Stealing on and offline

BLR technologies cheats at online craps

According to a post from the wizard of odds and other sources BLR technologies is cheating at their online craps game. The win rate over a sample of 328 rolls was only 24.7% (while it should be 49.29% for betting on the pass line). This expectation for such a event over this sample size is 1 in 3,940,183,270,432,190,000. So if you don't like losing (even more than you normally should expect to) don't play at online casinos using the BLR technologies software. This includes the following casinos:

• Legends Sports
• World Wide Wagering

And the second news is from the offline world but also features being robbed:

6000 copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 stolen

The demand for this new game seems to be quite high. On their way to retailers two different trucks with the game have been stopped and robbed of their delivery. The first delivery was crashed by a robbed car and as soon as the drivers wanted to check out the damage they were robbed be masked gangsters.
About one hour later a second truck was stopped by a parked car and armed robbers stole their load too. A total damage of about 800.000€. And lots and lots of unhappy gamers who now have to wait even longer until they receive their copy of their game.
But the bad guys should be pretty issue to spot when 6000 origin accounts send their data to the homebase ;-)

So if you what to be safe from online cheating, spyware and brutal force in real life make sure to buy Skyrim. The latest release of The elder scrolls series (aka the reason why I went to gamescom 2011).

Back from gamescom 2011

I am back from the gamescom 2011 in Cologne, Germany. The final numbers are not out yet but it seems that the gamescom had another record year. A total of 550 different companys and agencies had stands. I have to admit I didn't count them but it were a whole lot of them. Including the major distributors (Blizzard, EA, Activision, Bethesda, Ubisoft,...) and console creators (sony, nintendo, microsoft) showing off their latest products.
Especially Blizzard and EA had huge stands and stages which seem to occupy a third of one of the halls each. Too bad that they choose to hide there latest titels inside their stands which meant that you had to get in line to see anything. For a peek at Battlefield 3 (EA) there was a line so long you had to wait 6 hours to get inside.


A gimplse through the exit door revealed that the lucky guys got to play a bit but I'm not sure for how long. My personal guess....Not worth six hours waiting.
The same can be said about Modern Warfare3 (Activision) and Diablo 3 (Blizzard). And sadly my own private favorite that I wanted to see: The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim (Bethesda). All had hours of waiting which frankly I did not sacrifice. I'm not sure if this was clever marketing by the big guys. Sure you can only give a few people the opportunity to actually test a game but showing so little to the masses seems like a bad move to me.
Sony did a good job to use the current hype about minecraft to promote their new Xperia Play. They had youtube 'celebs' Lewis and Simon sign funny little block heads from minecraft.


Not sure if it really help Sony to advertise for their new mobile gaming plattform but it sure looked like fun and spread the word even further about minecraft (if that's even possible).
My personal highlight was playing Jagged Alliance - Online and talking to one of the developers. It's really amazing what can be done with browser games today. It looks great, all movements are smooth and controls are simple. If you put it into full screen you won't notice it's a browser game. The game itself is free to play and is financed by premium content so it's worth a try.
Next year I need to make sure to go to gamescom on a day which is not open to the public. Not seeing anything of the big games was really frustrating.

Oh, last but not least I've got a gift code for the first to grab it. It's for another online game called Wizard101 which is also free to play. With this code you get 5000 gold coins and a special pet/ride to use for 7 days. So however uses it have fun with it and please leave a comment so others know that the code is already taken.
And the code is: 7NP57-42CJ-9DLD-UMJO

Winning at roulette

I’m going to tell you a sure way to win at roulette…for free. All you have to do is double your bet every time you lose until you win. You properly heard this before. The only problem is that it is not working over a long time. It might fool you because you will win small amounts for some time but sooner or later you’ll lose it all back and then some. The only sure way to win long term is to be the casino.
So let’s take a closer look at this strategy. First of all it’s called Martingale and has been played properly as long as roulette itself. It has just a few very simple rules:
• Start with one betting unit (e.g. 10$)
• If you win => pocket the win and start over again
• If you lose => double your bet (going from 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32….)
That’s it ! This will win you one betting unit most of the time. And give you a false sense of security. Until you hit that one big losing streak which will erase all wins.


The above table shows all possible combinations after five rounds (without the fatal green zero(s)). Without the green zeros the chance to hit red or black is fifty percent each. Now analyze the possible outcomes if you bet on red every time following the rules above:


As you can see in the above tables you will bust once out of 32 times. When you do you will lose a total of 31 units. The other 31 times you will win one unit each. This results in an expected value (EV) of:
(31/32 * 1) + (1/32 * -31) = 0
So you are not making a profit…but you are also not losing like I said before. This is because, as already mentioned above, we neglected the zero(s) which is making the roulette unprofitable. But showing no profit if the rules are not as bad as in the casino should already demonstrate that the method is not working as advertised.
If we include the green zeros into the above tables the chance to win is getting smaller (lower than fifty percent). Hitting the correct color has a chance of 18/37 = ~48.6% (single zero) or 18/38 = ~47.4 (double zero). This results in a negative EV for this betting system which is called Martingale.