Calling the Oregon Lottery's Bluff After Poker Machine Dealt a Strange Hand
wweek.com
wweek.com
And finding documents marked "confidential" that say the machine has a certain winning percentage means nothing. You cannot say that a confidential document that was unknown to gamblers before Cruzi obtained it from a public records request mislead anyone. If people do not know about a document there is no way it can mislead them.
Since the article is quiet on the two questions listed above it seems very likely that their answer is "no". In that case that Cruzi person, as glamorous as the article makes him, probably has no case. If the machine is not required by law or by previous advertisement to give out a certain percentage, I do not see how the fact that the advice it gives results in a lesser percentage than other possible advice is at all relevant.
The state lottery knew that the win chance they told players (0.9), was actually higher than the win chance when using 'auto-hold' (~0.85).
That doesn't mean that Curzi will win, of course.
Curzi discovered that the odds displayed were not correct and the commission knew about it.
Articles generally get built around a story such as what we see here, leading with a human-directed hook, and then proceeding to build up the human backstory - even when it's only vaguely related to the actual topic. In this case I skimmed past maybe half the article as useless fluff.
I can't speak for everyone that manufactures these games, but the company I worked for always made autohold use a simplified strategy (similar to whats found here: http://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/strategy/jacks-or-...) for ease of implementation. 9-6 Jacks or Better had a slightly different optimal strategy than 8-5 Jacks or Better, and it was easier to code a simplified strategy that every paytable variation could use. Obviously a simplified strategy will deviate somewhat from optimal, but not by a huge margin. Autohold is generally as good as any unskilled player would expect to be on their own. Anyone considering themselves to be a skilled video poker player would never rely on autohold during their play.
In this specific instance it sounds like a software bug or a poorly implemented hold strategy. There's no reason the game should be offering such bad advice and I'd hope the game maker would correct it in an update. I'm inclined to assume stupidity rather than malice on the part of the game maker in this instance. It's absolutely ridiculous to imply some kind of conspiracy on the part of Oregon State Lottery however. As someone who made these games I would have happily blown the whistle on that kind of shenanigans had I encountered them. The truth is that nobody needs to rig these games to make money. We already have the laws of mathematics on our side and cheating just sows distrust in the player base.
If anyone wants more insight on how these games are made please ask. There are lots of misconceptions about gambling devices and how they really work.
I've spoken with a few colleagues that are ex-WMS and the consensus has pretty much been "yeah, that sure sounds like a bug but why didn't GLI catch it?"
Edit: Now that I've (finally) finished the article I see it was a WMS machine. I worked for WMS and on this exact product before I left. I'm not sure why they didn't name the manufacturer in the first paragraph of the article.
It's been years since I've worked on that poker product, but I remember the autohold on Jacks or Better used a very short, simple ruleset that didn't do anything obviously boneheaded. I'm having a hard time imagining it doing what the article described, but I don't have access to the system to check it out anymore. The autohold ruleset was built long before I started there and was ported from system to system.
Is the goal of autohold to provide the player with any win, or give the proper chance at the optimal win given the upcards? Those two goals aren't always in alignment given certain hands.
(ex-WMS engineer here too. Glad to see you survived.)
Slots with bonus games could auto-percentage themselves, right? Like how does Jackpot Party hold to a PAR sheet percentage when the player is pretty much making random pokes? Or are the pokes gaffed to reveal the five virtual reels that were spun earlier in the play?
What relevance to the claim being made does this have at all? The question is whether a feature on the machines intended to accelerate play by automatically choosing the ideal card draw was actually doing that. It has been determined that it was not (unlike every other supplier of machines that Oregon uses), and those machines have now been withdrawn.
>And finding documents marked "confidential" that say the machine has a certain winning percentage means nothing. You cannot say that a confidential document that was unknown to gamblers before Cruzi obtained it from a public records request mislead anyone. If people do not know about a document there is no way it can mislead them.
This objection is incomprehensible. It is not being claimed that players were being deceived by the listed winning percentage of machines within documents marked "confidential." The documents are being used to prove that Oregon was aware of an error in their favor within the autoplay algorithm on those particular machines, therefore consciously benefiting from that error by possibly over $100M.
