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Many casinos have leaderboards for a wide range of competition. Is there a way to verify the validity of the users and their scores? What stop the casinos from printing random (fake) users and put that on the leaderboard?

That's the reason I only participate in competitions published and handled in Bitcointalk. It's easier to verify. Do you also think the same?

Sincerely,
A skeptic guy.

I believe in the wager and raffles, because with respect to the wager amount I've got moved to the top on leaderboards. Also at times used to participate on competition, and has received raffles based on the wagered amount. In a competition for every $100 wagered I've received raffles.

Sometimes I do get those thoughts when I don't win but I rarely have doubts on the casinos i'm playing given that they have a solid reputation.

It's always great to have some sort of verification if there's an option but it's hard to pass up in-house competitions that could be +EV even if there's no way to verify it.

I don't think there is any way to verify the legitimacy of an in- house casino competition. Casinos can definitely create fake accounts and place them to the top of the leaderboard so that they don't have to actually pay out the prize money to anyone else other than an insider.

Holding raffles and lotteries in bitcointalk is still verifiable but nòt the in-house ones. That's why I prefer to enter only free raffles in online casinos where I don't risk loosing anything. But unfortunately, I have never won anything even in free raffles!

Frankly speaking I do not really care about wagering competition because it is not something that suitable for me as a small gambler. Coming up to the possibility of fake accounts created by the casinos, I cant talk about it further because I have no proofs to accuse any casinos create fake accounts.
Anyway, I have won few times on In-house competition at several casinos but all of them are not wagering competition. Mostly, roll hunt number competition (yolodice), profit contest (coinroyale), raffle (duelbits), slot contest (fortunejack).


In the contrary, I'm participating competitions in bitcointalk because I feel that the chance to win is bigger since the number of competitors/participants is low compared to in-house competition.

If the leaderboards are at the gambling sites with reputations, I believe that they will not give a fake result because that will be related to their reputations among the members.
I do not know how to verify the validity, but I believe in the gambling site's big name, as I said before.
The competitions that launch in the bitcointalk come from the gambling site with good reputations, recommended, and trustable, so there is no point for the user not to believe in them. They are one of many recommended gambling sites here.
The casinos can print random users on their leaderboard, but I do not think that the big gambling site will do that.

I only take part in Sportsbet.io tournament competitions as I only play there.I tend to believe there are no faked names because as long as people are taking part in slots tournaments they are using money and the company in the end will only share part of this money to the top 5 players who wagered the most.There is no reason for a big casino why they would want to put random fake names in these competitions as there is nothing to be gained from this.

my way of verifying is if the high roller in the leaderboard competition is not hidden and the another one is if he is active chatting in the public chat of a gambling site .
 my tips are not perfect because there are hidden players that are not connected on the site and also dont spend time in the chats but they play anonymously .
im not trying hard because i am no way of participating a competition  .
i never win a single competition because my plays are not intense

#RIP lol

Yeah, but perhaps that's because there was no sybil (fake accounts) attack. Only real account = fewer participants.
Duelbits' raffle was legit IMO (not because we won) lol, but because they stated the total ticket number. At that time, I was sure at least one of us would win.

Interesting idea!

But most of the gamblers don't want their names being posted in the leader board.
It's their privacy too.
So, that is still not a way to verify them accurately.

I have also not been at the top of leaderboards even with dice.
It takes time and I don't want my computer to heat up just opening it 24/7 for the ranks.  ;D
I guess it will all depend of the trust built up by the gambling site.

I have asked this questions many times myself and unfortunately I don't think there is a way to find out if these leaderboards are legit or not. Even if the casinos tells us everything is being regulated we still don't know what is going on behind the curtains. Maybe someone just makes a few fake accounts for leadersboards. In the end we just have to trust the casino or not.

I agree with you that having a well known forum behind the competitions makes it much more reliable. If the competitions are managed by a Hero or Legendary member here with a good trust record over several years we can all belief in it. The trust factors on the forum are a great way to reward long term users who were never involved in shady business.

