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MODERATOR NOTE: This topic split from "Another Secret to winning at SLots" (http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=9603) and moved to Tech Talk board from eBay Auctions board.  SF :31-


The same combination could have come up on the very next spin after the first hit. It's just extremely unlikely. That's why we call slot outcomes random.

Meditate with me:
Random distribution does NOT mean even distribution
Watt? :5-
Random distribution does NOT mean even distribution
Watt? :5-

Ohm.  :72- :72- :72-

All kidding aside, random distribution does NOT mean even distribution.  The position of the stars is an example of randomness. Are the stars evenly distributed in the sky? If I tell you that one star in 1000 is a certain brightness and color, would you question why you found two stars next to each other that were that same brightness and color and then spent a week trying to find another?

Why do humans insist on finding patterns in the stars where there are none? It's human nature. It's a survival instinct. We don't easily grasp randomness. We have an instinctive need to find patterns everywhere, and when there aren't any, we invent them.

The human need to see patterns in random events caused man to invent the constellations in the sky, and has built empires out of gambling houses. The best thing the casinos ever did for Roulette was to add that light board that indicates the last set of outcomes. Casinos saw a huge increase in revenue because players started betting perceived patterns in a game of independent trials.

The best thing any slot junkie can do to avoid losing too much is to stop trying to see patterns of wins and losses where there are none.

so say you were gonna play that machine before it hit 5 minutes earlier would you have gotton the same winning combo or would the rng pop out a diff combo?

If you pressed the spin button 1/100000 of a second later you would have gotten a different combo. Get it? 

Although computers can't be completely random, it's the human interaction that finally makes slot machines completely random. The numbers fly by at light speed and you snatch a set of three numbers from the sky at the precise moment you press the button. Twitch your muscle as you press the button, and you'll get a different part of the sky.

Within a few seconds, it's likely that every possible combination of outcomes has flown by.

heres another? okay the rng zipps out combos in mili secs but now if you lower the percentage chip of a slot machine it reduces payouts and winning combos.... how does the rng adjust to that....does it skip high paying combos?

The rng make no adjustments at all. It is an independent process that is not connected in any way with the percentage.


Look at it this way: You roll one die and get a number from one to six. Does the die care what you do with the number?
If I say that you must roll a six to win, then the odds are 1 in 6 that you will win. If I say that you must roll a five or six to win, then the odds are 1 in 3 that you will win. I can also say that if you roll a six, you'll win 4 times your bet, or I can say that you'll win 3 times your bet. The die doesn't give a darn.

No adjustments to the die are necessary, as long as it's a fair die and is not loaded. I can completely control the payback by deciding how many outcomes are winners and how much you get paid when a winning outcome happens. The math will do the rest.

Doesn't it just reassign the winning numbers, for example, if the machine picks 10 numbers:
1 thru 4 = losing symbol
5 thru 8 = small win symbol
9 and 10 = big win symbol

They would change it to this to reduce the payouts
1 thru 5 =losing symbol
6 thru 9 = small win symbol
10 = big win symbol

This is my basic understanding of how it works. Obviously the numbers used and combinations are much higher than this example.

Am I right?!?

Yes. :89-  :133-

I  HAVE TO GIVE A COMPLIMENT WHEN ONE IS DUE >>TO STAT <<-GREAT POST AND
 ACCURATE AS HELL ON THE RANDOM & HUMAN INTERACTION!


now convert your words into lyrics for a song >>>>twitch that muscle<<< and >>>win the pie in the sky<<< ..you can be wealthy also lol

i thought the rng new what numbers are gonna come out as soon as you put the money in the slot machine is there any truth to that?

"RNG" means "Random Number Generator"...

It's a program in a chip that generates random numbers.

It has no clue what it's going to pick when you put money into the machine.
This program is running numbers all the time when the machine is powered up...


Inserting money into the machine only tells the machine that money was actually inserted and how much.
However, nothing else happens until you make a bet and depress the SPIN button.

