The desperate posts keep flooding my Inbox. Here are some excerpts:
This is the worst year I have had playing VP. I am so tired of losing.
I play mostly in A.C. and in Vegas a few times a year. I play only the best games I can find at the dollar level. A group of nine of us studied and practiced on software program. Because we all play nearly perfect, we were all able to win or at least stay close. For the last two years none of us have won so it sure seems to us that the casinos have made some adjustments. We understand the paytables have not changed but why can’t they have a chip with less hit frequency, say a royal hits every 45,000 hands instead of 40,000.
What am I doing wrong – I just can’t seem to hit a royal no matter how long I play or what game I play.
Oops, that last one was something I said to myself. Yes, Brad and I are in a long losing stretch ourselves. We have had only 3 royals this year – all Brad’s – and the last one in early April. (Actually I haven’t had one since last August!) If you think that this doesn’t sound so bad, remember that we both play regularly. However, we don’t play as many hours a week as we used to, especially me. And that is part of the problem. We play for “long term” results – and the more you play the faster you tend to trend toward the expected winning results if you play only when you have the advantage. When you don’t play as much, the losing stretches seem to last longer if you count the days, or weeks, or months. You get more realistic figures when you compare the number of play hours.
However, being in a losing stretch is never fun, whether you are a casual recreational player who plays once in awhile or a serious student of the game who plays almost every day. When you are in winning streak, you may not think about analyzing your play. However, when the losing spells come, you may start to have questions and doubts, like the people I quoted above. I suggest this is a time for “checking up,” and in the next few blog entries I am going to talk about some of the things you might be doing wrong and give suggestions for some right moves that may help your losing streaks be shorter.
However, I am going to give you one basic fact now that you must realize, no matter how hard it is to face: you can not be a long-term winner at VP unless you always play when you have the advantage. That means you must know the EV of the game you are playing, add up all extra benefits, and not play unless that total is over 100%.
Stay tuned. But in the meantime, I encourage you go back and read all the comments on the last few blogs I’ve written about VP. I don’t always agree 100% with every single comment, but they all give you something to think about. And many of them give helpful advice on how to win more and/or lose less.
I also smell a rat. I was in Vegas last weekend for 4 nights, and it was the worse ever in 10 years of playing. We are recreational .25 players but skilled at our core games. We don’t expect a big win, just a good time. Although we weren’t playing 24/7, I only got 1 quad the whole time I was there. And that was my biggest VP hit. Not much give and take, just mostly take all at once. Finally gave up on it and played wheel of fortune slot machine, where I hit 250 quarters after only $5 put in. My husband doesn’t want to go back so I’m afraid my Vegas era has sadly come to an end.
Steve Bourie of AmericanCasinsoGuide.com has interviewed Gaming Commission personnel in both Nevada and New Jersey and written about it. There is a nice video about the randomness of slot machines at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wkubf1PrWg
He has a rather lengthy article about gaming machine procedures that insures that the machime configuration approved by the gaming commission cannot be altered to cheat the player. It is at:
http://www.americancasinoguide.com/Tips/Slots-Honest.shtml
The part about gaming procedures starts about a quarter of the way down with the paragraph beginning with:
“The five-story State of Nevada office building …”
My take on whether the video poker has been altered to reduce Royals and Quads is: “I don’t think so and I hope not”. According to the Steve Bourie article, it seems that the procedures are in place to insure the games cannot be altered without some chance that a casino will be caught and getting caught will be worse than running a fair game. Casinos don’t like to gamble with things like losing their license, and employees don’t like to gamble with getting put in jail and blacklisted from their profession for life. And for that matter, hacking into a EPROM that you don’t have the source code for and reprogramming it so that a gaming official with an EEPROM comparator couldn’t detect a parity difference or a CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) difference isn’t that easy. And the fact no skilled technicians haven come forward as a whistleblower (of course Larry Volk (mentioned in the Steve Bourie artcle) did get a bullit in his head before he could testify) suggests that there are no such
technicians out there (at least that are alive;-).
There are enough clueless players playing poorly that a close to 100% EV fair machine can still make money. If a machine isn’t making enough money (i.e the skilled players are hitting that quarter Double Bonus Poker 100.17% machine too hard, they simply downgrade the pay schedule on the machine legally or reduce the points earned on it, or pull the machine and put in a reel slot machine that earns them a better percentage and the professional players will go elsewhere. Isn’t everybody always complaining about the above 100% machines going Missing In Action? And if the locals casinos were cheating, why are they all going bankrupt?
