I’ve written recently about looking for certain slot machines to be reset — because some of them, not many, reset to conditions favorable to the player. A reader who calls himself jstewa22 wrote a number of posts saying this didn’t make any sense to him. Why would a machine reset in such a way? A very good question, to be sure. Today’s blog attempts to address this question.
First of all, keep in mind that gaming manufacturers (IGT, Aristocrat, Konami, etc.) are not owned or run by casinos. They are separate entities. Manufacturers need to walk a fine line between casinos and players. To be successful, the game must be profitable for the casinos and interesting to the players.
Also keep in mind that game designers aren’t, for the most part, also advantage players. The game designers might pick a reset number out of the blue — resetting to 12 sounds good, perhaps — and go with it.
The game manufacturers possibly don’t know the return for the machine when reset at 12 (or any other number). They know the overall Return to Player (RTP) (typically between 85% and 95%) over time, but may not have the return broken out at every possible reset number.
Advantage players, however, make it a point to know when a game is positive. We collect data and analyze what we find. When we do find a game that resets positively, we play until the game is no longer positive.
A famous example of this happened a few years ago when New Jersey allowed online gambling. I wasn’t involved in this bonanza, and might have some details wrong, but it went something like this.
On the game Ocean Magic, the game reset positively FOR EVERY PLAYER FOR EVERY DENOMINATION. So, a player signed up, deposited money, probably collected a signup bonus, and then played off all denominations and number of coins — of which there were lots. When that player had run through all of the possibilities, he was done gambling and ready to cash out — often thousands of dollars ahead.
That player would then do the same thing using the identities of as many people as he could talk into it. How much these people were paid to let the APs use their name and accounts was open to negotiation. But if a player could get dozens (or even dozens of dozens!) of additional names so Ocean Magic would reset for every one of them, think of the windfall!
It didn’t take long for the New Jersey Gaming Commission (or whatever the organization is called) to notice this pattern: players sign up, play all the Ocean Magic combinations, and then cash out. When the NJGC figured it out, they stopped it. They either got the Ocean Magic manufacturer to change the reset numbers or stopped offering the game.
I heard there were lawsuits against the players for “taking advantage” of the situation. As I understand it, players eventually got paid — but many were barred from playing online in New Jersey thereafter at one or more casinos. The players who spotted this did quite well for themselves until it was shut down. Today there are ways to play Ocean Magic with an advantage, but not when the game is originally reset.
How could this happen? I’m not really sure, but I am sure it did happen. Somebody somewhere didn’t dot all the i’s and cross all of the t’s. This was another case of “the early bird gets the worm.” The early discoverers made out like bandits. The rest of us just heard about it after it was no longer profitable.
While I know of four different games that are positive at reset, at least some of the time, you’ll never see me identify which games those are. The reason is simple. I assume some number of my readers are casino employees. If I told them which games are beatable in this way, you can bet that the opportunity would dry up essentially immediately. Casinos would demand that manufacturers fix this problem — or the casino would no longer offer the game. And since a game that casinos won’t buy (or lease) is no good at all to a manufacturer, the manufacturers will comply with the casinos’ wishes.
Even if the knowledgeable player can figure out how to make thousands of dollars when these particular games are reset, resets don’t happen very often, and the games are still wildly profitable to the casinos.
Consider the opposite side of this: One game that definitely is NOT beatable at reset is Buffalo Power Pay. When this game is reset, all of the betting options have the Major at 30 and the Mega at 50. When the numbers are at this level, the game returns 80% or so. It takes a while for the Major and Mega to be built up so it’s profitable for to the players.
But at some major casinos in Las Vegas, these games are reset by the casinos several times a week! This is equivalent to letting the players build up progressives, and then the casino confiscates the money that the players built up. I’ve asked Bob Nersessian about this, and his belief is that it is patently illegal to do this. And casinos are doing it time and time again.
A player who complained about this to the casino would thereby identify himself as a player who paid attention to such numbers — and, for the most part, casinos don’t appreciate such players. The player who complained would be, in effect, outing himself as a player the casino wishes to kick out. Because of this, players do not complain about this to the casinos.
There’s another way for games to reset positively — and that is for the new starting number to be selected at random! Sometimes it’s positive for the player. Usually not. But it does happen from time to time. On these games, just playing regularly, players have noticed the reset number — and sometimes it is positive after the bonus round is played. Sharp players are alert to this!
I’m not sure my explanation will satisfy jstewa22. After all, the explanation is basically “shit happens on occasion, but alert players can take advantage of this.”
