Beware of PartyCasino Live BlackJack

#1
Hello everyone,

I just wanted to warn you all about PartyCasino Live BlackJack. About 4 days ago I decided to give it a try and ran into problems almost right away. My actions were not registering with the dealer after pressing the appropriate button. Also there were a few occasion where they would have to stop the game for up to 5 mins cause they were having connection problems. Not just with me but the whole table/site.

After pressing the button the options would go away like the action registered but the Hit/Stand/Split/Double action never showed up on the table. I would type to the dealer what button I pressed before my time expired. Then she would ding a bell on the table and raise her hand for support.

Support would come and ask me for the hand and they would proceed to give me a reference number. They also said I would be contacted via email by support.

Days went by and still no email so I decided to write them and ask whats taking so long. This is what they say:

Thank you for contacting Customer Service.

I am sorry to see that there were a few causes for disappointment and I hope that we will be able to answer your concerns as fully as possible.

I would like to confirm that the Live Dealer games represent a special mixture of technologies which makes it a bit more difficult for us to check the game logs. This is standard procedure when it comes to any complaints or disputes with the Live dealer games. So, any check takes slightly longer to perform and come back with a result, but this also ensures a correct reply.

Now, when our special games team has checked the given reference numbers: CI-8002, CI-8003 and CI-8005 they have confirmed that you have indeed clicked on HIT/SPLIT/HIT (for the three games respectively) but the decision was not accepted, since it reached our game servers too late, when the time given for a decision was already over. This may have happened due to slow Internet connection or general Internet delays. We however can confirm that we did not experience an issue on our end on that date and time.

Internet connection is established via the help of many servers. A disconnection/slow connectivity may be caused by one of those additional servers. Internet Delays or Internet Disconnections can be caused by a number of reasons, some of which can be influenced by us or yourself. For instance, the increasing number of Internet gateways(servers) that fall between our site and your system contribute towards poor connectivity to our games.

On our web site it is stated that "If you get disconnected in the middle of a game of blackjack your hand will automatically stand." I am sorry to confirm that according to our game rules and the mechanics of our software, the stand decision which was automatically taken due to the disconnection was practical and fair in the given circumstances. We would have no reason to refund the bets placed as in the occasion that the dealer would have busted, you would have received winnings for your bets.

We are sorry once again that we cannot assist you further with your refund request, but we do hope on your understanding that in that particular situation we are only applying the standard game rules where there is a confirmed disconnection outside our servers. Disconnections can and do happen, so you may happen to encounter others complaining of the same delay issues, but I can assure you that we have not caused such from our end and we will always refund accordingly when we have caused any such inconvenience.


I would like to add in closing that there was another person at the table that was having the same problem. I would also like to point out that I have a 45mbps hard line connection that virtually never goes down/slows.

I'm also looking into the possibility of starting a class action lawsuit against PartyGaming. If you or anyone you know has been wronged under similar circumstances please post a brief description here.
 

pit15

Well-Known Member
#4
I wouldn't be surprised if partycasino still cheats people.

Back in 2006 or so partycasino refused to pay me and my friends several million after they took over ace club / planetluck casino
 
#5
pit15 said:
I wouldn't be surprised if partycasino still cheats people.

Back in 2006 or so partycasino refused to pay me and my friends several million after they took over ace club / planetluck casino
Several Million? did you hire a lawyer to try and recoup it? why ddint they pay you and how did you get several million?
 

pit15

Well-Known Member
#6
Partyscammers said:
Several Million? did you hire a lawyer to try and recoup it? why ddint they pay you and how did you get several million?
There were about 50 people involved and about 500K was paid out, after that they froze all the accounts.

This was back when they offered a blackjack game that gave you 75% of your bet back when you surrendered (long story short, if you clicked the surrender button twice you got 75% back instead of 50%). Apparently playing the game the way they offered it wasn't kosher so they locked all my accounts and refused to pay after they figured out why they were losing so much $.

My account had like 200K in it because I hit a jackpot on their $100 slots which I was playing for cover, the rest of the accounts had anywhere from 20 - 100K and of course they had max cashout limits which we were requesting every week.

Believe me, if I thought I could sue for the money I wouldn't have gotten so many people involved to open a ton of accounts to get around the max weekly cashout. I would've just sat there and grinded out 5 million bucks on my own account then sue for it rather then go thru the hassle of opening dozens of accounts and also having to split the win of course.

Good luck suing an online casino based in some other country
 

MangoJ

Well-Known Member
#7
I guess the game server likes to reject decisions (and revert to stands) especially when those are big bet counts.

What were your bets ?
 
#8
pit15 said:
There were about 50 people involved and about 500K was paid out, after that they froze all the accounts.

This was back when they offered a blackjack game that gave you 75% of your bet back when you surrendered (long story short, if you clicked the surrender button twice you got 75% back instead of 50%). Apparently playing the game the way they offered it wasn't kosher so they locked all my accounts and refused to pay after they figured out why they were losing so much $.
In most casino venues if you discover a technical glitch that favors player and you purposely exploit it aggressively - you are cheating and may be prosecuted.