That's a nice question honestly. I am skeptic on wager competitions on small casinos and platforms that gets up to hundreds of btc wagered in a span of a week. Not that I'm questioning the pockets of those in the leaderboards but oftentimes, it's hard to believe that someone will wager such an amount in a relatively small casino that can perform exit scams so easily. Anyhow, on established casinos and platforms I have no problems joining the competitions. Even I myself managed to wager quite a nice sum on some events, although not enough to put me in the top 20s of the leaderboard.

Believe me the only 1 way to prove the real winner of contest on Gambling site is raffle (well mostly it's only a giveaway, not contest). Site will use 3rd party to decide the winner by going live, so no one feel got cheated.

Different when we are talking about wager, biggest profit, race and other contests, all of these contest could be manipulated (especially when the time of contest is near end).

I am always skeptical about "wagering" and probably some time I have seen serious suspect about frauds...because I have seen people wagering hundreds of bitcoin for just hundreds of dollars as a prize.
I think it's kind of impossible someone will risk so much money for just a little prize.

Or another example I have seen people playing for "lottery"... but the same amount of ticket earned was much much more of first prize if directly converted in "rakeback point"...

If you think that those who gamble hundreds of btc is aiming for the contest only, I can say that it is wrong.
Bear in mind that not all gamblers are gambling just for the wagering contest.
Whales wont really care about the prize as they can earn it easily with single bet.
Of course people who gamble for the wagering contest only does exist but they wont be risking hundred of btc for hundred of dollars.

When it's a new casino, and their leaderboard has some serious wagers, I don't believe they're real. But when we're talking about a reputable casino, I don't see why they would fake such info, as the risk of someone casting solid doubt on the data outweighs the potential reward they might get. That being said, I also don't know of a way to check if these wagers are true, so it's indeed nice to have people share the info on Bitcointalk (especially when we're talking about a competition), thus proving that the info is legit.

Well if an user is at leaderboard top positions there must be someway to proove that, maybe through his account's statistics?
I think a casino can't fake this kind of competition for too long, because the real big players will start doubting, questioning and complaining about the results, what will lead a wave of suspiciousness among other gamblers, prejudicing future competitions and the casino itself. So there is no point for a casino who wants to be reputable and to operate for a long time to practice such actions.

As long the system using internal casino system count, IMO still no solution for this went the casino was really want to cheat on the contest with some big prize + they want to take all the winners to spot so as not to lose anything just for creating some HYPE.

Some solution maybe for Multiplier Contest the casino can provide a hash result for each user who reaches the multiplier depending on what type multiplier for the contest (High or specifiq). But just like I said before if the casino really want to cheat and not losing money, yeah they can create their own account and just add unlimited money on real balance to play for chasing a high multiplier ~XD

Wager contest was impossible to be tracked + cannot give any solution. In the case for the raffle we can using a number of tickets like duelbits and roll the winners via livestream.

Hey, I am also one of the skeptics when it comes to stuff like this... because we know some casinos use some drastic strategies to get people to gamble more. The thing is... if they get caught and something like this is posted online... then their reputation will be destroyed.

I know some of the Streamers are funded by the casinos to showcase their casinos and to attract new gamblers to their casinos. I do not really think this is unethical... but they should really just say that some of these streamers are funded, so that it does not cause any problems when it is revealed.

Problem is.... exposing this is almost impossible and you have to be a hacker or you have to get some whistleblower to expose this practice.  ::)

I trust such competitions - if you pay attention to the size of the prizes in relation to the money that is spinning there, then we can say that these are insignificant amounts for the casino. Such prizes are a small rateback for big players. These are image projects and are practically free for casinos.

Probably, this scenario about faking would only exist for non reputable casino who's going to scam every gamblers who fall into their promotional traps. If you're smart enough to determine their modus, then don't trust on their mode of set play and it's in the first place they'll be suspicious once complains started to burst out from random players who experience some disappointing experience.

Often wondered and sometimes still wonder about this issue as well : and usually I rely on site reputation and go with the most pupolar and trustes...but those are the ones where winning in those kind of competition is harded or that same reason.
I think some sites might do some tricks like this, expecially the ones with the feature on hiding player profile : in my opinoin people with hidden profile should be excluded from wagering competition.
One thing that makes it harder fro site to eventually cheat on this kind of promo is if they have bankroll investiment feature : in case of house players losing their asses to climb the leaderboard investors profit would grow, so site admins should make some math to calculate the lesser damage for site bankroll.

