That’s it for my blackjack discussion. My sincere apologies to the OP, I hope you found our friendly banter at least amusing as we hijacked your thread :dubious:
Getting back to slots. I never had much luck downtown, but they have a LOT of nickle slots down there, if you like to play the chicken feed games. Seems to me slots are a weekend game in Vegas, that’s when they get the hoards coming in for just 1 or 2 days of play. The slots gobble up much more money on the weekends, therefor they also pay much more out on the weekends. I have had my best luck at Circus Circus, Flamingo, MGM, Harrah’s, Luxor, Riviera, Monte Carlo and Bally’s. Places like the Mirage, Mandelay Bay, Caesars, Venetion, and Bellagio are fun to go into if only to annoy the snobby employees. I liked Paris a lot too, it’s crowded and noisy, but everyone seems to be having a good time. Never had much luck at Slots-o-Fun, but the craps game right inside the front door is usually good for a couple laughs. My favorite blackjack casino is Barbary Coast. The others I don’t go into very much, they may have some interesting things going on, I just never spent much time in them.
Not a casino employee but I lived w/a blackjack/holdem dealer g/f for several years and I personally worked arcade management involving slot machines evil cousin, the ticket redemption game.
Beware of statistics.
Things like “98% payout slots” are the average for the casino as a whole. IIRC Individual machines can be set tighter or looser as long as the average is 98%. This can also include things like progressives that may only hit a few times a week or month.
Slots in high traffic areas are often set to pay out lower than machines buried in the ranks since they are so “convenient”. People will often use them just to burn the few coins in their pocket on the way out or on the way into the changers.
Machines are however often easily reconfigured for different coin/credit configurations. Making for a mess now and then with a dishonest tech.
I’ve developed a great “no-fail” gambling system - don’t. Granted, it doesn’t yield big payouts, but I can honestly say I haven’t lost a dime either !!!
Some postings here have briefly mentioned lotteries. Your odds on those are horrible. Plus it is your way of telling the state where you live: “I don’t think my taxes are high enough so I’m going to give you some more money”.
What did Ross Perot say? Lotteries are a tax on the stupid :wally:
I do occasionally buy 2 bucks worth of quick picks when the stakes get high. It just gives me something to contemplate while I am falling asleep at night. Dream on
They are EXACTLY as bad as I say. There is simply no room for personal opinion here - blackjack strategy is exact. The game has been analyzed through both logical analysis and high speed simulation, and the optimal strategy and house odds have been known with a high degree of precision since the 1960’s. Saying that you think your system will work is like saying that your personal value for PI is 4.5. You can think it, but you’ll be wrong, and if you try to apply it, you’ll get screwed. It’s really that simple.
Money management schemes also do not work. This can also be mathematically proven. There is no combination of negative expectation bets that can result in a positive expectation. All money management schemes can possibly do is change the distribution of your losses. For instance, a martingale system can skew your results so that you have many small wins, punctuated by a few horrendous losses. In the end, the house will get EXACTLY the house ‘vig’ X the amount of money you wager, ± the variance inherent in the number of trials you play and the type of game you are playing. There is no room for personal opinion here.
No it won’t. Consistency has nothing to do with it, since the trials are independent.
And no one mentioned ‘hit till you bust’. In blackjack, analysis of the proper play includes the odds that the dealer will bust, and the odds that you will improve your hand without busting if you hit.
For instance (going from memory here, and it’s been a while, so don’t take these numbers as exact), the dealer has about a 28% chance of busting if he’s got a 10 showing, and about a 42% chance of busting if he’s got a 6 showing. That obviously affects your hit decisions. But if you stand on 16 or lower when the dealer has a six showing, you’re going to lose about 58% of the time. If you stand on less than 17 when the dealer has a 2 or 3 showing, you’ll lose more like 70% of the time. It can be shown mathematically that in the case of the 2 or 3 showing, it’s better to hit when you have 12 than stand. And when the dealer has a six showing, you stand on anything above 11. There is no guesswork here - it’s hard mathematics. For example, off the top of my head that you have a 3.5% gain in expectation when you hit a hard 16 against a dealer’s 10, as opposed to standing. A small difference, but a positive one. On the other hand, you gain about 7% hitting a 16 against a dealer’s 7 as opposed to standing.
Incidentally, hitting a soft 17 is a VERY common rule, and has been for years. It costs the player about .2% in expectation.
Poker machines, or “pokies” as slots are called in Australia, are the bane of our existence. Our little state of New South Wales (population only 5 million or so) has TEN PER BLOODY CENT of the WORLD’S slot machines (yes, including Vegas, and the other big casino cities). Every suburban pub and club these days is wall to wall with the damned things, and our state government has become addicted to gambling revenue (with halfarsed attempts at “responsible gambling” laws). I think it is picking up where cigarette revenue tailed off with the decline in smoking.
