The graphic you see (if you click on this Video Poker Screen Shot.) was obtained by the Online Players Association and sent to us for comment. What you'll see is a form that has obviously been developed by a gambling software manufacturer to enable the casino to set the payouts for the various hands of a Video Poker game. There's nothing unusual about that, because any casino has the right to set whatever pay schedule they want for a game, so long as they understand that players can quickly analyze the implied long-term return of a game and then choose to play it or pass it by. But that assumption is true only if the cards of the game are dealt in a random fashion. By "random", I mean that any one card has the same opportunity to appear as any other and, over time, all cards in the deck will appear the same number of times, within acceptable standards of measure.

The game in question here is a $1 "9/6" Jacks game with a progressive Royal Flush and you'll notice that not only is there a place to assign a payout for each hand, but also a place to dictate how often such a hand will occur! Putting it as plain and as simple as possible, this is software that allows the casino to cheat players.

Some of you may not know why a Royal Flush or other hand shows up every "X" number of hands on average, so let me take a minute to explain how it all works. If a game is dealt from a standard 52-card deck, there are 2, 598,960 distinct hands that can result, based upon the suits and values of the cards (the order in which the cards are dealt is ignored). All Video Poker games begin with one of the same 2,598,960 hands. For example, there are only four Royals that can be dealt, one in each suit, so the odds of being dealt a Royal are exactly 1 in 649,740. But what you're dealt is only half of the equation in a typical Video Poker game. How you play the hand you're dealt ultimately determines what kind of hands you'll end up with and that's what really matters. If, for example, some crazy player never keeps a pair, then that player will get a hand of Four-of-a-Kind only when it's dealt to him or if it appears on the draw, assuming he's discarded at least three cards. However, if a player uses the proper playing strategy for a particular game, then the frequency of the various hands can accurately be determined. For example, in a 9/6 Jacks or Better game the player who uses perfect strategy can expect to end with a Full House once every 87.18 hands. This is an average, so it doesn't mean that a player will get a Full House on hand # 87, then another one on hand # 174, etc. But over a period of 100,000 hands, a player should receive a total of 1150 Full Houses. There are some differences that can exist due to normal statistical variation, but all of it can be measured, so we're able to determine if a game is honest or not.

Now look at the setting for the Full House on the graphic above. You can see that the casino has set the Full House to appear once every 150 hands, on average. That is obviously not a random result, yet it's close enough to what can be expected to be almost undetectable, if one tracks only 2000 or 3000 hands. I think it's fair to say that the average player will go to a casino that runs this software, play maybe 500 hands, get only 3 or 4 Full Houses, lose their $$$, then go away thinking, "Hey, that's how Video Poker works." And the crooks who run this game will make a fat profit.

I don't use the word "crook" lightly here, I assure you. Any casino that offers 9/6 Jacks or Better has an edge over even the best players, albeit a small edge, but it's an edge, nonetheless. Against the average player who will make mistakes when they play, their edge will be larger, perhaps in the 1-2% range. But that wasn't enough for these thieves, so they added on a progressive to increase the apparent "expected value" of the game and then rigged the frequency of the hands to make sure they still showed a profit.

The weird thing about this is that the pay schedule shown above is actually a long-term loser for the casino! As you can see, the overall payout is calculated to be 77.92%, but the Royal is funded at a rate of 33% (1 coin is added to the progressive for each 3 coins played) for a total long-term return of 110.92%. You can also see that Royals were set to appear once every 100,000 hands, so this game would build up the "jackpot" very quickly, however, it would be slow to hit. Very appealing to the suckers, err...players. Of course, it's always possible that the Royal frequency was set to never show up and that's how they made their profits. I'm quite sure we'll never know.

I and the good people at the Online Players Association know where this is from, but we want some confirmation from someone out there who is familiar with this software before we go public. It will undoubtedly take some disgruntled employee to do it and that always makes their motivation suspect, but it's all we have to go on at this point. I promise any such people who do confirm this that your identity will be kept confidential. E-mail me directly at aceten1@mindspring.com.

It kills me that I can't name the software company at this stage because it means people are being cheated even as you read this. But responsible journalism requires that I get more proof, so I'm hoping someone out there will come forward. Because once I do have the proof, the company who makes this software is, I imagine, going to be put out of business. This simply cannot be permitted to continue.

We'll keep you updated as this drama unfolds.

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