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Best of John Robison
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Gaming Guru
Posting Odds, Slot Systems20 November 2003
Dear John, I don't have any idea what the odds are for hitting the Betty Boop or Payday progressives. I do know that Bally's philosophy is to offer wide-area progressives that hit more frequently than other companies' wide-area progressives, and that the higher the denomination, the greater your chances of hitting the progressive when there are multiple denominations on the link. People have proposed requiring casinos to provide odds information similar to that provided by the lotteries, but these proposals have never gotten much support--either from the casinos (no surprise there!) or from the players. The bottom line, I'm sorry to say, is that the cost/benefit ratio for requiring casinos to provide this information is nearly infinite--that is, posting this information provides almost no benefit to the vast majority of players regardless of the cost to the casino. Why do I say this? First, how many lottery players do you know who look at the published odds for the games and decide which games they're going to play based on the data? How many players even bother to look at the odds? And of those who do, how many understand what the odds mean? Lottery players are drawn by the big prize or the relatively small investment, not on how good a bet the lottery is. Second, some casinos have signs indicating which of their machines have high paybacks. You'd think that these machines would constantly be in use, yet I frequently see players playing unmarked machines while the machines marked as high payback sit idle. Finally, I frequently see high-payback video poker machines sit idle, while lower-paying machines are in use. Sometimes the machine with the high-payback is right next to the lower-paying machine. I think most slot players play for entertainment and the chance to hit a big prize--and I don't think they really care how good their chances of hitting the big one are, just having the chance is good enough. Casinos could post payback information on their machines, but most players would ignore it, it would confuse most of the players who tried to read it, and it would provide valuable information to a only very small number of players. Best of luck in and out of the casinos, It takes me anywhere from a couple of days to a few weeks to answer questions. I received this follow-up e-mail from John (Jack) before I had a chance to reply to the first e-mail.
Dear Jack, No, I don't find it disconcerting that states do not require casinos to post payback information on slot machines, but I do find it funny that there are double standards for the lottery and the casinos. Here in New Jersey, for example, the odds of hitting various combinations in the lotteries is available on the back of bet slips and in brochures--even though anyone who took a course in probability can figure them out--and the lottery's slogan is "It pays to dream." The casinos do not have to reveal the odds on their games and they're prohibited from using such blatant come-ons. There are two ways to determine the odds on any slot machine. The easiest is to get a copy of the par sheet for the machine. This sheet tells you everything you need to know about the probabilities of hitting the winning combinations on the machine. Most casinos will not show you the par sheet for a game, no matter how nicely you ask. The other way is to play a few thousand spins on the machine and not how many times each symbol lands on the payline on each reel. Depending on how many stops there are on each virtual reel and how many times each symbol appears on each virtual reel, you should have a fairly good estimate of the probability of landing each symbol on each reel. With that info, you can calculate the odds on the machine. There are a series of payback programs for IGT's Haywire slot machine that have a 4,000 top jackpot and your odds for hitting the top jackpot are 1 out of 32,768. John
Dear Stu, You're right that the push on two pair can be a problem. We hit a lot more of those hands than quads. You're experiencing the volatility of the paytable. Your money tends not to last as long on the Shockwave machine as on the ones at Kewadin, but every once in a while you'll hit that Shockwave bonus and your money will last longer than you want to play! Best of luck in and out of the casinos,
Dear Debbie, As I say in my book The Slot Expert's Guide to Playing Slots, there are two rules to slot play: 1) Over time, a slot machine will pay back to its players an amount of money very close to the amount predicted my multiplying its payback percentage by the amount of money played through the machine. 2) There's nothing slot players can do legally to change rule 1. Some of these system sellers are scam artists; some just believe that they've found some flaw in probability theory or the programming of the machines and that they can exploit these flaws to win money. I've ordered a few of these systems over the years, and I've found the vast majority of them to be worthless. I know of a website selling a booklet called The Zig Zag Method of Winning at Slot Machines for $30, but I've never read the book. I'm fairly sure, though, that you'd get far more content of far better quality by spending the $30 on any of the good slot books available. Best of luck in and out of the casinos,
Dear Jerry, Thanks for the kind words about my column. Each machine maintains some bookkeeping information (such as total coins in, total coins out, number of games played, etc.) on an EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read only memory) chip that will retain the values even if the machine loses power. It takes a few seconds to store the bookkeeping data, and that's the pause you're experiencing. The machine doesn't do anything else while these values are being stored. These pauses have no effect on the results from the machine. Your odds of hitting any combination are the same on every spin. Best of luck in and out of the casinos,
Dear Annette, You're right. You just put it nicely. You can send your letter to the attention of the Director of Slot Operations. If you'd like to find out his or any other executive's name, you can call the casino or send an e-mail to barbaryinfo@coastcasinos.net. Best of luck in and out of the casinos,
Dear Margie, Yes, the casino can monitor what is going on with the machines. The slot data systems in use in casinos today can provide a great deal information to the slot department. They can identify winning and losing players, in addition to finding players who have given a lot of action and don't have a players club card inserted (presumably because they don't have cards). In addition, the surveillance room can watch what is going on among the slots. Using your players club card has no effect on whether you win or lose. The RNG in the machine doesn't care--or even know--whether you've inserted a card. Best of luck in and out of the casinos, Dear Barb, The competition is so strong in Las Vegas that all the casinos have a wide variety of slot machines. With so many casinos having so many slot machines, it's almost impossible for any casino not to have a wide variety of machines. I don't have any hard data to back this up, but my impression is that the locals casinos tend to get new machines first and the strip casinos tend to be more conservative and wait for the machines to build a track record. That said, I'm sure we can find plenty of instances in which new machines were installed on the strip before or at the same time as they were installed in the locals casinos. Best of luck in and out of the casinos, Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert, at slotexpert@comcast.net. 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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