Back when I was working in the hospitality industry about fifteen years ago (and I think it is still the case), venue owners could alter the payout percentage of the machines without seeking permission. They’d just need to call the manufacturer who would send out a serviceman to make the necessary adjustments. These adjustments were within a reasonable narrow predefined range. The idea was that if a venue had a reputation for having machines which payed out more, then it would gain more customers, or if it decided to pay out less, then it would take more money rom fewer customers, and thus market forces would regulate the system. Either way, the punters got screwed, and yes, as several have said in this thread, playing slots is generally a form of gambling which offers relatively poor odds.
Good for entertainment in very small doses now and then, if that’s your thing.
I’m kind of new here, but I’ve lurked long enough to know Sam is pretty sharp and I have great respect for his opinions. From a pure mathematical perspective, I agree that the players odds on the pass line on craps or playing blackjack is infinitely better than slot machines. However, I think you have to look at what your goals are. If your goal is to play for a long time and have a decent chance to make a little money, then the craps and blackjack tables are good bets. If your goal is to either lose what you have or return home with a thousand times more than you came with, then slots are the way to go. Turning $50 into $150 may be infinitely more likely on the craps table, but turning $50 into $1,000,000 is only going to happen on the slots.
There’s another angle, though. The casinos like giving free drinks to gamblers, so if you drag your losses out for a loooong time, you’ll get more free booze.
What about the newer video multi-line ones (Price is Right, Austin Powers, etc) where you can “freeze” the spin? Would it be the same combination/payout regardless of if you freeze it or let the “reels” spin out? I suspect it would and freezing it just makes it more interactive somehow.
This may actually be the case. If your money-management scheme is something like a Martingale, it can be the case that you usually win money. However, this does not mean that you win overall. In a Martingale scheme, you will usually win a small amount of money, but you’ll occasionally lose a large amount of money. And the amount you lose on those rare occasions is large enough to offset all of your many small wins.
So, I ask you: In total, how many dollars have you won or lost, playing your system? Even better, how many dollars average, per game? I’m not asking for a subjective assessment of “Well, usually I’m up by about ten bucks”. Even if you’re remembering correctly, that’s the mode, not the mean, and is totally irrelevant for this discussion. Humans are really bad at mentally figuring means. So, have you kept records of your winnings and losses?
First, I’ve never seen a blackjack table in Nevada that doesn’t hit a soft 17, and I’ve been playing there for 20 years.
Second: I’ve seen a dealer cheat exactly once, and it was for the benefit of the player. Happened in Lake Tahoe, 1984. In the old days, the dealer would have to peek under his down card to see if he had a blackjack when he had a 10 showing. This dealer would therefore know if he had a 16 with a 10 up, and would advise “I wouldn’t hit that” if he saw the player thinking about hitting a stiff hand.
Player then tips the dealer from his winnings, and everybody’s happy.
Given a player uses a reasonable strategy playing blackjack, what are the odds that player will lose 4 hands in a row? Are those odds different when playing against a 3 deck dealer verses a 6 deck dealer?
Do players and dealers really get “hot” and “cold” streaks or is that just an illusion?
If a player ALWAYS enters a game with exactly X dollars, and leaves the game when he has either zero dollars or 4X dollars. Is that a good strategy?
If the number of hands you play in any playing session is N, as N approaches infinity you are going to lose. Is that true?
I guess you could say I use a modified martingale system. Exactly how much have I won? I can’t say. I know I have walked away from the table with 4X at least as many times as I have walked away with zero though.
First off, are the odds generally better on higher costing machines (like $20.00 a play ones) or lower ones? And do casinos vary the odds among slot machines, say, right next to each other?
The reason I asked this question is my employer keeps talking about the different machines he played at Reno, and while I highly doubt his perceptions are anywhere near correct (am I planning to inform him of this? No, I like my job), I am curious as to how these actually work.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Netbrian *
First off, are the odds generally better on higher costing machines (like $20.00 a play ones) or lower ones? And do casinos vary the odds among slot machines, say, right next to each other?
QUOTE]
I don’t believe the denomination of the machine has anything to do with the pay out percentage. It does seem that some machines get “hot” at times, but I think that is due to the “random” numbers. Even random numbers generate patterns periodically
Oh, I know all about what most likely causes it (I’m a Mathematics minor), I was just wondering if the casino actually did something like that to encourage the misconception.
Sigh. Actually, the denomination of the machine DOES have a lot to do with payouts. As a rule, the higher denomination machines have better odds than the lower ones. This makes sense, because it acts as an incentive to get people to raise their stakes, and also because the casino can afford to lower the odds when the amount of action they get is greater.
