Google Now Permits Android Apps That Facilitate Gambling With Real Money (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson shares a report from BetaNews: Google has relaxed its rules surrounding real-money gambling apps in Google Play -- in some countries, at least. There has been a ban on apps and games that allow users to gamble with real money since 2013, but that has now changed. While there was previously a ban in place due to the difficulty in policing ages and complying with different gambling laws around the world, real-money gambling apps are now permitted in the UK, France and Ireland. The new rules stipulate that developers must submit their gambling apps for a special vetting process, and they must have an IARC content rating. Other rules include a ban on the use of Google payment services, a requirement to display information about responsible gambling, and a requirement to block underage use. The full list of requirements [can be viewed here].

Comments

Is there a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

While Indian Reservations all over the country, plus the state of Nevada and Atlantic City all allow casinos for people who gamble with real money, as a libertarian I do not see any problem for google to allow gambling apps which accept real money

Re: Is there a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

as a libertarian

Yep, I think we have found the problem here.

Re:Is there a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

An atheistic libertarian vegan crossfitter walks into a bar. I only know because it was the first thing out of his mouth.

Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Not every single thread needs a post explaining Betteridge's Law
2) Where exactly are you seeing a question mark?

Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[rtb61]

For a start that should make it illegal to call it gambling when the odds are specifically, purposefully and corruptly tilted in the houses favour. That is called cheating, when the odds are titled in your favour, your are no longer gambling you are winning, when the odds are tilted against you favour, you are not gambling you are losing.

I am all for gambling, as long as the odds are equal and fair. The house should have exactly the same odds of losing as the mug punters, otherwise it is a lie and they are cheating. The authorities should pay real attention to any marketing, so that those who present the gambling as fair are prosecuted and manage a custodial sentence for their gamble. Clearly listed in bold in every site should be how the odds are tilted against the users and that they will eventually, inevitably lose. Any claims of winning should be legally challenged and prosecuted.

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[Anonymous Coward]

The house always wins and that is the only way a gambling house can exist.

If the odds were actually fully equal then the house would on average have no income but would need to pay for the building, furniture, staff, etc. Between mandating this and just declaring them illegal is no real difference.

What needs to be mandated is that the odds are fully transparent and no actual cheating is going on.

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[Anonymous Coward]

the only winner is google. thirty percent is thirty percent. more than the users will ever see.

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[Calydor]

You have just reduced any and all gambling to flipping a coin.

Poker? Nah, flip a coin. Roulette? Nope, flip that coin. Blackjack? Hell no, flipping a coin is easier than counting cards.

And not even that, because flipping a coin there's a tiny, minuscule chance it'll land on the edge.

I'm not sure what gambling ever did to you, but to the rest of the world, gambling includes known odds and risk-taking.

Re: Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[Anonymous Coward]

Google isn't going to make 30%, they won't even allow the apps to use Google for payments. They might make some ad revenue and get some user data, but that's it.

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[tsqr]

For a start that should make it illegal to call it gambling when the odds are specifically, purposefully and corruptly tilted in the houses favour.

"Specifically and purposefully", of course. That's how casinos can stay in business. See, for example, the green "0" and "00" slots on American roulette wheels that make bets on red or black somewhat less than an even bet, and odds on single numbers 37:1 when the payouts are 35:1. In blackjack, the only house advantage is that the players draw before the dealer, so if the player busts he loses whether or not the dealer busts, rather than it being a push when he and the dealer both bust.

"Corruptly", not so much, unless you consider any business that makes any profit corrupt. The odds are well known to anyone who investigates. Corrupt would be using loaded dice, or a crooked roulette wheel, or a marked deck of cards.

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[XxtraLarGe]

For a start that should make it illegal to call it gambling when the odds are specifically, purposefully and corruptly tilted in the houses favour. That is called cheating, when the odds are titled in your favour, your are no longer gambling you are winning, when the odds are tilted against you favour, you are not gambling you are losing.

