Anyone else disappointed at the turn this potentially entertaining thread has taken?
I wanna hear what he does to the burgers!
I’m not even a math nerd, I just hate people who are stupid about basic probability, especially when they are claiming to work in the gaming industry.
Generally, nobody does. I mean, they’re nerds.
Not exactly. They are programmed to keep a certain percent, and over a long period will be close to that percent. However, the programming is insidious. The programmers know how gamblers think, and the machines run it fits and starts so that they appear variously hot and cold – all while hitting their programmed payout over time. THAT is how you entice dipshit gamblers who insist they have a system. The mind doesn’t react much to random, but loves to look for patterns.
Did I say that the programming is insidious?
Actually, if I owned a casino, I would tell everyone I had some slot machines that pay out at more than 100%.
Now have fun finding the 3 good ones out of 2000, suckers!
Nothing magical, it’s just amazing how often he will win. I remember one evening where, in the space of three hours, he won a video poker royal flush and three other slot jackpots. And like I said, he wins more than he loses at least 80% of the time. I’ve been watching him do it for over ten years now, and I don’t know what it is.
He also, by the way, used to count cards before the multiple deck systems everyone uses now, so he’s good a good memory; and he used to help repair some of the earliest video poker machines when he lived overseas, and could genuinely read their (admittedly simple) programming well enough that when he stumbled on a few of those same machines a couple of years after we were married, he hit a jackpot eight times out of ten – because he could play just a few hands and know where in the payout cycle they were. He doesn’t pretend to be able to do that with the programming of today’s machines, but he also wins far more often than the house odds would suggest. I have no explanation for it, except that it definitely happens.
That being said, we still don’t bet the rent on his luck! Nope, we just use it to offset my losses in our entertainment-only gambling.
To hell with “loose slots”, I want to know where the casino is with “loose women”. Or “loose joints”. Or at least “loose leaf paper”? Hell, I’d settle for “loose heal ball”. Waaaaaaahhhh!
He flips them over more than once and squeezes all the juices out with the spatula. Duh.
Dry and cross-contaminated. Oh, the bovinity! :mad:
This is such a strange post. You’ve been here long enough to post almost 4000 times and you don’t know yet that people are very good at “finding” patterns in random sequences? This is a constantly recurring, well-attested theme at the SDMB, I don’t see how it could have failed to escape your notice. (I’m sorry I don’t have cites, but maybe someone else who is better than me at that kind of memory will be kind enough to provide citations for what I’m saying, both about the SDMB and humans’ ability to see “patterns” in random sequences.)
This is what’s really funny about your post. The kinds of patterns people “find” in random sequences tend to give them exactly the impression that they are experiencing ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ streaks, and that if they could just ride the correct probabilistic wave they’d win the next round on average, etc etc. They get all the same impressions you are ascribing to insidious and evil programming on the part of the slot machine designers. They don’t have to do anything particularly complicated, they just have to give it a random number generator. Stupid players do the rest.
-FrL-
Here’s a dirty little secret: random numbers often aren’t random. With computers, they’re often calculated by a mathematical formula:
NewSeed := (OldSeed + Big Prime Number) Modulo Lesser Prime Number
Random Number := NewSeed / LPN * Range
Oldseed := Newseed
It will be immediately obvious that after a certain time the pattern repeats. Someone watching the slot machine carefully for a sufficient length of time will be able to determine when this is going to happen and profit accordingly.
I often wonder if in a pub or a bar, it would actually be profitable for a machine to have a slightly positive - say 102% - payout. Not profitable for the machine itself, of course, but for the other custom it generates. People buying drinks and the like.
No need for cites. I’ll agree that people imagine patterns in randomness. I’ll amend my statement to read that the brain doesn’t like randomness (hence the search for patterns) and that the slot machine programming does exploit this by stacking more consecutive wins and losses than it would if it were programmed to behave completely randomly. People might imagine patterns anyway, but the machine is carefully programmed to get their attention.
I’m waiting for someone to post about how they use the Martingdale system to beat the casinos at roulette. Its a sure-fire winner!
(That last line was a joke.)
I’m not one to clamor for cites, but I’d like to see one that the machines are programmed to be streaky. It seems to me that random payouts would be streaky enough without trying to induce it.
The only winning system is the one Nick the Greek used when he started out: figure out the odds for all possible outcomes and make side bets with other players on non-intuitive ones (or playing on the fallacy that a particular outcome is ‘due’), choosing of course the outcome with better than 100% payout for yourself. In effect, make yourself the house.
His later strategy was even better: be famous enough as a gambler that people would willingly accept bets with poor odds just for the chance of saying they beat Nick the Greek.
Do casinos nowadays frown on side bets?
“Instead, the slot machines are programmed to return their percentages explosively. That is, sometimes nothing comes out (more often than not) and sometimes a hell of a lot comes pouring out (rare, but heart-throbbingly exciting). It is the lure of a great windfall (or even a little breeze) that excites the slot player.” From: How Slot Machines Work
Also note that while certain intentional “near miss” displays have been banned in Nevada, others, such as those immediately above or below the payout line, are legal. From Wiki
That’s two non-random behaviors. I’m sure there are others, but that should illustrate the point. Slots are programmed to hook niave dupes.
Over the years, the number of times I’ve seen people who claim to be “the smartest folks in the room” believe in “luck”, a “system”, or some special “influence” towards slot machines is truly demoralizing.
And the OP’s brother should get a nickname, like “the Tick”, because he sounds like a fucking parasite.
That article is saying the opposite of what you think it’s saying. A couple paragraphs above your quote is this:
The bit about explosive returns is just saying that, instead of paying you 92 cents every time you put a dollar in, it pays you a large amount of money rarely and no money the rest of the time.
I’ve been trying to find a good cite for whether gaming machines use streakiness psychology to entice players to play longer. I was hopeful about your cite above, but the author did not back up his assertion at all. It is not hard to program streakiness – just pre-generate your random numbers and then re-arrange the numbers in a pschologically appealling way. One buddy of mine that works as a tester at a gaming company thought that the games did this. Another buddy that develops some of the games did not. I used to assume that the games have this behavior, but considering the regulations, the regional variations of the regulatations, and the requirement to publish source-code, I’m not convinced yet. Does anyone have a solid cite that this is permitted and done?
FWIW, the wiki article for slot machines says that it is not necessarily true. The assertion is not backed up with a cite though.