898

NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE

No. 32

Game Fairness Objectives

3.9.57 All games are to be fair to players in that the game must not be designed to give the player a false expectation of better odds by falsely representing any occurrence or event. For example, games (and features within games) that incorporate an illusion of control in that players are offered an option which appears to provide an opportunity to influence the outcome of a game using skill, when in fact the outcome cannot be influenced by the use of skill and/or the outcome has already been determined, are not acceptable.

3.9.58 The mapping of numbers directly from the RNG output or through a scaling algorithm shall not influence a symbol to occur with a probability not equal to its statistical expectation.

3.9.59 Symbols of virtual reel games (video) must appear to the player in the same arrangement as per the reel strips. No manipulation and rearrangement of the reel’s symbols when displayed to the player is permitted.

Card Games

3.9.60 The consequences for games depicting cards being drawn from a pack are the following:
a) card selection must be from a deck of cards that correctly reflects the status of previously drawn cards;
b) cards once removed from the pack must not be returned to the pack except as provided by the rules of the game depicted;
c) the pack must not be reshuffled except as provided by the rules of the game depicted; and
d) as cards are removed from the pack they must be immediately used as directed by the Rules of the game (i.e. are not to be discarded due to adaptive behaviour by the gaming machine).

Ball Drawing Games

3.9.61 The consequences for games depicting balls being drawn from a barrel (e.g. Keno) are as follows:
a) at the start of each game only balls applicable to the game are to be depicted;
b) balls once removed from the barrel must not be returned to the barrel except as provided by the rules of the game depicted;
c) the barrel must not be re-mixed except as provided by the rules of the game depicted; and
d) as balls are drawn from the barrel they must be immediately used as directed by the Rules of the game (i.e. are not to be discarded due to adaptive behaviour by the gaming machine).

Roulette Wheel, Spinning Reels, Dice Rolling, Coin Tossing Games

3.9.62 The consequences for games depicting or involving either:
a) the spinning of reels (such as “slot machines” or “poker machines”);
b) the spinning of wheels (such as roulette);
c) the rolling of dice;
d) the tossing of coins; or
e) other similar depictions

are covered by the following requirements:
i) for each reel/wheel/dice/coin, etc. depicted, the probability of any one face appearing must be as for the actual physical device (e.g. 1/20 for a 20 faced reel or wheel; 1/6 for a 6 faced dice; 1/2 for a coin);
ii) if virtual reels which map to physical reels are used, each of the reel stops of the virtual reel strip must have the same probability of occurring (i.e. if the virtual reel consists of n positions, the probability of occurrence of each position must be 1/n). Symbols of the physical reel must appear to the player in the same arrangement as would the corresponding symbols of the virtual reel (i.e. it must not be possible to determine by observing the symbols displayed on the machine that the physical reels are used instead of virtual reels). This observation extends to all symbols visible to the player. Accordingly, mapped symbols must have identical sequences of preceding and