So no lottery then? Odds of winning the Mega Millions lottery are about 1:259 Million.

I don't gamble too often, but when I do, I play Black Jack. It has the best odds and I've also memorized the basic strategy. I only bring the amount of money I can afford to lose. I see it as an entertainment expense.

I also have a money management system. My gambling chips are on the right, and my winnings go to the left. When the right-hand pile is gone, I take a break & count. If I'm down, I'll stop. If I'm up by a little, I stop. If I'm up big, I pocket the original money and play with the house's money, following the same system. After the second go-around, I stop.

I'm also pretty cheap, so I usually only play at the $5 or $10 table, and only at casinos that pay 3:2 on Black Jack. $200 on a $5 table will usually allow me to play for about an hour following my system. The most I've won is about $300 on top of my starting cash. When I've lost, it's usually about $20, which isn't too bad for an hour's entertainment.

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[DNS-and-BIND]

Legally, it is called gaming. As in the Nevada Gaming Commission regulates gambling. Your wish already came true sometime last century.

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[tlhIngan]

I'm not sure what gambling ever did to you, but to the rest of the world, gambling includes known odds and risk-taking.

I think OP really meant that these "gaming" or "gambling" apps really aren't transparent. I mean, let's say we do American roulette. The house advantage is the 0 and 00 spaces on the wheel, but the wheel is generally fairly balanced and the ball is generally going to land in any of the spots with equal frequency.

But who's to say the electronic version is going to be as fair? Perhaps because you bid on Black, it tilts the odds in favor of Red just a bit more? Instead of just under 50% (because 0 and 00 don't count) perhaps the odds of it landing on black have shifted to 35%.

The goal is of course, to give the house a rather large benefit.

Even a typical slot machine in Vegas typically pays 97-99 cents on the dollar (except the special fancy machines, which pay a lot less because of the novelty factor). Who knows what the app version pays out. It may say 99 cents on the dollar payout, but internally it can pay out far less.

There's really too many ways to cheat on an app to tilt the favor way towards the house. There's a reason why Nevada regulates gaming heavily

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what gambling ever did to you

I'm not the person you are replying to, but I can respond. It's never done anything to me personally, but it destroys countless families. Let me just share a personal story...one of countless many I'm sure others could share.

A relative's wife is a problem gambler. It's been an ongoing issue for 20 years, ever since Michigan legalized casinos. In those 20 years, here's just a taste of what she's done.
1) She's taken money meant to pay bills to go gambling. They once even lost their house over it...a house he could EASILY afford on their lifestyle (minus gambling) and income, but they lost it any way.
2) One time she forged documents and cleaned out his retirement account (luckily it was only like 10k...you don't get to save much with someone like that in the family sabotaging your efforts)
3) She once stole her own mother's cancer treatment money to go gambling
4) She took a job at a convenience store and stole $50k worth of lottery tickets over a period of months and gabled away the "winnings" of it at the casino. She even went to jail over that one...didn't change her behavior one bit when she got out.
5) She's repeatedly stolen her own kids money to go gambling. Even when the kids were as young as like like 8 or 10 years old, they understood what was going on, and they had an agreement with grandma. When she gave them money for birthdays/christmas/whatever, they would tell her to keep the money and they'll ask for it when they need it. Can you imagine the emotional effect of a kid growing up his whole life knowing he has to hide his money from mom so she doesn't steal it?
6) She took out a student loan in one of the kids name and pocketed the money.

I could go on, but I think that makes the point. Casino's destroy lives to profit a corporation. State lotteries aren't much better. They destroy lives but at least the profits generally go to schools (though there it's essentially a regressive school tax in that lotteries are disproportionately funded by the poor). And at least lotteries tend not to be as addictive as the casino environment, so I suspet a lot fewer lives are destroyed by it

Yes, it's great that there's all these problem gambler resources, and that casinos will happily keep you out if you self exclude, but the problem is that they are all voluntary. This relative can't go down and exclude his wife...she has to do it voluntarily himself, but she doesn't think she needs to. Yeah, ideally he should have divorced her long ago, but that isn't happening, and the bridge is long crossed....the kids are grown and gone now and the emotional damage to them is already done.