With that said, I’m a fairly recent convert to VP using the Bob Dancer method and I’m losing this year also. I met a local in El Cortez last year that said there was a big switch in the backroom that the boss would throw every once in a while to make the machines pay out. If I believed him or that machines were rigged, I would stop playing VP immediately and go back to Blackjack. But what if some face cards been removed from that deck, and is she always dealing me the top card and … is it paranoia if they are really out to cheat you?
Can I get an answer from someone who actually KNOWS to this simple question_
“Do the regulators actually perform random, unannounced tests to confirm that the chips in VP machines at casinos are not gaffed”?
I was playing at a casino in Indiana when the vp machine next to me went blank. After it went blank a computer screen came up and different colored squares were flashing and getting highlighted. Could it be that these machines can be remotely controlled from a mainframe? Is this why I lose when I play on my card but win when I play on a friends card who do net gamble at all?
To answer your question, bluechip, all that would have to be done to make a +EV game -EV, without changing the paytable, would be for the RNG to assign different “weights” to each card in the deck. In a true pseudo-RNG (for mankind has not yet invented a true “random number generator”), each card has equal weight, i.e., chance of appearing. But the RNG could be altered to assign a weight of, say, 99 to A/K/Q/J and 100 (the default weight) to the other cards. This would affect the frequency of both high pairs and royals–there would be slightly less of each. This would be completely undetectable: the player would never notice the difference, since it would take literally millions of hands to produce results that would suggest an aberration that could not be easily explained by simple negative fluctuation, and the flawed RNG could simply be loaded as “firmware” on the controller chip, and lost when the machine is powered down. (Not that a single solitary Gaming agent could detect a change in the chip’s programming anyway.)
It used to be that casinos could blithely reduce the pay schedules and people would still play anyway. In certain markets, such as the Vegas locals’ casinos, this is no longer true. People simply stay the hell away when all they can find is 9/6 DB and 7/5 Bonus. It would be much better for the casinos if they could offer “full-pay” machines that were, in fact, subtly non-random, to the players’ detriment, in the way I’ve described above, or a thousand other completely undetectable ways.
The thing to be very, very afraid of is that NONE of the three reasons why “the casinos would never cheat” actually apply: legal, moral, or financial. Legally, they would never get caught. Morally, we’ve already seen that casinos have no ethics whatsoever. Financially, they are currently frantic to do anything to boost the bottom line, even if it’s a bit risky.
The prospect of casinos using a chip to reduce the frequency of royals doesn’t sound likely to me. While it might be technologically possible, the FAQs section at VPfree says Nevada and Mississippi casinos are forbidden by law to have non-random VP machines. Rather than run afoul of the law, casinos reduce the pay schedule.
VP strategy derives from the assumption that every card has an equal chance of appearing. If the frequency of the royal is somehow changed, wouldn’t the frequency of other hands hitting have to be altered as well?
The debate over whether the casinos CAN alter paybacks by fiddling with the RNG is over: they can, and they have. The American Coin scandal is the most widely known, though that was a slot route vendor (convenience stores and such), not a casino, doing the gaffing. There have been dozens of other reported incidents in “regular” casinos, as well.
The debate over whether the casinos WOULD alter paybacks by fiddling with the RNG is ongoing: some people say that the casinos “would never” alter the RNGs, because “they would lose their licenses”. First of all, Gaming has NEVER revoked or even suspended the license of ANY Nevada gaming operator for cheating. This obviously means the casinos never, ever have cheated, LOL. Oops, how about the Venetian rigging its drawings? Wow, they must have pulled the Venetian’s license for that!
The only empirical test we have–since we are not likely to get the casinos to open up the machines and let us inspect the chips–is our results. As I’ve said above, every single person I know who I consider an expert–because of the high level of observed play, and positive results over the years–had, despite their expertise, a losing year in 2009. How do I know, by the way? I do their tax returns. When twelve consistently winning players ALL lose in a given year, it MAY be due to simple fluctuation–but something does start to smell bad when their losing streaks continue into the next year. Luck actually has very little to do with results over a large enough sample size, as net return will converge on expected value over time. This many bad results over this long of a period suggest an increasingly small probability that luck is a factor in those results.
