The question of provable fairness standards

[M47AK16]

Funny as it may sound, I have never seen a report before from casino regulators addressing an issue that they must have discovered about a casino and give a heads up so that players can stop using that casino.

It left me with the question of whether the regulators do not bother to regularly audit a casino that they have licenced to check if those casinos are still abiding to the right policies and are not cheating players. If actually there's a regular regulatory audit on these licensed casino, they regulators can be the ones to detect it and warn players against using the casino, but I don't think they do it.

If there was a case of regulators prosecuting a casino for manipulating a game results, I have not seen one, maybe someone can show me a case like that if they have seen one.

Supposedly anjuan licenses check randomness and probability. But the fact thst many casinos who actually operate under this licence still chest shows that it means jack shit in reality. They check nothing and once any entity has laid for a license they get a blank slate to do whatever they want.

Not to say that government licenses even from big countries like US states, Canadian territories or even EU countries would be much better. How can they verify the randomness and probability? They're incompetent first of all and regulators are not to be trusted with anything technical. Casinos could be cheating anyone for real.

So basically, as a gambler, you are not just relying on luck when it comes to the randomness of the results alone but also relying on your luck for a casino's fairness, because if there is no proper check and balance, there are no audits or any sort, the casinos are not answerable to anyone if they cheat unless they get caught and the one who catches them collect proof against them and challenge them in court, then it is surely all just luck that we depend on even when it comes to reputable platforms, because they earned their reputation through the services provided, but if there is subtle cheating mechanisms they are using, no one would basically know, because people would only notice if there is excessive cheating.

This means, all this provable fairness and everything, they are just a play of words and promises to make people feel that they are not being cheated, and they don't really mean much, because if there are no proper audits of the systems and regulators barely care whether the gamblers are being cheated or not, casinos can always manipulate the results of the systems they create for their users, and users won't even notice, at least the majority won't, until, as I said, they do something excessive and then get caught.

[WhoYouCantKill]

Most players have experienced this, having just had a bit of luck and thinking it would last forever. But over time, the game reveals our true place in the world of betting and casinos. More accurately, it's virtually impossible to beat the casino, especially if you play for a long time. There will certainly be lucky players, or even super-professionals who understand all the intricacies of the game and have colossal experience, but even they aren't completely confident they'll win. So why do we believe in our inevitable luck and not consider the possibility of losing our deposit?

Exactly. Most of the times, when a market is suspended, it’s often more of a temporary precautionary measure than a sign that there’s something wrong with the match. The last thing the sportsbook needs is to make any mistakes because that’ll cost them dearly, so they need accurate and timely information before accepting bets. So even the slightest change in the weather, match conditions or odds could potentially lead to a game temporarily suspended.

[Questat]

That's also become my concern with everything that claims provable fairness. You may be able to check it and see that it matches the result you get, but we don't know how they decided to pick a certain value for the result and verification, like the server seed, for example. The problem is not only whether it's locked before the play or not, but there's also a possibility that the casino finds and chooses a server seed that makes your client seed lose even before it's finally locked. So, in this way, it's still verified as provably fair.

According to the casino operator in the AMA here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5482508, game fairness is also part of the licensing requirements. He said, “If it's a licensed casino, it has to have provably fair games, the regulator will not permit it otherwise.” However, there's still a possibility that the code could be changed after the casino gets its license, just like how some apps on the App Store and Google Play Store later turn into scams.

Yes, its already a requirement for licensing, yet it does not mean that all licensed casinos are promoting games fairness and equality. Some can still end up manipulating the game outcome so that the big advantage is on the house, not on the gambler.

That's why having this provably fair system is perfect for gambling casinos. If they have no intention to offer us fair games, then we can always verify the specific game round independently and check if its aligned with provably fair system or if its not.

[alegotardo]

What are your thoughts on this?

I was doing the maths here.... a difference of 1.69 percentage points in RTP means, on average, an additional of $1.69 retained for every $100,000 wagered by players if this configuration is used continuously. How much does a casino of that size handle per day???

Even so, for a company of that level, I do not think the reputational risk or a loss of users, disputes with regulators, payment processor blocks and even a possible regulatory sanction are worth this gain... in crypto cassino market, trust is the main "asset" that any company needs to protect.

Anyway... I am keeping a close eye on how this develops, especially because if this is true, it will set more precedents.... hopefully not!

