[Edited] Netent blackjack - is it fair??

[Hazard1]

I analysed 8000 hands in a row because I was a little suspicious. I believe that there is something wrong but that it is basically impossible to prove because a player cannot afford to test a million hands. First of all, it is easy to alter the program but the skill is to alter it smartly enough that it is impossible to prove.

Here is what I have found (and as a result stopped playing online BJ):

 

- the amount of times that the dealer gets a ten card when they already have a ten card is higher than it should be; it should be ~4/13. It isn't, it's higher.

- when you have a 12 and hit you should get a 10 card bust ~4/13 but you don't, it's more often.

- the pause before a bust is well documented and easily observed yet the makers don't cure it.

- there are other small things - they are known as the theory of marginal gains and they are akin to the chocolate bar manufacturers reduction in grammage whilst maintaining price.

 

Online BJ is the great undocumented and undocumentaried thing; nobody can prove it because the answer will always be that your sample was not large enough.

 

I'll finish by asking if any of you know who funds the 'independent testers' because even 'independent' is a vague term in online gambling.

 

My RTP last year was 99.6% on $36,000, I like online gambling and that's a great price for lots of fun, but if the casino you use shows signs of the marginal behaviours I mention, do yourself a favour. Not all of us gamblers are just paranoid.

[BlackJohn]

Just my experience, following situations I encounter often playing Blackjack:

 

- Suppose you have 12 against dealer's 8 and you hit a 6 ending at 18, the dealer draws an Ace, the dealer always seems to get this Ace at the right moment;

- After long grinding play, one makes a big (frustration) bet by clicking the coins fast, often resulting in a blackjack for the player;

- Dealer and player get more blackjack's than at Brick-and-mortar casinos (often in succession, 3 at a row isn't an exception);

- Same for dealer's first card being a 10;

- Same for player busting with a ten card;

 

Probably this is because of the use of a pseudo RNG which is accepted practice in online casinos to generate outcomes and no problem for third party testers.

Google 'pseudo RNG casino' and you see what I mean.

[ValDes]

Hello @BlackJohn and welcome to AskGamblers. 

 

Reading your post makes me feel you are quite an experienced blackjack player, so we'll greatly appreciate if you could shed some more light upon the so called 'pseudo casino RNG' and what's our personal opinion about it. 

 

Thanks in advance. 

[MacdoniS]

 

Just my experience, following situations I encounter often playing Blackjack:

 

- Suppose you have 12 against dealer's 8 and you hit a 6 ending at 18, the dealer draws an Ace, the dealer always seems to get this Ace at the right moment;

- After long grinding play, one makes a big (frustration) bet by clicking the coins fast, often resulting in a blackjack for the player;

- Dealer and player get more blackjack's than at Brick-and-mortar casinos (often in succession, 3 at a row isn't an exception);

- Same for dealer's first card being a 10;

- Same for player busting with a ten card;

 

Probably this is because of the use of a pseudo RNG which is accepted practice in online casinos to generate outcomes and no problem for third party testers.

Google 'pseudo RNG casino' and you see what I mean.

 

I supposed that this is the mechanism of "algorithm" of blackjack and there's nothing wrong in it unless they programmed it as unfair in percentage winning? I don't know if this right, can you please briefly explain it to us mate? Thanks. 

[Raptordinos]

 

Just my experience, following situations I encounter often playing Blackjack:

 

- Suppose you have 12 against dealer's 8 and you hit a 6 ending at 18, the dealer draws an Ace, the dealer always seems to get this Ace at the right moment;

- After long grinding play, one makes a big (frustration) bet by clicking the coins fast, often resulting in a blackjack for the player;

- Dealer and player get more blackjack's than at Brick-and-mortar casinos (often in succession, 3 at a row isn't an exception);

- Same for dealer's first card being a 10;

- Same for player busting with a ten card;

 

Probably this is because of the use of a pseudo RNG which is accepted practice in online casinos to generate outcomes and no problem for third party testers.

Google 'pseudo RNG casino' and you see what I mean.

 

About a year ago I was glued to NetEnt virtual blackjack as well; I could notice it works like if cards were shuffled after every single hand, so that many BJ in a row wouldn't be so strange. However, I poured my huge betting stats on a spreedsheet and results discouraged me to keep on playing virtual BJ, and I tryied more software brands and I was still unhappy with results. 

 

Before that, and still today, I rather play the live dealer version if BJ is what I want to play that day.

[catapultaudio]

it's an old thread, but unfortunately I have to agree to the notion that these games are rigged compared to live games. Why such conclusion?

I agree that bad / good luck happens. But it's more then that.

 

First: There is no such thing as true random number. This simply doesn't exist in IT! A random number must be programmed. Therefore an alogorithm is in place to produce a random number.

