Moore Games – Changed allowed games 4 days after a great win of 24k.

Hi Granti56 - thanks for getting in contact.

I'll contact Moore Games just now and see what I can find out. Please bare in mind that as this is already Friday afternoon, I'm unlikely to receive a response before next week.

ThePOGG

Also I'll need your username and the email address you use at Moore Games before I contact them.

Thanks

ThePOGG

Thank you.
My username is [EDIT]
My email is [EDIT]
Also my deposit was 200 euro and the bonus was 200 euro with wager requirements 16000

Hi Granti56,

Can you confirm for me that you played Hitman?

ThePOGG

Yes i played Hitman, and Tomb Raider and Thunderstruck.
These are the games they removed.

I check now again the terms and they removed also the slot Secret Admirer , which was the first slot i had play during my game play.

Thanks for that Granti56 - let me speak to Moore Games and see what happens. Did you take a screen shot of the terms and conditions at the time you signed up?

ThePOGG

No i didn,t did this, but at your site you can find the terms before changed (http://thepogg.com/casino-review/moore-games/) and of course check this link, is from google cache which is from 13/04.

hxxp://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8aAmtC7ESpUJ:https://www.mooregames.com/double-your-money/+&cd=1&hl=el&ct=clnk&gl=gr.

Thanks for your help again.

Hi Granti56,

I had already spotted the difference in terms from those we listed in our update in Feb, but the terms could have changed at any point between then and now. The google cache however really narrows the field.

I have edited your post slightly - I understand your frustration, but for the time being lets not throw accusations around.

ThePOGG

Hi Granti56,

I have deleted your last post as it makes similar accusations to my previous edit that currently the evidence does not substantiate.

All I can confirm at the current time is that 4 days before you signed up the terms definitely did allow the games you played.

Please allow me time to liaise with Moore Games and get their side of the story.

ThePOGG

Hi Granti56,

I have tried to contact Moore Games a couple of times this week regarding this issue with no success. I'm going to extend this complaint for another week - it's possible that my contact has been off sick or there is some other issue - as I'd like to continue working on this as long as I feel a resolution may be possible.

Thanks

ThePOGG

Hello.
Thanks for the help.
Do we have any news from them?

Sorry about the delay Granti56 - I was away from the computer for most of the day yesterday.

Unfortunately I have not heard anything back from Moore Games at this point. I've emailed them around an hour ago to inform them that if I've not heard back from them by Tuesday I will be publishing a report reflecting the nature of this complaint.

Hopefully this will get them moving, but I wouldn't count on it at this stage.

ThePOGG

Ok Moore Games have had more than enough time to respond to this complaint, or even make any reasonable effort. They haven’t. As such, I’m closing this complaint as Found for the Player.

Worse than not responding to this complaint, I’ve come to believe that Moore Games did in fact change their list of allowed game after Granti56 hit their win. There are several factors that have influenced this conclusion which I’ll go through below.

Firstly Granti56 claims to have played Hitman, Tomb Raider, Secret Admirer and Thunderstruck all of which are big name Microgaming titles. During our last review update in February 2013, all four of these games were on the allowed list. Checking against the current list, of the original 88 game present on the list in February 2013 4 have been removed – Hitman, Tomb Raider, Secret Admirer and Thunderstruck.

Further to this, when we checked the Google cache on the specific promotion page, we can confirm – as will the video below – that on the 13th of April 2013, all of these games were still on the allowed list;

Granti56 claims to have played on the 17th of April. This means that for Moore Games to be right and Granti56 to have played a disallowed game, they would have to have altered the allowed games sometime between the 13th and the 17th of April 2013. There are only three possible way in which Granti56 could have ended up playing these excluded games;

1. Granti56 looked at the list at the time of play and chose to play games that were not allowed

2. Granti56 looked at an old list and selected the games previous to when they actually played

3. Granti56 did not look at the list of allowed games

Going through these options one at a time;

1. I can see no logical reason that any player would specifically choose to ignore the allowed list – it would create a guaranteed lose situations.

2. I find the idea that Granti56 read the list previous to the change and select their games at a point in time prior to actually playing very unlikely, but even if this was the case out of 88 games on the allowed list, 4 were removed – for Granti56 to have selected all 4 that were removed would be mathematically expressed as such;

4/88 x 3/87 x 2/86 x 1/85 = 1 in 2331891

Simply put there is only a 1 in 2331891 chance that Granti56 randomly selected all 4 games removed from the list of 88.

3. Granti56 did not look at the list of allowed games. This is far from unlikely, many players fail to properly read the terms and conditions when playing with a bonus. However a similar but reversed problem occurs with this solution. Assuming that we only look at the ‘Slots’ and ‘Other’ game categories, there are 95 games, only 4 of which were moved from the allowed to the disallowed categories. Repeating the sum above;

4/95 x 3/94 x 2/93 x 1/91 = 1 in 3183545

In other words, if Granti56 did not look at the list of allowed games, there’s even less chance of them selecting the 4 games that were removed.

Given that regardless of how Granti56 selected the games it is highly unlikely that they selected the same four at that Moore Games decided to remove, we now have to consider the other possibility; that Moore Games removed four games from the allowed list after a player had a substantial win playing them and in an effort to justify not paying the player. In this scenario there is clear motive, that being not having to pay out €24k, and as the games are specifically identified after the event, no mathematically unlikely coincidences.