[Dogedegen]

Most gamblers do not care about provably fair anymore, when it first was a thing some years ago it became somewhat massive, still for a short amount of time. The gambler of nowadays wanna know for real, the RTP if it is the same as the one advertised by the casino as many slot providers offers different range of RTP-s and only the casino would know, they would advertise like 96% RTP when in fact they would be giving like 89% RTP and this needs a way to be verified, we have no way still of how to verify the RTP of a certain slot machine at a certain casino for the moment, this is what most gamblers want to know nowadays including me. The fun fact is that gamblers despite not knowing true RTP they still play with the hope of getting the max win so most likely for most of them the provably fair thing is, well a thing of the past.

I would agree with you, but how can you actually claim that? What would be the basis of making that claim? The average gambler has no way to verify or check anything that relates to the concept of provable fairness or RTP. So what are they able to do? They can search on the internet to see if someone has made some kind of analysis, but with so many casinos and options often there is no analysis at all. The only thing that is left is to ask strangers on the internet to see if someone can or wants to make this kind of check. Because of these reasons they are probably not even willing to try to check if something is provably fair and they focus on playing. Playing on a casino is entertaining and easy, but getting involved with this topic is difficult and takes energy. If there was a standard that enabled people to check if a casino is provably fair with a click of a button then I am sure many gamblers would get interested in this topic, even more so if we found that there were many cases of casinos cheating.

[Betwrong]

I think, 240,000 bets is not enough to say something about real RTP, especially if they were made on three originals, Limbo, Dice, Plinko, combined. It means, roughly 80,000 bets on each game, right? This number is two to three orders of magnitude smaller than what is needed to claim something about a game’s RTP. BUT on any game where provably fair system  is implemented, it should work perfectly. There's no excuses for its not working, in my opinion.

[Hazink]

There is always an element of uncertainty in betting, and the game can go in a completely different direction from what you expected. Even if you closely follow certain players or teams, unexpected situations can always happen. That’s why it’s important to keep this in mind and consider the possibility that your bet might not win. You should never risk an amount of money that you can’t afford to lose.

That's sports betting for you, and we already know how unpredictable it can be and how easy it is to verify the result of a game without stress, but it's a different case if we are to look at casino games, where the only thing we get to see, and really is what ever the casino brings up for us as evidence, which this is beyond just seed and hash verification like what the op is trying to point out which most of us in the industry don't even know how to verify our games and the casinos have really been taken advantage of that on us with such gambling knowledge.

[Royal Cap]

I would say that a game is not fair if the chance of heads and tails is half. The real issue is whether the outcome is truly random and whether the casino can influence it in advance. However, as far as I know, there is a thing called RTP, is that related to this term? Because for example if there is a 90% RTP, if you bet $100, you will get 90% back and 10% will leave the house edge.  And this is why I will only see such games as entertainment, not with serious money. Because at the end of the day, the casino will be profitable.

[SamReomo]

What are your thoughts on this?

I think the majority of players don't even know a thing about provable fairness, they only play the games to try their luck and that's it, even if a casino tricks those users they'll consider that as part of the game and think that they might not have good luck.

To be honest, there are very few people who might check such fairness thing and that's why the casinos can do their trick without much fear.

That's why I think the best way is to choose a reputable casino that has built trust for years, we can at least expect some fairness from the reputable casinos because they won't ruin their reputation by faking the provably fair system.

[EluguHcman]

Why would a casino risk such a reputational hit? The money is probably the answer.

For the fact that the casino centers and sites are invents for businesses, the goal of every of their impacts is to make money.
Some don't consider reputation as the keyword that proves to users how provable fair they are so that the provability could ignite bettors to stay for the long term.

In fact as much is spent in the casinos, much is expected and when a casino had become so greedy, they would find means to cheat that even when their platform claims to have system glitch has an ulterior motives which is why sometimes in the sport book trying to manipulate players huge amount of winning at some point claims there was a system glitch when bookie was loading the odds.

So how does that really concern players?
It is just all to save costs, that is why some of the gambling platforms does that. They always want to maintain their grounds as the house edge.

Maybe us as gamblers should be more informed and demand better and uniform standards across the industry.

Don't hope to get a provably fair one that is worthy of trust. Face the risk as you can afford with the minimum provable you are convinced with.
If they serve us bettors more on the provably fair they won't make much money ad they already do.

[eisen33]

The recent report by probablyfair.org brings to question the standards of provable fairness across the industry.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5588925.0

It makes us all wonder how easy it is for a gambling site to pretend it's provably fair for the eyes of the people just to hide behind some skewed odds. While yes, bets could be pre decided on a one to one basis, the odds of such bets may be skewed in an unfair way as the afformentioned investigation against betfury showed.

