Betfair Blackjack Manipulated?

[nderien]

I play Blackjack at BetFair Zero Lounge. My experience is, when small stakes, dealer gets small cards. When I raise stakes, dealer always get A or ten.
Today I lost the whole bankroll on Betfair Zero Lounge in 20 or 30 plays and I think the whole game was not fair. All my hands were 13 or so, and dealer always got A or ten. After hit I always busted. I played according to basic strategy. There should be a little edge for bookie, but losing almost all hands in a row? Some of them were push, when I got 19 or 20..
I played an browser instant game. Could it have been unfairly manipulated?

[Dunder]

Betfair would have way too much to lose by having tainted casino software, IMHO.
They state very clearly that their RNGs are audited and the loss of reputation, let alone legal consequences, if this was proved not be be true would be huge.

This applies to all of the major European books where gambling regulation is quite tight.

[necro]

Stay away from casinos.

[davidchong]

i think is fixed, had to beat at the casino there....

[gryfyn1]

theres no need to, casino games are a losing bet to start with why bother?

[Domestic]

theres no need to, casino games are a losing bet to start with why bother?

Agreed, stick to the sports.

[althelegend]

I can understand op's gripe, but results like this do happen without any unfair software manipulation.

Not only online - real casino experience, too.

[warriorfan707]

I have often wondered if casino software has been tampered with. Its a good question.

[FXmotherlode]

They are not tampered with in any way. Especially at Betfair. They are extremely reputable and there have been huge winners too, not just losers.

I hope I am allowed to post this link being ontopic with the discussion here. Check out this poker player who is a degenerate gambler. He won $500k at Betfair playing Blackjack (for those amounts he was playing Blackjack Exchange for sure).

[tadgemole]

I can sympathise, being in exactly the same position! Played this morning, and BF dealer had an incredible run - 8 blackjacks to my one, over a period of about 25 minutes, and a losing streak for me of 12 bets in a row. The hands the dealer was making were just laughable, not that it was much to laugh about.

I play strictly to the book strategy, apart from adjusting stakes, which ought to make no difference to the cards dealt. But like you I find that if I raise or drop the stakes, the cards seem to change accordingly. I've read similar moans on the subject, and just put it down to bad losing. I'm sure the auditors can show that the overall house edge and payout are fair, but individually you get a very strong sense that the hand is already played from the moment the bet is placed, and that there's no way you're going to win if the RNG has decided against it.

This is a thought that saps the spirit, somewhat. No matter what I do, or what strategy I adopt, the machine will win whenever it wants/needs to. I'm tempted to spend some time on the free player, and see what happens if I take a completely nonsensical approach, ie demonstrate the true meaning of the word 'random'. I wouldn't be surprised if the win/lose ratio remains exactly the same.

(PS. Is there any way of obtaining an official log of play?)

[anieve]

I've had the same problem where on 3 different books. I started playing 500$ hands and got raped EASY i lost 40 grand of winnings QUICK! On SIA i made 6 and then lost it right after, on bodog i made 7 and then 6 and lost it all on the greek 7 7 7 and lost it all and ever since i havent been able to win 1 hand. ITs funny that when your bankroll is now at 10$ or 5$ and you put 5$ u always lose against blackjack on all the books. How can that be possible?

[TFC]

theres no need to, casino games are a losing bet to start with why bother?

Well, with Betfair Zero Lounge there is no house edge (assuming you believe they are on the up-and-up) -- so it's not really a losing bet. Of course, as there is also no player edge, it's not really a winning bet either.

To the original poster: 20-or-30 games is not enough to determine whether or not the game is being manipulated (especially as it appears you lost your bankroll in some sort of Martingale system). After a couple of thousand games if you are not breaking even -- or close to even -- then you may have a complaint.

[kravinec]

So... I had this strange experience with Betfair's Zerolounge blackjack as well.
Starting with 125€ and risking 2.5-3% every bet, playing perfect strategy I got to 449€ after 1200 hands. So far so good. But today after just 154 hands (12€ per bet) I got down to 41 EUR and from that to 5€ (6€ bet) in additional 33 hands. That's losing about 0.2€ for every 1€ betted.That doesn't seem like just a bad streak to me.
Is it possible? Sure. Probable? I don't think so. The game is powered by Netent, so it shouldn't be rigged.
What do you think? What would you do? Do I have a chance of getting my money back if I confronted them?

[king7811]

So isn't it manipulated? Neither a little bit? The goal of a bookmaker is not to lose money in my opinion...

[dreamchaser]

Well, with Betfair Zero Lounge there is no house edge (assuming you believe they are on the up-and-up) -- so it's not really a losing bet. Of course, as there is also no player edge, it's not really a winning bet either.

To the original poster: 20-or-30 games is not enough to determine whether or not the game is being manipulated (especially as it appears you lost your bankroll in some sort of Martingale system). After a couple of thousand games if you are not breaking even -- or close to even -- then you may have a complaint.

Is the zero lounge live-dealer, or software? And why would they offer zero-house-edge games? Seems too good to be true...