Exploring social gambling: scoping, classification and evidence review

The aim of this report is to speculate on the level of concern we might have regarding consumer risk in relation to ‘social gambling.’ In doing so, this report is intended to help form the basis to initiate debate around a new and under-researched social issue; assist in setting a scientific research agenda; and, where appropriate, highlight concerns about any potential areas that need to be considered in terms of precautionary regulation. This report does not present a set of empirical research findings regarding ‘social gambling’ but rather gathers information to improve stakeholder understanding

Why Swedish people play online poker and factors that can increase or decrease trust in poker websites: a qualitative investigation

Three face-to-face focus groups that included 24 online poker players were conducted in Stockholm to investigate their motivations for playing online poker and issues relating to their trust of poker Web sites. Casual players played because they liked the convenience, the ease of learning, the low stake size, the relief from boredom, and the social interactions. “Professional” players played to win money and utilised several features of the online game for psychological tactics. They also tended to play several tables at once. Factors that affected how much a player would trust an online poker Web site included the size and reputation of the operator, the speed with which winnings were paid out, the clarity of the Web site design, the technical reliability of the service, and the accessibility and effectiveness of the customer service. Responsible gaming measures also increased levels of trust by demonstrating company integrity and by reducing anxiety about winning from other players. The findings indicate that providing a safe online environment with effective responsible gaming measures may be much more than just a moral and regulatory requirement. Players in this study suggested that such features are sometimes necessary in order to achieve an enjoyable gaming experience. Consequently, responsible gaming initiatives and good business practice do not have to be mutually exclusive. Indeed, in this particular scenario, they might even be considered mutually dependent. This project was funded by Svenska Spel, the operators of the Swedish National Lottery. Other than agreeing to the research question, Svenska Spel had no say in how the research was carried out, the results that were reported, the conclusions that were drawn, or the editing of the report

Gaming security by obscurity

Shannon sought security against the attacker with unlimited computational powers: *if an information source conveys some information, then Shannon's attacker will surely extract that information*. Diffie and Hellman refined Shannon's attacker model by taking into account the fact that the real attackers are computationally limited. This idea became one of the greatest new paradigms in computer science, and led to modern cryptography. Shannon also sought security against the attacker with unlimited logical and observational powers, expressed through the maxim that "the enemy knows the system". This view is still endorsed in cryptography. The popular formulation, going back to Kerckhoffs, is that "there is no security by obscurity", meaning that the algorithms cannot be kept obscured from the attacker, and that security should only rely upon the secret keys. In fact, modern cryptography goes even further than Shannon or Kerckhoffs in tacitly assuming that *if there is an algorithm that can break the system, then the attacker will surely find that algorithm*. The attacker is not viewed as an omnipotent computer any more, but he is still construed as an omnipotent programmer. So the Diffie-Hellman step from unlimited to limited computational powers has not been extended into a step from unlimited to limited logical or programming powers. Is the assumption that all feasible algorithms will eventually be discovered and implemented really different from the assumption that everything that is computable will eventually be computed? The present paper explores some ways to refine the current models of the attacker, and of the defender, by taking into account their limited logical and programming powers. If the adaptive attacker actively queries the system to seek out its vulnerabilities, can the system gain some security by actively learning attacker's methods, and adapting to them?Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables; final version appeared in the Proceedings of New Security Paradigms Workshop 2011 (ACM 2011); typos correcte

Machine learning applied to the context of Poker

A combinação de princípios da teoria de jogo e metodologias de machine learning aplicados ao contexto de formular estratégias ótimas para jogos está a angariar interesse por parte de uma porção crescentemente significativa da comunidade científica, tornando-se o jogo do Poker num candidato de estudo popular devido à sua natureza de informação imperfeita. Avanços nesta área possuem vastas aplicações em cenários do mundo real, e a área de investigação de inteligência artificial demonstra que o interesse relativo a este objeto de estudo está longe de desaparecer, com investigadores do Facebook e Carnegie Mellon a apresentar, em 2019, o primeiro agente de jogo autónomo de Poker provado como ganhador num cenário com múltiplos jogadores, uma conquista relativamente à anterior especificação do estado da arte, que fora desenvolvida para jogos de apenas 2 jogadores. Este estudo pretende explorar as características de jogos estocásticos de informação imperfeita, recolhendo informação acerca dos avanços nas metodologias disponibilizados por parte de investigadores de forma a desenvolver um agente autónomo de jogo que se pretende inserir na classificação de "utility-maximizing decision-maker".The combination of game theory principles and machine learning methodologies applied to encountering optimal strategies for games is garnering interest from an increasing large portion of the scientific community, with the game of Poker being a popular study subject due to its imperfect information nature. Advancements in this area have a wide array of applications in real-world scenarios, and the field of artificial intelligent studies show that the interest regarding this object of study is yet to fade, with researchers from Facebook and Carnegie Mellon presenting, in 2019, the world’s first autonomous Poker playing agent that is proven to be profitable while confronting multiple players at a time, an achievement in relation to the previous state of the art specification, which was developed for two player games only. This study intends to explore the characteristics of stochastic games of imperfect information, gathering information regarding the advancements in methodologies made available by researchers in order to ultimately develop an autonomous agent intended to adhere to the classification of a utility-maximizing decision-maker

The Elgamal Cryptosystem is better than Th RSA Cryptosystem for Mental Poker

Cryptosystems are one of the most important parts of secure online poker card games. However, there is no research comparing the RSA Cryptosystem (RC) and Elgamal Cryptosystem (EC) for mental poker card games. This paper compares the RSA Cryptosystem and Elgamal Cryptosystem implementations of mental poker card games using distributed key generation schemes. Each implementation is based on a joint encryption/decryption of individual cards. Both implementations use shared private key encryption/decryption schemes and neither uses a trusted third party (TTP). The comparison criteria will be concentrated on the security and computational complexity of the game, collusions among the players and the debate between the discrete logarithm problem (DLP) and the factoring problem (FP) for the encryption/decryption schemes. Under these criteria, the comparison results demonstrate that the Elgamal Cryptosystem has better efficiency and effectiveness than RSA for mental poker card games

Formal Verification of Security Protocol Implementations: A Survey

Automated formal verification of security protocols has been mostly focused on analyzing high-level abstract models which, however, are significantly different from real protocol implementations written in programming languages. Recently, some researchers have started investigating techniques that bring automated formal proofs closer to real implementations. This paper surveys these attempts, focusing on approaches that target the application code that implements protocol logic, rather than the libraries that implement cryptography. According to these approaches, libraries are assumed to correctly implement some models. The aim is to derive formal proofs that, under this assumption, give assurance about the application code that implements the protocol logic. The two main approaches of model extraction and code generation are presented, along with the main techniques adopted for each approac

The Regulation of Internet Gambling in the United States: It\u27s Time for the Federal Government to Deal the Cards

This comment will provide an overview of the history of gambling laws and regulations in the United States to establish a framework for the analysis of regulation of Internet gambling. Next, this comment will discuss the current state of the law regarding Internet gambling in the United States and the effects of recent legal developments in the industry. This comment will expound on state action in the realm of Internet gambling, including proposed legislation, the expansion of state gambling commissions, and successfully enacted legislation. Finally, this comment will analyze the implications of state actions and how they relate and contribute to federal proposals for national regulation of Internet gambling, including the establishment of a federal gambling commission