Simple example: suppose healthcare.gov (US healthcare exchange under ACA) had a feature that calculated the amount of insurance plan subsidy that you were eligible for based on the information that it had about you. You would then be optionally allowed to review the calculation before selecting the plan, or click "NEXT." Further suppose that this feature was broken, and unless the calculation was reviewed, it would consistently ignore certain subsidies whether or not you qualified for them. Now, add that this error was discovered, but since it was in the government's favor, was ignored, resulting in a loss of over $100M to people who pressed "NEXT" (or lets say $100M * [US population/Oregon population] = $8.1 billion.
Would that be a problem?
I assume you're talking about blackjack: unless there is a CSM at the table or an absurd 6:5 blackjack payout (you shouldn't be there in either event, period) you can absolutely play to your advantage.
But yeah, you might track cards (good luck doing that with 10 decks though)
In fact a higher number of decks can improve one's advantage when counting because when the count turns in your favor it can happen with more of the deck left to come (so a longer period of advantageous play)
"Some casino gift shops sell basic strategy charts the size of a business card. However, these charts have at least one mistake about half the time."
A basic strategy depends on the exact rules of the game and these might be small or subtle mistakes, but they are there.
OK, not exactly a reaction on people's deaths, but people react to deaths in a more or less similar way whether it's on a government-managed railway or privately operated 747...
It's easy to sit back and act like government's all corrupt, hur hur, but guess what--you can talk to your elected officials and try and shape government more to how you think it should work.
If your elected officials don't give you access to them, work to put in office, some who do.
Do you even know how much time an elected official spends fund raising? Many members of congress fund raise every day, every day they are walking out of capitol hill and across the street to be glorified phone bank monkeys begging some rich guy for money.
Do you know what gerrymandering is? Have you looked, actually looked at gerrymandered districts? They're like something Escher would draw, they certainly don't reflect communities, geographical constraints, or anything besides the best statistical slicing to ensure the status quo prevails.
I'm all for Ghandi's "be the change you wish to see", but being critical to someone who points out the ills in the world is shooting the messenger.
You recall what platform Obama ran on? Hope and Change, how did that work out? The political process in America is broken and voting will not solve the problem of corruption.
Your parent post just put forward an argument which you did not address:
"You recall what platform Obama ran on? Hope and Change, how did that work out? The political process in America is broken and voting will not solve the problem of corruption."
Please address this argument. No need for "we'll see who gets more done" future arguments, this is a present-day argument. What should we do when, after people go out and "get involved" and "get more done" to elect the right representative, they don't follow through on their promises? What should we do?
In the sense that I'm saying, be a part of the democratic governance process, yes, that is a definition the government would put out there, but I'm not saying, "toe the line and choose between a big mac and a quarter pounder," I'm saying, "work to make the world you want."
I want to live in a country with a democratically-selected government, not one with a government instilled by revolution (and definitely not one without any government at all), so being involved and involving my fellow citizens is my tool of preference.
No offense, but the way you put it, it sounds like empty rhetoric.
Paint me a scenario where a bunch of people like you "getting involved" succeed in stopping corruption and keeping politicians from breaking the promises they made to their people.
I also note in this response and in another you made, that you're zeroing in on corruption and broken promises--which is kind of a shallow way to view politics and citizen involvement in civic life. (It's ok to be shallow about politics, but it will limit your perspective and your ability to do anything about your world.)
What do I mean by get involved? Couple of things I've done in the last few years:
Volunteer on a local political campaign. Don't just show up and ask for a task, talk to everyone you can, get to know them as people, make friends and make connections. You'll quickly discover that you see the same people again and again. Lots of people don't make political involvement a priority for whatever reason, so you'll see the same faces in a variety of contexts (supporting a candidate, supporting a cause, etc).
I say "local" because it's the best place to start. You'll have a lot of chances to talk to and get to know the candidate for office, and it's easy to get involved, depending on what you can bring to the table (skills, connections, etc).
(And it's kind of neat, if they win, and you've made a friend of them, to get to brag to your friends, "I'm going to go have coffee with my pal, State Rep Jones," and then you get to stay in touch with your politician who you helped get into office, and you find out what new pressures they're under to compromise...)
What else?
Go to civic groups, chamber groups, and association meetings, especially when politicians are going to give talks. Walk right up to them, bluster your way into a conversation, and just start talking with them. Everyone you meet, and I do mean everyone, ask them, "is there anyone else I should meet? I'm interested in x and y, and I'd love to talk to anyone who I can help advance these issues."
