Investors in PartyGaming must be terrible poker players. Confronted with the slightest prospect that the UK-based online gambling group will settle with the US Department of Justice, they react with ill-concealed joy, marking up shares in the group and its rivals. When gossip fails to conform with reality, they take heavy losses.

On Tuesday, for the first time in months, they will be presented with evidence that they have a stronger hand than they perhaps suspected. The decision by Anurag Dikshit, the computer whizz who co-founded the company, to lay his cards on the table, while painful for him, should be good for his fellow investors.