Nothing changes whether the player's profile is hidden or not. You can "simulate" both a hidden and an open profile - in any case, you have to rely on the reputation of the casino. I think most of the big players have hidden profiles for obvious reasons and would be annoyed if kicked out of this competition. It would annoy me if I had to choose between bonus and privacy.

I am glad I am not the only one who thinks like it. I was trying to ask the same question but I was feared that most of the reputed casinos will come hard at me if I directly ask them in support chat, great to have a topic here and discuss with players.

Its actually a very viable option for them and specially the new casinos who don't have players can announce 100 BTC race/contest and then show up their own usernames and accounts.

I hardly ever compete for these wager contests because I don't like losing $100 to win $10 from these contests but really good point and I wish some casinos can answer because we as players can only discuss.

I don't see why they would have to put fake people on the leaderboards even if you say that it's to boost popularity. They literally could use any other tactic than that. And besides, if you think the gambling site you frequent in is pulling a fast one on you, then you might wanna switch to a different one just to save yourself the trouble of being so skeptical about it.

The main reason why they put fake accounts on such contest is to save some money from the prizepool.
I remember there was a casino namely "wixiplay" did this thing in the past.
The casino had few wagering contest (daily, weekly and monthly) but the main winners are inactive account (by checking the profile of the account).
Luckily the site is not able to survive and I think it is gone already.
Of course it is not happening in all casinos, at least reputable casinos wont do such bad thing as they wont be willing to risk their reputation.

If it's a wager competition then I won't participate since I am a small gambler so wager competition is out of my hands unless it is another competition that is not based on wager then I'll be gladly to join to try my chance on winning the competition rather than gambling for fun and not taking chances on competition that does not take a lot of money to have a chance to win. Putting fake top participants on leaderboard have consequences and one of it is trust or reputation.

That is why it is extremely unlikely that at least someone does this. The savings from such actions are minimal and the loss is fatal. The casino actually exists because of its reputation, if it is lost then the players will avoid it and this business will fail. I doubt anyone would risk losing their existing business trying to save a couple thousand dollars.

Possibly could happen because there's no way that you can really verify if those players are real ones or just part of the team to rip off those prizes go back to the house itself
and deceived out those real players to play to catch up with the rankings.This is really happening and im aint excludning those popular or know ones because they can still ahve
that kind of probability that it might happen.When it comes to transparency of tournaments then it would be still on doubt when it comes to outcome.
Events on bitcointalk or being held on this place? I would also prefer this one than to those typical ones.

Well, I can't imagine this kind of cheating from casinos while I am a very active player of poker before. It perhaps also possible that the one who I played is one of their team, it is a ^[bogus] type of fraud. It is really hard to determine that truth if there is a possible bias that happens inside the competition. But perhaps, reputable gambling sites did not do this since they don't want to ruin their reputation. I don't know how it works and how to verify but if you will trust the gambling site and I think there is nothing you can do if they are cheating on you.

If we are honest there is no way to verify these results and the casino could easily cheat their customers by creating fake accounts or by giving the prize from those competitions to insiders that work on the casino, however I do not think we need to get that paranoid, if the casino in which you are playing has a good reputation and it prides itself in serving their customers to their best of their ability then I think it is fair to say it is unlikely a casino like that would cheat their customers.

I also took part in the sportsbet.io American Hero streak challenge where we had to make bets on NBA and other sports and win the most consecutive bets to get the prize. I never managed to win the 1st prize but I do got free bet, I trust them but that doesn't deny the point that they can easily cheat if they want and even the usernames are hidden for user privacy. Don't mistake me, I really trust sportsbet.io a lot and would never associate them with such frauds.

Yeah, but for example at stake.com there is a player who has the highest VIP level, GDLE but I never saw him in chat or anywhere and he even won the raffle draw of Lambo so I am not saying stake cheated or anything like that because everyone was given a ticket before announcement of the winning number and winner was chosen by google random number generator but the point remains the same that how do we know if such a player actually exist and not just a dummy account.

Many cryptocurrency exchanges fake their trading volume, are involved in wash trading, and other illicit practices to make it seem that they are bigger and more important than they really are. Your question makes sense and it is possible that such malpractices are happening on gambling sites as well. The funds exchanges hold aren't transparent. You can't verify which player holds what and who gets paid how much.  