So, how long had you and "your friends" been cheats, and how often do you still cheat? z:laugh:g
 
#9
MangoJ said:
I guess the game server likes to reject decisions (and revert to stands) especially when those are big bet counts.

What were your bets ?
Well there were in total about 6 or 7 hands where my actions didn't register. The main four hands were: 9 twice, 8 and AA. The other 2-3 hands were mostly stands.

I had 3x my bet on one of the 9's the others were 1-2 bets with the AA being a split.
 

RJT

Well-Known Member
#11
Partyscammers said:
Hello everyone,

I just wanted to warn you all about PartyCasino Live BlackJack. About 4 days ago I decided to give it a try and ran into problems almost right away. My actions were not registering with the dealer after pressing the appropriate button. Also there were a few occasion where they would have to stop the game for up to 5 mins cause they were having connection problems. Not just with me but the whole table/site.

After pressing the button the options would go away like the action registered but the Hit/Stand/Split/Double action never showed up on the table. I would type to the dealer what button I pressed before my time expired. Then she would ding a bell on the table and raise her hand for support.

Support would come and ask me for the hand and they would proceed to give me a reference number. They also said I would be contacted via email by support.

Days went by and still no email so I decided to write them and ask whats taking so long. This is what they say:

Thank you for contacting Customer Service.

I am sorry to see that there were a few causes for disappointment and I hope that we will be able to answer your concerns as fully as possible.

I would like to confirm that the Live Dealer games represent a special mixture of technologies which makes it a bit more difficult for us to check the game logs. This is standard procedure when it comes to any complaints or disputes with the Live dealer games. So, any check takes slightly longer to perform and come back with a result, but this also ensures a correct reply.

Now, when our special games team has checked the given reference numbers: CI-8002, CI-8003 and CI-8005 they have confirmed that you have indeed clicked on HIT/SPLIT/HIT (for the three games respectively) but the decision was not accepted, since it reached our game servers too late, when the time given for a decision was already over. This may have happened due to slow Internet connection or general Internet delays. We however can confirm that we did not experience an issue on our end on that date and time.

Internet connection is established via the help of many servers. A disconnection/slow connectivity may be caused by one of those additional servers. Internet Delays or Internet Disconnections can be caused by a number of reasons, some of which can be influenced by us or yourself. For instance, the increasing number of Internet gateways(servers) that fall between our site and your system contribute towards poor connectivity to our games.

On our web site it is stated that "If you get disconnected in the middle of a game of blackjack your hand will automatically stand." I am sorry to confirm that according to our game rules and the mechanics of our software, the stand decision which was automatically taken due to the disconnection was practical and fair in the given circumstances. We would have no reason to refund the bets placed as in the occasion that the dealer would have busted, you would have received winnings for your bets.

We are sorry once again that we cannot assist you further with your refund request, but we do hope on your understanding that in that particular situation we are only applying the standard game rules where there is a confirmed disconnection outside our servers. Disconnections can and do happen, so you may happen to encounter others complaining of the same delay issues, but I can assure you that we have not caused such from our end and we will always refund accordingly when we have caused any such inconvenience.


I would like to add in closing that there was another person at the table that was having the same problem. I would also like to point out that I have a 45mbps hard line connection that virtually never goes down/slows.

I'm also looking into the possibility of starting a class action lawsuit against PartyGaming. If you or anyone you know has been wronged under similar circumstances please post a brief description here.
If i were you i'd try getting a mediator involved. The fact that the server was registering you chat conversation easily within the time frame, but not your play decisions shows that it wasn't a problem at your end. They also flapped on about players getting disconnected, but you weren't disconnected so that's fairly irrelevant.

You could try either http://www.casinomeister.com or http://www.gamblinggrumbles.com. I'd personally recommend Gambling Grumbles. I think Steve's a stand up guy with a great deal of integrity where CasinoMeister's a bit of a hack.

RJT.
 

RJT

Well-Known Member
#12
pit15 said:
This was back when they offered a blackjack game that gave you 75% of your bet back when you surrendered (long story short, if you clicked the surrender button twice you got 75% back instead of 50%). Apparently playing the game the way they offered it wasn't kosher so they locked all my accounts and refused to pay after they figured out why they were losing so much $.
In this situation i think it unlikely that they stole anything. Today at least, almost every online casino has a clause in their terms and conditions basically saying that if you're found exploiting a bug in the software they don't have to pay out. This protects them against programming errors. In this case, you were clearly exploiting a bug, so it goes without say (assuming that party had such a term listed at that time) that's you'd breached the term and weren't actually due anything.

It's a very different thing when a casino withholds funds citing their bonus abuse term as more often than not the term is very vague and fails to explain exactly how the customer would be in violation of it, or their bot use term as it's almost impossible for them to actually 'prove' that a bot was used. In this case, as it wasn't a special version of blackjack where you're allowed to surrender twice, it was clearly a bug.