I've gotten connected with so many people at a variety of local government agencies this way. We sit down for coffee, they tell me what their agency is all about, I tell them what I'm doing and what's important to me, etc.
The best way to keep their attention is to frame whatever you want in terms of how it will benefit them: "Open-sourcing more of your agency's projects would be good for you, because of these benefits.." or "Providing an API to your agency's data would be good for you because it would let people like me build interfaces to make it more accessible to underrepresented groups X and Y.."
Now, if you're scoffing and thinking, "well hur hur so you got some small agency to sponsor open-source and open their data sets, that's not solving real problems," then you're right, my efforts haven't single-handedly gotten the U.S. out of the middle east, nor have they gotten single-payer health care instituted as a national policy.
But do these matter to me, as a fan of free software and open access to data, and everyone else like me? You bet.
And you know what? It doesn't stop here. Every year I get to know more people, and every year more people call me up out of the blue to pick my brain about, what do you think, should we do this? Should this be a policy?
Where's it all going? What's it going to look like for me in 10 years? I dunno, but it's exciting.
If you think it's all pointless, good, fine, stay home. I don't really care what you do--and if that's your attitude, it's better that you stay home and remain uninvolved.
Democratic process despite its flaws has had some moderate successes. Revolution is a much more mixed bag, and while I believe that there may well be a time when it's necessary it's not something to enter into lightly, and almost certainly modern day USA is not remotely in need of a revolution.
Happy to hear of other options, but enough people being negative about the possibility of democratic change (again, despite its flaws), will reduce its possibility, playing into the hands of the status quo and the revolutionaries.
As Kennedy said "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable". Unless you actually want violent revolution you should be doing all you can to keep people engaged in the democratic process.
I've never heard this argument made in a way that wasn't ahistorical, irrelevant, or both.
I also have no interest in revering people who lived centuries ago, as though they had the answers and we just have to follow their golden path--what they got right, great, let's go with it, but what they got wrong, let's ditch without sentimentality.
Governments are for the living--for us, not for some ancestor-worship.
This study from Princeton University says in its abstract:
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...
In other words, they are arguing the people have little to no impact on the government's policies. I don't want to put words in their mouths but they're essentially showing the government is a bunch of cronies and corporate special interest groups that care not a jot about the people.
Does that merit a revolution or not yet?
Well, if that's what you're asking for, come right out and say it - it is a position that can be debated on its merits. Moaning about democratic processes without being clear about the alternative you're proposing instead is negative because it comes across as a message of despair which if anything makes the problem you're complaining about worse.
You then complained that I'm not being clear about the alternative, which is fair.
However, I'd like first to name the options correctly. Do you still stand by the name "democratic process" in the face of the paper linked above and if so, what is your rationale for calling this "democratic" when the paper shows that most people cannot impact the system? Or maybe you have a refutation to the paper that can show that in fact people do impact the government a lot and the paper is wrong.
Because you see, sine qua non to the process of proposing an alternative is understanding why the status quo is flawed. And in my opinion, which is argued with evidence by the paper linked above, the flaw in the current system is that it is not democratic despite its name; it is oligarchical.
Yes, but you don't seem to.
> Hope and Change, how did that work out?
Hope and change was one of the Obama campaign slogans, not a platform. And in major addresses, that slogan was contextualized with Ghandi's "be the change you wish to see". How did it work out -- better than I expected, worse than I'd hoped.
> The political process in America is broken and voting will not solve the problem of corruption.
"Getting involved" is not limited to voting. GP didn't say "If your elected officials don't give you access to them, vote for those who say they will." He said "...f your elected officials don't give you access to them, work to put in office, some who do."
That includes voting, but goes far beyond it. Run yourself, or get people to run. To the extent that the electoral system and the perverse incentives and limited selections it offers are a barrier to getting the kind of candidates you want elected (and if you want something different than what the major parties keep putting forward, that's probably a pretty significant barrier) educate yourself about it and work to change it; sure, you may not get buy off from lots of incumbents in office, but if you live in a state with a citizen initiative process, you don't need that support to change electoral procedures at the state level. (Of course, in such a state, you can also work to directly attack problem policies through the same process, which limits the effect that problem politicians have even before they are replaced.)