It is certainly possible that the developers and casino operators can create accounts, fund those accounts from the money pool, and participate in competitions. This is not an accusation, just a statement on what could theoretically happen.

Could be, but I don't see casinos to do it, as what the OP is, gamblers are very skeptic in this kind of things. Gamblers tend to keep a close eyes on things they anticipated to win, so if the competition have been painted with other colors, there is a high chance of gamblers to notice it very quick. Aside from being skeptic, being friendly is also part of a gamblers attitude, so it is natural that this gamblers pretty much know who are they competing to.

Well, you can verify many of the races and players by simply seeing their most recent bets and verify if they are real bets or not. But your limit is only upto that, because you can't really verify if the users are from the casino itself or not, because in that case you are right, you are most likely being cheated. It's a very important point you have made which I haven't thought about earlier, sites can simply create users and play to make other people losers in races haha. I never really participate in races, because the prize always is lower than what I lose during the wager :P so yeah, it's best to avoid it unless you have huge money and want to lose some of it just for a little bit of thrill :P

It didn't cross my mind if there was something like about random user printing to place them on the leaderboard but yeah, it could just be for a trigger. But honestly, I never really thought it existed because well, so far I've only participated in competitions where at least there is a noticeboard or something here on the gambling board. Therefore, I never thought there was such a thing as random user printing, because so far in the competitions I participated in at least I still got prizes even though I didn't always win first place, but with me receiving real prizes I assumed the users who were on the leaderboard were real users.

Of course we didn't see it as it's being manipulated by a site. Did you ever see wager contest before? When the contest near ended, there are few new accounts appear and then make huge bet to reach top position in wager contest. With that way, that site don't need to pay more to the winner

This was actually a legit question. The obvious answer is… We can't actually verify the validity of these competitions. The only thing we can do is trust the organizers. Who's putting on the event, who's rating the games, etc.
Once someone wins an event it's up to the organizer to verify that this person won fair and square.

As for me, things will depend on the gambling casino that we're using. Nonreputable gambling sites will surely fake their leaderboard just to attract more players. However, good casinors are actually showing off real data based on real-time records of players. It's still up to us if we'll get tricked by casinos that are faking their data that's why we should always be wise and learn how to check the reputation of every casino.

I think, that any site doing this will actually create more losses than gains for themselves. All casinos have house-edge and the more the wager, more is the profit of the casinos, these races are designed to make sure people wager with maximum capacity trying to defeat the other players and grab a prize, and unless and until that prize is really so huge, I think it makes sense for the casino to simply let unique (and not fake) players to gamble their money for trying to get the prize along with that it will also establish a good-faith and good-will for the company.

Basically, no-one can very such leader-board nor their in-house competition becasue what they do wholly are just within. Have entered into different competitions that i presumed to be manipulated by the house but at the end there wasn't a means to verify the results. From that day onward, i repented from participating into such competition becasue they are not verifiable and fake are much just to collect your little pay as for ticket.

Actually had that kind of impression not only just because im a small time player but i dont really have the interest on joining those even if i do have the money.

There's no way to verify into those winners because you wont really able to know if those are legit players or not and majority of people would really have the same
impression towards those competitions.

Its just really obvious since this is part of their promotions.Its good if they are really fair when it comes to winners and not part of theirs.
With any competitions or promotions i dont really pay much attention to it.

Yeah, they can do that, for example in Dice, they know server seeds and can manipulate the results. I remember Bitsler wanted to implement an option where people would invest money into bankroll but they changed their money because of that reason, it's possible to manipulate the results (win/loss).

It all comes down to how you trust the casino where you are playing. It doesn't worth for reputable casinos to cheat their customers because financial pros can't outweigh the cons that it will bring to their reputation. Bad reputation = a few players and a few players = less profit.

I don't think users will be comfortable if they will see their names on the leaderboard with their respective details in such a way that it will be considered as proof that they are real humans.

