UB.com "All American" Video Poker

I sent in a message to support and got back an instant reply that their random number generators are really great and I am crazy for thinking there might be any problem, what do you guys think? Here's my original message to UB support:

This is about the “All American” Video Poker game you offer on UB.com. It has a progressive jackpot and I believe is programmed incorrectly not to pay out the larger payout amounts (4 of a kind, straight flush or royal flush). You should be able to check or see that internally and should also know how serious that is, but here’s what I can see from the outside:

Here is the 25 cent progressive jackpot. For a legitimate game with a non progressive jackpot the 25 cent coint value payout should be $1,000.00.
In order for the progressive jackpot to get to almost $21,000 means the royal flush payout is not happening at an almost impossible rate.

I personally played this 25 cent machine a LOT (approximately 2000 hands) and never hit a 5 coin payout greater than 40 coins (meaning no 4 of a kind, straight flush or of course royal flushes). Based on the number of hands of this game I played I think this is statistically strange but not impossible, but I think the 21,000 progressive jackpot is a much stronger indication that something is SERIOUSLY wrong with this game and it needs to be removed and fixed and probably refunds need to be made to the people who lost money at it if my suspicions can be confirmed.

Thank you

Kelly Stanonik

.....

It's not, that is for the 25 cent version. As I said I played it for around 2000 hands, but I also go the images from the other denominations. The jackpot for 50c was $1,873.03. The Jackpot for $1 was 3,813.40, The Jackpot for $5 was $9,134.20. My guess is that the 25c version is the most played and so it was the first to have the jackpot increase to an enticing level, once it hit more then $2,000 people were probably playing it like mad trying to get the 2x or better payout on a royal so it spiked up.

What about the odds of not getting 4 of a kind or better in 2000 draw hands? (assume I'm playing fairly close to simple VP strategy, so holding pairs unless there's something better like a 4 straight or a 4 flush or a 3 royal, etc.) That seems like it should be very unlikely on its own which is what, combined with the jackpot amounts makes me think something is wrong.

Quote: kmslogic

The jackpot for 50c was $1,873.03. The Jackpot for $1 was 3,813.40, The Jackpot for $5 was $9,134.20.

That's pretty screwy on its own. I've never seen a progressive that started at less than the normal value, which would be 2k for .50, 4k for $1, and 20k for $5. I can't imagine anyone playing a $5 game like this where the "jackpot" is less than half of normal.

edited to add, if you take those numbers and drop them down a denomination, and raise the .25 to $5, then it makes a little more sense.

.....

The highest real life progressive jackpot in Vegas I've seen was on nickel poker and it was only around 6x 200.

Quote: PaulEWog

edited to add, if you take those numbers and drop them down a denomination, and raise the .25 to $5, then it makes a little more sense.

That's interesting and I didn't notice it but you may be right--if they have the jackpots accidentally shifted that way through a poorly programmed custom game or whatever it could be pretty bad for them. I'm going to forward that to UB and see if that wakes anyone up.

Quote: kmslogic

What about the odds of not getting 4 of a kind or better in 2000 draw hands? (assume I'm playing fairly close to simple VP strategy, so holding pairs unless there's something better like a 4 straight or a 4 flush or a 3 royal, etc.) That seems like it should be very unlikely on its own which is what, combined with the jackpot amounts makes me think something is wrong.

Assuming you play standard VP strategy where royal plays 800x bet and you don't go after royal aggressively, the odds for 4 of a kind or higher is 1/419 which means that the odds to play 2000 hands without 4OAK or higher is: (418/419)^2000 = 0.0084, about 1 in 120 event.

Some updates...

UB has a "casino hand history" feature (nice) so I was able to pull the exact number of hands I played in all my sessions and total them. It turns out that I've played a total of 4167 hands on this game (and not hit 4 of a kind or better).

Badly Formatted Session Detail:

All American 3/4/11 11:55 PM 505 4167
All American 4/7/11 1:22 AM 87
All American 4/7/11 11:08 AM 360
All American 4/7/11 3:53 PM 97
All American 4/7/11 4:47 PM 140
All American 4/15/11 7:54 AM 356
All American 4/15/11 9:25 AM 298
All American 4/23/11 2:00 PM 101
All American 4/23/11 4:44 PM 45
All American 4/23/11 6:28 PM 351
All American 4/23/11 11:05 PM 317
All American 4/24/11 9:09 PM 405
All American 4/26/11 4:56 PM 0
All American 4/27/11 11:39 PM 332
All American 4/28/11 11:57 AM 186
All American 4/28/11 11:01 PM 293
All American 4/29/11 9:55 AM 160
All American 5/1/11 6:16 AM 134

So using the 418/419 ^ 4167 my calculator says that:

The odds of not getting 4 of a kind or better in that many hands are about 21,100 to 1 against!

So certainly enough to raise an eyebrow just from my personal log.

My initial email to UB.com got this response:

Quote:

Thank you for contacting us.

Please be informed that our casino games Random Number Generator (RNG) is also certified. Technical Systems Testing (TST), a well respected and independent 3rd party organization, successfully completed their evaluation standards with the positive result that the RNG distributes numbers with sufficient non-predictably, fair distribution and lack of bias to particular outcomes.

All of our poker and casino products are certified and regulated by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC), please also visit the homepage of the www.kahnawake.com/gamingcommission <.

If there is anything else we can do for you please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards,

Fabian
UB – Support
Support@UB.net

to which I replied:

Quote:

What a horrible response. A couple of weeks ago UB sent out an email about how their keno game wasn't working correctly which was painfully obvious to anyone who played it. How many of these blow-off emails did you send to the people who reported that keno game before someone actually looked at it.

I would have thought as long as I've been with UB that I would have merited someone actually taking a look at the game, or at least verifying the payout numbers. Something that couldn't take very long and instead this. I have played a lot of the casino games on UB and I'm not reporting all of them I'm reporting this specific one. Do you think there might be a reason?

To which THEY replied...

Quote:

Thank you for contacting us.

Please be informed that we have forwarded your report to the proper department for further investigation. As soon as they have finished their investigation, they will be contacting us. We will be sharing with you the results as soon as possible.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if there is anything else we can do for you.

Best regards,

Fabian
UB – Support
Support@UB.net

I'm about 75% convinced the proper department is the wastepaper basket nearest to Fabian.

I did also report the theory of jackpot amounts being 1-off associated with the wrong bet amounts and Fabian said they would forward that additional information as well.

The thing is this problem should be so obvious (you look and see your game has never awarded 4 of a kind for example, or that the 21k jackpot is obviously wrong for a 25c game) and at least take the game down but up it stays. I will post an update to this in the future if there is an update.

Any updates? I've never seen such a high jackpot. Highest I've seen is like $1200 for 25 cent.