A New Commission to Regulate the Internet Casinos and Online Gambling: eCOGRA
Fraud Still Rules!
By Ion Saliu, Axiomatic Watchdog At-Large
Yet another self-appointed governing body of Internet online gambling. Beware! Fraud Fraud still rules!! I already saw the list of online casinos that received eCOGRA seal of approval. If you don't see what they do, you do not play!
I wrote about a nuisance that hit my website beginning spring of 2008. I was moving physically from one location to another…about 8 miles apart…but still a big pain in the neck. I realized later that my site was facing another round of hack attacking. I wrote about it kind-of-in-a-hurry, given my priorities. Here is the entertaining page:
I guess, Google will have yet another reason to consider my website an online gambling site! That's how they treat me: An Internet site that offers online gambling! If that's not insanity, I must be the stupidest Homo sapiens since, at least, the last Ice Age! Hey, I wrote the truth (as tough as it may be) about these neo-neo-modern topics. One result was Google almost dropped the revenue from AdSense to my site to zero (dollars). On the other hand, Microsoft, who had banned me and my website from their search engine, reinstated my web site in their search engine (June 2008, after almost two years). I am not honored — they only try to Pontius-wash their hands clean!
To the Google kids credit, I have written on Internet or online gambling, indeed. But I had never offered online gambling at my website. Au contraire, I have strongly advised AGAINST Internet gambling. So, I get arrows from both the crusaders and the anti-crusaders?!
The hack attacking from online gambling establishments and the likes had subsided a little as we speak. It had happened before, several times. At one point, another self-appointed governing body of Internet online gambling wanted to come to the forefront: The Internet gaming Commission. I didn't write positively about them, mind you! Mind you?
I thought all such self-appointed governing bodies of international online gambling would be defunct by now. Main reason: There ain't international commerce without customers in the United States. The Marshall Plan made the world go 'round...slower...then faster and faster...all the way to Internet high-speed connections.
There is no viable online gambling without customers in the US of A. Say what you want about America (actually, I was born in Romania). But the world goes 'round if America moves around. First, it's post-war tradition. Most importantly, USA still makes the currency of the world, albeit at record-low levels in trade value. As they say, the gold doesn't rot, and the dollar doesn't rot…
To my surprise, I received an email from what appears to be a spokesperson for a new self-appointed governing body of Internet online gambling. Their name appears to be eCOGRA. Don't run away! It ain't cobra! Their guy wrote to me in this shape and form. I got no problem showing the full headers of his email. Perhaps some might know more about him, and, possibly about that eCobra!
"eCOGRA, a non-profit organization, is the independent standards authority of the online gaming industry, specifically overseeing fair gaming, player protection and responsible operator conduct. The function that eCOGRA performs protects those who engage in online gaming where it is lawful. ecogra.org”
I left the message unedited. I did not include the links for direct referral. They might just want free advertising at my website. The guy is clearly a public relation person. But he misspells the same way as an insincere woman fakes…you know what!
Authentication-Results: mta226.mail.re4.yahoo.com from=skynet.be; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 195.238.6.51 (EHLO mailrelay001.isp.belgacom.be) (195.238.6.51) by
mta226.mail.re4.yahoo.com with SMTP; Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:57:14 -0700
Received: from 237.86-240-81.adsl-dyn.isp.belgacom.be."
That is really naïve! They play it naïve like a runaway pupil of mine I call here Kulai. The un-grown kids always play naiveté in a manner that sounds child-sweet!
What to see, pal? The computer doesn't see... but that's not the problem! The problem is that you, the Player, cannot see what the software does! You can see what the casino dealer does, if you play in a physical casino (in Atlantic City, at least; Las Vegas is still a nest of the organized crime, including judges, and especially Nevada state judges; more about it later, perhaps in the U.S. Supreme Court!)
I expressed my ideas very clearly in previous writings. Bottom line has been:
Yes, it is remotely possible that casino dealers in Atlantic City might be able to (c)heat, including at blackjack and roulette. But if they do, you, the player, must be a gross idiot! Don't play again! The dealer cheating probability might be higher in the mob-era-infested atmosphere of Nevada. Again, as a player, make sure you have at least two witnesses and a good timekeeper. A hidden camera (with cell phones) would do better than a Mafia-trained court lawyer!
I advise to also be aware of the video slot machines, like for blackjack. You a bold guy, you think? Okay, bully! You play those blackjack video slot machines 100 times. Your bankroll is US $50 (modest; more is much worse for yea!) In 90 cases you are going to lose that skimpy bankroll in less than half an hour. You gonna lose your bankroll in less than one hour.
The losing rate is much faster if you bet the maximum bet faster than the average…say one every five hands… Remember that five-hand figure!
Nobody can beat the slot machines, including blackjack. Axiomatic colleague of mine, I am the best video blackjack player who ever graced the face of this green felt world! But the machines still beat me, because I have to bet the maximum. That's when the maximum pain settles in!
By the way – If you and I play next to each other video blackjack — I would be at least twice faster than you and last twice longer than you — in 95% of the cases. If you had the guts to test, I would be, on the average, fives times faster that you and last five times longer at the same slot machine. I tested in real life over one thousand hand in Atlantic City. They stopped the machines when I won a little more than US $100! How silly they were (a policemen told me that!) While waiting for my payout (it never came, because I disgustingly left before positive resolution...over an hour...) a son and father had a terrible experience. The father lost significant money. The son desperately wanted to stop his father continuing the video blackjack rip-off. I think both father and son knew my website, because I heard geesus referring to pater that “Dad, you read what he said...” I'm the only one who said NO.