I also feel the same way but since there is no way we can check or verify the validity of these users on the top of the leaderboard, I will just put my trust in that website but not on those unpopular sites.

you can click the players bet and thats how you verify it

if the casino is trusted they wont do such things because they want a fair play for every gamblers and to make the game competitive the way it was mean to . if a casino is not trusted they are cases that they are going to create thier own players and they wont stop because they are corrupt and want to secure the prizes that they showcased  .

like this one https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5310518.0 ( Bitcointalk poker series #2 hosted by Betnomi  )  ? because there are also gambling sites posted on bitcointalk that have a competition but not organized in a way like the one i used in the example  but the one that i used as sample can still be possible cheated .

There isn't technically anything stopping them from making fakes in their in-house raffles and such but I think that they wouldn't risk the house with such petty tricks, I think that we can trust the house doing this kind of thing if we were to look at their reputation which lies in between bad and good, if they lie near bad reputation then you know that you can't trust them but if they are on the opposite then they might be able to pull off this kind of petty tricks because they have a rich clientele and they want to make sure that they can trick them.

So after reading you guys' comments, it's almost all talk about reputation. About how reputable/trusted casinos won't risk their reputation for a small amount of money. Yeah, it sounds logical, but not enough for a skeptic mind.

Of course, it can be cheated (remember the massive alts discovery by Nutildah?), but at least by utilizing Bitcointalk, there will be less Sybil attack. And the culprit can be caught.

---

I'll let this thread open for a few more days to get more ideas (if any) about how to determine if the in-house contest rigged or not. The wager one is more obvious since often in just a few hours before it closed, whales start to rekt the leaderboard.

I do think one cannot for trust anything with closed eyes but idk if am right but is this possible to somehow Integrate blockchain itself in a casino ?? This way everything will be as open as it can be ? It would be extremely complicated but the track of scores , players, numbers can be kept in a highly integrated manner and anyone literally anyone can check if it's good or no!

We do have games which are developed on blockchain therefore I do think that, this might be possible but the system itself would be able to handle less number of individuals at a time.

Maybe this would be a time when we could trust these things with closed eyes ?

-*-

I myself do not particularly go forth in the competitions but I do think if someone would like to elucidate my idea ? Can blockchain be used in gambling platform??

This had been always the case or situation happen on a wager competition where even you do secure your spot on the top wont really make any guarantee
that you would win the competition because as long it wasnt over then whales can really fucked you up even with the last minute left of the time.
You cant even tell if those are real players or simply on the side with the house.Hard thing on spotting or determining out if they are rigging or cheating it or not.

I think it will be beneficial for you to check this thread where you'll see the detailed explanation of one example on how casino can cheat you in "provably fair" games: FortuneJack's "Adrenaline" game is not actually provably fair, despite being advertised as such (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5097164.msg49253796#msg49253796)
Popular and well-established casinos don't need to cheat, simply there is no reason to cheat because they already make decent money when they offer you wagering and other type of contests. Trust hugely matters in casinos, it can really ruin their business if they are cheating and it was somehow leaked. Some people still think that companies like Evolution (former Evolution Gaming) lie to their customers while in reality there is 0 such attempt. Games have house edge and it's already gives casinos the guarantee that they will profit. And in-house competitions just push you to wager as much as possible because of high competition, the reward that they give you isn't a huge loss for them too, just a tiny amount in reality.

I haven't thought about promotions/competitions that are being run on their site that way. Yes, they can probably put up some random account to win the highest prize and get the award back, but that is up to them. I mean, we wouldn't know, but there's some uneasy feeling that the thought gives. I wouldn't think about it like that if my stats are okay with the leaderboard.

I agree that it's okay to check out competitions here, so it's transparent. But what's stopping them from creating their account here and posting their results? If that's how you think?

I've had a few instances in which I doubted certain participants in competitions. I think it is not a matter of trusting or not because whether we like it or not the sites will always do something like this. That's part of marketing and they most probably have a certain budget allocation for it.

They need to always make it appear as though their competitions, raffles, chat boxes, or their entire sites in general are busy with a lot of users or gamblers. I assume many of those users are under the site's payroll. I think that's normal. And we have no way to verify whether they are legit users or just paid to use the sites.

We can let the casino do that while we can focus on ourselves. I think the casino will do anything that can ruin their reputations, especially if it is one of the trusty casinos that most gamblers know. But a gambler who has a passion for being the number 1 on the leaderboard will try hard to win many times as they want to see their name on that leaderboard. But still, the casino can arrange the name in the leaderboard, so it is hard for them to keep their name in that place. That is why we don't have to try hard to win by playing many times because that will not guarantee us to win.

