What Would It Take???

Please reserve the chatter on whether or not people's beliefs are true or false to other threads. There's no shortage of threads to discuss stuff like that. No shortage at all.

Here I just want to know what people would like the Do-it-yourself-turn key-home test to include.

All ideas are welcome and at least speaking for myself the only ideas I will reject are those that are impossible to test.

If it's testable then I'd like to hear about it.

I'm sure everyone knows that I've been on the side of the argument that believes machines (for the most part) are fair and random for a while now. That doesn't mean I'm sure, and it sure as hell doesn't mean that I'm going to dismiss what someone says that has a different viewpoint. I'm uber pro skepticism and I think this is the sort of thing people should prove to themselves and not listen to anyone else about, even if the "anyone else" is me.

I want to make a neutral nonpartisan utility for use by people on both sides of the argument and I can't do it by myself since I don't know what concerns other people.

I'll be posting all my work so far tomorrow, no time today.

Please contribute two main things.

1. What to test for.
2. How to test for it.

And leave the "is it true, is it false" and derogatory stuff for another thread or a later day.

A big thank you to those that have contributed ideas I can use.

There should be an identifier for each individual machine where data is being input. Using results from a game, without specifying the individual machine itself could skewer the results. If one machine is gaffed, it does not mean all are.

If I were a crooked operator and wanted to gaff my VP, I'd only rig one or two machines out of the 20+ of that specific game/variety.

JMHO, of course.

I didn't use it as "evidence of cheating". I used it as an example of why I now play recreationally only.
Depending for a living on a machine you can't be sure is gaffed and which even if not, can result in droughts of that size or more because you have a theoretical "edge" over the next 500 trillion gazillion hands?
Now that "is just silly".

The data analysis part of this problem is trivial. Laughable even. Just find someone with access to the SAS stat package, like just about any college upper division statistics major, and you can have your data analyzed every which way in matter of a few hundred clicks.

On the other hand , gathering the data for this task seems to me just about impossible. The standard deviation of a royal that occurs about once every 40,000 hands is........40,000. You would data from millions of hands to reach any reasonable confidence level. Where are you going to get that? And that data would have to be reliable. The diaried experiences of a several volunteers or friends doesn't meet any rigorous definition of reliable.

Incidentally, SAS is what the casinos to data mine their player's club members. Here is how the Venetian uses it.

I might be wrong but...most of us are assuming that the gaffe would be in on the RF draws, first because "that's where the money is"and second because any worthwhile change in the smaller hand draws would be far too noticeable. Since OP mentioned a 2500 hand session it seems he looking for e.g. drew to 50 flushes, should hit 12, hit 10. Just for the sake of completeness, I would say if you had 2 consecutive sessions of 2500 hands and in each session your result was in the bottom 3% of the probability curve I would think you were cheated. Of course, for the reason stated above, in real life you would need @ a million hands of data to reach any responsible findings.

Video Poker Hypothesis Tester and Confidence Quantifier

Basic Concept: The Utility will include three basic tests, each of which will be independent and optional. The user will be able to use some or all of them, if they so choose. In addition to the three basic tests there will be some optional tests and a place for advanced user-defined tests. The utility will include printable sheets for casino record keeping and tallying. Optionally, video of your play can be used to input at home, but the paper version will be included. The utility will be written in MS Excel and will be completely free, if the code translates then an OpenOffice version will also be made available for free for those that do not own MS Excel.

The Three Main Tests
1.A Test for Random Deal and Random Draw. All five dealt cards will be recorded, as will the cards drawn. The dealt and drawn cards will be analyzed for frequency of occurrence both separately and together. Since we are testing for the frequency of occurrence of single cards, each hand gives us 5 or more trials and minimizes the need for an impossibly large sample. This test is designed only for occasional or one time use. It's not something you are going to be doing for the rest of your VP career.

2.The Made Hand Test: This test will be ongoing and of indefinite duration. You may decide to track all your straights and higher for the rest of your life. It will allow you to track as much or as little as you want. If you only wanted to track Royals Flushes you could. Naturally the more things you track and the less rare they are the higher the confidence level will be. The problem with this test is it is based on your total number of hands and your strategy. It is therefore subject to error and is dependent on what your strategy is and how accurately you play. It might be amusing as a fun thing to do, but it is far too error prone to be good science.

3.Strategy Independent Frequency Test: This is similar to the made hand test in the sense that you are recording hands like Flushes, Full Houses, 4K, SF, RF. Where it differs is that rather than comparing your total hands to the number of paying hands, we are instead looking only at the frequency of the times you draw. The test will also include a dealt pat hand test as compared to total hands played, but again that is not subject to strategy difference. You'll be able to check for as little or as much as you like from the 3K on up to RF and it's designed for lifetime use or short term use. Obviously, as the sample size increases over time the confidence level will rise.

The utility will be designed non-partisan & side-neutral. That is to say, you can use it to test a hypothesis that machines are fair and your results are completely normal. Or, you could use it to test a hypothesis that machines are unfair and your results are abnormal. Most importantly, it will tell you your confidence level based on your sample size.

Oh one more thing: The utility will be completely open source and the method as well as the utility will be published and should always be consider a work in progress. As people make suggestions of how to do things better, it will be reviewed updated and new versions will be made available.

The new versions will be designed to work with your old data, so nothing will be lost and it will be totally backwards compatible.

~FK

Someone mentioned "fun" on one of the other forums and I was reminded of what inspired me to work on this little project. I met two nice retired couples from Canada a few weeks ago that were keeping hyper accurate tallies of all their made hands, SF on up to RF, and of all the 1 cards draws they made. My first thought was that they were wasting their time. I asked one them if he was doing it because he doubted the honesty of machines and he told me "no", it was just fun. It added a level of competitiveness (albeit random) to their play. They'd play next to each other and bet (a quarter) on who could get the most of a particular hand that day, and they got all excited when one of them would pull into the lead on let's say, "dirty royals" for the night.

It really seemed to add a level of fun and entertainment for them and I would imagine they aren't alone.

I asked him if he used the data to check for anything and he admitted that no he hadn't bothered. I guess he had originally intended to use it for checking, but had run so good on Royals, he never got around to it.

Anyway, I have it on the best of authority that recorded keeping like this can add fun and excitement to VP play for some people, and anything that can make the same activity more fun seems like it's worth spending the time on.

To increase people's fun is therefore my ulterior motive for working on this utility. I hope it does exactly that.

I'll begin coding and creating the forms early next week. I've gotten some serious help with the math and coding from some heavy hitters.

Everything will be open source and open for contribution by all. You can even take what I've done and improve it and post it yourselves separately or I'll happily put your versions on my website if you ask me to with appropriate credit where credit is due.

Don't think what I'm making will be a finished product, think of it as a good starting point and please feel free to improve it and contribute.

~FK

None of this would indicate whether the machines "are fair," in the sense of non-bias. Why would someone design a machine to be unfair in a non-normal way? It would be normally unfair. E.g. the Oregon Lottery VP machines.