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Gaming Guru
Ask The Slot Expert16 October 2000
Dear Ray: It is my pleasure to answer your questions. 1. Nevada has their own testing lab that verifies that the programs used in the machines are fair. Manufacturers typically have to submit one machine and a printout of the source code for the program running the machine as part of the approval process. The programmers at the lab look for problems in the program. In addition, each machine has a test connection to which the lab connects another computer. The test connection allows the test computer to rapidly get the results of thousands upon thousands of hands on the machine without having to actually play the machine. The lab usually keeps a set of reference chips for each machine in their archives. They use the reference set to compare against chips in the field. The actual machines on the casino floor are subject to inspection by the regulators. To check a machine, a technician removes the chips from the machine and electronically compares them with the reference chips. I don't know of any major casino that has been found to have machines gaffed in favor of the casino. (Some machines have been found to have been tampered with to favor the players.) About five years ago, though, there was a route operator that was found to have altered the program in its video poker machines to make hitting the high-paying hands much less likely than it should have been. 2. A full-pay machine is really just the highest-paying machine of a particular type. The full-pay version of Jacks or Better, for example, pays 4000 for a royal, 250 for a straight flush, 125 for four-of-a-kind, 45 for a full house, 30 for a flush, 20 for a straight, 15 for three-of-a-kind, 10 for two pair, and 5 for jacks or better when played with five coins at a time and is called 9/6 Jacks. This is the highest-paying, commonly found version of Jacks or Better. The Stratosphere has two higher-paying Jacks or Better paytables, but you can find them only at the Stratosphere. Before we had so many different types of paytables (Bonus, Double Bonus, Double/Double Bonus, Triple Bonus, etc.), you used to be able to key in on just the payouts for the full house and the flush, but now you have to look at the payouts for all the hands. There are many paytables that pay 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush that have lower paybacks than 9/6 Jacks or Better. These usually give a bonus for various quads and pay only 1-to-1 on two pair. So, to repeat the answer, you have to check the payouts for all of the hands to make sure that the machine you've chosen has the paytable you want. 3. The microprocessors and memory chips available today are many times more powerful and many times less expensive than the chips used in the older video poker machines. And the microprocessors slot manufacturers use are not necessarily the most powerful available at the time. The best cost a lot more than the older models. So, the older video poker machines had limited computing power and limited memory. My understanding is that the older machines used a shadow hand (or parallel deal) because it was faster or used less memory or both. The computers in the new machines are powerful enough to use a sequential deal. The computers in the old machines were not reprogrammed to use a sequential deal because they didn't have the resources to support the sequential deal. Besides--- 4. It doesn't make a difference which method is used. In your example, the player is better off with the sequential deal. But what if you had a 4-card royal and you discard the middle card? Suppose the card you need to fill the royal is three cards down in the deck. In this case, the shadow hand will give you the royal and the sequential deal will give you frustration. As long as the machine is fair, that is, each card is equally likely to be dealt from the deck, it doesn't matter how the machine assigns the replacement cards. For particular hands, one method will be better than the other. But in the long run, it evens out and the method becomes irrelevant. Best of luck in and out of the casinos! Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert, at slotexpert@home.com. For more information about slots and video poker, we recommend: Break the One-Armed Bandits! by Frank ScobleteVictory at Video Poker and Video Craps, Keno and Blackjack! by Frank Scoblete Slot Conquest Audio Cassette Tape (60 minutes) with Frank Scoblete Winning Strategies at Slots & Video Poker! Video tape hosted by Academy Award Winner James Coburn, Written by Frank Scoblete The Video Poker Answer Book by John Grochowski The Slot Machine Answer Book by John Grochowski This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net. Recent Articles
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