Why would a casino risk such a reputational hit? The money is probably the answer.
Maybe us as gamblers should be more informed and demand better and uniform standards across the industry.

What are your thoughts on this?

I think very few players go that deep. Most of the time, it’s enough for a player to visit a forum and see good reviews from other users about a casino. That’s usually where the checking ends. If a casino has a good reputation and positive user reviews, that’s enough for me to start playing there. Maybe if I were playing with large amounts of money, I would do a much more thorough analysis. But since gambling is just entertainment for me, I never take it that far.

[xenomorfo]

I would say that a game is not fair if the chance of heads and tails is half. The real issue is whether the outcome is truly random and whether the casino can influence it in advance. However, as far as I know, there is a thing called RTP, is that related to this term? Because for example if there is a 90% RTP, if you bet $100, you will get 90% back and 10% will leave the house edge.  And this is why I will only see such games as entertainment, not with serious money. Because at the end of the day, the casino will be profitable.

Exactly the real question is whether or not it is really 50% and that it is not obviously faked in favor of the casino.
Doubts arise, especially with the internet and computers you can do a lot of magic, so it is legitimate to ask yourself this question in my opinion.

[Emjay24]

Its because provably fair standard means its fair and 'you need to verify it yourself' but out of 100 people that play on provably fair games, probably only less than 10-20% that understand how provably fair actually works and out of those numbers probably less than 10% actually verify their own bets.

Most people also don't bother reading the casino's own documentation. In BetFury's case, they combine the server seed with a randomly generated number, instead of using a client seed and per-bet nonce. This is written in their fairness system:

The truth is that most people aren't tech savvy enough to understand these things even if they read them through, when you cannot understand how to reproduce the results yourself to validate your bets were fair, you keep trusting the casino only. arallmuus predicted percentage for those who understand how to verify their bets is huge, I don't think up to 5% of bettors actually understand how it works. In my friend zone, no one is even interested in knowing how fair the casino games are, most gamblers view it as a waste of time.

[Somegory]

Some casinos take advantage of their customers and make their provably fair uncheckable because they're saying the truth about it. Another thing is that most gamblers don't bother about checking if a casino is probably fair or not because they're only after gambling to make profit. Provably fair is just like slogan to these casinos nowadays in order to chest their customers.

I am actually one of those gamblers who don't bother to check because of how the whole gambling thing was created, it's already unfair for a casino have some advantages over gamblers, the house always wins like they say.

This statement alone shows why I shouldn't put my focus on gambling totally, it means that casinos are the ones selling us some lucky charmed shovel and we are the ones doing the diggings.

Since I use very small amount of money I don't even need to dig up their so called provably fair, because it's not going to cost me anything but some penny's to few dollars anyway.

[SuperBitMan]

I think very few players go that deep. Most of the time, it’s enough for a player to visit a forum and see good reviews from other users about a casino. That’s usually where the checking ends. If a casino has a good reputation and positive user reviews, that’s enough for me to start playing there. Maybe if I were playing with large amounts of money, I would do a much more thorough analysis. But since gambling is just entertainment for me, I never take it that far.

Casinos this days are turning into a scam company however it is not all.
I agree with you that if you want to check if a casino is actually very good and does not scam their customers doing that in a forum like this is the best.
We have a lot of scammer acquisition on some casinos in this forum and the casinos have not solved those issues or even said anything about it to defend themselves, so if you come to this forum and you see a casino that has not solved or said anything about the allegation that someone brought then you will know that such a casino should be avoided completely.

Gambling is for entertainment I agree but you are using money to gamble, so you have to make a proper research before using a casino.

[danherbias07]

I would say that a game is not fair if the chance of heads and tails is half. The real issue is whether the outcome is truly random and whether the casino can influence it in advance. However, as far as I know, there is a thing called RTP, is that related to this term? Because for example if there is a 90% RTP, if you bet $100, you will get 90% back and 10% will leave the house edge.  And this is why I will only see such games as entertainment, not with serious money. Because at the end of the day, the casino will be profitable.

But you don't know when that RTP will happen. You say 90%, but even if you bet $1000, there's a chance the RTP won't happen. It doesn't always mean that in every 100 bets we will get 90 back. They are also using that claim to invite more players. Well, in my experience, the RTP is higher when you play the game for the first time, and you also have a new account. It comes back as soon as you get a losing streak, and sometimes it will give back more than the total number of bets that you made.
But it was not a coincidence. That is also a marketing strategy. A risk the online casino took to get more customers and to make them stay. That's why we always have to be in control with our gambling habit and not let gambling play us.

