7 ms·

Really bad article. Goes to great lengths to glamorize that Curzi person, yet does not provide some of the most crucial information on the subject. For example

by hristov 12y ago

Really bad article. Goes to great lengths to glamorize that Curzi person, yet does not provide some of the most crucial information on the subject. For example - does oregon law require that the machines have certain winning percentage? And secondly did the state of oregon make a representation to gamblers that this machine had certain winning percentage? 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.

gnud 12y ago
I agree that the article wasn't very clear on this. It does, however, say that Oregon law requires the lottery to tell players the win chance. 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.
harywilke 12y ago
From the article: 'The lottery’s rules require “a close approximation of the odds of winning some prize for each game” and say those odds “must be displayed on a Video Lottery game terminal screen.”' Curzi discovered that the odds displayed were not correct and the commission knew about it.
- hristov 12y ago
  That is also very puzzling. It gives the above quote but it does not say whether these odds were actually displayed on the screen of this particular game, and it does not say which odds were displayed (the ones with using autohold or the ones without).
CWuestefeld 12y ago
One of the reasons I hate traditional media. 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.
- fenomas 12y ago
  Willamette Week isn't exactly traditional media - it's an alt-weekly known for investigative reporting. I think it's the only alt weekly ever to have won a Pulitzer, actually.
kyteland 12y ago
I used to work as a mathematician making OSL video poker games and I can tell you that there is no requirement that the autohold in the game use optimal strategy in Oregon. I don't remember if it was even required to have autohold enabled on the device. It was a configuration option in our software and could be turned on or off. It's possible that Oregon requires it is always on, but I can't remember. 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-better/9-6/simple/ 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.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  Do you recall which 3rd party lab validated the games for OSL? 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?"
  - kyteland 12y ago
    I worked with GLI when I was doing 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.
pessimizer 12y ago
>For example - does oregon law require that the machines have certain winning percentage? And secondly did the state of oregon make a representation to gamblers that this machine had certain winning percentage? 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?

by hristov 12y ago

gnud 12y ago

I agree that the article wasn't very clear on this. It does, however, say that Oregon law requires the lottery to tell players the win chance. 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.

harywilke 12y ago

From the article: 'The lottery’s rules require “a close approximation of the odds of winning some prize for each game” and say those odds “must be displayed on a Video Lottery game terminal screen.”' Curzi discovered that the odds displayed were not correct and the commission knew about it.

hristov 12y ago
That is also very puzzling. It gives the above quote but it does not say whether these odds were actually displayed on the screen of this particular game, and it does not say which odds were displayed (the ones with using autohold or the ones without).

CWuestefeld 12y ago

One of the reasons I hate traditional media. 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.

fenomas 12y ago
Willamette Week isn't exactly traditional media - it's an alt-weekly known for investigative reporting. I think it's the only alt weekly ever to have won a Pulitzer, actually.

kyteland 12y ago

I used to work as a mathematician making OSL video poker games and I can tell you that there is no requirement that the autohold in the game use optimal strategy in Oregon. I don't remember if it was even required to have autohold enabled on the device. It was a configuration option in our software and could be turned on or off. It's possible that Oregon requires it is always on, but I can't remember. 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-better/9-6/simple/ 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.

joezydeco 12y ago
Do you recall which 3rd party lab validated the games for OSL? 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?"
- kyteland 12y ago
  I worked with GLI when I was doing 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.

pessimizer 12y ago

>For example - does oregon law require that the machines have certain winning percentage? And secondly did the state of oregon make a representation to gamblers that this machine had certain winning percentage? 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?