Backgammon site problem (whinge)
surazal
fairly regularly for about 6 months mainly playing tournaments. I
withdrew two fairly large payouts and then began to build a fairly
respectable tank ( about a $1000) .
Then about 8 months back my luck changed. From winning 2 or 3
tours a week I seemed to enter a twilight zone of not winning for
about 2 months . These are $10 dollar tours ,usually 10 to 12
players . This was frustrating but being well used to the vagaries of
the dice I continued to soldier on knowing that good dice come and go.
The run continued .
In the last eight months i have won 2 of these tours and 3 2nds
( about 80 tours of varying lengths and entrance fees). I am a fairly
good player and would have hoped ( expected) to do rather better . My
rating on the site dropped from 1820s to 1670. I hit a bucketful of
semifinals but seemed incapable of reaching the final ( pays only 1
and 2) .
Paranoia began to play a part as my Tank dwindled to nonexistence .
Then one day I was talking to a fellow sufferer (live) and he told me
a theory .
Imagine , if you will , a new website trying to attract new
players . These new players come in and play away a few small games
here and there get up a bit of confidence then enter a few tours.
Their skill level would be poor enough so their tanks would disappear
fairly quickly to the sharks operating the tours (10 or 20 carving up
the shillings between them). New players get a bit down and bu**er off
whinging about these shark infested waters. Not much good to the
owners of the site as the backgammon is the main draw to the site.
They Snowie the games and find just enough errors to suggest the are
human players so what are their options . How about they get a
software guy in to tweak the dice a bit . The odd Joker here and
there can make all the difference. Shark killer software , the sharks
then get a bit depressed and they buuger off . One of said sharks
opens an account in a different name different email and credit card
and presto wins 2 tours and 2 seconds in a week , then the pattern
reemerges. Many of my fellow sharks have given up and moved on. I did
myself for a while and went to TMG where lo and behold I cashed 3
tours in the first 2 weeks. So are we nuts in that we believe the
site can be fixed.
Piranha
I´ll give you 3 examples, from online and live playing.
1) Former MSN Gaming Zone, specifically Cases Ladder.
That used to be a very active ladder, but on a very low skill level,
people were playing for fun, competition was secondary.
The entire thing absolutely for free, the site run by MSN, the ladder
by an independent company.
Not exactly sure when Snowie or other analysis tools were invented and
became available for automated on the fly analysis within a server,
maybe they didn´t even exist, at least they weren´t very popular when
I started there, some time in the 90s.
Rumors said, dice were all fixed, weak players would run lucky, and
especially new players would always have much better dice.
Due the free nature of membership and a rule they had saying inactive
accounts will be deleted after 21 days, a lot of people frequently
(re-) signed up.
I myself have signed up a new account several dozen times, and I had a
LOT of lucky runs on start, once I actually made it from zero to #1
without to lose a single match, but when I reached the top I would
start losing, once I had 33 consecutive losses in 5pt matches.
You recognize the pattern?
If so, then first try to explain, why an entirely free site, running a
ladder based on MSN Gaming Zone would have enough influence on MSN to
have them fix the dice?
Then consider the following:
There was a rule, you cannot play the same opponent more than once a
day, so whenever I had a bad start, I would withdraw, re-signup and
try again.
Other players who knew me on the ladder didn´t know this, to them it
looked as if every time I signed up, I would get very lucky dice on
start and I didn´t do anything to contest the rumors, I enjoyed the
reputation of a lucky guy.
There were many other players doing the same, and THAT is how such a
pattern is generated.
A new signup has a 50% chance of running lucky on start, but if you
never hear about the ones starting with bad luck, it looks like 100%.
2) After some years of online playing, I´ve joined my first live
tournament in 2001, got very bad luck, tried another, bad luck again,
and it kept going for 5 years.
Every tournament I joined, I lost latest in round 2, never won any
prize.
After 5 years I was ready to give up, trip, hotel and entry fee run
quite expensive, if you never get anything back and I didn´t play any
live tournament anymore.
