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Comment by anjel | Hacker News Reader

In the old days (1970s-1980s?) you could ask a casino employee for a card with the gaming odds for the various games / game bets the house was offering the gambler. About ten years back I was in a casino and had the same feeling of disconnect watching others play slots (IIR, it was in Palm Springs Ca.) So I see the casino manager walk by and ask him for a card on the odds for slot machines. He let out a long laugh and said "I haven't seen those in a long time but if I even had one to give you, I would get fired for showing you that kind of info."

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Every modern slot machine I’ve used will show you exactly that information. It’s somewhere in a help menu.

It’s not at all comprehensible, imagine boilerplate TOS from a big company, with a third year statistics course mixed in. But it’s there.

Doesn't the state regulate the odds there? If so it would be public information anyway.

Yes, all the online casinos have this information too. An interesting question is whether providers of these fake money casinos actually alter odds to maximise yields? Presumably. I believe FIFA has fixed odds for their gambling stuff.

What are the chances somebody from law enforcement is going to decompile your cryptographically signed obfuscated binaries to hunt for exact numbers in equations that can span across whole codebase if you want... exactly.

You can just spin a new company every few years claiming completely new software, so law has tough time building case and catching up and probably couldn't care less unless somebody literally snitches on you.

The casino industry is as highly regulated as they come. Code is inspected, fines are huge and licenses to operate can be withdrawn in case of established fraud.

There are many ways casinos try to part their visitors from the money but fraud - these days, not the past - usually isn't the driver. But psychology, greed and environment are just as effective, if not more effective at accomplishing the same goals. The best way not to lose any money in a casino is by not going there in the first place. Most people believe they are immune to the envy of thinking other people around them are winning but they'd be wrong and the whole environment there is geared to make you move into FOMO mode until you're broke.

There was a recent post[0] where the author discovered that the company had deliberately tuned the loss rate so as to incentivize purchases. Which, I suppose is legally in their power. It is "just a game" where they can set the rules however they like.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37642538

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