This Is Vegas Casino - New major issue reported by a player.

I have the entire complaint written out, but it is more than 5000 characters so I will follow up as soon as I can submit all at once. Pinning the complaint to an exact dollar amount, as you will see, would be inappropriate. This is completely separate from complaint months ago.

Dear mcd6802,

Thank you very much for submitting your complaint. I’m really sorry to hear about your issue with This Is Vegas Casino. I’m afraid, I will need more information regarding your problem. Please could you elaborate? I will be waiting for your reply patiently.

Best regards,

Nick

I apologize for the length. I am making substantial accusations. It warrants substantial evidence. When you adjust for the leaderboards, it is not as long as it first appears.

A quick disclaimer. I had opened a complaint previously against ThisIsVegas ("TIV") with casino.guru . However, I have scoured this complaint to avoid redundancy. There is minimal overlap with the previous complaint. The previous complaint centered around being stiffed on my balance.

I'd like to say preemptively that I can document all the info here with screenshots of emails, etc. For the moment, I am opting not to do so only to save time in the event such documentation should be academic. Thus far, TIV has opted not to engage any of the details on this subject other than to make vague assertions that I am a liar and a bully.

I would really appreciate it if you did not just punt me off to a gaming authority that you know deep down is unlikely to bring truth to power. This issue is a potential hazard to many other players. I'd appreciate confirmation of whether you read the entire complaint.

TIV pools together with its sister sites to run tournaments. By the end, I hope to convince you that TIV added imaginary scores to their tournament leader boards so as to pay real players less (while making them feel at the cusp of big wins) and did so in a lazy and formulaic way that is easy to detect. What I am hoping you will do is publicly affirm the lack of plausibility of the scores TIV has posted and the suspicious nature of how they have conducted their tournaments. The exact scale of damages I would have incurred as a result would be indeterminate.

First, a few notes so you can understand how TIV conducted its tournaments. They operated far outside of industry norms which I believe raises questions in and of itself.

-TIV only made tournament results available to participating entrants.

-When results were published, only scores and the corresponding prizes were published. Those scores were never matched to particular accounts.

-There was no dedicated tournament software and no live leader board. Results were not sent until hours after a tourney ended. A snapshot of each leader board (as it was Tuesday or Wednesday morning around 6:00 am EST) was available upon request.

-TIV had no dedicated link on their website itemizing the rules and details of their tourneys. Emails advertising them failed to establish or reference any T&C and almost always failed to mention there was an entry requirement. Instead, these emails merely established the scoring systems and the face value of the prize pools. Contacting support was necessary for full details.

-TIV ran tournaments with advertised prize pools that had routinely reached $500,000 to $1,000,000 face value per tournament (and still do). Except by emails to existing customers, I am unaware of any meaningful promotion for these tourneys. If you look around on their site, you'll see what I mean. To my knowledge, at face value, TIV runs the largest tournaments/raffles on the internet. This is in contrast to them being labeled as a "rather small casino" by the site sistersitesindex.

-When receiving a prize, any net gain in (balance + pending withdrawals) during the tourney would be deducted from the prize you'd receive. This could lead to receiving no prize at all.

-For the initial tournaments that I observed, coinciding to a change in management in late 2022, entry requirements were mandated deposits of $500-$1000. This escalated to $3000 within a few months.

-TIV's tourneys started Mondays at 12:00 am and ended Wednesday night at midnight. Presumably, this would represent the part of the week that their customers would have been most conflicted with work.

-TIV insists all their tournament prizes have always been non-cashable "cash back" bonuses.

continued...

With the above facts in mind, I will now present my evidence. Unless noted otherwise, most of the scoring in the presented tournaments comes from $1 wagered equals 1 point. Maybe 10% of the scoring came from new deposits. The leader boards can be approximated as total wagered. All my available leader boards can be found in this post. I have essentially posted all the early tournaments at TIV since they changed management in 2022. Later leader boards were not made available to me because I stopped playing.

The leader board below, the first I have on record, is a good ambassador of the distribution of scores that typifies TIV's leader boards.