I don't think any reputed site will ever rig a wagering contest. I know and fully understand the discussion that since the games in crypto gambling are provably fair, we are also looking at contests and wondering how to make them provably fair as well. I don't participate in many wager contests myself but from what I have seen, most of the players who win or are part of the leaderboard are usually active in the chat which makes me think the contest isn't rigged.

A simple solution to such contests is this: Make fixed limits like any player who wagers X amount of money will get Y amount of prize regardless of what others have achieved. This means that the prizes are fixed and cheating is impossible. It kills the fun to race against other players but at least makes it fairer.

In-house competitions are trusted depending on the reputation and the financial wellness of the casino, if they are doing well on both sides, then that means that they do not have any other intention other than to make some publicity and have their public relations go up and they want to attract more customers, if it is otherwise then you have to wary of it because they might rig the game that they are trying to conduct, risk will only come when you have an inkling feeling that the casino is going to cheat you.

That is why there is no point in making bets to win these competitions, just bet as you normally do and if you get placed in any of the competitions that's just an additional benefit. The prizes in these competitions are usually smaller than the house edge, what I mean to say is you won't get more than 0.01 BTC in most of these competitions by betting less than 1 BTC, assuming the house edge is 1%. I follow some stake betting competitions and last I checked, someone wagered 276 bitcoins and counting to win a prize of approximately 0.026 BTC.

It's a no brainer to participate in competitions just because of the prizes because like it's already been talked that there is no guarantee the competitions are fair and even if they are fair, you are getting much less than what you are "expected" to lose by wagering the amounts needed to win the competitions.

On a funny thought, I was thinking if all the players unite and decide that no one will wager for the competition and let only one guy wager 5 USD and win the top prize and then we all share the money haha.

A hundred percent agree with you, especially for wagering competition where high likely the winners are those who do not play for the prize. The prize is just like an additional bonus for them for being active wagering on the site. Expected lose for those winners are always higher than the possible reward they get from the competition. I also do not see any benefits for casinos to put some random fake users on the winners list as high rollers are smart enough how to gambler their money. Only scam sites do such cheating imho.

This is what it think as well, it is possible but unlikely, gamblers like to use the chat of the casino to comment on how they are doing, if suddenly a new player appeared, did not communicate it with others and began winning those competitions and this kept happening over and over again I would suppose that gamblers would have realized there is something wrong already and we could have seen a scam accusation on the forum about this.

Why would they care about that? Even if regular users could suspect something, there are many newbies who won't suspect anything and will fall into the trap. The crypto land is full of scams, casinos are not spared.

You really can't trust anyone unless there is a real name or account behind every user in the leaderboard. I feel the same with the exchange trading competition, I have joined several times and although I'm not really hoping to win, I just notice the top usernames do not resemble any real name.

If they connect the Bitcointalk account to the account on bitcointalk I guess that's something transparent. I think stake.com has this kind of system in which users in their stake.com forum are connected to their casino account.

Connecting to other platform as a sign of transparency? To think that creating one would really be that simple and if the management do such shady tricks then they can
anytime create one to patch up the hole on getting busted.
I do have always the same impressions when it comes to competition even though you are already on the top rank but on the last minute or hour then suddenly those
names do climb up in the leader board so fast.
I dont have any trust at all thats why i do skip most of competition and promotions out there.

Oh, why does a casino have to do this? I don't think they want to be associated in any way with BTT. Plus, how did you get the idea that real people are behind the accounts on BTT? Check out my investigations and how many multi-accounts I found here)
Maybe I misunderstood you, but if not, then your idea is very strange to me.

Strange idea indeed and as Quidat said above ^ there's no way on proving out those accounts are owned by each individual, so there's no point on having this kind of indication about legitimacy.

It is important because for the most part most of the money that comes to casinos comes from regular gamblers, it is obvious casinos spend a lot of time trying to get new customers but they also spend a lot of time trying to keep the customers they already have, if those customers realized that there was something wrong on the promotions they were receiving then why bother to keep playing in that casino when they can move to another one that is honest and in which they have an actual chance of winning competitions like those?

