Sources, methodology & terms

Methodology — how the games get their numbers

Each game is an original recreation of a documented, industry-wide mechanic — built from the public record (patents, regulator filings, peer-reviewed studies, and standard combinatorial gaming math), using original art and original code. None of it copies any real product's art, sound, or software.

The odds are not asserted; they are computed. The slot and side-bet returns are derived by exact enumeration of every outcome; the blackjack and crash edges are verified by combinatorial analysis and large simulations whose code ships with the project (verify-rtp.mjs, verify-blackjack.mjs, verify-peaks.mjs, and the in-page enumerators). The crash math is the open-source bustabit formula (see Attributions). Where a figure depends on the exact rules (deck count, payout, leg pricing), the game states the rules it uses.

The claims, and where each one comes from

Slots

• The exhibit is a real machine, rebuilt exactly — the Rigged Reels exhibit is IGT's Red White & Blue, reconstructed stop-for-stop and payout-for-payout from its published PAR sheets. Cabinet A (86.58%) is from the Wizard of Odds analysis (wizardofodds.com/games/slots/appendix/6); Cabinet B (94.675%) is IGT program SS3285 from the UA-RTIP / University of Nevada PAR-sheet archive (direct PDF). Both are catalogued at easy.vegas/games/slots/par-sheets. We verified the rebuild by enumerating all 64³ = 262,144 reel outcomes: every combination count and the returns (86.58% / 87.47% and 94.37% / 94.675%) match the published sheets to the unit. The math is the real machine's; the art is our own original work. Why this machine? It was chosen precisely because its technical specifications are public — its PAR sheets survive in academic and regulatory archives. That rare transparency is what allows a factual, verifiable, exact recreation of a real commercial slot's mechanics; the manufacturer is named here solely to enable that independent verification, not to allege any wrongdoing.
• Weighted reels are kept secret — that PAR sheets (Pay And Reel strips) are confidential and reels invisibly weighted is documented in Harrigan & Dixon, "PAR Sheets, probabilities, and slot machine play," Journal of Gambling Issues 23 (2009). The weighting mechanism is the virtual-reel patent, US 4,448,419 (Inge Telnaes, 1984). patents.google.com/patent/US4448419A
• Same machine, ~85%–96% payback, never disclosed — one title shipping to casinos at returns from 85.0% to 96.2%, identical to the player, is the core finding of Harrigan & Dixon (2009). Our exhibit demonstrates it concretely: two genuine, verified versions of the same Red White & Blue title — 86.58% and 94.675% — that you can play side by side. No US state requires the return be displayed.
• Near-miss recruits reward circuitry — Clark, Lawrence, Astley-Jones & Gray, Neuron 61(3):481 (2009), PMID 19217383. A documented companion trick (engineered via the Telnaes virtual reel above), cited in the article.
• Losses disguised as wins — Dixon, Harrigan, Sandhu, Collins & Fugelsang, Addiction 105(10):1819 (2010), PMID 20712818. UK banned the celebration on online slots: UKGC Remote Technical Standards 14F, in force 31 Oct 2021.

Blackjack

• House edges and rule costs — Wizard of Odds combinatorial analysis: 6-deck, dealer stands soft 17, basic strategy ≈ 0.5%; 6:5 adds +1.39 pts; H17 adds +0.22; insurance ≈ 7.4% (96 tens in 311 unseen cards → 30.8% vs a 33.3% break-even); 3-card-poker bonus (flat 9:1) = 3.24% by exact 6-deck enumeration. wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack
• 3:2 single-deck effectively gone from the Strip by 2024 — Las Vegas blackjack surveys, 2024–2025 (Vegas Advantage; easy.vegas).

Crash

• Open ~1% edge vs commercial 3% — bustabit formula (open source, ~1% edge); the leading commercial crash game (Aviator/Spribe) states a 97% RTP. spribe.co/games/aviator
• Bot-simulation technique — US Patent 11,430,287 B2 (Aristocrat Technologies, 2022). We demonstrate the technique; we do not assert any named operator fakes its own feed. patents.google.com/patent/US11430287B2

Sportsbook

• Vig and realized hold — Levitt, "Why are gambling markets organised so differently...," Economic Journal 114 (2004). A −110 leg pays decimal 1.9091; parlay hold = 1 − (1.9091/2)ⁿ.
• Parlays = 72.5% of NJ online sportsbook revenue (Sept 2024) — New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement monthly reports; national hold ~7% in the early years → ~10% (2025), AGA / Legal Sports Report. legalsportsreport.com
• Free bets worth roughly two-thirds of face — matched-betting analyses; Newall, Cortis & Torrance, UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal (2025) work a ~67% example (stake not returned). Cash-out gives up ~8.5–10.2% of fair value in a UK data set (Newall & Cortis, Judgment and Decision Making 2019).
• "Risk-free" enforcement — Ohio Casino Control Commission settlement, Feb 2023 (DraftKings, $500,000); American Gaming Association Responsible Marketing Code, 28 Mar 2023, banned "risk free." americangaming.org/marketing-code

Casino psychology

• Variable-ratio reinforcement; "time on device"; the machine zone — Skinner, Science and Human Behavior (1953); Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction by Design (Princeton University Press, 2012); Harris & Griffiths, Journal of Gambling Studies 34(2):393 (2018).
• Revenue concentration on problem gamblers — reported as a range: ~20% (conservative) → 40–50% (common academic, e.g. Productivity Commission of Australia) → ~90% (a Massachusetts study of casino revenue). Method-dependent; every honest version is large.

