Breaking the Slot Code – How would you use the information?

Yes and it's eye-opening to observe how far some AP's hang on to the AP mindset. The extremists of that group might walk past 8 casino storefronts just to get a 2fer hot dog deal or some cookware..or maybe a tote bag ( or alternatively, if said joint offering the hot dog deal also offers free parking and it is 115 degrees  they wouldn't bat an eye driving to get the prize). I get it and have chased a few negative EV events like these myself.

BTW Kevin..you can't predict or dictate the choices /outcomes of so-called beatable slots for Mr Flavor. It's his business and you obviously haven't participated in these games enough to know despite your atypically sterling casino math awareness quotient. There's some reasonable evidence that the math involved with these machines is different and that each spin is not an independent event at some point in a session as with most typical slots.

This is what you think I said.

"But youve told us that you do in fact play them, and your rather angry responses to my blasphemous skepticism strongly suggest that you have an emotional as well as a financial investment. Which is fine."

This is what I said.

"We'd also make a loop through town, walking from Monarch Casino on the east end up to Z Casino on the west end, vulturing machines at every casino along the way. It usually took about an hour, and honestly, it doubled as a pleasant morning walk."

When I say something like this:

"Why ain't you rich is a stupid question."

It's not anger, it's just a fact. Said in a flat tone with a complacent look on my face, with a bit of bemusement at such a ridiculous question.

I haven't had a chance to read the book yet but I did watch a couple of the free videos on the new website. 

My thoughts? First a caveat, I am by no means an expert on casinos or gambling and my math skills are not very high at all. So take this with not just a grain, but with a boulder of salt. 

The videos did not instill me with much confidence. The guy kept using terms like "most say", "the general consensus seems to be", "when you see this it usually triggers within c or d number of spins but sometimes as much as x or y" and "some would play this but others wouldn't" 

When playing he seemed to be learning as he went. There were examples of him not knowing what symbols trigger what and it seemed like he hadn't played that game much. 

One of the videos was on a lemmings game. The metric he was using does not seem valid to me. (Again not an expert). 

The game is a 5 reel video slot. Each reel has three rows. On wheels 2-4 some various lemmings symbols can appear. 

If a lemming symbol appears on the top row, lets say reel 2, then on the next spin it moves down to the middle row, then the last row, then goes away. 

The bonus is triggered by getting a fox symbol while there are lemmings on the screen. The type of lemmings on screen "determine" the style of bonus game. 

His theory was basically that if there are several lemmings on the screen on the top two rows it is a good play. Presumably because you are now closer to hitting the bonus, all you need is that fox. 

This SEEMS invalid to me. I think it is like perceived progression. I would think that each spin is independent. If that is true then the odds of triggering a bonus are the same regardless of what symbols are currently on the screen. 

I think this is similar to the logical fallacy we see on more simple slots like say double diamond. When one gets double, double, blank, and sees that third double is just off the pay line, they may think "oh man so close" in reality they were not close at all.

I could be way off on this and completely wrong. 

I don't know the  veracity of this guy and his listed games. It seems they invested quite a bit of time and funds to attain book publishing and website development. Common sense suggests there's something to it for that reason and then one can add the testimonies of a few slot 'experts' that bolsters those leanings. If it all ends up as just another "how to beat slots" endeavor, I'd speculate that it will become evident in a short period of time. MGM has identified slot AP's / vultures and have instituted restrictions of their point accumulations ( that's according to a recent conversation with an MGM pit critter in Vegas). The manufacturers of these "beatable" slots obviously have a stake in the marketing of the whole process and in the end it's always about marginal revenues for all involved. It's good practice to be skeptical about any process that goes against known norms and certainly skeptical about what's written on the internet / social media.

From what I've read ( and not participated in), I think there's something positive to it all. And, like you, I could certainly be in error. Time will tell.

I agree that most machines just offer the slot tech a list of six or eight settings from which to choose, all with different payback percentages. But some of the newer ones offer the ability to input a specific percentage and the hit frequencies are adjusted accordingly.

A par sheet wouldn't identify which of the possible payback percentage settings the casino has chosen for any given machine. It's quite likely that a given bonus situation will be profitable if the machine is set for a high payback and a losing proposition if it's set for a lower payback--and you can't know either way.

I did say that it's possible, even easy, to tell when a machine is better than usual. However, it is NOT possible to tell if its return is now over 100%. It's obvious that slot vultures surmise rather than calculate, and if they're selective enough (rejecting marginal plays), they probably can turn a profit. But I get the sense, and my limited observations have been, that even sorta kinda maybe mildly positive machines get swarmed. So like UX vulturing, slot vulturing is about as wise an investment of time as looking for credits left on machines.

Some of the other "AP plays" I have heard of do seem to make more sense to me. 

Examples like the  "must hit bys". The closer the progressive is to the must-hit number the better the ev. We have no way of knowing at what number it will hit (that was determined the last time the progressive reset) but since we know the max end point and know the average rate of increase per spin, one could get a good idea of when it is a better play. 

Also games like Frankenstein that have multiplayers for the bonuses that remain active until hit. The odds of hitting that particular bonus doesn't change but the multiplier increases the payout so the EV also increases. 

But I don't think that applies to perceived persistence games like watching chickens get fatter or watching buckets overflow. 

Math is math. There is no "different" math. And yes, I understand that for variable state slots, spins are not independent. That, I fully understand, means that a given variable state machine becomes a better and better play with each spin as long as the bonus remains unwon. But "now is better than before," or "now is better than usual," doesn't equate to "now, it's worth playing." That's the problem.

Furthermore, you can't judge whether you've picked +EV machines/situations by your results, or by anyone else's results, or the aggregated results of a couple hundred people. Your results could simply be on the right-hand side of the bell curve. Or the left.

Your perceptions are correct, and it's even worse than you say. Think about this: how many times does it go blank, double, double? Never, right? Blank 7 7? No way, no how. But the other way around? Lotsa times. 

This was the subject of a lawsuit back in the day. It was determined that a certain slot manufacturer would program its machines so that more "almosts" would appear than mathematical expectation would suggest. So if it was going to be something like bell, blank, bell, it would rearrange that to be bell, bell, "one off the line." The manufacturer's argument was that the RNG determined a losing spin immediately after the button was pressed, so if that losing spin was rearranged to create the illusion that the player had almost won, well then, no harm done. And astonishingly, the Gaming Control Board agreed with them. That was when I lost my faith in them as an honest regulatory agency.

All that has little to do with slot vulturing, except for my suspicion that often, those big juicy bonuses are not as great as they seem, because the hit frequency is abysmally low.