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Happy anniversary, readers, from the original Git it girl

Stob It's 30 years since .EXE Magazine carried the first Stob column; this is its pearl Perl anniversary. Rereading article #1, a spoof self-tester in the Cosmo style, I was struck by how distant the world it invoked seemed. For example:…

Staff tell El Reg to expect another wave of deck chair rearranging

Exclusive The exit of three senior executives at the top of Fujitsu's Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) management stack has unsettled the workforce who are braced for yet more restructuring.…

When Irish-made drives are migrating

Exclusive Dell EMC is terminating the contract it had with electronics manufacturer Celestica to take production in-house at its Cork-based facility in Ireland, with hundreds of jobs said to be at risk.…

And you're doing it in real time, yes? Is that a no?

Comment It's exasperating how each high-profile computer security breach reveals similar patterns of failure, no matter the organization involved.…

Probation, comm service for poachers turned gamekeepers

The three brains behind the Mirai malware, which infects and pressgangs Internet-of-Things devices into a botnet army, have avoided jail.…

Last week, Gamblit Gaming announced that it will soon launch a pair of poker “skill game” machines on casino floors, Deal or No Deal Poker and Deal or No Deal Poker Special. The games were first unveiled at the Global Gaming Expo eleven months ago and will go live later this year.

A Game of Random Luck

The games were developed in collaboration with Endemol Shine Gaming, a subsidiary of the Endemol Shine Group, the company that created the hit Deal or No Deal television show. For those unfamiliar with the show, it is a pure luck-based game with a small bit of strategy involved. In the television show, the contest chooses from one of 26 closed briefcases, each of which contains a different amount of money, from a penny to a million dollars. In the first round, the contestant eliminates six of the remaining cases. After that, a mysterious “banker” gives the contestant a dollar offer, based on a percentage of the average values of the briefcases still available. The contestant can choose to take the offer or continue on, risking that the briefcase he chose has more money in it.

The game goes on from there, with the contestant eliminating more briefcases and the banker giving more offers until the contestant ends up with the offer or his briefcase.

Deal or No Deal Poker

Gamblit Gaming’s new games use the Deal or No Deal format with a poker spin. Deal or No Deal Poker is a single-player game which is essentially video poker. Five cards are dealt to begin and the player chooses which ones to hold, just like in video poker. Above each card is a column of five briefcases, each of which contains a card from the deck; for each card that is discarded, the player can select one of the five briefcases in the column above it. Those new cards make the player’s final five-card hand.

That’s not all, though. If the player holds three or fewer cards, the “banker” will give the player a monetary offer after the first new card is chosen. The player can evaluate the offer based on the current hand and the payout tables and choose to take it or draw the next card. Offers are made until there is just one card left to select.

Deal or No Deal Poker Special

Deal or No Deal Poker Special is a four-player game where the participants sit down and compete against each other. After each person places an equivalent bet, briefcases with dollar (or cent) amounts are mixed up in the center of the table (displayed on a monitor, of course). Each player then selects one, which is the possible prize he or she can win.

When the game begins, each player is dealt two cards face-up and a timer begins to count down. At the same time, cards from the deck are revealed one by one. If a player wants to add that card to his hand, he presses a “Grab Card” button. Only one person can get each card, so it is a quick-finger contest if more than one person wants the same card. When someone completes their five-card hand, the timer advances quickly and the remaining players only have a few more seconds to find some cards. The player with the best five-card hand at the end wins.

And of course, since it’s Deal or No Deal, a few of the unselected briefcases are opened to show their dollar amounts and the dealer makes the winner an offer. The winner can take it or go for the briefcase he took in the beginning.

The post Deal or No Deal Video Poker Games to Hit Casinos in 2018 appeared first on Poker News Daily.

Cancer, brain damage, a bad back ... it's all for a good cause

A year-long round trip to Mars could give you more than half the maximum radiation dose recommended for an astronaut's entire career, according to data collected by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.…

Cheating and dishonesty are generally frowned upon in civilized society. I know that might be a blazing hot take, but I put it out there. This is why I have always found it bizarre that a solid percentage of people – a majority, maybe? – think it’s perfectly cool to try to get one over on casinos. Someone figured out how to dupe a slot machine? Kudos! It is not often, though, that we see a casino dealer get involved in the cheating, which is exactly what happened last year at the MGM National Harbor Casino in Maryland. Ming Zhang, a baccarat dealer, has recently pleaded guilty to his crime.

Baccarat, Explained Poorly

Baccarat resembles blackjack (kind of) in that the player and dealer each get dealt two cards, can take another, and try to get as close as they can to a key number. There are significant differences, though. For one, the player doesn’t actually play against the dealer; the gambler in this case simply bets on which hand – the dealer’s or the players’ – will win. In baccarat, cards less than ten are worth their face value. Tens and paint cards are worth zero. The two cards at each spot (player and dealer) are added up and the one’s digit of the sum is the total value. Thus, a two and five are worth seven, while an eight and nine are also worth seven.

If either the player or dealer is dealt a pair of cards worth eight or nine, the game is over and winning bets are paid. If not, a set of rules dictates if either the player or dealer is given one more card. After that, whichever hand is the highest wins. Ties can be bet on, as well.

It’s a Bold Strategy, Cotton

So it would be VERY valuable to know what cards are coming, right? If you knew one hand was going to be dealt two fours, that would be some important information, correct? Yeah, well, that’s exactly what happened in this case. Zhang – the dealer, remember – allegedly showed a player accomplice a part of the deck. That player then took a picture of it, which I would assume would be in order to remember what cards were shown. The player – and possibly others – then used that information to place their bets.