Then in November 2006 my wife talked me into going to another
tournament, not for winning, but for meeting friends there.
I didn´t expect much, yet I won it.
After that, with new confidence, I´ve played 3 or 4 live tournaments
every following year and with one exception I ALWAYS made 1st or 2nd
prize.
If you believe a few weeks or even months of losing is an indication
for fixed dice, consider having 5 years of consecutive bad luck in
LIVE matches.
3) When I joined TMG (long ago, when they had no ratings and only 2.5%
rake) I didn´t have much experience with playing for money online, I
was very suspicous and didn´t want to deposit money online.
I started playing freerolls (in those times TMG had a daily freeroll
with $100 prizepool) and even though they had about 300 players in it,
I won it 3 times within my first week.
Having $90 in my account, I started playing moneygames, but I ran into
bad luck and even though I played only for $1 per point it took only 2
days to lose it all.
Recognize the pattern?
Then consider the following:
I didn´t fall for gambling addiction, up to today I never deposited a
single cent at TMG.
I went back to freerolls and it took me 6 weeks, playing 3 or 4
freerolls daily until I won $2.
Back to moneygames my bad luck was gone, in addition I had collected
sufficient data about my opponents to separate fish from sharks and I
managed to make a living from my TMG winnings until they implemented
ratings and I´ve quit.
During this time I´ve had a whole lot of streaks of good luck and bad
luck, some short, some long, some VERY long.
I´ve analyzed all my games and created a database from the results.
I´ve had several consecutive months of constant bad luck, winning way
less than expected, sometimes even losing, but I´ve always kept enough
money in the account, so I survived even the longest losing streak
without to run out of money and the overall result after about 3 years
was an almost exact match to the expected result by skill difference
between me and the average of my opponents.
Considered the experience I´ve had on start, it matches your pattern,
but 3 years later, I can say for sure, there´s nothing to it, only
rumors.
Note:
I don´t suggest to play online for money these days, I myself have
moved to other things as well, but that´s not because of fixed dice,
the reason why one can´t win much in online BG anymore is much easier,
even absolutely obvious.
Servers have increased rake, most of them use ratings and a
progressive rake structure, decreasing the expected outcome up to a
point where even the strong players have virtually no chance of coming
out ahead anymore.
GE has captured nearly all fish on the market with their extensive
advertising and while GE has the highest rake of them all, that leaves
other servers with lower rake just the sharks.
In short, from a players point of view the situation is: either you
pay an outrageous rake, or you meet nothing but other sharks.
Either way, chances to make money in online BG have become quite slim.
If you don´t believe the words, how about plain math?
Take an example and compare former times to today.
Upon small stakes:
Let´s say at TMG upon 2.5% rake per player, on a server full of fish a
good player was able to win something around $1000 - $2000 (within a
given timeframe, depending on activity and stakes).
Considered he was 60:40 favourite on skill, that means he has turned
over something between $6250 and $12500, paying between $250 and $500
rake.
Today TMG charges up to 5.4% rake per player, if a player would turn
over between $6250 and $12500, he´d pay $625 - $1350 rake.
Add the fact that instead of 100s of active players with a good share
of fish in between they now have only a handful of players, almost all
of them sharks, and you´ll realize, why you won´t win a thing at TMG
anymore.
I know, rake at higher stakes is lower, but so is the skill level, so
lets calculate high stakes:
Today in moneygames TMG charges 4.4% rake up to $10, 3.4% rake up to
$50 and 2.4% up to $100, or in other words, today TMG charges for high
stakes more than they used to charge for small stakes in former times.
If a high stakes player was able to outplay the average of his
opponents by 55:45, in former times he would have won over 5% of all
stakes, i.e. winning about $75 for every $1000 on stake, paying about
$25 rake.
Today, if he turns over $1000 upon stakes of $10 per point, he´d pay
$88 rake and his leftover winnings would be no more than $12.
You said you are aware of streaks of good and bad luck?
