Know the brand? I’ve never seen that setting.
If you think the “Law of Averages” indicates that a machine that hasn’t paid out in a while is more likely to pay out in the future, you should just cease your participation in this discussion.
No. They tend to. There’s a big difference.
No, they get away with it since the vast majority of people that will play it are unable or unwilling to do the calculations on the spot for a small payoff.
I think the problem is that our intuitive notions regarding statistics are contrary to reality.
For instance, I’m told that if I’ve flipped a coin and gotten heads twelve times in a row, the next flip has the exact same chance - 50/50 - of being tails as the prior flips. I accept this on an intellectual level. But damn it, it *seems *like the chance of tails should be way higher.
FWIW, I think you are a “high roller” (that being a label indicating positive, impressive qualities) if you are so freaking rich you can afford to drop tons of money, and so freaking cool you don’t mind when you do. If you live in your parents’ basement at the age of 40, and mooch money off them to blow in the casino, losing often enough that the casino comps you stuff, you are a “loser.” I think the appellation “sucker” should in this case be reserved for the loser’s parents.
Some video poker machine have a kind of graduated jackpot when certain hands haven’t hit in a while. It can put them in a pos EV state (from the players point of view).
If you set a machine for a percentage it doesn’t take that percentage out of every coin.
Er, Trunk, there’s no such thing as the Law of Averages.
It could pay out $990,000 for every $1,000,000 put in. However, it could do it in three payouts of $330,000 each (theoretically). So if 10,000 people each put in $100, 9,997 of them are going home $100 poorer.
There is nothing wrong with gambling. Some people find the slots entertaining, some roulette, some craps, etc. I like blackjack. I understand that the odds favor the dealer and that there is no system that can change those odds (smart play just reduces the house’s favor). I’m happy when I’m up, and when I’m down (which my wife hates; she’s one of those who doesn’t get the appeal), I just tell her better at blackjack than stuffing it into some stripper’s g-string. I go in expected to spend $X, and anything less that $X is a bonus (and anything over $X is a double bonus).
No fucking shit.
You’re the one who brought the term up and I was trying to relate it to your level of understanding. . .that level where you seem to think that a machine that hasn’t paid out in a while is more apt to pay out in the future. The fallacy which is commonly known as “The Law of Averages” .
Okay, Trunk, you program a machine to take 90% of every dollar put into the machine. Ah! But you can’t return 9 dimes for every 4 quarters. You have to return like coins.
Do you keep track of the payout in your program?
When do you have your program payout?
We gamble strictly for entertainment. My husband, who is strangely lucky, wins five times out of six, I kid you not; I lose five times out of six, so it balances out. We go in with a preset limit of $100 per person (or frequently less, especially if we’re getting any house money), and it’s rare that we’re down more than $40 by the end of the trip. We try to leave when we’re up, too, instead of putting it all back.
But we recognize the game is in the house’s favor, so any time we walk out with our original money, we’ve won. As long as we keep that attitude, we have a good time. Plus we get some great meals; one of the casinos around here has a simply spectacular seafood restaurant that we’ve yet to pay a penny for a meal in yet, just by cheap gambling.
Where we’ve done best is by playing the free tournaments that are offered now and then, both slot and video poker tournaments. In one wonderful year, my husband won an $8,000 video poker tournament and a $2,000 slot tournament, and I won a $3,000 slot tournament. That’s where you get the house’s money back, and for nothing but gas money and a little time. (And the 8K came in really handy because he’d been laid off two weeks before; that paid the mortgage and car payment for the four months he was out of work!)
Aren’t there regulations that govern how the odds can be programmed in a casino?
I create an algorithm that says
Generate 100 random numbers.
Numbers 1-95, do nothing.
96 : pay A
97 : pay B
98 : pay C
99 : pay D
100: pay E
And using the wonders of the magical quantity known as “expected value”, I figure out what A, B, C, D, and E should be. I can tune them so that the machine pays out 95%, 50%, 100% of its intake. And, whatever number you’re seeing has no bearing on what the next number you’re going to see.
This is first thing you learn in probability class after flipping coins.
Dude, that ain’t even how it works.
Here’s an oversimplification of the process:
The computer running the machine computes a semi-random number internally – think of it as throwing virtual dice – ranging from 0.0000… to 1.0000… If that number below 0.90, it pays out, if not, it doesn’t. It doesn’t keep track of ANYTHING from bet to bet, for the purposes of calculating payout.
That’s not to say it doesn’t keep track of what it pays out, I’m sure it does, and keeps that record for the casino to check to make sure the machine is operating properly. But each bet is determined individually, the same way each roll of the dice in craps is unrelated to each previous and subsequent roll. I.e., dice don’t “have” to come up snake eyes every so often, they just do it when they do it.