I think jstewa22 was thinking that casinos and/or manufacturers were INTENTIONALLY doing this, and that simply didn’t make sense to him. As well it shouldn’t. These organizations are in the business of making money off of players — not supporting APs. I’m certain casinos and manufacturers are definitely NOT doing this on purpose. But there are a lot of moving parts and a lot of decision makers, and sometimes somebody somehow someway drops the ball.
Bob, thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my question. Yes, I’m sure that neither manufacturer nor casino would intentionally allow such a positive EV situation. My question was more about the specifics of how this could happen. I play VP almost exclusively, and was thinking about how VP progressives work: generally, the RF progressive increases with play until it’s hit, then resets to the 800 coin baseline. Thus, VP progressives are at their minimum EV at reset and only increase. The implication of a slot being positive at reset is that the EV wouldn’t necessarily increase as it’s played after reset, because that would mean that the machine would always be positive. Am I understanding that correctly? If there’s a bonus of some sort that increases with play, how could the machine be positive at reset and then become negative (and profitable for the casino) with play? Thanks again for tackling this, I appreciate it!
From my understanding, the reset event occurs when they change the jackpot threshold from $1200 to $2000 on a slot machine. Once changed, the machine loads its default state where the meter is at a playable state. As shown in the Ocean Magic example, every new player had a positive EV state on each bet amount by default. It didn’t automatically load what was previously on the machine before the change was made. That’s why Bob mentioned that EV is just being lost to resets being made because players could play a machine, build up a meter, casino does something to reset it, and it loads the default state where the meter is not a good play.
First time poster, long time reader… Thanks, Bob, for both starting and continuing your blog!
To jstewa22,
First of all, it’s easy to confuse the different types of reset. There’s “meter reset”, which happens when someone triggers the meter (gets the bonus), and the meter resets, usually to the base amount. Then there’s “machine reset”, which is done by casino personnel either directly or indirectly depending on what actions are taken while the machine is open.
Secondly, on some games (not VP, as you pointed out), when the machine is reset, the meters, coins, bubbles, etc will have a default setting that is different from the base values or configuration. One reason they might choose this higher game state is to encourage game play. Even regular players will sometimes avoid playing if the game is in the worst or lowest state. As Bob pointed out, the default state on some games happens to be a positive play.
Finally, a couple of examples using a VP:
(1) Imagine a RF progressive that resets to $1000 when someone gets a Royal, but resets to $2000 when the machine is reset.
(2) Same Royal progressive that resets to a random number between $1500 and $2000 when the machine is reset.
(3) Ultimate X: Any multipliers for the next hand appear when the machine is reset.
And no, I doubt we will ever see any of these outside of a tech mistake (different subject!)
Game makers have quite a bit more leeway due to the higher house edge on slots. Sometimes they guess rather than going through the math…
$ea-Note, thanks, this makes sense. I think maybe I’ve been making a bad assumption: it makes sense that a machine with a progressive jackpot or bonus could be positive on reset (I agree, likely not the manufacturer’s or casino’s intent), I’ve been assuming that after this reset the machine could become negative with further play. That’s not likely, right? A machine that was (maybe inadvertently) positive at reset should continue to climb further into positive territory with further play but become negative again after the jackpot has been hit. Sound right?
Not necessarily. Some slots are positive not because of a progressive jackpot or other feature which builds up until hit, but because of the positions of certain symbols.
For example, in Ocean Magic, the game can be positive if Wild symbols are in certain positions. With further play, those Wild symbols move up and eventually off the screen, so the game is likely to become less valuable for at least a few spins as those Wilds disappear (and before new ones appear).
I have to submit my “2 cents”. At a major tribal casino in Oklahoma (Winstar), I witnessed (on 2 separate occasions) a RF progressive reset from a positive state to default. Once, on a 1.00 denom 15/9/4/4 deuces which was around 10,000.00 reset to 4000.00 and second time on 0.50 denon it was about 3500.00 and reset to 2000.00 (same paytable). And no, it was not because someone hit it. After reset there were no decimal places on the royal meter, so instead of say 4003.20 or whatever, it simply read 4000. All other progressives which were not in a positive state were unchanged.
I asked for a slot supervisor and he stated the money was returned to a general pool to benefit all players. To me, this was blatantly dishonest and unfair. Since this is tribal land, there is no recourse. I guess the lesson is, if you sit down and play a good progressive, never get up because the casino can wipe it off the machine any time they like. Anyone else have a similar experience?