UB/Bet21 Seating Assignments: feeding the conspiracy theorists

Swog your results look so what random. I'm doing mine now and will report on it.

Joep

 

Interesting--what do you mean by "reset?"

 

flattered???

ok - we have established that they are assigning the good players to seats 1,2,3 & 4

are we all flattered by this

 

seriously

sarcasm aside -

it is not a matter of intent - deliberate or accidental - nor how good or bad a player is - nor how much one loves conspiracy theory -

it seems very obvious at this point that there is a non-random component in their programing - which materially affects the outcome of the play -

this is very, very unacceptable -

it is not a fair game

 

Actually I dont play UBT site often ...in fact the last time I did was when I qualified to play in the free roll..

I noticed this seating problem on Bet 21 site.... not all the difficult to notice when you are being seated on or near the button EVERY game.

The programing changes so far have always been carried to each site in this order...

First UBT then Bet21 and UB.


I am getting the same exact seating assignments at Bet 21....I just have not documented as many games ...

I started asking questions to CS about seating assignments a couple of weeks ago .....they give answers about poker seating....what a surprize...

I have seen enough at all 3 sites so as to be convinced that this seating assignment error orginates from the last upgrade when the program was changed to automatically seat winners at the next round of a MTT..

I dont know what factors are being used to assign seats....but I am convinced that Bet 21 and UB and UBT are all using the same program and I am seeing the same seating problem....no distinction.

At first I wrote it off as extremely bad luck but you start noticing when you NEVER get to bet last! Some smaller games go off with 6 players ...this would make seat 1 a great seat.....I never got that though ....then I would be in #2.

Tonights 25,000 had me in seat 3....not terrible but it got much worse as seat 6 was a no show ...

Its just to skewed to be anything but a bug in the program.....

No more real money games for me until this gets fixed....or maybe Ill change my name to a 5,6 7 seater...

I could try Archimen....or simply nearly copy a 5,6,or 7 seat name.

I have reported my findings to CS.....no reply yet.

For now ....Im out.

 

I ran 20 more and actually got a number 7 seat.....in 60 trys I got 1,2,3,4 59 times....5,6,7 ....one time.

22411472111112322212

Thats more than enough for me...

 

My 2 cents

I usually play for TEC's on UBT and thought y'all might want to see my seat assignments for my last 10 games (didn't have the patience to do 20, sorry)

6,6,6,6,5,6,6,6,6,6

 

More results

Ok, I went ahead and did 10 more...guess i was curious to see if i could keep it going with the 6's...

6,6,6,6,6,6,6,5,6,6

...and I did!

 

P6

That's it--I'm changing my name to Applejacks...

 

Seating

Playing in the Sit & go's today....same as the other day...seat # 6 every time...the seats move when playing in tourneys..they place you in the waiting table...and the seat is not the same...
Mikey754

 

My new name is ApplejackII

 

Seating

Playing on Bet21 Friday and Sunday my seats under my wifes account are:
66666566...I then played a couple under my account and I have the # 2 seating assignment.

 

It's a woman thing!

I guess they must favor women

 

more data

Just finished 20 sit and gos - was in seat three 12 times (lost 11 of 12 on the first hand) Was in seat 7 two times (won both) Other seats were mixed with wins and losses on first hand.

Too small a sample for significance - but the 12 out of 20 for seat three definitely exceeds reasonable probability estimates.

 

I have returned to SNG play

....and maybe I am on the UB chit list since I have gotten seated in the lower value seats for the last 10 SNGs I have played.

Seat 4 - 1
Seat 1 - 2
Seat 3 - 2
Seat 2 - 5
Seat 5 - 0
Seat 6 - 0

 

bet21 may review (fingers crossed) these non-random seat assignments

After playing in nine sit-n-gos on Wednesday, and always getting seat 1 or 4 (as has been happening in SNGs for the last two weeks), I sent bet21 customer service the following email:
This is about BLACKJACK and NOT poker, so please understand where I'm coming from. Since the last software update (about two weeks ago), it seems as if the seating at the BLACKJACK tables is no longer fully random. In about 90% of the cases -- and in all Sit-N-Gos, I either get seat 1 or seat 4. Other players have commented on an online forum that the same is happening to them -- either seat 1-4, or always 5-6, or another two-seat combination. One player did a study and in over 60 Sit-n-Gos, never got seat 7. I have not gotten seat 7 either in two weeks.

In tournaments, I do sometimes get seats other than 1 & 4, but it still doesn't seem totally random anymore.

Getting seat 1 is a huge disadvantage. Players who are now getting seats 5, 6 or 7 all the time are at a huge advantage.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could look into this, or check with the people who provide your software updates.

Thank you!
- Ted

Lo and behold, they just responded with the following:
Thank you for contacting us.

Please be advised that players are placed into a seat randomly by the system.

However, we understand your concern; therefore, we are going to forward your email to the proper department for further review.

Please do not hesitate to contact us back if you require further assistance or additional information.

Best regards,

Stuart
Customer Support

 

Random or not-random

That is the question

Several questions regarding this:

1. How big would the sample size need to be for any accurate information to be garnered? At what level does it become statistically significant? How large before the p<0.05 is meaningful?

2. If the seating is NOT random that what about the cards being dealt? At what point do we suspect that the dealer is getting more favorable cards than the players or worse yet are certain seats getting more undesirable hands than other seats?

3. If the beginning of each round really a reset and reshuffle or is there a pattern based upon the number of players, etc.?

Yes there are times when dealing with the theory of large numbers that a skewing effect will be noticed. However given the assumption that the remaining cards are “shuffled” after each hand isn’t it safe to assume that the dealer getting an Ace showing 4 (four) times in 16 hands is statistically improbable?

To the numbers gang out here, is there anyone who wants to do a multi-user survey? Maybe keeping track of the following would be a good start. If enough people kept these records and they were collected and crunched maybe we could have some concrete evidence of either a software “glitch” or maybe something else? Thoughts?

Hand Dealers Dealers
up card total Result
1 10 18 Win
2 8 18 Win
3 9 24 Bust
4 Ace BJ Win

 

We've had a large enough sample size to assure ourselves that the seat issue is non-random. As for cards dealt, I imagine that would be much harder to prove. In the case of seating assignments, it's very clear that it's non-random. However, there could be a random-seeming seat assignment system that is in fact trackable, but so complicated that we could never track it.

We should remember that any computer-generated "random" event is really "pseudorandom," so it's all actually non-random, but based on events that we cannot observe with algorithms we don't know. It just happens that the seating assignments are accidentally now based on something simple enough that we can observe it (and could probably figure it out of we put our minds to it).

Perhaps we could institute a "prize" for the first person to successfully predict seating assignments and send bet21.com's CS their own seating algorithm. ^_^