Archimedes and his "soapbox"

Can't we just get along?

Arc. Please continue to provide good info. Stop the sarcasm. LOL

"Now, I have seen placards over a bank of machines that specify 101% payback. Is that over the life of the machine or is it"over time"?"

If memory serves; they usually state "over 100% payback with optimal play". This is correct, in fact each hand you play your theoretical payback percentage is over 100%. Players often focus so much on the payback "over time", that they lose site of the fact that VP is a game of independent trials on which the odds are the same on each and every hand.

it's over time. Simple probability calculations will tell you that you should reach the theoretical payback with a limited number of trials. You can do the math and see how many trials you need to do in order to hit your target return.

If you want to insult the "strategist" you should refer to Union generals.

Oh, you mean you read books. The only war a man can actually study is the one he's fighting. This philosophical error is probably the root of your disparaging remarks. See also "fighting the last war."

As already stated "over time" is the meaningful phrase and you can compute the probability distributions for various numbers of hands (ie. time).

Also, you forget to mention the small print where it states using "optimal strategy". Since the vast amount of players don't use optimal strategy then the return over the life of the machine is likely to be much, much less. That's why casinos can afford to put in a few of these kind of games at low denoms (usually).

Stated much better than I did.

Arci, I understand the "overtime" as for your winning at VP. However, can you whittle down that "overtime" to a specific period of time? Like in days, weeks, months, or years.

Thanks

Starting a thread to denegrate a fellow forumite is pretty poor form, but suggesting Stonewall Jackson was a horrible strategist is moronic.
Can you please provide one example of a Jackson strategy you think was horrible?

No, it varies depending on the exact situation. The higher the edge the shorter the time period. The less the variance of the game (fewer number of high paying, low probability hands) the shorter the time period.

Also, the time period is really a function of number of hands, not actual time. That's why I prefer to use the term "over time" since there is no exact way to describe it.

Over on vpfree they have a page that discuss a function called N0. It gives a little more preciseness to the terminology by describing some specific cases.

https://members.cox.net/vpfree/Bank_NO.htm

Note the FPDW example is about a 1% edge.The game is medium variance and the number of hands is about 260K to have about an 80% (one standard deviation on the low side) chance of coming out a winner.