In total, the dealer and his accomplice cheated the MGM National Harbor Casino out of $1,046,560 last September. This may not have been the first time he did this, either. Court filings show that he was present when someone else did this at a different casino and was later paid $1,000. He demanded more and was approached by investigators about it the next day, but denied any involvement.

Zhang has pleaded guilty one count of conspiring to transport stolen funds and faces up to five years behind bars. He is scheduled to be sentenced on January 31st.

The post Baccarat Dealer Ming Zhang Pleads Guilty to Cheating appeared first on Poker News Daily.

Fresh from British Airways hack, Magecart strikes again

Netizens buying stuff from Newegg had their bank card details skimmed for a month by hackers who stashed the Magecart toolkit on the dot-com's payment pages.…

It was on to Day 2 of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Borgata Poker Open Main Event on Tuesday as the 490 survivors from the two starting flights came together to continue their advance to the money. Just 142 remain after Day 2 with TK Miles leading the way, bagging 1.062 million chips at night’s end.

Registration for the tournament did not close until the end of Level 10, two levels into Tuesday’s action. As a result, the total field swelled from 917 to 1,075, creating a prize pool of $3,441,075, easily beating the $3 million guarantee. 135 players will make the money; $6,097 will be the min cash and the winner will cash for $575,112. Clearly, the opening minutes of Day 3 will be tense as just a handful of eliminations are needed for the money bubble to burst.

In fact, the pressure-packed beginning to Day 3 was created by a late schedule change on Tuesday. The original play was to play through eight levels, ending at the close of Level 16. But because the money bubble was approaching, tournament management didn’t want the bubble to burst right at the end of the night, so it was decided that play would stop with 144 players remaining.* Obviously, that line was crossed slightly, but the end result was the same: those with short stacks will have to sweat it out overnight.

Miles is the only player in the tourney after Day 2 with more than a million chips. He is also the only player over 900,000 and 800,000. Nobody else has more than a quarter million chips. In fact, only eight players besides Miles have eclipsed the 600,000 chip mark. Needless to say, he is doing quite well.

This is nothing new for TK Miles, as he has more than $2.8 million in live tournament cashes in his career. Interestingly, even with that lofty sum, there isn’t one, single mind-blowing score on his resume. Not to say that more than $295,000 from winning the championship event of the 2014 Seminole Hard Rock Tampa Summer Poker Open isn’t money that could, say, pay off my house and leave me with more than $100,000 left over, but hey, I’m just making an observation.

2018 World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open Main Event – Day 2 Chip Leaders

1. TK Miles – 1,062,000
2. Leonard Sande – 752,000
3. Akash Seth – 722,000
4. Liam He – 710,000
5. Joshua Gordon – 706,000
6. David Lin – 704,000
7. Michael Wang 692,000
8. Bruce Collado – 690,000
9. Ali Imsirovic – 657,000
10. Ryan Hall – 570,000

*I don’t know exactly why this is, but I am guessing that it has to do with simply wanting everybody to be able to retire for the night. Allowing the money bubble to burst so close to the end of the night means that hand-for-hand play will have to take effect, which slows things down (though of course, the end of Level 16 could be reached). Possibly more importantly, it means a bunch of the staff will have to hang around to process cashouts.

The post 2018 WPT Borgata Poker Open Main Event Day 3: TK Miles Open Up Wide Lead as Money Bubble Approaches appeared first on Poker News Daily.

International hunt for American bod after he skips flight home

Cody Wilson, notorious for publishing 3D-printed gun designs online, is believed to be holed up in Taiwan after US cops suspected him of sexually assaulting an underage teenager.…

Learn everything you need to know about company deployment

Promo Although Windows 10 has been on the scene since 2015, users were at first reluctant to abandon their familiar and usable Windows 7 for the attractions of the bigger and better operating system.…

UK watchdog demands max penalty after security snafu

The UK's privacy watchdog wants to fine Equifax £500,000 ($660,000) after hackers siphoned off 15 million Brits' info from the credit-score agency's databases.…

Consumer groups beg to differ

Big cable companies have told the federal government that "now's not the time" to talk about US internet speeds; despite a new program that will pay them billions of dollars to expand broadband access across the country, and a new proposal that put even more money in their pockets.…

Consumer groups beg to differ

Big cable companies have told the federal government that "now's not the time" to talk about US internet speeds; despite a new program that will pay them billions of dollars to expand broadband access across the country, and a new proposal that put even more money in their pockets.…

EU-funded gizmo clings to trash like a face hugger

Video Scientists have managed to capture a small floating human-made satellite using a net deployed from a spacecraft orbiting the Earth for the first time.…

Probably cost a pretty PENNE to run that physics simulation

Good luck sinking your teeth into nuclear pasta. For one it’ll be tricky to get a hold of since it’s the stuff lodged inside neutron stars. Additionally, it may also be the universe’s strongest material.…

One-size-fits-all pricing will expand, not narrow, digital divide

The latest effort by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to expand 5G networks across the United States is little more than a cash giveaway to large telcos and will grow, rather than close, the digital divide.…

Better update if you leave your laptop unattended in public...

Telco EE's Mini Wi-Fi modem needs to be updated with a recently issued patch.…

Your video guide to locking down systems – and then fire questions our way

Promo On September 26 at 10:00 PT / 11:00 MT / 13:00 ET / 18:00 BST we're broadcasting live with an exploration of insider threats to enterprises and other organizations.…