So if we remove "reputation" from the equation, there are not many things that can determine fairness. The only practical idea is to observe whether the username was active in the chat or not. That's bad :D

So this case is still in the grey area, where there is no way to verify the competition's fairness.

The proposed idea about utilizing Bitcointalk also not perfect, but based on the history, cheaters often got caught as in guess the score on Betnomi or Adskinsbet? (I forgot). You can see also in multiplier competitions that the winners are well-known addicts.

Even if there is a real name, how do you know they are actually real people? Suppose the leaderboard shows the name Peter, how do you know if Peter actually plays or is just a dummy account to cheat players by placing Peter on the top of the wagering contests. Names and usernames don't matter as much as the reputation of the casino in my opinion because no casinos with a good reputation like PD would risk doing such frauds.

Stake allows users to connect their stake forum profile with their stake but that is to facilitate the user with the prizes they win on the forum in the various promotions run by stake. It has nothing to do with fairness or making wager contests more legit.

In a way when casinos start they have bots and even players who test the platform, some even in god mode. It is a very valid question, but there are ways to find out, perhaps the easiest is reputation, some casinos have it because they have been verified and are handled on certain industry standards.

Among other things that help to have confidence in a (certain) casino is that these prizes, although they may seem high, most are so profitable that it would be stupid for a so-called serious casino to be involved in such a scam.

Perhaps it is repetitive in mentioning it, but the answer is as classic as your question about the OP, only use trusted casinos.

On the contrary,,, I think a lot of people in the casino industry would love to associate their players with a secondary source of identity without KYC. And if it is an active and old forum user here, then it is more likely to be a real player they do not have to ask for ID documents from. That is just my personal opinion though,,, and as you say it is not a guarantee of real identity but it is one extra step towards it:)

Only the viable solution for you to take on because there's no other way on verifying out things to be true other than to be an employee on the said gambling site or company and having those information.

Other than that, you cant really find any proofs that they've been cheating.I dont exclude out those reputable ones because i do believe that they are still making out a bit of those kind of shady acts.
This is just in my hunch though but not totally been proven out.

Sticking out with reputable ones is a bit better but doesnt guaranteed out fairness.Just play on where the masses been hanging out and dont mind if those competitions are
fair enough for you to believe on.

How about the casino platform that has the option of searching out usernames on the leaderboard, if the user profile exist then it's likely be a true user not a fake one. Also, you can verify it if you know a particular user that play with higher amount of money and wins it, that could also be way of verifying people on the leaderboard, I'm just having a feeling that there could be some ways if verifying those users if they aren't fake at all.

Bitcointalk published competition is legit compared to those advertised from social media or other website promotions. We can only relied on that aspects, because it's been supported by many trusted members who also participate with that competition.
In this ways, we can be confident to join and thus other fake users will be eliminated.

The issue is that the community wants to have total privacy and transparency at same time, what is impossible. To verify if a winner is legit you would need his personal ID and his betting history to make sure he isn't a casino's *strawman*. But no one wants to give personal details in public in order to join a competition. The maximum we can have are usernames linked to betting histories (when it is not hidden by the player or casino).
Anyway, the best you can do is to avoid a casino competition when you feel there is some cheating in the air, or just stick with single player games.

I guess with a linked account it simply adds an extra layer of difficulty to participate contests and i've noticed that it's somewhat effective at least on stake's forum as there's a lot of forum accounts that got banned there.

I think that's similar to what mu_enrico just mentioned above, even if every participant in the contest did have an actual profile it's still not enough proof to determine that they're unique from one another.

If it is coming from a reputable casino, I wouldn't doubt the competition that they held and the stats that they show. That is why their reputation is for.

About the leaderboards, yes, sometimes it is doubting if they have actually won the prize but I would still trust if that is coming from the very reputed casino. Otherwise, if it is from an unknown casino, it is normal to suspect.

They can just fake the identity behind that player you know, if you are going to cheat then don't go half-assed on it along the way. I do trust in-house competitions because they are in a way make the players play more and have other reason for playing at that casino, I mean if you don't trust it then probably you aren't in that casino in the first place.

