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Comment by ghostbrainalpha | Hacker News Reader

You don't have to qualify that with "At least, this is what the lawsuit alleges".

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?

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I recently attended a talk by the team that approximately solved the two player head's-up limit hold'em variant of poker. Their strategy is close enough to optimal that a perfectly exploiting opponent would take millions of played hands to expect to extract 1 big blind's worth of value.

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.

They are obligated to display the odds on each machine, so people have at least a fair chance of evaluating their changes (even if they odds are always in the house's favor). In this case, the odds they posted didn't take into account the poor suggestions given by the autoplay feature.

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 question is are they obligated to give the best advice?

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?

I feel like government-run ventures are obligated to not try to intentionally mislead me. If this is incompatible with gambling machines, then the entire venture seems unethical. Well, I won't beat around the bush, I already think government running gambling machines is incredibly unethical for a number of reasons, so the fact that they also have intentionally shitty defaults and misleading instructions is just more proof to me.

Are government run lotteries also unethical? What about government run investment schemes?

I think no. Video games traditionally give tips - these are designed to help out players who aren't sure what to do. They are not designed to be the best possible move.

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.

The guy's in software but then he acts dumbstruck that the machine wouldn't tell him the optimal move? Wouldn't you be happy if there was at least some player skill involved which would contribute over time help you lose less.

That's not usually the social contract in gambling. The house usually goes out of its way to make sure you know the technically correct play (i.e. the one that 9 out of 10 experienced players would make). These are meant to be games of chance, not games of skill. At least at the level that you would never draw to an inside straight, if given the option not to -- that's just dumb. As others have mentioned, there are times you might turn in a winning hand in hopes of drawing a royal flush, since so much of the return is in the jackpot -- that's less clear-cut, and I wouldn't expect a video poker machine to make the jackpot-seeking recommendation, since it's not how you would play in a 5-card draw table game.

The way to give helpful tips, as opposed to best possible moves, is to be more vague, not to recommend a specific less-than-optimal move. Imprecise help like "hold onto your high cards" or "don't gamble on drawing one particular rank" could work, but if the Auto-Hold feature is advertised as a faster way to hold onto an optimal set of cards, then that's what it should be.

Video games <> gambling machines.

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