It looks like most of you do not think the machines have been tinkered with, only the paytables are worse. Maybe. It just does not feel right, though.
Im thinking your hitting less because overall the machines are being played less so you are having to put all those hands into machines that may have had double the play before. All those unskilled players havent loaded the machines up for you.
Money management is as important when you are losing as it is when you are winning. Sometimes players get overly aggressive at pursuing royals or play at a higher than normal denomination with the hope of making a quick comeback. Instaed, you can end up digging a much bigger hole.
I feel a better appraoch is to recall the days when you were ahead and the good disciplined play that got you there. The jackpot hands will come around again. And don’t keep returning to play at “losing” casinos. You will be luckier at some places and not at others.
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Part of the problem is that the edge isn’t what it used to be, we’re all playing thinner stuff. As plays disappear, what’s good that’s left gets cannibalized quickly. So, expect to make less money with a lot more variance. Actually, while there are those who disagree with me, I think we’re close to the end of the era of profitable VP play.
I wrote on VPFree I think that I had five plays disappear on me in a 2 week span. A couple of them were in places you’d never find, unless you were a pro and desperate for a positive situation.
The economy has caused quite a bit of the problem…people can’t afford to play like they used to, which causes sharp play to stand out. So, you have this vicious cycle where either the game goes, or the player gets restricted, and the casino usually guesses wrong more often than not. One recent mass restriction I’m aware of, the casino bounced at least 4 people I would warmly welcome into my casino. Really warmly welcome. (Not to worry, the casino is suffering for this, judging from it’s revenue numbers)
Finally…if you play in AC or Vegas, good luck. You’re going to need it. What comes in the mail is a fraction of what came in the mail two years ago, and I’m certain that impacts emotionally your results on the game.
I was glad to see such a rapid response to my note about losing. It’s hard to believe after reading other players comments that it’s a coincidence that so many good players are losing so bad. Sometime in the near future i’m going to ask why vp players have to pay double for a comp when the casino keeps the same percentage no matter how many hands we get. Maybe a nationwide boycott on vp a few days a week would get someones attention. Thanks
Hi Mrs Scott,
I can’t help but wonder why anyone with the mental ability to learn perfect VP strategy would play anywhere they felt they were being cheated!!! I had my first royal before I had played 2000 hands. It was on a nickel machine that took 40 nickels to load it. I won $1000.00 which I never put back into the machines. I’m sure that the pay table was horrible, but don’t remember since I didn’t know strategy back then. Now what did that do to the “long term” results? Did another player need 78000+ hands before they hit a royal? The theoretical “long term” results are not calculated on just the 40,000 hands being so prominently mentioned here. They’re calculated on millions. The more hands the more accurate the results. Forty thousand is an average not a hard cold fact!!! My wife, Nancy, plays much faster than me. She once went sixteen years and hit only one royal. In those same sixteen years she started calling me Mr Royal because I hit so many. We play strictly for fun and expect a long term loss. We only ask for decent play time. Oh yes!! And too many beers on one of those nights.
We went in early April with only $200.00 for two nights at the Gold Coast and one at the Fremont. The Gold Coast makes us each book a room to get the food part of the mailer(how dumb is that?). We used our free play together and split the cash when we were up. Nancy then hit quad aces on quarter BP twice. She gave me a hundred and I turned it into two hundred before I went to bed. We lost it all over the next two days. On a prior trip we had stopped at the Mystic for their free play sign up bonus. It took a few days to get put on so we didn’t play the day we signed up. We played the $20.00 together on a quarter 9/6 DB(best we could find) machine and hit four quads including 4’s within 20 minutes and cashed out our original $200.00. That trip was definitely a winner with all the free rooms, food, drinks etc. It’s really all luck when it comes down to it. Long term results are only a factor when far more than 40,000 hands are played. Never play at a casino that you honestly believe is cheating you or shame on you.
As always we hope everyone has continued good fortune in all they do.
For what it’s worth, I’m having my best year ever. I’m a recreational player who is not an advantage player, but knows the proper holds. I play mostly dollars both in Vegas (DDB) and in Atlantic City(JOB). I’m up well over what I have lost in 2008 and 2009 and my play has more than doubled since last year. If someone is turning the screws on these machines, I must have somehow been lucky enough to catch the machines they somehow missed. I’ve been playing video poker for about 13 years now and have never noticed a real change in tightness or looseness of machines. I see the royal flushes on adjacent machines about as frequently as I always have. Fortunately, I’ve seen them on mine as well! Perhaps the casinos have loosened those adjustable chips? Now doesn’t that sound far-fetched!