10/14/2022 Final Scores

Place Prize 50K Total Points

1 10000 USD 967,753

2 8000 USD 931,441

3 6000 USD 899,887

4 5000 USD 866,784

5 3500 USD 823,042

6 3000 USD 798,772

7 2000 USD 763,802

8 1600 USD 752,991

9 1500 USD 741,901

10 1200 USD 717,559

Here, 1st place, with a prize 8.5 times that of 10th place, has a score only 35% greater. Scores rarely distribute anything close to this at other casinos. By itself, this leader board might be an outlier. However, not once, anywhere in the 11 tournaments I have on record, have I seen a breakaway 1st place score at TIV or even a semi-breakaway score. Elsewhere, they are common. To reinforce this point, there is no live leader board, so players cannot strategically herd together. Herding is a common occurrence where players will get to a similar score as others on the leader board and then, to avoid a war of escalation, do nothing and hope that the other player(s) do the same (which they often will). Then, at the very end of the tournament, players will make their moves. Since there is no live leader board, players must guess what scores others will have and should typically compensate in varying ways. This tends to lead to disparate scores. That is the opposite of what is consistently observed at TIV. As a reminder, these tournaments extend a full 72 hours. With larger prize pools, later tournaments would commonly have scores 10 times that of early tournaments. Thus, it is not like players are playing similar strategies over a limited window and the scores are a reflection of some players playing slightly more efficiently than others.

If you make a study of the leader boards, another thing you could gleam is how little is being paid at certain parts of the leader board relative to how much is wagered. Most of the players on these leader boards would presumably be regulars who would start to get an idea of where they would finish. These leader boards would force you to believe that TIV has a core of customers who week after week would wager so much for so little. This is especially true given how prizes are awarded. As a reminder, when receiving a prize, any net gain in (balance + pending withdrawals) on your account during the tournament would be deducted from any prize you'd receive. Thus, one would often receive no prize at all because their balance would be too high. Given the amounts you would need to wager to win anything meaningful, a player should run into 1 of 2 scenarios somewhat frequently:

1. You win a high enough balance that it's no longer worth playing because you’d likely finish with too high a balance to collect the prize you'd win.

2. You hit a balance of $0 and depositing more would have conflicting implications. This is because, while you might move up the leader board, you risk winning and increasing your balance to a point where you'd become ineligible to win the prize you already would have won.

Thus, TIV's rules frequently discourage the one thing they should be trying to maximize: total wagering. For a casino paying such large prize pools, prize pools which are fixed and therefore should seek as much action as possible, this scoring system would be a bit inexplicable. However, if you think cynically and transpose their rules onto scenarios where TIV is in fact not paying out their entire prize pools because they are adding fabricated scores, their rules make sense because a lot of players would receive diminished prizes.

According to TIV, people whose ending account equity would be too high to qualify for a prize are removed from the leader board so somebody else can get their prize. Thus, a large portion of high scores would not be shown on the leader board at all. As a random point, a person could take, for example, a $50K prize out of the prize pool even if they have a $40K net gain in balance and could collect only $10K. This point would remain unknown to everyone else.

continued...

Now let's take a look at the correlation between my personal scores and the scores that were reported when I was in position to win a prize. With over $155,000 in deposits and over $20,000,000 in wagers targeted at these promos, I am an important data point. This is especially true if you make an assessment of how many high rollers TIV is actually likely to have had as customers. I have included all my tournament entries. As you start to see more and more of my finishes, a pattern will emerge.

10/14/2022 Final Scores

Place Prize 50K Total Points

1 10000 USD 967,753

2 8000 USD 931,441

3 6000 USD 899,887

4 5000 USD 866,784

5 3500 USD 823,042

6 3000 USD 798,772

7 2000 USD 763,802

8 1600 USD 752,991

9 1500 USD 741,901

10 1200 USD 717,559 (me)

Above is the first leader board I have on record (the one I showed earlier). I do not believe I received daily scores updates for this and other early tournaments, so I am showing only the final leader boards. At 10th place, notice how small my prize is relative to scores slightly higher.

10/28/2022

1st 100K tournament I have on record.

1 35,000 USD 874,929

2 25,000 USD 831,863

3 15,000 USD 801,771 (me)

4 10,000 USD 768,025

5 5,000 USD 745,186

6 4,000 USD 659,21

7 2000 USD 632,231

8 1500 USD 618,910

9 1,000 USD 590,557

10 500 USD 579,069

Finished third. Nothing especially notable on this particular tournament although I do get narrowly edged out relative to 1st place.

Next tournament: 100K on 11/16/2022

Place Prize 100K Total Points

1 35,000 503,587

2 25,000 421,110

3 15,000 389,381

4 10,000 358,441 (me)

5 5,000 349,952

6 4,000 331,309

7 2,000 317,153

8 1,500 311,087

9 1,000 301,296

10 500 296,429

Above is the scoring coming into the final day. I am 4th.

