Now you’ll notice that none of the casinos that I recommend on my site are BLR Technology casinos. Okay, if you didn’t notice that, trust me, they aren’t. There has been some information swirling on the internet recently questioning the integrity of the company’s software and now it looks like the rumors may be true.

So, what’s going on? First, let’s take a look at what casino software is. Casinos don’t all run out and develop their own software to run the games they have. That would take more time and effort than they really need to use. Think of it this way - casinos in Las Vegas don’t manufacture their own slot machines. They buy them from slots manufacturers. And online casinos set up partnerships with game developers to run their software platform. Platforms like Playtech, Realtime Gaming and Microgaming are considered top of the line. The casino that use them are usually on everyone’s top casino list.

BLR Technologies also makes online casino software but it’s used by a small group of casinos - World Wide Wager, Legend Sports, and 5Dimes. But players who played on those casinos started complaining that they seemed to be losing more than they should. So? Sometimes people lose in gambling. But when people who are absolute wizards when it comes to things like odds and probability went in and ran their own tests, they found that the odds just weren’t coming out right. Now to see this, you don’t look at a game like slots. You take something like craps with a Pass/Don’t Pass bet. Something where the chance of winning vs losing is a known quantity that you can test against. Okay, not everyone may be familiar with craps. So, let’s say you toss a quarter in the air. The odds are 50/50 for heads vs tails. You could get a brief run of one or the other, but if you make 1000 tosses, you should come out really close to 50/50.  If you don’t that quarter may have been rigged. So when the craps bets are nowhere near what the expected outcome is based on pure math, that game might be rigged.

And it seems that the casino software developed by BLR Technologies is rigged. The software can detect a player’s bet and make it less likely for a large bet to win.  News is out that World Wide Wagering is dropping the company. Legend Sports says it doesn’t affect their sports betting and besides, they’ve invested in fixing the casino part, and 5Dimes has actually issued a refund to a player who complained.

My advice - don’t play on these casinos. Now, I’ve heard nothing wrong about Legends sports betting side of the business, but I still wouldn’t play video poker on their casino.  I’m not sure if these casinos knew they software was cheating or if they were using it for that reason, but I expect a casino to be more aware of what’s going on with their software than these seem to have been.  I don’t play with “maybe safe” casinos.

PokerStars has made a publicity campaign out of awarding prizes for whoever wins a big milestone hand on the site. This started with 50 billionth hand or something like that. It’s become difficult to keep up because the site is so big that they seem to turn over another billionth milestone every couple of months. The latest being the 70 billionth hand with a $70,000 prize plus to the winner. Which isn’t even hitting the big News these days. (Give them a couple of weeks and they’ll probably tell us what’s going to happen for the 100^th Billionth Hand.)

But the problem with consistent promotions is that they often lead to someone trying to figure out ways to turn the promotion to their advantage. This isn’t just for gambling promotions, but the more money involved, the more likely someone is to want to figure out a better way to win the money. And some players are claiming that’s what happened with the PokerStars 70 Billionth Hand Promotion.

Players have gone back and check the hand history of the winning table and have claimed that the overall history of the hands played shows that players at the table weren’t really focused on playing each hand but on playing as many hands as possible to give everyone at the table a better chance of hitting the 70^th billionth hand. And if they were, it seems to have worked. Of course, no one seems to be checking the hand history of the tables that didn’t win to see if they were playing the same way.

PokerStars has reviewed the issue and determined that the “fast folding” going on at the table wasn’t a violation of the rules of the promotion. But they will be looking into the way they run the billionth hand promotions going forward or else everyone on that site is going to be fast folding as they get nearer and nearer to those milestone hands.

I’ve been following the news on the two Cereus Network poker rooms - Absolute Poker and UB.com since the Black Friday Poker Shutdown back in April of this year. Well, actually, I was following the news before that, but in a different way. Before the Black Friday Shutdown, the two poker rooms were fun to follow for the action and if nothing else, for Phil Hellmuth’s costumed entrances to the World Series of Poker and other tournaments. But I can’t blame the FBI for depriving me of a little Hellmuth overkill, since he left his pro spot with the Cereus Network before the shutdown. (File that under things that make you go “hmmm”)

But the news on the Cereus Network kicked into high gear right after the Black Friday Poker Shutdown when the poker rooms run by the network were the two that didn’t take steps to work with the United States Department of Justice to obtain approval to pay players back money in their accounts. This worried players, who wanted to know just why that was happening. And it turned out the worst suspicions were correct - Blanca Games, the company that owns the two poker rooms, wasn’t worried about negotiating to pay players back because it couldn’t pay players back. But it was easier to let the blame rest with the FBI for as long as people would buy it. Mostly no one did and the company struggled to deny rumors of bankruptcy while laying off support staff.

Well, now the news is out that Blanca Games will be liquidating their assets in order to try to raise enough money to pay out what they owe players. Perhaps what happened to Full Tilt poker has shown them that not paying out will ruin their reputation and cost them their license. That’s if they have any reputation left to ruin.