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Applications

Applications may be deployed on a one-to-one basis (one application per server) however it is more common for multiple applications reside on the same physical piece of equipment for reasons of economy and performance.

System monitoring tools

Monitoring tools are frequently used to monitor the technical aspects of the gambling system including performance, resource utilisation, or the performance or interaction with external systems.

Reporting

Reporting applications gather and summarise information from the system, providing reports on most aspects of the system including ongoing liability, virtual event statistics, account activity (for example, large bets, large wins, summarised information) and profit/loss reports. Reports may be scheduled to run at particular times of day, run manually or triggered by unusual activities ('alerts').

Bet capture/bet matching

The capture component processes the information about the customer's gamble, validating the selections against the rules of the particular bet type, game or event/market before it is stored in the gambling transaction record. For a betting exchange this component would be the 'bet matching' component.

Customer management

Customer management applications provide facilities for customers to register their details, deposit funds, update account details and view their account history. Customer Support personnel use the same or similar components to manage aspects of customers accounts.

Settling

Settling is sometimes referred to in two parts, ‘marking-up’ (ie identifying individual gambles as winners or losers) and ‘settling’, the term settling is used here to represent both parts. Settling determines whether or not a customer has won based on the outcome of some real or virtual event. If the customer has won, the settling component calculates the value of the return to the customer and corresponding adjustments are made to the customers account balance.

Random number generator (RNG)

Random number generators use specialised hardware and software to generate sequences of numbers that are unpredictable, that is, numbers that do not have a detectable pattern. Virtual events always require one or more numbers within a specific range (for example a roulette game may request 1 number between 0 and 36). The output of the RNG must be 'scaled' to fit into this range. The scaling component may be part of the RNG, a separate component or part of the game depending on the deployment.

Virtual event control

Each virtual event has its own rules and behaviour. Virtual event control is used here as a generic term for components that handle:

  • placing a request for random numbers and/or receiving random numbers
  • the determination of the virtual event result using the random number input
  • issuing instructions to the client application to display the result of the event and the result of the customer's gamble.

Some virtual event gambling may also require components that coordinate activities in multi-player scenarios.

Back-office tools

Back-office tools provide a variety of functions that aid the smooth running of the system or allow operational personnel to perform tasks such as pricing and setting limits on betting opportunities, adjusting customer balances (for example, in the case of settlement errors), and changing event configurations.

Security

Security, for example authorisation and authentication (user-name, password, access rights, etc), and audit trails may be deployed within other components or applications, but may also be deployed as a separate component.

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