But I told you how you could beat the video blackjack: IN SMALL STEPS ONLY. Don't be greedy. The machine plays quite fairly for a few hands, if you bet the minimum most of the time...except for a few double-downs now and then. As soon as you make a $5 profit — you cash out immediately! Start a new game, preferably at a different machine. The truth is, the slot machines have no human recognition. They never know that you are the same human who just cashed out. You know, the casinos would go bankrupt with their video machines, albeit slowly!
They just approved casino gambling in Pennsylvania. How convenient would be for yours truly to take advantage of territory in gambling! Yeah, gas is very expensive in the U.S. these days. But it ain't that. It is about the slots — The One-Armed Bandits. I got a question for you: Can you see what's inside the Chip? No, you don't! If you insist, you ain't but a stupidiot...and you know how hard I kick rear-end! You play The One-Armed Bandits — you gonna lose the shirt off your back, for sure! But don't baby-cry to my ears!
So, this comes around common sense. Believe it or not, common sense works even in international politics. The Cold War reached the most dangerous point when Ronald Reagan won the White House. Yet, Gorbachev and Reagan reached a point of sanity when they agreed to “Trust but verify”.
Can you verify a casino slot machine? NOT! It is extremely hard even for a highly trained computer programmer.
Get drunk with your winning illusion...and lose all your (gambling) money. On the other hand, we can enforce fairness. The U.S. government has the largest amounts of money on hand, still! But they get poorer and poorer! I wouldn't trust another government in online gambling, still! The U.S. government is also the most realistic government in history. If they can't pass legislation regarding online in the United States —They have a valid point. Only the FBI could enforce legality in Internet gambling.. But FBI is way, way too busy with counter-terrorism and the likes. America is an its most dangerous position since Pearl Harbor. It is hard to be-understanding, for a reasonable person, why the number one must be downed in the muck! It must be the European soccer-hooliganism-preferred behavior and the Muslim hate-you-everything behavior.
The Internet gambling guy who just emailed me once sent me a second email. He would be glad if I wrote an article based on his messages. Sounds like the eCOGRA group wants advertising at my site. They also want customers from the United States. I dislike, however, the spokesperson's pretense. He pretends he doesn't know my take on random number generators (RNG). They all read the pages where I analyze in depth the RNGs. I even published source code to generate TRUE random numbers, by using a special randomizing function. Every random number generator based on the randomizing function I wrote is guaranteed to be a TRUE random generator (as opposed to pseudo-random).
But, again, the problem is NOT the RNG — it is HOW the random number generator is used! It is about the business software that uses an RNG. The player gets a hand randomly. Then the generator generates FAIRLY a random output for the house (online casino). If the house has a better output in the first try...the round ends right there. The house wins, but the random outputs were generated fairly. If the house loses the first time...the generator does not display that first result. RNG generates another hand… but you, the player, see nothing. In order to get a winning result for the house, the RNG might be run three times...four times...even five or even more times...
In games close to 50-50, like casino blackjack, or roulette even money bets, if you try 4 or 5 times in a row, the winning probability (degree of certainty) goes up to 90-95%! No wonder the online casinos and video blackjack slots win 90-95% of all maximum bets! The player never comes close to winning 50-50 of her/his maximum bets!
Yes, the random number generator could be fair all the time — but it is misused by other software components. And nobody can see what's happening. The online gambling can be trusted only if supervised by an agency such as FBI. The online gambling network must be Saliu-locked: One password for the online operator followed by at least one password by the enforcement agency. That supervision is not necessary in a brick-and-mortar casino. The player can see with his or her own eyes if cheated. They can have eyewitnesses. The eye-in-the-sky cameras also produce evidence. It is relatively easy for the player to seek justice in a court of law against cheating by the physical casinos. Matter of fact, the physical casinos are afraid of such lawsuits and they discourage the dealers to try cheating.
The player can't see what the online casino software does. The software does not record how many tries the RNG had. If the RNG was run five times, the software only records one hand: The fifth and winning hand for the house!
Just think again of what I said previously. An online gambling operation enticed me with bonuses totaling 135% of my initial deposit. I deposit $1000, they add $1350 to my account. I go to a brick-and-mortar casino. I buy $1000 worth of gambling chips. They do not add anything, not even a penny, to my stack of chips! Why not? The physical casinos want customers as badly! The brick-and-mortar casinos have enough financial troubles already. Adding to a gambler's bankroll would definitely run the physical casinos out of business in mere years.
Think about those outrageous bonuses if you are tempted to gamble online. I know, there are US citizens who still defy the ban on Internet gambling. Virtually all of them end up losing. Some even tell me about it in their emails. I used mathematics to warn you. Now I use common sense: Think of those outrageous bonuses offered by online casinos. Forget about all those international or national commissions supposed to watchdog online gambling. At best, they are naïve! Next to best, they are incompetent, like that Canadian tribe commission who issues online gambling licenses. They can't tell the source code from the cod…the fish! At worst, all those commissions are simply exercises in corruption. It might be that a bunch of online gambling operations chip in with a few million dollars and establish so-called regulatory commissions.
One more thing. Those casinos and agencies and commissions keep coming after me — but not with legal actions. For all that I said to this date, they would have sued me in a court of law or two. I am 99% certain that they tried. Their complaints were thrown out, for sure! But the bottom line is that lawsuits would wide open the vaults of the online casinos. All their operations would be exposed. The online gambling operators don't want that! They would lose all customers on a short notice. Nobody in the world would gamble online after the exposé.
They can only do a few stupid things now. Like they hack-attack my website by running scripts to bring down damaging pages. I mean, damaging to their financial interests! Or email-begging me to write something nice about Internet gambling. I can't be nice. I only hear very bad things about online gambling. And, most importantly, there is no way I can see how the operation is conducted. No see, no trust!
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