This post is for yanks21x :

Poker Players Alliance Tries To Delay UIGEA’s December 1st Deadline

Recent legislation designed to halt the UIGEA being enforced in December failed to make it past Congress and so the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) have adopted a different tactic to try deferring the time limit to a later date.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has now received a petition from the PPA ‘interest group’ requesting an extension of one year to the December deadline under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

Within the petition was mentioned a warning that enforcing the statute would put “an unreasonable burden on regulators and the financial services industry at a time of economic crisis.”  The reference here is to banks and designated payment systems who, once the date is reached, will be required to block movement of funds from their business to the online poker sites.

Up until now there have been only a few instances of banks freezing the accounts of processing companies involved in online poker payments, usually under orders from authorities, because compliance of the UIGEA was not required until December 1st.

The experience of American online poker players could be about to change drastically but not if the PPA has anything to do about it. The U.S. Treasury Secretary now has 180 days to reply to the petition.

If you aren’t familiar with the UIGEA, it’s a bill that was signed into law on October 13th, 2006 when it was piggy-backed (at the last moment) on the Security and Accountability for Every Port Act of 2006 (SAFE Port Act). This caused the first big crash in online poker, basically wiping out Party Poker to U.S. players. Also, Neteller stopped processing and a scare hit the online community. I remember in 2000 before online poker was popular but offshore sportsbooks was gaining huge popularity, they first outlawed using credit cards directly to those sites. Once you got Neteller and FirePay (Paypal originally, and many others), the online surge was on its way.

The biggest obstacle in 2006 wasn't the law itself, it was the scare it caused among the community. The highest stakes players online didn't worry, but 95% of the online world did. Now the same holds true. Yes, it will be harder getting money on and off, but if there is still enough players actively playing, these companies will always find a way to get you access.

It started with PlanetPoker, where players were able to predict what cards were going to be dealt. This was about a decade ago, and the problem was with the software.

  The Flawed ASF Shuffling Algorithm 

procedure TDeck.Shuffle;
var
	ctr: Byte;
	tmp: Byte;

	random_number: Byte;
begin
	{ Fill the deck with unique cards }
	for ctr := 1 to 52 do
		Card[ctr] := ctr;

	{ Generate a new seed based on the system clock }
	randomize;

	{ Randomly rearrange each card }
	for ctr := 1 to 52 do begin
		random_number := random(51)+1;
		tmp := card[random_number];
		card[random_number] := card[ctr];
		card[ctr] := tmp;
	end;

	CurrentCard := 1;
	JustShuffled := True;
end;

The shuffling algorithm shown in Figure 1 was posted by ASF Software in order to convince people that their computer-generated shuffles were entirely fair. Ironically, it had the exact opposite effect on us.

The algorithm starts by initializing an array with values in order from 1 to 52, representing the 52 possible cards. Then, the program initializes a pseudo-random number generator using the system clock with a call to Randomize(). The actual shuffle is performed by swapping every position in the array, in turn, with a randomly chosen position. The position to swap with is chosen by calls to the pseudo-random number generator.

Problem One: An Off-By-One Error Astute programmers will have noticed that the algorithm in question contains an off-by-one error. The algorithm is supposed to traverse the initial deck while swapping each card with any other card. Unlike most Pascal functions, the function Random(n) actually returns a number between 0 and n-1 instead of a number between 1 and n. The algorithm uses the following snippet of code to choose which card to swap with the current card: . The formula sets random_number to a value between 1 and 51. In short, the algorithm in question never chooses to swap the current card with the last card. When ctr finally reaches the last card, 52, that card is swapped with any other card except itself. That means this shuffling algorithm never allows the 52nd card to end up in the 52nd place. This is an obvious, but easily correctable, violation of fairness.

Problem Two: Bad Distribution Of Shuffles A closer examination of the shuffling algorithm reveals that, regardless of the off-by-one problem, it doesn't return an even distribution of decks.