Final Scores 11/17/2022

35,000 - 1,791,428

25,000 - 1,721,333

15,000 - 1,657,551 (me)

10,000 - 1,428,934

5,000 - 1,291,778

4,000 - 1,226,734

2,000 - 1,087,980

1,500 - 1,022,313

1,000 - 998,941

500 - 981,025

I finish 3rd. Note how I just get edged out of 1st place even though my score was almost twice the previous tournament's high score. More importantly, note how the final day's scores, all the way down, are more than triple that of the previous day's scores despite any sort of live leader board.

Now note the scores of the following tournament. I hit a win target and did not go for a high score in this one. With me out of the picture, the scores revert to being a lot lower.

Final Scores 12th-14th December

Place Prize 100K Total Points

1 35,000 892,287

2 25,000 771,150

3 15,000 703,489

4 10,000 665,543

5 5,000 622,651

6 4,000 551,799

7 2,000 501,741

8 1,500 439,032

9 1,000 388,865

10 500 334,849

Next tournament:

12/20/2022

After day 1.

Place Prize 100K Total Points

1 35,000 303,204

2 25,000 286,171

3 15,000 280,002

4 10,000 269,551

5 5,000 252,881

6 4,000 211,358

7 2,000 201,994

8 1,500 197,831

9 1,000 174,420 (me)

10 500 156,449

12/21/2022

After day 2.

Place Prize 100K Total Points

1 35,000 781,256

2 25,000 739,937

3 15,000 703,716

4 10,000 619,131

5 5,000 556,250 (me)

6 4,000 497,548

7 2,000 474,661

8 1,500 419,992

9 1,000 374,623

10 500 271,873

12/22/2022

Final result for the 19th-21st tourney -

Place Prize 100K Total Points

1 35,000 1,224,883

2 25,000 1,189,615

3 15,000 1,128,414

4 10,000 992,051

5 5,000 821,889

6 4,000 653,330

7 2,000 611,982

8 1,500 602,006

9 1,000 557,191

10 500 413,457

In this tournament, I hit a win target, and my balance became too big to win a prize. Notice the much more reasonable escalation between the day 2 scores and the final scores with me out of the picture.

1st-4th of January

$500K Final scores.

1 - 150,000 – 2,983,773

2 - 100,000 – 2,629,558

3 - 75,000 – 2,242,031

4 - 50,000 – 2,153,140

5 - 25,000 – 1,819,020

6 - 20,000 – 1,690,577

7 - 15,000 - 1,678,706

8 - 10,000 – 1,581,909

9 - 9,000 – 1,361,600

10 - 8,000 – 1,342,250

1st 500K tournament I have on record. I get to an early win target and stop playing. Observe how low the final scores are here relative to the prize pool. I conclude they are beatable and decide to play the next tourney.

continued...

1/17/2023

Next tournament after day 1. I am 12th.

1 - 150,000 - 1,024,771

2 - 100,000 - 1,017,558

3 - 75,000 - 1,003,741

4 - 50,000 - 955,038

5 - 25,000 - 909,113

6 - 20,000 - 898,025

7 - 15,000 - 841,207

8 - 10,000 - 777,909

9 - 9,000 - 713,440

10 - 8,000 - 678,386

11 - 7,000 - 627,949

12 - 6,000 - 569,800 (me)

1/18/2023

After 2nd day.

1 - 150,000 - 3,004,136

2 - 100,000 - 2,911,664

3 - 75,000 - 2,689,396

4 - 50,000 - 2,624,209

5 - 25,000 - 2,398,701

6 - 20,000 - 2,233,535

7 - 15,000 - 2,204875 (me)

8 - 10,000 - 1,895,814

9 - 9,000 - 1,638,058

10 - 8,000 - 1,544,549

1/19/2023

Final Scores

1 - 150,000 - 7,744,662

2 - 100,000 - 6,847,781

3 - 75,000 - 6,447,367

4 - 50,000 - 6,389,385 (me)

5 - 25,000 - 5,478,872

6 - 20,000 - 4,953,980

7 - 15,000 - 4,846,315

8 - 10,000 - 3,978,687

9 - 9,000 - 3,361,295

10 - 8,000 - 3,118,444

Notice here that, with me playing, the scores are > 2.5x the previous tournament. Also, notice the final day’s escalation in scores that correspond to my big push. I finish a disappointing 4th, edged out narrowly by the top 3. Remember, players should often be reaching one of the 2 stopping point scenarios I discussed earlier. This factor should become elevated over the course of millions in wagers. Let's go the next tournament.

