Comments on: When to Walk

By: Pablo

Pablo — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 01:33:29 +0000

Jean, your column has sound advice. I have only been “serious” about VP for a few tears [I think this is a typo – “years” – but we all have had a few period of “tears”!] but I have encountered all the situations you described. I especially like the idea about celebrating a big win…

By: Alan Silverberg

Alan Silverberg — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 06:36:32 +0000

Kevin, mathematically you are correct, but the casinos make enough profit from their house edge to not want to risk losing their license. Factoring in the penalties if they were caught cheating and how well regulated the games are, their expected return by rigging the machines would be very negative. Even if no one notices, someone, probably a disgruntled programmer, will eventually say something. A Chinese restaurant can illegally increase their profit by perhaps 0.2% by rounding the sales tax up to the higher nickel. The worst thing that can happen is that the person who complains to them gets a nickel, or if someone goes to the trouble of filing an official complaint, maybe the restaurant gets a small fine, which would probably be a lot less than the extra profit they made. If a casino rigs the RNG to gain the same extra 0.2%, they could risk losing their license, not only at the location with the problem, but in other cities as well. They could lose millions and maybe billions, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about.

When the casinos want to make more money, they change the pay tables, reduce the comps, free rooms, and other offers, give out a reduced rate of comps on the “playable” machines, etc. They can also use misleading and unclear promotions and marketing, because that aspect of the casino industry isn’t very well regulated like the actual games are.

I think what you’re saying would definitely apply to the online casinos. I’ve heard a lot of negative stories and that type of operation can more easily get away with cheating. Personally I stay away from them.

By: Kevin Lewis

Kevin Lewis — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 17:03:35 +0000

Well, that’s my point. You can’t KNOW if a machine is non-random (unless, I suppose, you ran a million dollars through it and lost it all), but starting with whatever probability of that you feel exists when you sit down, an uncharacteristically negative result increases that probability by some amount, depending on your personal point of view. Someone with absolute faith in all VP machines’ fairness will probably not bail out at all. I, lacking such faith, will be long gone. And I freely admit–the vast majority of bad results are simply bad luck. We all have our individual points at which something does or doesn’t pass the “smell test.” For example, some friends and I who used to play together a lot went 1-for-228 in one-card draws to royals over a couple of weeks’ time. Just horrible luck? Quite possibly. But we stopped playing at that casino anyway.
In any case, my advice is congruent with yours. If for ANY REASON you don’t want to play any more, don’t force yourself to. The machines will still be there tomorrow.

By: queen of comps

queen of comps — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 06:54:23 +0000

I don’t think one could “catch” any gaffed machine in one session, even a very long one. Weird things can happen in the short term – good and bad. Not enough quads, way more than “expectation,” rarely completing a 4-card flush, being dealt 4 to the royal and never connecting, have 2 or 3 or more royals in one session……….

By: Kevin Lewis

Kevin Lewis — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 21:08:20 +0000

One other time that you should walk wasn’t mentioned. When your results in a session are far worse than expectation, you should walk–even if you intended to play longer, even if the casino is offering 14,000 times points with a cherry on top, even if they’re offering a new house in Malibu with every royal. The reason is: there’s always a REAL, SUBSTANTIAL, DECIDEDLY NON-ZERO chance that the machine is, er, less than random, and by that, I don’t mean it’s set to deal you lots of Aces. Most VP writers and those who make their living from the game, or purport to, say that this possibility is essentially nonexistent, because “Why would the casino EVER EVER cheat?” Curiously, the public has this same mindset, with the same rationale. My logic is that whatever the chance may have been when you sat down that the machine is non-random, producing a result that is five or six standard deviations in the wrong direction increases that chance. Why bother risking it, when other good plays–not to mention other things to do–exist as alternatives?