David Hume bites the invisible hand that feeds him.
That describes a huge portion of what government does. Heck, that's essentially the basic definition of government in political science.
It is well known that lotteries pray upon the poor and uneducated, ironic really.
Instead of monopolizing gambling, or giving sweet-heart deals to those close to the government, or trying to outlaw it completely so we can see tragedies like cops shooting people over playing fantasy sports, the state should get out of the way, maybe provide counseling and treatment, and gasp let people do what they want with their property.
It's always about power, and ensuring most people don't have any.
Above is more extreme but real examples to clarify a point. In my mind saying people can do what they want with their property is overly simplistic and assumes a more perfect world than the reality.
However bad it might be to prey on people by trying to trick them into gambling, it's a trillion times better than just taking their money (the other way of raising revenues).
Are you so out of ideas on how to actually defend your positions that you have to pretend that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiotic child? Because everyone can do that, and it doesn't get us anywhere. We just go round and round being condescending to each other and nothing really gets said.
It's annoying and stupid. Let's stop this right here.
In Georgia less than a third is actually reaching the designated programs, it was by law 35% but terms in there let it fluctuate to payout to instant tickets.
http://www.twincities.com/politics/ci_26579002/vikings-stadi...
What legislators didn't tell the public is that after the bills passed, the existing education budget would be cannibalized for other expenditures, thereby not actually improving the education situation and in fact, making funding more volatile.
There's plenty of evidence that gaming machines in the UK are set to far lower than a 95% payout, namely that each machine displays this percentage on it, and they are almost always below 95%
The people installing these machines aren't fools, they know that lowering the payouts increases their profits.
I would love to give a source for the 95% figure but I only have that info second-hand from an ex-employee.
Regardless of whether or not you believe that statement, you should see that the logic that lower payout ratio equals a lower payout amount simply doesn't hold. Imagine if the payout turned out to be 50% rather than 90%. Would you expect the company make more or less money? Even if players believe they were simply unlucky, that will still be enough for some of them to stop playing. The optimal payout in terms of revenue for the company is something that can only be determined by real world experiments and there is no evidence in the article about this case that the lottery company determined that an advertised payout of 90% and an actual payout of 87% by experimental analysis. Hence my tendency to believe this was not an act of deliberate deception.
Having a different payout than the advertised one is definitely illegal in the US. What Oregon seems to have done is to find a neat loophole to get around that law.
(I assume that is how most video poker machines work anyway)
At least based on how I understand the law, you cannot tinker with the randomness of how the cards are dealt. The only thing you can use to alter payout percentages is alter the actual payout amounts for different events.
The lottery is not disputing they make recommendations that are not optimal for the player. The question is are they obligated to give the best advice?
If the game autoplayed the best possible moves, what would be the point of learning poker? Where would skill come into the mix?
This lawsuit seems frivolous to me. I would never expect a game to give me the most optimal hint - only a hint for how to get closer to winning.
So the question is, does the fact that the player has a choice that would allow them to improve their odds to what was posted mean that they met their obligation in posting the odds, or does an autoplay feature that most users choose, because it speeds up the game and requires less thought, determine the odds that they are statutorily required to post.
The rules (http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/rules/oars_100/oar_177/1...) state: "A close approximation of the odds of winning some prize for each game must be displayed on a Video LotterySM game terminal screen or a help screen. Each game also must display the amount wagered and the amount awarded for each possible winning occurrence based on the number of credits wagered on a game play." So this will likely depend on whether this is determined to be a close enough approximation, and whether autoplay suggesting a sub-optimal play that reduces your odds is considered to be a problem, if you do have a choice that would let you avoid that.
The Oregon lottery should be held to a qualitatively similar standard. They should state how many cents an optimal player would expect to lose, per hand, by following the default advice instead of playing optimally. Also, there should be regulations about how high that opportunity cost can be.
... not that I think the machines are a good idea in the first place.
I didn't get this from the article.
I understood the issue to be:
1. It is undisputed that the lottery is required to display odds (return $$s per $$s spent). 2. It is undisputed that the lottery displays the theoretical maximum return given optimal play 3. The lottery supports a feature that does not play optimally 4. The issue: Should the lottery be required to display the rate of return given the use of auto-play?
