I’m in London until Monday. First of all, what’s the difference between a fruit machine and a slot machine?I see these complicated looking fruit machines in just about every pub.
How do I place a sports bet? I’m looking at the premier league fixtures for Saturday. Is there a minimum? I was thinking £20 on a few different matches.
Finally, I realize the casinos aren’t Las Vegas style but it is worth heading there with £200 or so for some blackjack or craps to live my inner James Bond? I can play basic strategy blackjack and also can bet craps in Las Vegas.
Fruit machine/slot machine are pretty much interchangable terms in the UK, even for “fruit machines” that don’t actually feature fruit. One important distinction though, the fruit machines you find in the betting terminals of bookmakers are pretty much like Vegas slots, each turn is independently random. The ones you’ll find in pubs and clubs are different. They actively work towards their correct RTP, so if you lose a lot it’ll be “ready to pay”, if you win a lot it’ll go very tight. The ones in pubs also have a much lower RTP and are more interactive, people with skill will lose much less quickly in the short term, although the best fruit machine player and a random button pusher would get exactly the same back if they kept on playing the same machine for hours.
Sports bets are easy. Just go into the bookies, find the current price for the selection you want. (Most UK prices are listed as a fraction where the left is what the bookie will give you for the right, so "Tottenham to win: 2/1 means the bookie will give you £20 for every £10 you risk) and either tick it off on the preprinted form or write out a slip “Totttenham to win 2/1” You will then be able to collect at any branch of that bookmaker, not just the one you placed it at.
I haven’t been to many brick and mortar casinos but the ones I did go to all had Blackjack, roulette and 3 card poker, and minimum bets as low as £5 max bets £1000 or over.
Mr Shine is right about British fruit machines – they are not random each play but use an algorithm to keep the payback percentage close to theoretical in the short term … so jumping on a machine that has recently shown a long losing streak may improve your chance of a win and leaving a machine after a big win is probably a wise thing to do. On other types of machines it doesn’t matter what you do, your chances are the same on every play.
Blackjack games may be the type where the dealer doesn’t take a hole card until after all player hands are finished and the player may lose all double and split hands on a dealer blackjack. There are some variations to basic strategy you should look up if that is the case.
In the short term over a few hours or days none of this really matters. Just have fun.
The UK is sort of antithetical to the US in that bookies are everywhere, can’t walk down a High St without seeing three. And while I wouldn’t call them respectable places - you get a few tragic specimens lurking there, it would be completely normal to go in and place a bet or two. Renaissance at Everton if you’re thinking of heaving on the Blues against Huddersfield (taps nose).
Football bettors are quite fond of accumulators, where you bet on multiple matches. I am sure the bookies are equally fond of these bets, as the chances of it coming in are very remote, but it adds a bit of interest if you’re following a day’s football.
Casinos on the other hand haven’t really made the step into the mainstream like they are in the US and can be a bit shady. I think in London you’ll be fine, though, as there will be some good ones to choose from and hopefully someone can give you a specific recommendation. Generally though they have niche appeal.
I don’t think full-on casinos are quite mainstream in the US yet although they are close. While it’s easy most places to find a “slot” (aka video poker/bingo) or a place with poker and/or card games, most of the US is quite a distance away from somewhere that has all of them combined and they are still regarded as destinations rather than an everyday thing.
Is that a new policy? I remember placing a bet at a bookmaker in London 30 years ago, and when it won (I bet the favorite, or “favourite” as they spell it there, to win the 1987 Epsom Derby at 13/5 - when was the last time you saw a horse race in the USA where the favorite paid 7.20 to win?), I went to a different branch of the same company, and was told that I could only cash it in at the office where I placed the bet.
With the advances in scanning and information transfer technology it is now much easier for a Paddy Power in Romford to verify the bet placed in the Paddy Power in Oxford. All majpr bookmaking brands now can and do allow bet collection at other branches.
Some good info already given. Personally I wouldn’t bother with fruit machines in pubs, either they will have just paid out so you won’t win anything, or they will pay out and you’ll piss off some regular who was just about to play on it. If you want to play slots I’d go to a casino.
Sports betting is very easy on the high street as has been mentioned. The big names are Paddy Power, Betfred, Coral, Ladbrokes, William Hill, and Betfair. They will usually have similar odds, unless there is a promotional deal on for something. Obviously you can’t cash in a winning Willaim Hill bet at a Coral (for example), but you should be fine in a different branch of the same chain.
In the casinos I’ve played at over here that is right, the dealer doesn’t take a face down card so if their showing card is a ten or an ace, they will deal to everyone and you might still lose to a blackjack. And yes, splits or doubles on your part that result in a blackjack for you will not pay out as a blackjack (just even money) and will lose to a dealer blackjack.
Totally agree about bookies, but disagree on casinos. For most people these days it would be completely normal (though admittedly not common) to go to a casino as part of a normal night out on the town. Yes there are a few hardcore gamblers but on a Friday or Saturday night, most people in a casino will just be having fun over a few drinks.
I’d say it’s unlikely you’ll find craps but blackjack will be no problem. One thing to be aware of is that all UK casinos will require you to become a member before entering (unlike bookies). This is a legal requirement, but membership is free and only takes about five minutes. I assume being a foreigner is no problem, just bring your passport with you for ID.
Doesn’t that mean you could install a hidden camera aimed at a fruit machine. It would record the outcome of each lever pull by various people using a bit of computer vision. (camera would probably have to be above, in the ceiling)
It would calculate the overall odds and the adjusted odds at any moment.
If those odds ever become positive - as in, the player is actually going to make more money on average than the cost of the chips - the system alerts you and you can go play it.
Probably not a viable business plan; these are small numbers of machines in local pubs. There will be regulars nearby ready to jump on a machine when somebody leaves after dumping his whole bankroll into one.
Wouldn’t that just be the equivalent of any roulette “system”? i.e. when you’ve seen a long run of either red or black you know that, over the long term, there will be a period of the opposite colour. However, you’d have to be prepared to play for as long as it takes to allow that run to take place and there’s no guarantee that it’ll happen before you run out of cash.
So if a slot machine guarantees a payout of 75% over the course of x spins and you know it has paid out only 50% in x-10 spins then sure, the next 10 are going to be lucrative but if that “x” is hundreds of thousands of spins then such a method may not be practical (and I suspect the owner will not allow you to film it). If, though, the payout is strictly probability-based then no amount of monitoring will tell you when to play.
No a roulette wheel has no memory. However UK pub fruit machines are designed to keep within an RTP range over the course of relatively few spins. If you know the machines tolerance, had access to it when you wanted, and were able to constantly monitor it you could turn it into an +EV proposition. This is impractical in the real world though.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t suggesting it did, merely that theoretically it will end up roughly 50/50 and people thinking they have a “system” (hence the scare quotes) use a run of one colour to justify thinking that it is going to even up for them. well it probably will, given an absolutely fair wheel and an infinite number of spins but it may not “even up” in a practical time scale for any individual player.
Sounds reasonable. I’m not familiar with how machine manufacturers calculate their payout ratios nor how they ensure they stay true to it.