So yeah...I wouldn't shed a tear if casinos, lotteries, and other forms of gambling with slanted odds were banned.

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[rtb61]

So why exactly should one side be allowed to cheat and the other side be banned. Card counters anyone, ohh fuck no, we, the house lie, cheat and steal get idiots drunk so they lose more. Yes, a coin toss on who wins or loses, hey, I'm Australia so that coin toss would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., can't handle the, then get the fuck out of the kitchen, don't want to gamble, than don't play the fucking game. It is a corruption of government for them to knowingly allow blatant cheating in what should be 'games of fucking chance', fuck the casinos let the fuckers take their chances with every other gambler, by what imaginary right do you think it is appropriate to allow government to cheat in favour of gambling houses, cheat the citizens, cheat the electorate. I am all for fair and equal gambling, go right ahead and bet your casino on an equal basis with mug punters.

Re:Only Gambling When Odds Equal

[rtb61]

Dude you seem not to grasp the greed and corruption involved. Theoretically pay out a mathematically demonstrable percentage of all amounts wagered, which must not be less than 75 percent for each wager available for play on the device. http://gaming.nv.gov/modules/s.... I had to dodge the panther at the bottom of the stairs to get it. (more accurately all searches failed payout, hold rate, maximum, minimum, until I forced the search with '75'). So for each dollar in you lose a quarter but of course the casinos market that some machines payout 98% just remember to dodge the panther at the bottom of the stairs.

Do you see a question in the headline of TFS?

[mwvdlee]

Please apply Betteridge's Law of Headlines to this post.

Money laundering hype in 3, 2, 1 ...

[dbIII]

Previously those apps were banned to stop governments cracking down on google for being a platform for money laundering. Expect the news media (especially the Murdoch stuff - Fox etc) to make a lot of noise about that since google is their hated rival for advertising cash.

Re:Money laundering hype in 3, 2, 1 ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's somewhat curious though that the countries this is rolled out in happen to be important in Google's tax evasion scheme.

not everything has to be an app

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully UK bookmakers won't drop their mobile sites in favour of going down the app route.

IMO they rank among the best engineered, no bullsh*t mobile websites out there, in many cases far better than their non-mobile counterparts.

Re: not everything has to be an app

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't drop their websites. And they probably already have an app that's delivered outside the app store. Disclaimer, I recently contacted to a subsidiary of Paddy Power, working on an Android betting app.

Pogues - White City

[Anonymous Coward]

Here the paddies and the frogs, came to gamble on the dogs,

Came to gamble on the dogs not long ago

Coincidence? I think not.

Re:Pogues - White City

[Anonymous Coward]

Even a drunk Irishman is correct once in a while.

Fuck this shit

[stealth_finger]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Oh, that's hilarious.

[jcr]

Gambling on an unsecurable platform? What could go wrong?

-jcr

Re:Oh, that's hilarious.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll never understand the need of some people to sign their posts, as if the name, email etc. on top of it weren't enough. Always struck me as redundant and downright stupid.

-Anonymous Coward

Re: Oh, that's hilarious.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up
-cremier

Re:Oh, that's hilarious.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people like to post on topics where they've already moderated, but want to be recognised nonetheless, so they post as AC to preserve their mods and sign for name recognition. The rest of the time they sign for consistency with their AC posts. That's my take on it.

-Anonymous Coward

Re:Oh, that's hilarious.

[tsqr]

There are many things that people do that baffle me. I try not to let it bother me, though, unless the thing they're doing is complaining about things that people do.

Re:Oh, that's hilarious.

[Anonymous Coward]

Special snowflakes, desperate for attention.

Re:Oh, that's hilarious.

[jcr]

I do it in hopes that someday it will make someone like you burst an aneurism and drop dead.