[sompitonov]

But you don't know when that RTP will happen. You say 90%, but even if you bet $1000, there's a chance the RTP won't happen. It doesn't always mean that in every 100 bets we will get 90 back. They are also using that claim to invite more players. Well, in my experience, the RTP is higher when you play the game for the first time, and you also have a new account. It comes back as soon as you get a losing streak, and sometimes it will give back more than the total number of bets that you made.
But it was not a coincidence. That is also a marketing strategy. A risk the online casino took to get more customers and to make them stay. That's why we always have to be in control with our gambling habit and not let gambling play us.

As players, we still won't be able to find out the real RTP, simply because it's impossible to publicly demonstrate, and to do so, a huge number of bets would be required to obtain a huge sample. But in general, this isn't something that can be done lightly; someone controls it or tries to control it, even though we understand that huge amounts of money are involved in this industry and can bribe anyone at any time. This is my opinion; I'm just guessing, and sometimes I think it makes me avoid betting at casinos and instead prefer betting on sporting events.

[MisFoxie]

Casinos take such a big risk because if they just reduce the win rate by 1% or 2% when users do a lot of spins their profit from those spins will be much higher. Depending on the number of users a casino has some casinos end up having millions of spins that's when they made huge profit. They know that most bettors do not check these things which is why they can take such a big risk.

We need better standards just verifying the hash is not enough anymore. We should demand that casinos should make the math behind their games public so that we can easily see what kind of randomization numbers they use.

[Gost ms]

I think very few players go that deep. Most of the time, it’s enough for a player to visit a forum and see good reviews from other users about a casino. That’s usually where the checking ends. If a casino has a good reputation and positive user reviews, that’s enough for me to start playing there. Maybe if I were playing with large amounts of money, I would do a much more thorough analysis. But since gambling is just entertainment for me, I never take it that far.

Casinos this days are turning into a scam company however it is not all.
I agree with you that if you want to check if a casino is actually very good and does not scam their customers doing that in a forum like this is the best.
We have a lot of scammer acquisition on some casinos in this forum and the casinos have not solved those issues or even said anything about it to defend themselves, so if you come to this forum and you see a casino that has not solved or said anything about the allegation that someone brought then you will know that such a casino should be avoided completely.

Gambling is for entertainment I agree but you are using money to gamble, so you have to make a proper research before using a casino.

I don't like to use many casinos or like to change casinos frequently. But whenever I want to enter a new casino, I do a lot of research about that casino and if someone I know uses that casino, I hear from him how the casino is and whether it is fraudulent or not. If he says it is good, then I start using the casino after doing a little research.

Yes, I agree with you that this forum is the best medium to know about casinos. But don't start using that casino just by hearing from someone, rather collect information from some other places and then use that casino.

[Bryan jessy]

I think very few players go that deep. Most of the time, it’s enough for a player to visit a forum and see good reviews from other users about a casino. That’s usually where the checking ends. If a casino has a good reputation and positive user reviews, that’s enough for me to start playing there. Maybe if I were playing with large amounts of money, I would do a much more thorough analysis. But since gambling is just entertainment for me, I never take it that far.

Casinos this days are turning into a scam company however it is not all.
I agree with you that if you want to check if a casino is actually very good and does not scam their customers doing that in a forum like this is the best.
We have a lot of scammer acquisition on some casinos in this forum and the casinos have not solved those issues or even said anything about it to defend themselves, so if you come to this forum and you see a casino that has not solved or said anything about the allegation that someone brought then you will know that such a casino should be avoided completely.

Gambling is for entertainment I agree but you are using money to gamble, so you have to make a proper research before using a casino.

I don't like to use many casinos or like to change casinos frequently. But whenever I want to enter a new casino, I do a lot of research about that casino and if someone I know uses that casino, I hear from him how the casino is and whether it is fraudulent or not. If he says it is good, then I start using the casino after doing a little research.

Yes, I agree with you that this forum is the best medium to know about casinos. But don't start using that casino just by hearing from someone, rather collect information from some other places and then use that casino.

Collective information with personal research is very important before someone starts making use of any casino, the information must be from reliable sources and trusted individuals, the mistake most people make this days is following anything they see in the Internet, the bonuses and promotion packs, disregarding the vital things to look out for, and it always happens that when a person is carried away by some attractive physical features before they finally realized the the real feature of the casino and how it operate it will already be too late because they have already put their funds there, nowadays people can do some crazy things just for profit, let's not forget that casino are made and control by humans so let's be guided.