1/24/2023

After day 1.

1 - 150,000 - 1,531,114

2 - 100,000 - 1,336,081

3 - 75,000 - 1,297,557

4 - 50,000 - 1,211,846

5 - 25,000 - 1,143,287

6 - 20,000 - 1,091,664

7 - 15,000 - 1,072,500 (me)

8 - 10,000 - 998,412

9 - 9,000 - 899,991

10 - 8,000 - 873,444

1/25/2023

After day 2.

1 - 150,000 - 6,117,651

2 - 100,000 - 5,729,980

3 - 75,000 - 5,614,383

4 - 50,000 - 5,387,325 (me)

5 - 25,000 - 4,499,354

6 - 20,000 - 3,767,815

7 - 15,000 - 3,165,533

8 - 10,000 - 3,002,798

9 - 9,000 - 2,661,634

10 - 8,000 - 2,582,207

1/26/2023

Final Scores.

1 - 150,000 - 12,790,784

2 - 100,000 - 12,313,771

3 - 75,000 - 11,765,930 (me)

4 - 50,000 - 11,299,331

5 - 25,000 - 8,759,762

6 - 20,000 - 8,495,292

7 - 15,000 - 7,008,490

8 - 10,000 - 6,638,585

9 - 9,000 - 5,634,679

10 - 8,000 - 5,373,572

Again, notice the escalation of scores (including day 1 to day 2). In just two tournaments (3 weeks real time), the scores of such a high-profile event (which should have garnered substantial attention the first time around) quadrupled. The result is that I finish 3rd despite a score of 11,765,930.

I’d now like to address the limits of scoring capacity for these tournaments. There was really only one available game that would have been viable for wagering amounts large enough to compete for the highest prizes. That would have been blackjack from Dragon Gaming. The game had a $500 per hand limit. It may not seem like it, but the 6.4 million points I got credited for on the final day of the tournament is actually kind of a lot. Wagers prior to 5:42 am would have been attributed to the previous day and Dragon Gaming blackjack has a slow maximum animation speed. I had been max betting most of the second day, got about 4 hours sleep, and then went straight back to max betting the entire final day (minus a few modest interruptions). I barely moved or ate anything that entire final day and played quickly and mechanically like a robot to the exclusion of everything else. The field, which put up such mediocre scores just 3 weeks ago, would have needed to have gotten good in a hurry just to have the stamina.

I will now present my final piece of evidence. The above tournament didn't end on midnight as usual. Somewhere during the 2nd half of the tournament, TIV decided to add on another 2 hours to the end of the tournament. I did not even learn this was the case until I went on chat shortly after the normal midnight finish. Besides the ethical implications of changing the rules during the middle of a tournament, I received no email notifications about this change and would presume others didn't either. The reason TIV cited for this extension was a 17-minute period the previous day where one of their software providers, Rival, went offline for an upgrade. I was not only livid because I had to wager for another 2 hours, but because I might have been forced to deposit another $10,000 to $20,000 to realistically continue competing for 1st place if my balance didn't hold up. Such extra deposits would have had substantially compromised value when you take into account TIV’s prize eligibility rules. I complained and TIV followed up with an email compiling the total points they claimed were scored by the leader board in those extra two hours.

continued...

Prize, Score Prior to Final 2 Hours, Points Scored Final 2 Hours

1 - 150,000 - 12,259,727 (+531,057)

2 - 100,000 - 12,101,777 (+211,994)

3 - 75,000 - 11,102,830 (+663,100) (me)

4 - 50,000 - 11,172,314 (+127,017)

5 - 25,000 - 8,468,347 (+291,415)

6 - 20,000 - 8,397,648 (+97,644)

7 - 15,000 - 6,637,336 (+371,154)

8 - 10,000 - 6,445,696 (+192,889)

9 - 9,000 - 5,533,267 (+101,412)

10 - 8,000 - 5,343,671 (+29,901)

11 - 7,000 - 4,220,078 (+171,552)

12 - 6,000 - 3,801,371 (+79,658)

13 - 5,000 - 3,266,345 (+212,009)

14 - 4,000 - 3,385,906 (0)