-jcr

One thing's always bothered me RE online gamling

[Shemmie]

So I go to an online casino. Poker, roulette, etc - against the CPU in some cases.

Are there any regulations in place to ensure... the odds are fair? How can anyone possibly know if the code is playing by the rules, or if the house is stacking in their favour?

Always struck me as a potential minefield.

Hot diggity!

[puddingebola]

Baby needs a new pair of shoes!

Re:One thing's always bothered me RE online gamlin

[Anonymous Coward]

Under US law, investigators can basically make you hand over the source code and equipment, on demand, out of nowhere, as many times as they want, for any reason they want, including "Because fuck you that's why".

Re:One thing's always bothered me RE online gamlin

[stealth_finger]

Not even that but loads of people have won big prizes then the casinos go "nope, sorry the machine glitched, you ain't getting shit."

Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines

[kelemvor4]

Headlines that contain questions should be answered with no. The answer to this headline is no. Thank you, Ian Betteridge.

There's no question in this headline...

Re:One thing's always bothered me RE online gamlin

[alexo]

Yes, there are, but the stringency of the regulation depends on the jurisdiction.

Regulatory bodies may demand, among other things:
- Validation of the mathematical models of the games and the RNG.
- Vigorous and ongoing 3rd-party testing to ensure compliance.
- Disclosure of the source code, the build environment and hashes (to ensure that the code that actually runs is the one submitted).
- Various levels of access to the servers and the servers and the databases.
- Sending them the details of every hand or spin, either before or after the fact (for approval or reporting).
- Limiting the amounts that can be wagered (and sometimes won), and/or having "responsible gaming" controls for self-imposed limits.
- Having certain information easily accessible by the players, such as: game odds, history of hands/spins, etc.

If you are concerned about possible foul play, I suggest you (a) check the the regulations for the jurisdiction you play in, and (b) stick to the bigger companies (preferably publicly traded ones) that have more to lose from tarnished reputation and increased regulator scrutiny than they can gain from monkey business.

Disclaimers:
- I work in the industry.
- I have designed and implemented features to address regulatory requirements.
- I have assisted CSRs in investigating player complaints (they are always treated seriously since we can lose a license to operate if the regulators are unhappy).
- The opinions presented here are my own, I do not speak for my employer.

Re:One thing's always bothered me RE online gamlin

[Anonymous Coward]

Show the user hash of result. Where 'result' is the coin toss in question, the state of the deck of cards, etc etc.

Allow them to bet etc.

Show them result. Allow them to confirm that hash of result matches what you originally showed them.

Assuming the hash function is unbroken, that is enough to verify fairness without allowing them to know in advance what the result is.

Re:One thing's always bothered me RE online gamlin

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even that but loads of people have won big prizes then the casinos go "nope, sorry the machine glitched, you ain't getting shit."

So, basically the same as brick and mortar casinos then?

Re:One thing's always bothered me RE online gamlin

[Sloppy]

Are there any regulations in place to ensure... the odds are fair?

Hopefully not! Why would there be such regulations? It's not supposed to be fair. If it were fair, nobody would do it. Nobody would offer it. There would be no point.

If you force it to be fair, you're killing it. Making it be fair is a bad thing. If you want to gamble, you need to work to prevent regulations from making it fair. Whoever tries to make it fair, probably has a "gambling is a sin and the lord told me to fight it" agenda.

Personally, I am hard-pressed to think of anything as boring as gambling, but even I wouldn't try to kill it. I know people who enjoy it, and they enjoy it with the full knowledge that they lose money. On the bright side, they sometimes treat me to a casino buffet with their "free" (omg, I so have to suppress my laughter when I hear that word) points.

Please, don't take away my buffet.

Re: One thing's always bothered me RE online gamli

[Anonymous Coward]

It would take only a couple of hours until someone somewhere reverse engineers the hashing process and creates a database + bot

Like stock tickers?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Gambling" is so disingenuous.