Second: It would have been uncovered already. By whom and how? Even VW was able to hide their cheating software for a very long time.

Third: The amount of suprise 21, 20 and BJ from the dealer compared to the players hand is uncanny. Shouldn't the player get approx as many BJ as the dealer?

Fourth: Impossible to counterprove. No chance. Only by inspecting the source code such a thing could be proven. Roulette should have one line: Take number between 0 to 36. That's it. BJ similar. Everything else is video, audio etc. I doubt the source code is as simple as it should be.

 

just my 2 cents. And of course I agree not to play such games when the option is available with live casinos.

 

Sure, a computer generated random number isn't actually truely random, but it's as close an approximation as your ever going to find - in my work as a software developer I often need to create random numbers and was once asked by a client to do some checking to ensure that the numbers being generated were infact entirely random. I used established techniques for identifying patterns and with a properly seeded pRNG, was unable to find any sort of pattern, or any way of accurately predicting any part of the pRNG's output. 

In my work we will usually use several "microtime" values to achieve a decent amount of entropy - this "microtime" is best described as the current date and time, including milliseconds, and is expressed in such a way that it does not repeat from day to day. The resulting number will never be repeated, and you can never successfully try and manipulate what the value will be even by asking a computer to perform a task at a specific date and time - the millisecond count is the key part really, which combined with the latency inherent in any electronic system ensures that the particular "microtime" that is returned is entirely unpredictable. Use several of these at different stages of your computer program (for example, when the program first begins, when a bet is added to the table, when the "deal" button is pressed...) and use the three values as the starting point of a complex equation before sending it to the pRNG, and you can be sure that the output is going to be completely unrepeatable.

 

 

I analysed 8000 hands in a row because I was a little suspicious. I believe that there is something wrong but that it is basically impossible to prove because a player cannot afford to test a million hands. First of all, it is easy to alter the program but the skill is to alter it smartly enough that it is impossible to prove.

Here is what I have found (and as a result stopped playing online BJ):

 

- the amount of times that the dealer gets a ten card when they already have a ten card is higher than it should be; it should be ~4/13. It isn't, it's higher.

- when you have a 12 and hit you should get a 10 card bust ~4/13 but you don't, it's more often.

- the pause before a bust is well documented and easily observed yet the makers don't cure it.

- there are other small things - they are known as the theory of marginal gains and they are akin to the chocolate bar manufacturers reduction in grammage whilst maintaining price.

 

Online BJ is the great undocumented and undocumentaried thing; nobody can prove it because the answer will always be that your sample was not large enough.

 

I'll finish by asking if any of you know who funds the 'independent testers' because even 'independent' is a vague term in online gambling.

 

My RTP last year was 99.6% on $36,000, I like online gambling and that's a great price for lots of fun, but if the casino you use shows signs of the marginal behaviours I mention, do yourself a favour. Not all of us gamblers are just paranoid.

 

I agree that the dealer SEEMS to get another 10 far more than they should, but whenever I set out to monitor something such as this the results tend to be reasonably close to what they should be considering the small sample size I have obtained. I don't know about a "pause" before a bust and guess that is some particular software you are referring to, as it wouldn't make sense for it to happen on all softwares. I've heard some suggest that such a thing happens because the computer is "working out" what card it needs to turn in order to beat you, but this is ridiculous - your dealing with a machine that can process billions of calculations per second, it doesn't need extra time to fathom the answer to a sum with an answer is below or equal to 21

 

 

 

Just my experience, following situations I encounter often playing Blackjack:

 

- Suppose you have 12 against dealer's 8 and you hit a 6 ending at 18, the dealer draws an Ace, the dealer always seems to get this Ace at the right moment;

- After long grinding play, one makes a big (frustration) bet by clicking the coins fast, often resulting in a blackjack for the player;

- Dealer and player get more blackjack's than at Brick-and-mortar casinos (often in succession, 3 at a row isn't an exception);

- Same for dealer's first card being a 10;

- Same for player busting with a ten card;

 

Probably this is because of the use of a pseudo RNG which is accepted practice in online casinos to generate outcomes and no problem for third party testers.

Google 'pseudo RNG casino' and you see what I mean.

 

 

These things also happen in live dealer play and on the tables in the real casino too - I played quite a bit on real tables when I went on a city break a few weeks back and had some damn near unbelievable hands play out on that felt. It felt just as unbelievable as an online blackjack game.

 

Don't get me wrong, I also find online blackjack to be somewhat iffy at the best of times, though I have had a few unbelievable sessions playing it as well .. you know, £1,500 from £10 deposited and the like! The pseudo RNG isn't the reason for the bad feelings we get though, the shuffling every hand may possibly be involved, but overall I think it's just the house edge at work. Consider this, you can play Microgaming's virtual BJ in Autoplay mode using demo credits in the download software. I have done this for many sessions, £1 bets, 1000 hands at a time, and in general the ratio of win/lose/push is almost always within 10-20% of what it should be. Average out 10 sets of 1,000 hands and the number invariably gets a little closer to what you would mathematically expect. Because of this, if you want to play virtual BJ I recommend Microgaming - I am at least certain that they offer a fair game!