Loot boxes / social casino

• Loot-box ↔ problem-gambling link (strongest in adolescents) — Zendle & Cairns, PLOS ONE 13(11):e0206767 (2018), PMID 30462669; Zendle, Meyer & Over, Royal Society Open Science 6(6):190049 (2019).
• Prevalence: 58% Android / 59% iPhone / 36% Steam — Zendle, Meyer, Waters, Cairns & Ballou, Addiction (2020), DOI 10.1111/add.14973.
• Secret odds-nerf fine — Korea Fair Trade Commission v. Nexon, ₩11.64bn, 3 Jan 2024 (under appeal). Yonhap
• Free chips ruled a "thing of value"; $24.9M jury verdict — Kater v. Churchill Downs, 886 F.3d 784 (9th Cir. 2018); Larsen v. PTT, LLC (High 5 Games), No. 3:18-cv-05275-TMC, jury verdict $24,940,366.15, 7 Feb 2025 (W.D. Wash.).
• "Surprise mechanics" — testimony before the UK DCMS Committee, 19 June 2019.
• The resale exception: items with real cash value draw the heaviest gambling scrutiny — Counter-Strike "skins" resell on a secondary market for thousands, the rarest occasionally over $1M (SteamAnalyst); Washington State Gambling Commission ordered Valve to "stop facilitating the use of 'skins' for gambling," formal demand 4 Oct 2016 (ESPN); Valve barred skin-gambling & case-opening promotions from its CS2 esports events, 2025 (Dot Esports). Steam's own market caps a single listing at ~$1,800 (Steam Support), so seven-figure sales happen off-platform. We allege no wrongdoing by any company; these are documented facts about a legal grey area.
• Item "value" is publisher-controlled — a 2025 update erased billions — Valve's 23 Oct 2025 "Trade Up" update let players craft knives from 5 Covert skins, wiping ~$272M in hours and helping drive a multi-billion-dollar drop in the CS2 skin market (CSMarketCap).

Ongoing enforcement (cited as filed/decided, with dates)

• UKGC suspended Spribe (Aviator) over a licensing/hosting matter — 30 Oct 2025; lifted 30 Mar 2026. SBC News
• India Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 — presidential assent 22 Aug 2025; bans real-money online games (passed/assented; not yet notified; under Supreme Court challenge). overview
• NY Attorney General v. Valve — loot boxes as illegal gambling, filed ~25 Feb 2026. ag.ny.gov
• Washington AG v. Playtika & Aristocrat — social-casino apps, filed 3 Feb 2026, $225M+ alleged. SBC Americas

The state's role — government as gambling's silent partner

• US state lotteries: $104.7B sold / $34.5B kept as government revenue (FY2024) — U.S. Census Bureau state-government finances. State-run and state-advertised (national lottery ad spend exceeds $500M/yr).
• Lottery regressivity & the "education" earmark — a South Carolina Education Lottery–commissioned study found under-$35k households spent 2×+ vs six-figure households (reported by CBS News); earmarking lottery money "for education" is largely offset by budget substitution — Brookings Institution.
• Sports-betting deregulation — Murphy v. NCAA, 584 U.S. 453 (2018) struck down PASPA; legal sports betting in 38 states + DC at the end of 2024 (39 after Missouri's December 2025 launch), $149.9B handle in 2024 — American Gaming Association.
• Harms the government permits — no federal rule requires a land-based slot to disclose its RTP; LDW, weighted reels (Telnaes US 4,448,419) and RNG near-misses are legal (Nevada Gaming Reg. 14); loot boxes studied by the FTC (workshop, 7 Aug 2019) and left unregulated.
• Lobbying vs. treatment — FanDuel federal lobbying ≈$160K (2024) → ≈$1.1M (2025), OpenSecrets; total US problem-gambling treatment funding ≈35¢/resident vs ≈$14B/yr social cost — National Council on Problem Gambling.
• UK FOBTs & the revenue conflict — £100/spin "crack cocaine of gambling"; £2 cap effective 1 Apr 2019; the Treasury delayed it a year and raised Remote Gaming Duty to offset a projected >£1.1B loss; Sports Minister Tracey Crouch resigned 1 Nov 2018.
• UK reform slow-walk & loot-box non-decision — Gambling Act 2005; White Paper "High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age," 27 Apr 2023; loot boxes left outside gambling law (DCMS response, 18 Jul 2022).
• UK Treasury dependency & revolving door — betting & gaming duties ≈£3.6B (2024-25), forecast £4B (2025-26), Remote Gaming Duty raised to 40% from Apr 2026 — OBR; a former Gambling Commission chief executive left in 2025 and joined an industry consultancy in 2026.
• The human cost — 117–496 gambling-related suicides/yr in England (OHID evidence review, 2023, superseding the earlier 409 estimate); £1.27B annual harm cost (Public Health England, 2019–20); ~2.5M US adults with a severe gambling problem (NCPG).
• "Maximize government revenues, not protect the public" — testimony of Les Bernal, Stop Predatory Gambling, before Congress (incl. the projection that Americans will lose >$1 trillion to government-sanctioned gambling over eight years).

Attributions

The crash game's math is the bustabit crash-point formula, which is open source; our implementation is independent and credited here. All art, symbols, sounds, and game code in this project are original and were created for it; nothing is taken from any real product.

Trademarks & nominative use

Company and product names — including any betting or game names referenced — are the property of their respective owners and appear here solely to identify and comment on documented public facts (patents, court rulings, regulator actions), with citations. "21+3" is a registered trademark of Galaxy Gaming, Inc.; we refer to the three-card bonus mechanic generically. This project is independent and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any named company.

Terms — what this is, and isn't