Question of the Day - 07 March 2019

From the third paragraph above:

> If you’re playing a different pay schedule, the frequency will be a little different.

Payouts will be different but the frequency remains the same. 

The frequency of *dealt* results is the same regardless of the pay table, but the distribution of *final* results depends on the "hold or draw" strategy used by the player, which *should* depend on the pay schedule, hence the sentence you quoted.

Slick-
Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I’m not enough of a VP player to have interpreted what he was saying. 
Thanks. 

Just wondering if over time I were to play say 500,000 hands at a $.25 VP machine with 5 coins on each play, what would be the theoretical loss over that long period of time.  Just Curious.

To the player who wrote the original question.... I've been playing VP for 20 years as well. Although not as much as you (I go 2-4 times/year), I am a dedicated Deuces Wild player. Although I don't play 1000 hands/hour, I play steadily and I always use the strategy card. My traveling companions also play, and all of them have had multiple royals over the years, as expected. I have been waiting 20 *YEARS* and still have not been dealt even one royal. Auntie Jean Scott would agree - this frugal gambler is on the truly terrible end of the bell curve when it comes to the statistical probabilities!

Are computers really "random"? Is it based on the moment you push a button?

The questioner seems more to be complaining that he is on a losing streak, and it is caused by nefarious actions by the casino.  Why would they take a chance of getting shut down when they have a license to take your money without cheating.  Luck is where you find it, and you usually need it to win, unless you play like Bob does.  I was at Ballys late last year, and playing one of the 8 1$ progressive machines, DDB.  The progressive was over $5500.  I sat down and within 10 minutes got 4A+3 for $2k.  Right after I hit that, a person next to me said that machine was now dead, they never pay large hits  one after the other.  I asked him what the difference was between his machine and mine, and he said the "casino makes sure they do not hit very much, and for sure they do not let it happen in the same week".  While he was saying that, I hit the Royal.  Right after, all the machines in that group were vacated. Just goes to show you, most folks think the casino cheat.

Pat Higgins

The answer depends on the VP game and pay schedule. Given Bob's assumption that the player was playing full-pay deuces(FPDW), I think the theoretical loss would actually be a gain. You'd be putting $625,000 through the machine playing 500,000 at $1.25 a spin. FPDW has a theoretical return of 100.76% with perfect play. With slightly less than perfect play(100.7% return), you'd win $629,375. That would be a profit of $4,375 not counting any card benefits you may receive from the slot club. Playing 1000 hands an hour, it would take 500 hours to play 500,000 hands. That turns out to be about $8.75 an hour. Again, not including slob club benefits. My math may be wrong, but I think it's close.

This reminds me of the Marx Brothers' comment "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Strictly Slots magazine is always fielding questions like this and their answer is always "What you are experiencing is a coincidence".  The fallback is always that the odds work out "over the long run" which is supposed to be millions of hands.  Who plays millions of hands in one sitting?  Machine #2 or Casino #2 doesn't know that you played 10,000 hands previously.  And it can't be "coincidence" if thousands of people have experiences that are almost identical.

I love these stories. When I first started playing I believed the machines were fair(they are). My funniest result was a AZ Charlies Decatur about 20 years ago playing 25 cent 101% Jokers on the bank with 10 slant tops. When I got there only one machine was available. When I sat down, the nice lady next to me politely said "honey you do not want to play that one is just hit a royal." I smiled, put in $20 and 5 hands in, much to my surprise, hit a royal for $1175. The expression on her face "priceless."  

To the questioner:  On December 11, 2018, lady luck came down and smacked you up side of your head and said "No more soup...er Deuces for you, fella."  THAT's how it works.  Luck and that's it as far as hitting the big ones.  

Bob Dancer's advice applies to lowering the house's edge--conserving your money on certain games using certain strategies, but doesn't guarantee the big hits (Four Deuces or Royal Flush).  Only luck.

Ask any blackjack player.  Favorite casino, favorite table, favorite dealer.  Best game, best strategy used.  But 'tonight' the dealer gets blackjacks and the player gets zip hand after hand after hand.  Or player is winning and winning, but suddenly it turns south until chips are all gone.  Who can say why?  It happens.

You've played "months or even years", every day?, before your winning streaks stop?  Sheesh, be glad.  Stop calling the NGC.  You must be a real pain of a customer.  It can't be much fun for you.

I find it incredible that people who claim to play all the time seem to know nothing about what's going on in the casino, especially at Video Poker. Does the questioner actually know how VP works? Bob probably needed to give him a short course in what happens when you hit the deal (and draw) button. I ask those who think the casino cheats at VP to explain how they think the casino accomplishes that.

The standard (tiresomely so) response to anyone who has experienced terrible results and is suspicious of the integrity of the game (whichever game we're talking about) is "you just don't understand variance, you ignorant putz" and a sniff of disdain. The effect of this is to mask any actual cheating that occurs--and I think it's incredibly naive to assume that casinos don't cheat or even that they rarely do.
The question is, then--at what point do we become suspicious? How bad do our results have to be before we start to smell a rat? people who make their living flogging gambling books (etc.) will tell us that that point is essentially "never," because we can't experience enough iterations in our short lives to say that an anomalous net result isn't due to variance.
But let me ask you this: I was at Caesar's Tahoe many years ago, bought in for $100, and proceeded to lose SEVENTEEN hands in a row. Was I being cheated? Probably not. Should I have kept on playing against that dealer???

Kevin, I've been there and done that, got the tee shirt, wore it out, as they say.  

Stay with that dealer?  Heck no, after a lousy run like that at blackjack I move.  Not blaming the dealer, just that those cards are not going to turn for me, my thinking.  I tip well, so dealers like for me to stay at the tables but I can't if the cards are bad and they know that.  Can't say there is any rhyme or reason, but why keep eating something that tastes rotten?  And often things will be better at another table.  Makes no sense, but that's my experience.