[ValDes]

Quite an interesting and informative feedback as well you got there mate! Thanks for jumping in this particular forum thread and sharing your professional point of view.

[Hazard1]

I read all this with interest as I had had some suspicions playing NETENT. I have now stopped playing their BJ completely. I played more than 30,000 hands and I noted some very clear things. It seems that if you quote that you have, for example, played 10,000 hands then someone will just say that you need to play many millions to approach a random distribution. So the player cannot do that and rely on statements that talk about companies that do monitor RTP's and the software. I cannot find an independent one. they are all funded by the gambling industry and/or software providers. Anyway, I didn't lose big on NETENT but I did notice some patterns that concerned me. Of course I wrote to the Casino customer support and just got the standard paragraphs back about testing. Some contributors on this thread claim that nothing is wrong and if it was it would be discovered and all over the news. I disagree, how do you prove it? We are always told that it is all tested and random, but we must take their word. Anyway, here are the patterns that I have monitored; I would describe these as 'marginal gains' where certain behaviours are tiny but will make a difference. 

 

The first thing is based on the primary goal of a Casino, to make profit. Profit will be made relative to deposits. The house edge will generate it's profit but the revenue levels are about getting more and more people to deposit. More deposits, more revenue, more profits. On the front side we see this in the Bonus offers and bright lights, that's to bring you in and it works very well. There is another thing though - the new deposit. What I started to notice when playing NETENT BJ was that whenever I came to the last bet of my bankroll I would get a very good opportunity to split or double. But I don't have any more money so I need a new deposit. I thought I was just being paranoid but it happened too often so I started to monitor it. It's not going to be picked up in a test is it?

 

Second pattern is the issue of 10 cards. When the dealer has a 10 then the chances of getting a second 10 are 4/13. But I saw between 6-7/13, sometimes 6,7, 8 times in a row.

 

Third key one is the busting on a 12. You should get a 10 card 4/13 times but it is higher, I had one 'streak' where I got a 73.6% 12 to bust on a 10 ratio. It is always higher than it should be.

 

I am an experienced BJ player in both land casinos and online and I do fine thank you, but these are patterns that I have seen and I am not saying they are deliberate and that NETENT is cheating us, it could be that the software simply has faults, but these are real patterns. I have identified a few more, but these are the main three.

 

In summary:

 

1. A higher than normal number of double or split opportunities on the final bet of your bankroll

2. A higher than normal number of ten cards followed by ten cards for the dealer

3. Player getting a 10 card more often than is expected when hitting on a 12.

 

I would be interested to know if anyone else had seen these particular patterns, as opposed to the usual complaints that the dealer always hits a miracle 21

[catapultaudio]

Hey there Hazard!

 

You mention two scenarios where the frequency of a 10 being dealt seems unusually high - when the dealer upcard is a 10 and when the players first two cards total 12. Although there are of course 4/13 ten value cards in the shoe, the expected frequency of a ten being dealt is skewed significantly by the use of eight decks and shuffling after every hand. When you consider that only the first ten or so cards are ever going to be used before the next shuffle plus the fact that ten value cards outnumber the rest of the numbers by a factor of more than 3:1, its unsurprising that those first few cards often contain a high percentage of tens and faces.

 

Perhaps more shocking is the fact that this constant reshuffling actually benefits the player, as theoretically it should result in the player receiving many more starting 20's plus causing the dealer to bust more often. I must agree that neither of these benefits "feel" as if they have any measurable effect on my own play,  however!

 

My own experience is that Microgaming's "virtual" blackjack is by far the most generous - I like to play the two deck no hole card game eg. "Premier Blackjack" or "European Blackjack Gold", although the rules are fairly dull(though you can draw to split aces which is nice!). I think the Vegas Downtown uses four decks and gives you the option to double on any two cards, split to four hands, double after split etc so can be a little more interesting but is also much higher variance.

 

Premier Blackjack has an autoplay feature which can be set to play a large number of minimum bet hands and then the results exported from the playcheck feature and loaded into a spreadsheet for analysis, which is perhaps the simplest method you can use to check the fairness of your results!

[Hazard1]

The argument always put forward is that after playing tens of millions of hands the card distribution will be as expected. I don't doubt this is the case. That is not what makes many players a bit suspicious of NETENT. It's the patterns that are worrying for many players not the overall card distribution. I monitored many thousands of hands and found that the card distribution was as expected. What was not expected were the runs of wins for the house. Here are the classics that turn people off NETENT BJ: Try it yourself.

