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1. Big Jim Slade v2.0
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   In another thread I read something from one of the folks at the company that makes secure card dealer. He was speaking about his product.

   I don't represent the PPA in any way, but I was curious about the product. Like with Mr. eBlade, I don't see any real reason to have the product. I thought the thread the info was in was inappropriate, so I started another thread here.

   Now I have to defend why the PPA forums would even want to include such information. Well, if you have read the pending legislation we all seem to support, it does go along the idea that online poker needs something to make it legit and stop scams - not that I am saying any of this problem currently exists. So maybe Secure Card dealer can be something that satisfies the promulgated regulations that the bills will generate.

   So, let's let give Mr. nMaiorana a chance to make his sales pitch, Mr. eBlade a chance to ask exactly what problem is it the company has a solution for, and as for me - I'll scoff in the general direction of the technology. Seriously, Nick, tell us about it....

   Posted 9 months ago #

2. Eric Blade
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   I would expect that legislation including verification of the validity and security of the technology would include having each site's code examined by independent experts..

   Posted 9 months ago #

3. Eric Blade
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   I ran across this little PDF "analysis" from Nick, that he posted to a blog I frequent.. seems he's going all around the Internet looking for anyone discussing cheating at poker, and posting things to advertise for himself.

   http://www.securecarddealer.com/presentations/BigHandAnalysisReport.pdf

   He's basically accusing all of the sites out there of cheating, pending his analysis of online hands. Unfortunatly, I doubt it's pretty likely that his analysis of online hands will ever come out to be large enough, because he can't witness the hole cards of every person every hand (I hope :D ), so therefore, he'll only see pocket-pair-races in the situations where people just shove it to showdown.

   Here's a totally non-scientific study for you, though -- I'm a dealer at a card room. In a 7 hour shift, I'll usually see AA vs KK 2 to 3 times in a night. I deal about 20 hands an hour, more on tight or short tables. I've dealt AA vs KK vs QQ three times (that i'm aware of) in the almost year I've been dealing. I've witnessed AA vs KK vs QQ with K and Q both hitting the flop, twice. (queens won the first time hitting quads on the river, and aces won the second time, hitting a set on the turn) (both of those times, I was a player, so I didn't include those in my dealing)

   A specific player will be dealt AA one in every 220 hands. A specific player will be dealt KK one in every 220 hands. Give or take a few, SOMEONE will see AA or KK (or any other specific pocket pair) on a table, if you were able to see everyone's hole cards, once every 22 hands, if full handed.

   My conclusion: Nate's simulation is probably not real, and his numbers don't seem to add up to real-world mathematics. If I'm incorrect there, please tell me, because I'm certainly not a math wiz, although I am a computer programmer, so if Nate would post his simulation code, we can check it for flaws.

   Posted 9 months ago #

4. Nick Maiorana
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   Thank you for your comments. Your viewpoints are greatly appreciated. Do I have a serious concern about the legitimacy of online poker? Yes. Mostly because I see a big difference in online play and live play. I'm not the only one who believes this, there are a plenty of sites and forum postings on this subject. Did I invent a solution to this problem? Yes. I do have a vested interest as well.

   It comes down to this. Back in the old days, before the Nevada Gaming Commission, some casinos would cheat there customers by rigging games no one could win. To solve this problem, tight regulations were installed to insure the patron was getting what he was promised. Why would anyone think online gaming, specifically poker is different? There are large sums of money at stake, and in all forms of industry when there are large amounts of cash, there is fraud.

   The easiest form of fraud is electronic. Especially when there is no way to prove (unless you get down to the source code) that something was setup to be unfair. Our solution is to remove the randomness from the poker rooms (because that is where the outcomes can be tweaked) and allow an independent, disinterested 3rd party to generate the randomness. Not only that, we also perform security which would have prevented UB and Absolute issues that cropped up.

   If the US is going to have legalized online poker, then it is in ALL the players best interest to have services like DealGuardian in place to ensure the integrity of the games being played. How can anyone disagree that active regulation is a bad thing. It's the only way to secure an electronic environment. It protects the players and that's part of what this organization is about.

   If you would like to discuss my Big Starting Hand analysis, I would like to do that in a separate post so this one is 20 pages long.

   Posted 9 months ago #

5. Eric Blade
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   Well, your starting hand analysis came from this software - so, let's see how this software arrived at it. Source code? Or will this independent, disinterested 3rd party, not submit their code for audit by people who would be able to check it for accuracy?

   The "big starting hand analysis" that says on a given table, you'll see AA vs KK once every 9 hours, at a rate of 70 hands per hour, quite frankly, seems ludicrously inaccurate, if nothing else judging by the fact that I see it twice a day, in a 7-hour dealing shift - at probably around 20 hands per hour, single deck, no auto-shuffler. And I'm on break for over an hour of those shifts.
   (and, if you want an amusing anecdote from a player .. just as a player .. last night, I played for 5 hours. I got AA 10 times. At a casino. And KK twice. had no other pocket pairs the whole night. And we were not using a Euchre deck)

   On the other hand, if you break down the rest of the numbers, it comes down to AA vs KK every 1 in 630 hands.

   I think that the actual odds would be half that - approximately once every 300-ish hands. Then again, like I said, I'm not a mathematician. I'd be able to read your code far easier than to figure it out on my own using math.