Do the math:
If the expected outcome is as low as 1.2% of the stakes, while there
are serveral $1000 on stake, how much would you lose, as soon as the
smallest bit of bad luck kicks in?
A real long streak of bad luck would require more than a lifetime
playing to recover the loss.
Since you were talking about tournaments, there the situation is even
worse.
With only 2 prizes in the pool and a 10% registration fee you´d have
to outplay the 3rd best player in the tournament by more than 55:45
before you could expect to come out ahead in the long run.
While there are only sharks playing, that´s impossible to adchieve,
even without any bad luck.
Grunty
You're new to this neighborhood so you don't know about me and my
memorable RGB fightings around dice manipulation techniques at
TrueMoneyGames, Partygammon, GammonEmpire and a few other sites not
worth mentioning (even defunct Gamesgrid) way back since 2003.
Also, if you bother to google back in this newsgroup for:
'Piranha' and 'Partygammon' as far as 2007/2008,
'neilkaz' and 'manipulation' around 2005/2006 (Neil Kazaross, guess
you heard the name),
you will find extremely interesting stuff.
In my paranoid view, EACH and EVERY bg site where I ever played for
money did or keep doing real-time dice manipulation by means of the AI
software of their choice -- the same software they use for settling
disconnected games.
Of course, they don't monitor and rig *every* game - just those where
players meet certain well-defined criteria, eg:
1) shark vs fish (rigging a fraction of games towards fish),
2) too-successful a shark (ROI measurement based on their account
balance history).
The technical tools are out there, up and running: Snowie, GNUBG,
BGBlitz. Each site just has to pick the 'policies' they want to
implement to increase cash flow -- the selection criteria mentioned
above.
Shills and disbelievers will call it 'luck swings' and 'variance', but
we do know that when luck swings, variance, get abnormally widespread
against sharks, then there must be another regulatory factor in the
middle.
I'm including here a post taken from rec.gambling.poker posted by a
renowned paranoid from there, W. Coleman aka Ramashiva.
You just change words 'poker' by 'backgammon' and 'cards' by 'dice'
throughout this article, and get a picture of the industry's state of
the art in dealing with sharks.
-----------------
"The poker hierarchy and the doom switch"
From: William Coleman
Date: Sat, Sep 2 2006 1:08 pm
....
<snip>
Action flops?
I don't know about that, but it does make economic sense from the
point of view of the cardroom. What makes perfect sense, and what is
an indisputable reality, regardless of what those of you in the peanut
gallery think, is that at least some online poker rooms, and most
certainly Poker Stars, have a doom switch, which they turn on to keep
extremely tough players from draining too much money from the fish.
Poker Stars does not want tough players like Russ and Ramashiva
looting large sums of money from the fish, who include probably at
least 90% of those of you reading this right now.
So they handicap the strong players. In some cases, this is just a
regulator, like people making more draws against you than expected, or
your draws don't come in with the frequency expected. They still let
you make a profit, just way below your EV. The more extreme example
of the doom switch is when you just run into a total brick wall, and a
specific player beats you every hand, no matter what. I and many
others have experienced exactly this type of scenario --
You raise the pot with AA. Your nemesis behind you reraises, so you
cap, assuming 3 raises max. The flop comes AK2. Again, the action is
capped headsup. The turn is a 5 and the action is capped one more
time. Now you are a little bit worried, because you don't have the
nuts. Surely he wouldn't have capped every round with 34??? The
river card is a 3, so now you definitely slow down. You check and
call. The lunatic shows you J4 offsuit. I am not bullshitting. I
have seen this scenario repeatedly.
Once the extreme doom switch is thrown, the same player shows up in
everyone of your games, and he lays beat after beat on you of this
type, capping the action on every round. Please do not give me some
patronizing bullshit about how I am just trying to explain away the
fact that I am a losing player. I am a very strong winning player,
even when the mild doom switch is thrown. I have the Poker Tracker
databases to prove it.
Russ and his cheating pack have had similar experiences. Invariably,
when they open a new account with a new ID, the new ID wins heavily
for a while.
