Credit to FortuneJack for making the bet history public. Although I disagree with their verdict, I appreciate the transparency in comparison to other casinos that have been in similar positions.
Here is my take on the matter after looking at the bets and withdrawal history more closely. I'd appreciate if both parties read it in its entirety before dismissing any points.
To start with, verusfides did receive 2+ BTC from the bugged rounds of Adrenaline. However, I think it is hard to say this is due to intentional abuse. Here is my reasoning for that:
1. Verusfides only doubled his bet sizing once, and that was after the second bugged round. I think this is pretty reasonable to do after doubling one's initial deposit, and 2 60x wins in a row doesn't necessarily indicate a game is bugged.
2. Adrenaline is essentially a re-skinned version of Moneypot. Setting an auto-cashout multiplier doesn't stop the player from manually cashing out at a certain point. Verus continued to manually cash out at low multipliers, even after upping the auto-cashout to 200x. If he was intentionally abusing what he perceived to be a bug, he would be losing money by doing this.
3. All of his higher wagers above .2 mBTC were not made during bugged rounds, and half of them did not have an auto cashout set. He actually lost money during this part.
4. Adrenaline was a recent addition to the website, and this was verusfides' first time playing. Owing to the nature of slot machine "jackpots", where users can trigger a set of bonus spins that award very high multipliers consecutively, it is entirely possible a new user might believe this to be an intended game mechanic.
Owing to the above reasons, I think it is fair to say that verusfides did not act in bad faith by continuing to play with his winnings.
The next question is did FortuneJack act in good faith as well?
According to FortuneJack's logs, verusfides immediately tried to cash out. This brought his bugged winnings to the site's attention. Indeed,
FortuneJack manually reviewed his withdrawal and denied it. Rather than freezing his account, however, they allowed him to keep playing.
This means that FortuneJack was aware that verusfides' balance was illegitimate prior to winning the plinko jackpot, not after.
To me, it feels unethical to essentially "freeroll" a customer, allowing them to continue gambling with no intention of ever paying out in the event that they were to win anything else.
In my opinion, FJ should have frozen his account at this point, awarded him with the
.2 BTC bounty for major bugs, and adjusted his balance accordingly. If that had happened, neither party would be in this situation.
It also seems to me unfair to retroactively penalize someone for hitting a jackpot they earned in good faith. Given verusfides not only identified a critical bug through his play, which in itself should have earned him the .2 BTC bounty, but also lost out on a large potential financial windfall through no fault of his own, I believe he deserves higher compensation.
First, I looked to see what would have happened if verusfides had been credited the .2 BTC immediately and placed the same wagers on Plinko. A graph of his balance is shown below.
Verusfides would have busted and been down over 1 BTC before finally hitting the jackpot. Given his previous deposits to the site total less than .5 BTC, it is unlikely he would have continued this betting pattern and achieved the same result. Therefore, I don't think FortuneJack should be forced to pay out the full 20 BTC.
What I propose as a reasonable solution, and I hope both parties will agree to this, is to re-evaluate verusfides' plinko bets as if he started with the .2 BTC balance FJ should have paid him anyway, instead of the 2.082 BTC he had at the time. Rather than take the face value of each bet, count them proportionally to what his correct bankroll should have been at the time, ie. 10% of what he actually wagered. This would result in verusfides hitting the jackpot for 2 BTC, instead of 20 BTC.
In my opinion, a 2 BTC payout is the fairest solution. This is arguably what the outcome would have been had FJ been more proactive with the situation, and also happens to fit nicely between the numbers both parties are offering by a factor of 10 on each side.