Edit: Also, what Trunk said.
Having been to Las Vegas exactly once, I can speak with authority. 
Roulette: Here in the UK, we have one zero. Our casinos still make money. You have two zeroes. :eek:
Blackjack: Ed Thorpe’s book was the only time the casinos have faced losing odds (to a card counter near the end of the shoe). They now use multiple decks and early reshuffles.
Craps: You can work the odds out yourself. As Wikipedia puts it: 'Since all bets have a house advantage, and a negative expected value, the optimal strategy is not to play. ’
Slots: The machines are programmed to pay out a losing percentage. By law, the minimum payout percentage in Nevada is 75 percent and in New Jersey is 78 percent. :smack:
Poker: Since you bet against other players, you can actually win - but from those players, not the casino. The House takes a rake of each pot and a gentleman will also tip the dealer when he wins.
So to sum up:
- the Casino sets the odds in its favour on every game (unless it charges for hosting)
- when people play regularly, the Casino will make a steady profit
- if lots of people play, the Casino will make a lot of profit
- players who tell you they ‘win regularly’ or ‘have a system’ don’t keep track of their losses
- Las Vegas gambling is a multi-billion dollar business, paying out for construction costs (e.g. the Wynn cost $2.7 billion), running costs (especially staff), air-conditioning, taxes etc. Where does all this money come from … losing gamblers!
And now for my astonishing news. I am the only person I know who is actually ahead on both Las Vegas slots and poker. 
DMark, who kindly explained the casino systems to me , was there when I won $5.26 on video poker.
The staff at the Luxor Poker room will surely remember the eccentric Englishman who cleaned up $12 after 3 sessions of Limit Hold’em lasting 7 hours.
By contrast, my sister played video poker twice. The first time she lost $7 in 3 minutes and walked away saying it was boring. The second time she won $12 and we nearly missed our flight because she was obsessed with playing on. :eek:
I don’t know how you’re defining “lucky”, but if you think your husband possesses some magical force that is going to make the coin turn up “heads” more often than not, he doesn’t.
If you and your husband go to the casino tomorrow, and play the exact same game for the exact amount of money and time. . .the money you can expect to come back with is EXACTLY THE SAME.
If I were to say to you, “I’ll give you $1 if he comes home ahead of you, and you give me $2 if you come home ahead of him” would you play that game?
Because I would. I’d mortgage my home and sell my stocks to play that game.
Help me with my level of understanding.
This program would constantly and consistantly pay out your tuned percentage?
I’m guessing they use random number generators (well, pseudo-random anyway) with a set distribution that guarantees a 90% payout over very long time scales. To take a simple example, say they generate random numbers between 1 and 100 and programmed it to keep your dollar whenever a number less than or equal to 90 came up. The other ten times they pay out $8.
Now, let’s say you put $200 into the machine and don’t win anything. That means that you had 200 random numbers in a row that were less than 91. Do this increase the odds of a number over 90 the next spin? No, not at all, any more than flipping 200 heads in a row changes the odds of the next flip.
I suspect your confusion comes from the common assumption that a random distribution is also uniform, i.e. after 100 spins each number will come up once. It’s not. A truly random distribution will always contain highly non-uniform clusters, e.g. three 13’s in a row or twenty numbers all under 50. It will be uniform only over very long time scales, far longer than you’re going to perceive with your pattern-seeking human brain.
Edit: I type slow.
Sure it does - because your intuition is calculating the wrong odds. Your intuition is saying “What are the chances of getting 13 heads in a row?” Very small chance- but that calculation only applies before the first flip. After 12 flips have already come up heads, the proper question is " What is the chance of getting 13 heads in a row given that I already have 12 in a row?" Most people’s intuition doesn’t account for the fact that the 12 previous heads have changed nothing for the 13th flip - there are still two equally likely possibilities.
No.
Imagine the slot machine like a die.
If you roll 1-5, it keeps your dollar.
If you roll a 6, it gives you $3 (and your $1).
After you’ve rolled the die 10 times. . .shit, you might be up $30. You might be down $10.
More likely, you’ve won once or twice, and you’re down $2 or down $4.
But, the 11th roll doesn’t care where you are. If you’ve lost $10, it’s not more likely to give you $3.
What’s important is that after you have played this game 1000 times, it’s up about $667 (if I did that correctly).
If some shlub was sitting there, and lost his last 1000 rolls, and you come along and roll the die, you’re not more than likely to “take his win”.
That’s – essentially – how slot machines work.
What they can change is the payout scheme. You can change my $3 win to a 4 win. You can change it so that it pays out .50 on a 5 and $.50 on a 6.