Then, suddenly, the new ID cannot win a single hand, no matter what.
The extreme doom switch has been thrown. They have experienced this
over and over, at several online poker rooms. But Russ and his
cheating pack are not dumb. As soon as it becomes obvious the extreme
doom switch has been thrown, they just lock up 80% of the net win,
cash out, and abandon the account.
Of course this post will be greeted by hoots and hollers of scorn, as
is every post which suggests that any internet poker room has a random
number generator which is less than perfect. According to the wisdom
of the shills and sycophants of internet poker, the internet poker
rooms have no motivation or reason to handicap tough players, or to
try to prevent the draining of large sums of money from the suckers
(which would be 90% of you who think you know how to play). What the
internet poker rooms want as an ideal is for the pool of money
represented by the deposits of its customers to swirl around like
water draining from a bathtub, with the house slowly draining off all
money through the rake.
Everytime a tough player like Russ or Ramashiva comes along, the
bathtub springs a leak, and the money gets permanently drained off
into the bank accounts of the tough players. Capitalists maximize
profits. Capitalists operating internet poker rooms maximize profits
by preventing tough players from draining the bathtub.
Please do not show your ignorance by claiming that internet poker
rooms have no economic interest in preventing tough players from
draining funds permanently from the pool of their customer deposits.
Of course they do. Do you know anything at all???
Please do not embarrass yourself by claiming you are a huge winner and
have never experienced the doom switch. There are two possibilities
-- Either you are a shill for online poker rooms and are simply
lying, Or you are a losing player who has experienced a hot streak
and thinks he is the second coming of Ted Forrest.
There is no third possibility. You think large internet poker rooms
do not already have sophisticated software which can analyze a
player's play to determine if that player is a tough player and a
threat to drain the bathtub, or whether that player is just another
sucker on a hot streak?
Again, if you really are a heavy winner at internet poker and have
never experienced the doom switch, you are simply another clueless
sucker on a hot streak. Remember my recounting of my experience of
being barred at 21 at Caesars Tahoe when I was stuck $700 at the
blackjack table?
Why did they bar me? Very simple. An eye in the sky who was also a
proficient card counter was monitoring my play and seeing that I was
playing perfect blackjack according to the count, and could thus
easily turn a winning shift in the 21 pit into a losing shift with
great regularity.
Although I represented no serious threat betting three hands, $25/
hand, what would happen if I suddenly "found" some serious money and
started playing three hands, $10,000/hand? If I played 100 rounds of
three hands per hour, which I can easily do since I can play faster
than the fastest dealer can deal, then my total betting volume per
hour would be $3 million dollars. If my total edge flat betting is
1%, which is very conservative with the favorable rules Caesars Tahoe
offered me, then my hourly rate would be $30,000/hour. You think any
casino will book action from a player like me who will beat them for
$30,000/hour???
I don't think so. The casinos are in business to make money, not to
let proficient card counters like me bankrupt them. This is why the
casinos routinely bar expert card counters, or take other
countermeasures to prevent them from doing serious damage.
....
<snip>
Tony Hrysicos
called RedTop, (not a money site, but he played at other money sites too I
believe) who was the top player there for years. I idolised him. I analysed
his games, barely any errors, very snowie like. He was finally caught out by
his friend using snowie to play his moves. Gammonzone kicked him out,
haven't heard of him since.
"Grunty" <grunti...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f922cda2-ee50-4e36...@h10g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...
Robi
"surazal" <tinam...@gmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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surazal
players and rake structure and that poor sod in another discussion who
lost the 100k , and of course the world shortage of weaker players
prepared to give me their cash I think I shall return to GammonZone
with at least a modest profit and a lesson learned. Having said that
have just played a 1 euro tour where my opponent overturned a 56 pt
deficit off the bar to win the race and strangely I wasn't the least
bit surprised. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not
out to get you.
Robi
with playing better and playing less skilled opponent i make some money...
naturally not always, cause of the bad luck but overall.
"surazal" <sheam...@gmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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