Testing the platform with bots and/or multiple accounts is a very different angle as compared to casino cheating giveaways by faking data and stats. I slightly agree reputation can be a good way to avoid fake giveaways and wager contests but even then we cannot assure if there is cheating going on. It's similar to how some players avoid betting on new casinos because they don't want to get in the hassle of verifying bets and rather go with the reputed ones knowing they won't cheat.

I recall a site named dicebitco.in or close to that name used to be very famous before a player found how they were cheating, so every casino is only trusted until they are caught cheating. I am not very actively taking part in wager races so it doesn't concerns me a lot though.

At the end this is what it boils down to, we want to retain our privacy and we are within our rights to do so, but when it comes to those competitions the only way to verify if the people at the top of the leaderboards are real people would be with KYC and no one is going to be willing to go through that so at the end the only thing we can do if you want to participate in those competitions is to only do so if you are in a casino you completely trust.

You have good reasons to be sceptic in general, but there are places and places. Some edgy sites, too recent or that want to make just quick profit may try to benefit from such as strategy as fake players, however that eventually drives the customers out. The usual legitimate odds and methods are more than enough to drive the right profit from a betting platform, so for the old and well stablished ones there is no need to cheat.

Gambling site owners would neither be minding on having a temporal profit out of cheating or would really be minding about making money in long term ones.
So cheating out those competitions would be no point because once the masses or community got caught you then say goodbye into your business
Its true that even with just those typical house edge and methods you would really be definitely profit and thats the word or common saying that
house do always win.

We cant directly tell if they are doing this stuffs in the past and changed up when they get some recognition, no one really knows.

Even if they are not caught cheating, it will be an unprofitable undertaking. The point of bonuses is that in fact, they buy the loyalty of the player, and these bonuses are aimed specifically at the top players. If casino have not "bought" a player, then another casino will buy him, since a large player is a tasty morsel for any establishment. I read stories about how offline casinos paid the (top) players for flights and hotels and made a lot of profit because these gamblers lost much more than these costs.

You have said on whats happening in reality which i do fully agree.Casinos would really be spending out something or risk to be included on expense because they do know that they can
really benefit from it on longer runs.Getting loyalty from big bettors or whales is something a house do always target on.You are right about unprofitable undertaking and also
it does have corresponding risk because you are really risking out your reputation that you are trying to build.It isnt just on the right mind on doing such.

Nothing actually. Only the integrity of the owners which is questionable since they set up a gambling site in the first place. Then again if you think your favorite casino is trying to pull a fast one on you, I guess it's best to find another that you could wholeheartedly trust, be it in rewards or in-house competitions.

Some time ago I remember reading that is several times more difficult for a business to win a new customer than to keep an old customer, this means that if any casino is trying to cheat the players from which they obtain the most profits by denying them the bonuses that they told them that they could get this casino very quickly is going to find itself in financial trouble, because those players are going to leave and they are going to move to another casino that actually gives them bonuses and that cares about them, so while it is entirely possible that casinos are trying to cheat their players in this way at the end of the day it is going to be counterproductive for them.

If you were thinking that your casino is going to pull a fast one then you know that they don't have a good reputation and you shouldn't be playing there in the first place, I believe that there is no compromise to that because you wouldn't be a patron of that casino if it has a bad reputation in the first place. In short, if you are a patron of that casino then you don't have to worry that they are going to do a fast one with their In-House Competitions.

I do not trust any shady casino for anything, and I trust any good casino with everything. It is not about in-house competition or anything else, if I trust the place enough to gamble there that means I trust them enough with the in house things that they do as well, if there is a place where I do not trust the in house competitions that means I do not trust them with my money and wouldn't gamble there neither.

What is the point of trusting a place enough to gamble there whenever I want and not trust the same place when they do in house competition? There is really nothing that would be different there, you have to trust both or neither.

This makes sense, it is because of this that when you want to try a new casino you need to do your due diligence, looking a review here and there is not enough, look for their ANN thread and see if there are any scam accusations in the forum against the casino and see if there are grounds for those complains, also make sure the casino has good customer service and quick withdrawals, if a casino has all of this then it is way more likely the competitions they offer and the rewards associated with it are legitimate.

This is a reasonable position - if a casino is suspicious, then its individual offers/promotions will also always be under suspicion. As for whether it is worth avoiding such casinos, yes. But sometimes participation in promotions is free, in which case you can try your luck.