Re: Online poker RNG...

On 19 Feb 2006 12:36:20 -0800, "Gerry" <gerald_helmling@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

For me, David, collusion-detection is part scientific (i.e. I own
software which tracks the number of times particular players are
involved in hands together, and looks for "markers" of collusion --
raises and reraises in an effort to isolate a "mark" and drive him to
fold, etc., etc.) and part from-the-gut (based on years of playing B&M
and online poker). Certainly, incontrovertibly, your statement (I'll
paraphrase it as: "Good colluders know, as part of their colluding, how
to minimize the risk of detecion.") is true. But it isn't my particular
worry, wrong or right.

My particular worry is that, as was shown possible in 1999
(http://www.cigital.com/papers/abstracts/developer_gambling.html),
someone can "know" my cards...

Again, the authors of pokerrng (at pokerrng.com) make this claim, and I
have no way of knowing whether it's true that their product is snake
oil or that my fear of it is well-grounded.

None of you (and I mean this as a complimentary term, and one of
respect!) math geeks are curious?

Could be just that nobody knows anything about the question.

I've already said that it seems to me that yes, a person could
predict things after a certain number of cards, _if_ the person
knew exactly what algorithm was being used. Reverse-engineering
the algorithm from records of past hands seems like it would
take a _lot_ of hands - do they really publish records of
_billions_ of previous hands?

Looking at that url for the first time I see that sure enough,
the problem started when a site published the shuffling algorithm -
that seems like a bad idea to me. I haven't looked at the pdf -
if I think of it when I get to the office I will.

************************

David C. Ullrich
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: JSH: Your funeral
    ... computer time using the best known factoring algorithms. ... your algorithm runs about as slow as a random GCD ... never find a way to prove that with some super dramatic discovery ... discoverer then yeah, maybe you should worry. ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: Hint instructions
    ... cute way of trying to fold ... then takes all the scaffolding away to reveal self-optimized code. ... The furthest I've ever gone in this direction was to write 6 different inline asm versions of the same algorithm, then determine at runtime which of them turned out to be the fastest on the current cpu/data combination. ...
    (comp.arch)
  • Re: JSH: Your funeral
    ... computer time using the best known factoring algorithms. ... your algorithm runs about as slow as a random GCD ... discoverer then yeah, maybe you should worry. ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: Need Graph Isomorphism Algorithm De-bunked
    ... Phil Carmody wrote: ... Else here's an Oalgorithm which correctly differentiates all of the examples you've listed so far. ... Not to worry. ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: How to write a nonrecursive program ?
    ... int factorial{ ... Note that the tail-recursive version performs the multiplications in a ... The recursive version is a right fold. ... as you said, a completely different algorithm. ...
    (comp.lang.c)