose you have bought something on card and this happens at the same time as your bank is receiving some money (say a friend sending you money); clearly these two transactions need to be serialised otherwise your balance could go wrong.

Proper method
(a) Obtain and lock Initial balance (100)
(b) buy something (x=x-20=80)
(c) Update new balance to 80 (and unlock).
(d) Obtain New balance (80)
(e) cheque in (x=x+30=110
(f) Update new balance to 110.

Incorrect method
(a) Obtain Initial balance (100)
(d) Obtain balance (100) (still 100 as the purchase hasn't yet gone through)
(b) (c) process the purchase
(e) x=x+30=130
(f) Update new balance to 130.

Note that either (d) should wait until (a)-(c) has happened or (a) should wait if (d) gets in first.

Most system databases handle this correctly but it can go wrong if the system fails during the unlock (c) as you don't know whether the transaction completed or not until that system comes back up again.

Another method is to use "Compare and Swap" so you say to the system, if the balance it still 100 then set it to 130, otherwise let me know the new balance, in this case 80, and I'll try again. (Those in mainframe may recognise the CS instruction!)

Quote: darkoz

Darkoz glitch theory.

This was really great. Well thought out. Makes me think MGM might be in the right to not pay. It wasn't really a "glitch" or "malfunction", it may simply have been an incorrectly graded bet. I see them all the time, and they usually get corrected to the right amount. I think the woman should start looking to settle. The one huge advantage she probably has is a lawyer working on contingency against lawyers working on retainer or salary. It would definitely be in MGMs best interest to settle quick, rather than have it drawn out for a long time.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

If MGM had some obligation to report, that's between MGM and the Control Board, and has nothing to do with the player. If MGM didn't follow the regulations then that doesn't mean the player should get paid. link to original post

Predictably, the player lost her case and the appeal, and the court's decision was for precisely the reason that I predicted: However MGM might have dropped the ball on regulatory requirements, that doesn't create an obligation for them to pay bets that didn't actually win.

Quote: infernoawarenes

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link to original post

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