I have been playing VP in Vegas (and now in California)for at least 20 years. When I first started, I had no clue what I was doing (I was a good poker player, but that did not help much) and I still managed to eek out small wins. There were lots of quads. Everywhere.
In 2008, it seems like a switch was thrown. Quads became so spaced apart that I at first thought that they were now precluded by the machine. Impossible, I thought, there is no way a casino would ever mess with the programming. 2009 became so frustrating, I do not think I got 25 sets of quads the entire year, and I had 9 different trips (of at least 2 days each). I am no a math whiz, but it “feels” like the games have changed to either “compare” dollars in and dollars out, or they have found a way to cut off quads almost altogether. In California, I have been told (by persons not in athority, so it is really meaningless) that the programming does get modified (no one really checks, and competition rules the market) to make it harder to win. Could this be happening in Vegas, on the strip? I play for fun, not to make a living, but try to make my gambling dollars last, so I am not close to an expert. But it sure seems that it is harder to get quads for the same number of hands as it was a few years ago.
I am pretty sure a casino or VP game maker did have a chip that lowered the EV of royals so it does happen. Can anyone recall this story? While it would seem the harm done if caught would be huge, would people really give up gambling, I doubt it. Most of us play games where we know we can’t win in the long term anyways.
Just wanted to add that the dollar denom players are the ones who seem to be getting REALLY crushed; in my own observations, most .25 games still seem to be OK.
A major exception to the above is Stations’ “Optimum” machines, on which I have NEVER been able to even hold my own. I have also only seen two royals ever hit on Optimums, which seems totally ridiculous since I must have logged 300-400 hours on them (needless to say, I’ve never hit a royal on an Optimum).
I’ve got a circle of about a dozen friends who are highly skilled advantage VP players. I’ve observed them in action; at one time or another I’ve “gone partners” with them, where two or more people agree to share wins and losses, which smooths out the variance.
In 2004, all twelve of them had winning years.
In 2005, all twelve of them had winning years.
In 2006, all twelve of them had winning years.
In 2007, ten had winning years, though smaller than before; two booked small losses for the year.
In 2008, only four had winning years, and two of the other eight booked large losses.
In 2009, ALL TWELVE LOST.
My own results mirrored those of my friends, with the exception that I did eke out a win in 2009. But 2007 and 2008 were bloodbaths.
Now I suppose it’s POSSIBLE that they all started playing -EV games. I suppose it’s POSSIBLE that they all forgot how to play video poker. I suppose it’s POSSIBLE that they ALL, SIMULTANEOUSLY, got “unlucky”. Anything is POSSIBLE.
Call me paranoid, but I have a deep suspicion of casinos in general, and a “slightly modified” chip that shaves, oh, 1% off the EV of a game would be completely undetectable; Gaming, of course, NEVER does a surprise audit of VP machines, so such a chip could be installed and removed at will. Casinos nowadays are feeling strong pressure to boost the bottom line, and what better way to do that than targeting a group of players that they hate anyway? It’s not as if moral considerations, or any of that nonsense, come into play.
Another factor that needs to be considered for the occasional casual player is the tax consequences of not getting to the “long term” results. When I first started playing I had several winning years and I had to pay taxes on my winnings. I then had a year when I was not able to play much and I lost quite a lot of money when I did get to play. I then went on to have another good year but of course, unless you file as a professional gambler you cannot carryover gambling losses from one year to the next. I have never seen an analysis of the effect of taxes on overall EV and I am sure it would be hard to do since the “long term” is not well defined. How many hands would you have to play in a year to make up for the tax consequences? I think this is especially important now that the really good plays are hard to find.
I too had been on somewhat of a losing streak this year. But this comes after winning six royals last year. This year I finally hit my first royal two weeks ago tomorrow. The casinos I frequent have not changed their pay tables. But as the blogger mentioned above, I wonder if casinos haven’t somehow programmed the machine to pay less quads. Surely there’s a chip casinos can insert so the machine has less frequency of payment.
i dont think a chip has a chip frequency for royals. my thought has always been its down to timing and milli-seconds when you hit the deal and draw buttons to be fortunate to hit a royal. i have three this year on the .25 level but i play what i can afford. so far i am up around $800 for the year.