Go back up and read Statfreak's answer as to what happens after you hit the SPIN button.

Did you ever see the cage with all the balls in it spinning and bouncing around
on t.v. at night during the news when they are picking
the Powerball numbers or some lottery numbers?
The balls are always bouncing around and around right?
That's the RNG!!!

Does it care or have a clue how much money you spent on lottery tickets or
know what numbered balls are going to fall out?

NO

The same (somewhat...) goes for a slot machine....
It doesn't care how much money you put into it nor
does it have any idea what symbols it's going to stop on until you push the SPIN button.

 

This is kind of a irrelevant symantec.

It would be possible for the machine to choose the numbers when the first coin went in, the last coin, Bill, or the Max Bet button, or Bet 1 etc OR when the Spin button / Lever.
It could even use a combination of these factors. It would be up to the game manufacturers and could differ from machine to machine.

Irrespective the "true" randomness is the users action and not the machines choice.

Since the user has no "view" as to where the RNG is in its cycle, or even the length and given the speed of a microprocessor being in the mega or giga hertz range there is NO possibility that there is any predictability.


On a slightly different topic of randomness there have been some Roulette "cheat" devices created as of late. What they proport to do is to "predict" where the ball will land. You are supposed to enter in 1000 consecutive spins. This is to "calibrate" the device so it can figure out where the ball, and wheel have worn. You then enter in the aproximately velocity that the croupier is spinning the ball. I had even heard that there was supposed to be an Iphone app that could measure that speed and susbsequently predict what range is more likely to come up. While this is not supposed be an exact prediction it is supposed to vastly improve your odds.

Generally speaking single number picks on roulette pay 30:1.  There are only 38 numbers on the wheel. SO the theory goes that if you can narrow that range below 30 then you guarentee that by betting on all of the "possible" winning combinations you will be on the winning side.

Of course like any system there are flaws.... given that on average the wheel is spun just 45 times per hour. You would have to stand there entering in each number for 22 hours so even if the game is open that long you would be using more than one croupier and I also think that they switch up the balls every now and again. Of course standing there for 22 hours entering in each number into your iphone is not going to gather suspicion.....

Coming back to the topic at hand.... even as ridicilous as the roulette "cheat" is..... you don't get any kind of "electronic" wear that would aid in predictability of the RNG.

im surprized no one out there ever tried makin a device that can controll rng numbers on a slot .....i guess he would be rich or in prison lol......

A question to all the numbers crunchers. This is how the payout theory was described to me: for a particular payout paytable say with 64 stops per reel. odds of hitting the jackpot 64x64x64=262144 possible combinations, only one of those is the jackpot combo. also it is one machine cycle. So they take all those combos and put them in a bingo cage(RNG), as the cage is rotated and a number is dispensed (hitting the spin button).after all those have been dispensed that is considered one machine cycle.The machine cycle is the part I have a hard time understanding, it is this cycle they have based there refusal to payout jackpots that have hit. "malfunction voids all payouts"  written on all IGT reel glass .The question, How does the RNG know which numbers have been dispensed,and which ones it can still generate to hold the payout percentage to the promised percent.

Jim

Jim-

The 'cycle' is pretty theoretical.  Yes, all of the balls are in the bingo cage, but after one is drawn it is put right back into the cage, eligible to be drawn again.  To keep things simple, let's say that there are 10 bingo balls in the RNG cage.  You can easily pick number 8 twice in a row, but over thousands of picks, the distribution of numbers 1 through 10 will pretty much even out.  There are 10 numbers in the cycle, but that doesn't mean that the cycle will repeat after 10 draws.

The term "cycle" is confusing to people, too, because they think that it means what you described -- that the jackpot is eventually "due" to hit if it hasn't been hit in "x" number of spins.  The reality is that it's not any more due to hit on the 10th spin or on the 262,143rd spin.