   And, what's to stop someone at your organisation from putting in a backdoor, so that they can now see every hole card on every hand on every poker site that contracts your company? There's a level of trust, that people have in Full Tilt, and in Stars, and so on, that I don't think they are going to have in a single party, that does the work that the sites already do.

   Posted 9 months ago #

6. Nick Maiorana
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   We are not going to submit our code for public view, part of our security depends on it so you are not going see it here. I can provide data generated from the software, if that would be sufficient. I can even send you the raw data for the trials used in my document.

   From a statistical point of view, the data is accurate. In some of the trials AA-VS-KK came up more frequently, but on average over the course of 56,000,000 hands the rate was approximately .11 per hour.

   I did not put this in there, but the rate at which any player would see AA, KK or any pair is slightly less than 3 per hour, so in an 5 hour period seeing it 10 times is quite possible. The percentages of these odds are precisely in line with standard hold'em paired hole card probabilities of 4.08% for a 9 player table.

   Internal fraud from our site? Part of our patent pending process prevents users from our site from knowing which tables are being dealt for on the poker site. So putting dealt cards with players at online tables is not straight forward. I can't go into our technology too much since we consider it a trade secret, but we have thought trough the process of fraud on both the poker site and our site, and I believe we have the best solution out there.

   I guess I'm not sure why you are so against a service like ours. Do you completely trust the poker sites? Would you have said 'yes' prior to the UB or Absolute scandals? What we have created is good for the industry and the players. I'm not sure why a player would be against it. And if the sites are operating legitimately, using such a service to prove their innocence should not be a problem. At this time the sites have no one, NO ONE to answer to. That situation has happened many times in history and it has always proved problematic.

   Posted 9 months ago #

7. Eric Blade
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   Security by Obscurity doesn't work.

   If you don't provide just the shuffle/deal parts of the code, so one can determine if it's a fair and correct deal, then you're selling the exact same thing that the poker sites are already providing - a closed box, that you have to trust is correct, and that no one is looking inside.

   It would be impossible to setup a system whereby no one on the inside could tell what is going where.

   I'm not necessarily against this service, but I just plain can't see how it at all differs from the existing status quo, so unless you're getting a license from some sort of overseer of this sort of thing, who does get access to the code to verify that everything is correct, what is different between that, and what everyone already has?

   Posted 9 months ago #

8. Nick Maiorana
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   It is not impossible. We have built it. The difference is that the service does not profit from outcomes of hands. Poker rooms do. That is where the trust issue is dealt with and that is how cards can be kept secret until the end of a hand. Just like in a real card room where nobody knows your hole card except you.

   I get the feeling that you simply like the status quo. You have no idea what the current rooms are doing behind the scenes. No one does. If you would prefer to just trust them, then there is no way to convince you otherwise. But let me ask you this. Would you trust the electronic machines in a casino if they did not have the scrutiny of a powerful regulatory body governing them?

   Being a dealer you see a lot of hands. Do you see a higher percentage of bad beats online than you do in a card room?

   Posted 9 months ago #

9. Shane Stacey
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   Do you really think online poker is "rigged"? I find that ignorance from losing players seems to drive this notion online and the one statement that credibly debunks the notion is "why bother?". The risk/reward scenario for rigging said games makes the notion -EV. As independent companies, the online poker rooms can run a fair and balanced game and recognize collectively billions of dollars in revenue. The first site to be found guilty of rigging its games losing millions in revenue and finds themselves with a sliding marketshare (I'm sure UB/AP will validate this for you, even though it wasn't company itself who was responsible for the acts of cheating).

   Given the thousands of employees working for (and who have worked for) these companies, including the programmers responsible for the RNG software, why have we not seen a healthy scandal involving the major online sites and its flawed random-deck generation software in the past 10 years? Why have we not seen players on sites like 2+2 get together with a meta-hand analysis based on hundreds of millions of hands and show that "yes - these hands are indeed not random".

   "Do I have a serious concern about the legitimacy of online poker? Yes. Mostly because I see a big difference in online play and live play. I'm not the only one who believes this, there are a plenty of sites and forum postings on this subject. Did I invent a solution to this problem? Yes. I do have a vested interest as well."

   I could dissect this line by line, but find myself running short on time before I hop into my session. Having played hundreds of tournaments live, thousands online, and having spent literally thousands of hours in brick & mortar rooms, and a greater number in online rooms, I call BS. I realize I see 30-40 hands per hour playing live (at one table), and see about 400-500 per hour online at multiple tables, knowing that one hour of online play translates to approximately a 12+ hour live session. My 8-hour days online show me the number of hands that a live player (or dealer) will see in 2-3 weeks.

   Of course people pose the questions, challenge the results, and speculate / hypothesize / formulate conspiracies on the internet. In closing, the world is flat, the first moon landing happened in Hollywood, and global warming is a myth. I can provide links substanciating all of these claims.

   No offense to the person posting about their software is intended, but it is that individual's attitude that goes hand-in-hand with "60 Minutes" reporting and causes the general public to continue to look at online poker with their ignorant viewpoint.

   Posted 9 months ago #

10. Nick Maiorana
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    Loonbat seriously. If what you said about revenue is true, then why did Nevada have to setup a regulatory body to police their casinos? Oh, and the companies behind the UB and Absolute scandals exactly knew what was going on. In fact, I believe it was A.J. Green, former operational chief of AP that was able to see opponents cards.

    Are you a professional poker player or do you represent one of the online rooms?

    Posted 9 months ago #

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