 

1. % of times dealer gets 10 as first card

2. % of times dealer then gets another 10

3. How the double and split opportunity comes when you are at the end of a bankroll

4. You have 12 and hit, enjoy those 22's

5. Multihand - the curse of the single BJ for you, watch the other hands

6. The pause before the bust

7. The Rtp for higher bets

 

Casino defenders will say 'oh, he has had a bad run, it will hit the expected rtp in the end', or ask if I play perfect strategy. I do, and I win just a bit less than it should be, on £1 bets my rtp is averaging 99.5 - 101; on £10's it is 97.3 and on 25's it is 90.9. I gave it 8000 hands and then switched game provider.

 

Now i am a happy player. At rtp 99.72 this year it's a small price for a lot of fun playing the game many of us love. The reason i pitched in on this oldish thread was because i decided to check how things were. `Only played 200 hands but all the above list happened again.

 

Could it be rigged? No of course not, eCogra make sure it's perfectly fair. Probably just me. Or maybe you too? Worth checking against my list eh? Just to be sure.

 

PS Love their slots.

[marasking99]

Hi everyone, sorry for my english. I used to play BJ online since 12 years, so i am experienced player. BJ is my primary game, (RNG) , i don't  play other table games, sometimes i play slots game, especially when i won on BJ.   I must say that i don't think the games are fair. When You play BJ many times for 12 years you must see some paterns that make your bankroll down. Once upon a time i was playing BJ and my girl was watching it ( she knows BJ rules well) - she confirmed that it was really strange, she wondered why i didn't have for exapmple 2-3 times in row a good winning hand.     That is why i think BJ on-line is rigged :

 

- when you play high stakes, dealer has almost all the time better starting situation than players ( 13-16 player, dealer 9,10,As)

 

- when you have for example 410 Euro and you place 5 bets for 80 euro  you will lost it without any chance, and when you start playin for 10 euro that left , sudennly BJ,   20,21,19 apperas and you start winning ( on low stake)

 

- when you have 13-14-15 against dealer 10 , you hit and bust , the second dealer card is 3,4,5,6 , when you stay, delaer has 17,18,19.. and wins.

 

- dealer has most often good streak than player

 

Those situation happen of course in normal not-rigged games, but in on-line casinos those situation happen to often so that is why i think online games are made to steal players money. I played in offline casino as well, and there is visible differece between on-line and off-line BJ. 

[Jones87]

Hi,

Sry for my english I'm not a native english speaker.

I'm certain that NET ENT Online BJ is rigged. My experience with it is 12 years and I play constantly, usually weekly (sometimes daily).
I see the difference with live BJ and online BJ.

 

It is programmed to steal the money from ppl like myself who are compulsive gamblers or problem gamblers.

When I talk about it with friends etc. they say or ask "Why don't you play live BJ in the online casino?" .. Well, because I lack the patience to wait for the rest in the table to decide and it also has a latency. So Online BJ is 10 times faster in phase an that's why I play it.

Usually I might have a good session going in and out from online BJ to slots and roulette and then back to BJ and sometimes it's a good run.
But when I've played awhile, suddently when I raise my bet in BJ and I'm about to take my money out it starts to give me 11's so to double down but always gives smalls and ofc dealer gets the 20 or 21. It happens so clearly that my friends or wife sits next to me and I notice the programming changing on the Blackjack and that's when I can predict the next card of  the dealer almost all of the time... WHY this happens? I think because I've played the game for so long that I notice when the programming chances in the game.. Because of that I've lost soo much money - not talk about the nerves.

In a nutshell the programming goes so that it starts to give BJ to the dealer in rows, it might even give 4 BJ in a row (not kidding). Other things it does is that it might give me hands like 18, 18 and 18, and ofc dealer has an 8. and what the dealer on these occasions gets? An ace.
AND all of this happens when I raise my bet and go on "tilt". It rarely happens in Live BJ but there also, but a lot more often in NET ENT online Blackjack.

My conclusion has been for a few years, that it has been programmed to trick the mind of a gambling addict so that it will trigger emotions like anger and frustration which makes the player then to deposit even more and more. And it will continue the programming till some point when it stops. But that's too late the addict might've already ruined his financials.

I mean it is so clear that I'm 100% certain about the programming of the net ent BJ.

I'd suggest always just play live tables and if you do play online BJ just use small bets relative to your bankroll. Otherwise it will trick you and pull the right strings in your brain or consciousness or whatever so that you will loose everything..

I tried to see the history of my session today when this same thing happened, but I can only see the history of the bets on the site not how the hands were played. I would've liked to attach screenshots etc.. but can't.

 

[cocopop3011]

With all due respect but why would you keep playing this particular form of BJ when you're convinced that it's rigged?