Don't get me wrong in all of this - the way this issue should have been resolved is that the payments made should have been allow and all remaining balances should have been reset to pre-wagering levels and allowed to withdraw. Although so many related accounts does lead to suspicion of multi-accounting and that may have muddied the water.

RJT.
 
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#13
Having games programmed that even just 2x per hour if you are subject to a
forced stand on any number of hands, it probably creates a sizeable extra EV.

So it very well could be a scam. Maybe others are talking about it at CasinoMeister? zg
 

MangoJ

Well-Known Member
#14
They could easily play the hand to the end according to basic strategy.
Further, you cannot make your decision "out of turn", which makes no sense ether.
 

pit15

Well-Known Member
#15
Of course, they have a T&C that basically lets them do whatever they want.

Doesn't mean that's fair.

If a real casino has a wrong layout or something, they still owe players the money they won on that layout up until they close the game. Even if they notice it midhand they still have to pay for that hand even if it's wrong.

Same with dealer mispays. You don't have to give anything back (though they can trespass you from coming back in the future).
 

pit15

Well-Known Member
#16
zengrifter said:
In most casino venues if you discover a technical glitch that favors player and you purposely exploit it aggressively - you are cheating and may be prosecuted.

So, how long had you and "your friends" been cheats, and how often do you still cheat? z:laugh:g
Well they sure as hell didn't act like I cheated or that I was in the wrong in any way.

They acted guilty as hell. They kept avoiding me for months, and finally got to talk to someone from higher up. I even asked him "are you accusing me of cheating" and he gave some really evasive answer and changed the subject. At the end I never actually got a valid reason from them as to why they wouldn't pay. They dodged the subject and just said they're not unfreezing my account and that's final.

He fed me crap about how surrendering that often in blackjack is suicide and told me to look at wizardofodds.com for the basic strategy and how I played wasn't right and I shouldn't have won playing that strategy (duh.. but the strategy changes if surrender is 75%).

Nothing was straight up about any of this. The only reason they finally had management call me is because I set up a bot to spam their live support chat with thousands of messages a day demanding my money and had this running for about a month straight (and I had it set up in a way to make sure they were actually spending time to respond to the messages instead of just ignoring them, guess they never heard of blocking an IP address), and I also sent a bunch of porno to their support email (these were my college days.. when I was 19 that seemed like a good idea) along with messages demanding my money.
 
#17
pit15 said:
Well they sure as hell didn't act like I cheated or that I was in the wrong in any way.

He fed me crap about how surrendering that often in blackjack is suicide and told me to look at wizardofodds.com for the basic strategy and how I played wasn't right and I shouldn't have won playing that strategy
Beautiful!! Next time try to make a graceful exit sooner!! z:laugh:g
 

pit15

Well-Known Member
#18
zengrifter said:
Beautiful!! Next time try to make a graceful exit sooner!! z:laugh:g
Well legal trouble was actually something we considered once we got the ball rolling on this thing. I figured they have as much recourse to try to get me for something as I do for them not paying me -- none. Especially considering that even in 2005 an online casino was illegal in the US. It's just that nobody was doing anything about it at the time. "Some kid screwed our online casino" isn't going to hold up. Hell, the online casino executives were scared to even enter US soil, one of them got arrested while in the US or something like that.

So I figured the most +EV thing to do is bang them as hard as we could until they decide to stop paying. Those 3 months of my life revolved around opening online casino accounts, playing blackjack with a ridiculous advantage, faxing documents (you had to in order to cash out > 2K from an account), requesting cashouts, and constantly checking accounts to see when the money arrives.

Most people involved were skeptical at first but bought into it because I had people backing me up. My sales pitch was basically "Let me open an online casino account and a neteller account under your name and you'll get thousands of dollars directly into your bank account within a week!"
 

MangoJ

Well-Known Member
#19
pit15 said:
but the strategy changes if surrender is 75%
So you were actually too greedy, you could have just played basic strategy for cover.
If you surrender all hands below -0.25 EV, this is ASKING for a review of your play.
 
#20
pit15 said:
He fed me crap about how surrendering that often in blackjack is suicide and told me to look at wizardofodds.com for the basic strategy and how I played wasn't right and I shouldn't have won playing that strategy (duh.. but the strategy changes if surrender is 75%).
It sounds like he new their contract stipulation about not being paid if you exploit a programming glitch. By the correlation to play that deviates from BS exactly until the advantage afforded by the glitch is used up you gave them the exact evidence to legally not pay you. You might even find yourself having to pay back your "winnings" had you ever ended up in court. You were smart not to pursue it legally. This reminds me of people who spread so much they jeopardize the playable games in blackjack. The worst part is many are playing HILO which really cuts down on how many playable games are out there for them. They have a cash cow that they butcher for a fat meal. Next they will eat the goose that is laying golden eggs. I guess we all did foolish things when we were young.
 
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