15 - 3,000 - 2,229,306 (+47,994)

16 - 2,000 - 1,998,625 (0)

17 - 1,000 - 1,121,266 (+33,277)

18 - 900 - 835,815 (+12,856)

19 - 750 - 724,255 (+2500)

20 - 500 - 620,242 (+61,411)

Note that a significant swath of these players may not even have known the tournament was extended. I knew only because I was proactive in going to chat. Yet, 90% had meaningful outputs. Secondly, this time period would have corresponded to Thursday between 12 am and 2 am EST. This list would imply a lot of truly dedicated competition, especially in the lower parts of the leader board where the prizes were smaller. By my way of thinking, a good number of players in the top 20 would probably have hit a natural stopping point somewhere in the first 72 hours of the tournament where they would have run into one of the 2 scenarios I described earlier. They wouldn't play the final 2 hours because they would have no motivation to do so. Finally, if you dissect the actual dollar amounts, they raise questions. The players in the top 4 could have only gotten their scores by wagering one way the final day. That would have been to go 100% all day. Their final day scores would require an average pace of about 330K an hour and that's if they played straight through since 6:00 am. Instead, the rest of the top 4 averaged about 145K an hour during this period. Conveniently, these final 2 hours moved me up a rank. After reading the above email, I decided I would play no further tournaments because I no longer trusted TIV. I did not immediately report my suspicions because I had a huge balance to collect and figured doing so could jeopardize it. 

One final point. I have posted publicly about this in order to refine my presentation for a complaint. I haven't gotten any push back as to my reasoning, but that is not my takeaway. I realized I would get a TLDR reaction from most people, but my real takeaway is that no one seems to care about this casino group at all. I think this reinforces that they do not have anywhere close to the pool of players required to put up the scores they are reporting (especially since I have gotten over 13,000 views).

Final Leader Boards. Not pertinent info but I've included for sake of disclosure and because the distribution of scoring conforms to the irregular nature of previous tournaments.

Halloween 50K 2022? *My best interpretation of email from 10/26/2022.

1 10000 USD 712,619

2 8000 USD 692,733

3 6000 USD 661,242

4 5000 USD 641,225

5 3500 USD 617,551

6 3000 USD 611,997

7 2000 USD 602,873

8 1600 USD 581,119

9 1500 USD 559,442

10 1200 USD 548,099

Final Scores Feb 6-8 2023

1 - 150,000 - 14,311,879

2 - 100,000 - 13,224,599

3 - 75,000 - 13,057,002

4 - 50,000 - 12,151,412

5 - 25,000 - 10,944,120

6 - 20,000 - 9,117,314

7 - 15,000 - 7,992,119

8 - 10,000 - 7,764,491

9 - 9,000 - 6,338,515

10 - 8,000 - 5,869,277

11 - 7,000 - 5,035,113

12 - 6,000 - 4,442,125

13 - 5,000 - 4,070,217

14 - 4,000 - 3,831,465

15 - 3,000 - 3,642,060

16 - 2,000 - 3,285,527

17 - 1,000 - 2,739,818

18 - 900 - 2,216,034

19 - 750 - 1,112,366

20 - 500 - 842,096

Superbowl Tourney 2/13 - 2/15 2023

Was advertised as $1,000,000 tourney on the 12th. Prize pool they sent me seems to add to 500K.

Final Scores $1 bet = 0.5 point

1 - 150,000 - 11,975,331

2 - 100,000 - 10,260,097

3 - 75,000 - 9,818,126

4 - 50,000 - 9,033,019

5 - 25,000 - 6,202,433

6 - 20,000 - 5,902,887

7 - 15,000 - 5,437,757

8 - 10,000 - 4,822,637

9 - 9,000 - 4,638,003

10 - 8,000 - 4,015,347

11 - 7,000 - 3,253,990

12 - 6,000 - 2,741,389

13 - 5,000 - 2,110,191

14 - 4,000 - 1,065,243

15 - 3,000 - 998,541

16 - 2,000 - 928,955

17 - 1,000 - 632,414

18 - 900 - 218,410

19 - 750 - 110,763

20 - 500 - 102,846

Dear mcd6802,

Due to a temporary issue the system did not show your other complaint regarding the same issue. As it was previously rejected, I will be now forced to close this complaint as well. Please if the situation was explained in the past, submitting the same complaint with the same issue will be automatically rejected.

Best regards,

Nick