But there is no justification for state lotteries as revenue raising streams, nor for behavior maximizing those revenues. They shouldn't advertise and shouldn't be creating new games to increase their take. These are just taxes on mathematical illiteracy and risk factors for people with gambling problems.
Of course, the revenues are more important to the politicians than the general interest, so here we are.
Gambling, in a sense, appeared to be legal in Finland. In Helsinki there was one Vegas style casino (similar odds, $10 minimum -- memory serving me right); but many bars had 21 tables. The trip in the "bars" was a tie was not a push, but went to the house.
Given I was a loner in a country known for it's lack of gregariousness (a stereotype, I had friend's there, but many focused on family and those outside the city didn't come in during the week), playing the odds was an interesting gambit.
Giving up the natural odds in a tie is a push for 21 was a hard one to digest. However, I offset some of it by always taking the #1 position. Not ideal overall, but a help.
In the end, after 6 months there, tabulating pure gambling stakes, I ended up a net positive by about 15%.
On my return to the US, my first trip was with friends to Vegas. My skewed methodology of playing, assume no tie, for 21, permeated my game for the first few hours. It resulted in unhappy players, but saw a slight uptick in my own earnings.
I wish I had the time and energy to more fully document this period, but playing games that expect one skew and then coming into another that expects something else, at least for me for awhile was a benefit.
The machine is not playing poker. The machine is presenting a game that superficially resembles poker, to achieve a slot machine payout rate of 90%.
As a slot machine, it is a game of chance, not skill. If the actual payout of a machine advertised as 90% is 85%, that is fraudulently advertised odds, period.
So the lottery posts a notice on the machine that user interactivity may reduce the odds of winning. Relying on that information, everyone just hitting the "play" button like a robot--treating this particular type of slot machine like a regular, non-interactive slot machine--should realize the posted odds.
They did not. The owner of the machine was aware of this. The Lottery made false statements to its customers, harming them by its deception and profiting in the process. That's fraud.
It is true that the Auto-Hold function does not need to recommend the optimal Draw Poker play. IT MUST RECOMMEND THE PLAY THAT ACHIEVES THE ADVERTISED SLOT MACHINE PAYOUT.
It's an incredibly interesting book about building addictive gameplay, the industry that does it, and the people that use it.
For example, what do you hold with
(1) AH QH TH JD 3H
vs
(2) AH QH TH 9D 3H
On (1), you hold the 4-flush.
On (2), you go for the 3 card royal. (Reason: Discarding the jack makes it slightly less likely to draw the straight, tipping the otherwise close decision to favor the 4-flush.)
In the article, the machine was advising plays anyone with basic competence would never make.
There are games on your phone, even free ones. Play those at a bar, there's no excuse.
Here's a dude who claims to have worked it out: http://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/strategy/jacks-or-...
While not a trivial strategy to memorize, it should be quick and easy to code.
http://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/strategy/jacks-or-...
Note that the strategy depends on the payout table.
If the study he found showed the machines paid out _more_ than it should (but still positive to the State) you bet there would be audits of the machine.
On smart phone games auto is often not the best strategy, just the easiest (Summoner's War with 30 million downloads, I'm looking at you).
Sounds like the guy was just ignorant and thought auto was something it was specifically declaimed not to be. If it was labeled "Best" I might feel something for him.
I don't think it's ignorance on our gambler's part; I think it's the standard "Black Hat UI" issue mentioned on HN so often: We assume that sw does somethign to maximize utility for the user, based on the design or experience, when it's instead doing something to maximize profit for some other entity.
Yes, it's a gambling machine; we all understand that it's designed to take our money. But offering a feature as part of the experience that appears to help when it doesn't (or to a lesser degree than would be expected via presentation), would be deemed misleading by any reasonable person, small print and disclaimers aside.
To quote the state director in the article “I don’t think we’ve ever represented that the auto-hold gives you the optimal result,” he says. “The idea was that it gives you a good result.”
You'll get a perfectly good result if the lotto balls are loaded. Might not be optimal, might not be random, but it'll be a good result, as in not some random negative integer or a float or wrong number of balls.
But, can they really do it? Manipulating lotto balls and drum (mechanical devices really) is much harder than manipulating software behind some video poker game. I don't say it's impossible, but harder.
Because that is very counterintuitive if true.