However there is one further factor to consider; the one piece of information that we managed to get out of Moore Games before they stopped communicating is that they removed these games due to Return to Player bandings - in other words these games were considered by Moore Games to be too cheap for the player to play. Is it possible that Granti56 having looked at the list of allowed games before the change and selected the 4 lowest house edge/highest RTP games from the list, went back a few days later and coincidentally Moore Games had removed those games for exactly that reason? In short no.

This site’s slot review section provides extensive information on the RTPs of many slots games, including many of the Microgaming slots games that Moore Games offer. Below are the house edge figures for the four removed games (the highlighted entries have been independently verified by a source we can’t name);

Hitman 3.7-4.52%
Thunderstruck 3.9-4%
Secret Admirer 3.92%
Tomb Raider 4-4.45%

Even if we assume that the lowest house edge figure in the above list is correct, then if Moore Games are claiming that they removed games based on RTP banding, anything less that 3.7% should have been removed from the allowed games. Below are the games that remain on the Moore games list that contradict this (the highlighted entries have been independently verified by a source we can’t name);

Cops and Robbers 3%
5 Reel Drive 3.05%
Reel Thunder 3.05%
Carnaval 3.06%
Thunderstruck 2 3.35%
Age of Discovery 3.38%
Bush Telegraph 3.44%
Joker 8000 3.5%
Hellboy 3.51%

All of these games fall substantially beneath the 3.7% that is the lowest figure on the removed list. Basically, the figures that we’ve seen and had confirmed for us do not support the four removed games having been removed because they were too generous to the player, leaving us with only one remaining conclusion – these games were removed after a sizable win to justify not paying the win.

I can’t prove unequivocally that this is the case – I would need to have seen the list on the 17th of April to do that - but the evidence very strongly indicates that it is and as such we will be blacklisting Moore Games effective immediately.

Further supporting this are two highly worrying factors. The first of these occurred when we later checked to see the Google cache again for the specific promotion page, the page we saw was dated the 28th of March. The Google cache is a screenshot of the last time that Google looked at that page. The first time we looked at the Google cache for that page it was dated 13th of April, how if Google looked at the page on the 13th of April did it then revert to saying it hadn’t looked at the page since the 28th of March?

There are two possible explanations for this. Firstly Google uses a large number of servers, it’s possible that not all servers had been updated to the latest file. Given that I was checking from the same geographic location, it seems unlikely that I’d get another server, but as a check I had friends in 3 other distant locations check to see what they saw and all three confirmed the 28th of March as the date displayed. It seems unlikely then that this was an issue with the servers. The second possible explanation for this is that Moore Games made a request to Google that they remove the last cache page they had logged – this is a service that Google offer website owners for several reasons and is easily accessed. This is by far the weakest piece of evidence in this case, but worrying none-the-less given all of the above.

The second – and far more serious – issue that came to light was that as of two days ago (the 12th of May 2013) Moore Games Curacao EGaming license has been revoked and is now listed at ‘Invalid’.

Curacao have never been the strongest of online gaming regulators, for them to revoke a license is highly suggestive that Moore Games have failed to pay their license fees and are likely in substantial financial trouble. Again, this is simply my opinion based on the facts at hand, but I’m confident that readers will agree that financial troubles would certainly account for a casino looking for a reason not to pay a winner.

At the end of the day, this mediation has been a complete failure. While we appear to have vindicated the player’s claims, Moore Games have not paid the money they owe the player and as such while this may serve as a warning to other players, we’ve failed in our purpose.

As a result of this case, we have set in place a system to monitor the terms and conditions of all casinos that we list on the site. This system will check both the General terms and the Promotional terms (where possible) at least once a day and we will be posting reports on any substantial changes to our message boards. The intention of this is to ensure that rule are not changed after the fact to justify seizure of winnings.

To Granti56 – I’m sorry we could not have been of more help in retrieving winnings that appear to be rightly yours.

Hello.
First of all thank you very much for your help.
My real problem is how can I take my winnings ( Moore games have not even send me my deposit back to my account )
Do you have any suggestions about what path I have to follow now to take my winnings. For example: Should I made a complaint to Casinomeister to?

Thanks again for your time and your cooperation.

Hi Granti56,

Your options for recovery are limited at this point. In your position I'd be inclined to speak with all the dispute mediation services - CasinoMeister, Ask Gamblers and Gambling Grumbles - to ensure that there is maximum exposure for the issue. However, I'm already aware of at least 2 other sites that are covering this issue now due to this report, so I would doubt that they'll pay out to avoid further negative attention.

The other normal course would be to contact their regulator, however as Curacao has suspended Moore Games license I doubt they'll be willing to discuss your case.

The only other option is to try and pursue them through legal channels, but that would be very very difficult to do due to the international nature of this case and I personally have no experience of trying this so could offer no advice.

I will add that not even returning your deposit is further evidence to support you claim and makes it seem even more likely that this group simply don't have the money to pay their winners. No reputable casino would hold on to a deposit even if you had played restricted games.

I genuinely wish I could be of further assistance with this issue and I'm sorry that I can't.

ThePOGG