The RNG doesn't care about what has been previously hit.  Let's change the example to 100 bingo balls (possible outcomes).  The RNG is constantly selecting a number (bingo ball) from 1 to 100.  Now let's say that we have a 90% payback program in there.  Balls 1 through 45 pay 2x your bet -- balls 46 through 100 are losers.

Welcome to my casino, here's a $100 bill for you.  Come play my one-coin, $1 machine.

If you made 100 plays and pulled balls 1 through 100 (in any order), you'd wind up with $90 back (you'd get $2 for balls 1 through 45, and $0 for the others).


Now, let's put a 92% chip in there.  Balls 1 through 46 are winners, while 47-100 are losers.  Same scenario.  You'd now have $92 back when you hit 1 through 46, and lose on 47 and above.

The difference is, as I mentioned earlier, is that you don't get to play every number in the cycle in order or only once per cycle.  In my 92% game, you could hit 1 through 47 100 times in a row since the balls keep getting put back into the cage, giving you a 200% payback in your short term play.  Over the life of my game however, with thousands or millions of draws, the game will eventually hold 8%, or pay back 92%.

The way I've always understood it is that there really isn't any "cycle" -
that's a myth.
If there was a "cycle", it would be depicted in the PAR sheets...but they
only base their % value of the reel chips on 10 million pulls.
Is that a "cycle"?

In theory, all of the "number balls" are always in the "cage" (RNG)
and are continuously bouncing around waiting for word from the SPIN button.
The reel chip determines the % via symbol weighting. Like what Knagl was saying above^^^
A multi-combination of the microprocessor reading the reel paytable,
and the action of the very moment the player hits the SPIN button -
determines which symbols ( reel stops ) will fly out of the RNG "cage".

One reason that I believe that there's no "cycle" is because
I've seen the top Jackpot hit on back-to-back pulls on a S+ even though
the PAR sheet for that particular game showed only 1 Jackpot on the sheet through 10 million pulls...!
There's absolutly no way in the world the 1st Jackpot came from another previous "cycle" -
that would means the 1st jackpot came at the exact end of one "cycle"
while the 2nd Jackpot occurred on the very first pull of a new "cycle".
I find that extremely hard to comprehend.
Take the "cycle" out of the equation and things are much easier to understand.
 
Please correct me if I'm wrong on this...I'm only human... :72-




ADDED>>> knagl answered while I was typing but the "weighting " of the symbols is also in his post.
I decided to leave my answer as is to see what differences we have of how the RNG is used in an S+.
As Jay said earlier, different companies used different ways of getting the "balls" to pop out.

Then what do they base a machine malfunction on? 

Good question Jim!

I wonder if that idea came from casino bosses in the past rather than the manufacturers?
I've also seen a cherry master-type of machine getting stuck and hitting the Jackpot pull after pull.
I've never seen it it happen on a slot other than the 2 Jackpots in a row.

The only way I see this happened was that the microprocesser "froze" or a transistor or diode
didn't allow the reel stepper numbers be released from the CMOS?
The CMOS DOES store the last so many hits in it's memory banks.
I don't think the CMOS has any say in what should come out on the next spin however -
it's just a memory bank for the accounting records & bookkeeping stuff.

Something ( a board component) temporarily failed I believe and I had to change out the MPU board.
I was never able to determine the exact cause though I also suspect it was a bad ( stuck) gate in the reel chip program perhaps?

WOW! It took me so long to write this that there have been six posts back on the slot subject, so I'll now include Jay's quote to keep this post in perspective. :88-

Stat :31-




Ah, Jay, you bring up a favorite of mine, not because of the cheat itself, but because of the true story behind the physics and computer grad students who got together in Santa Cruz in the 1970's to figure it all out. Their goal was to win enough at Roulette to fund the founding of a scientific community. They developed a shoe computer -- believe it or not -- using a 6502 processor, and while they were successful in practice, they made only a small amount of money in the casinos due to hardware problems, casino heat, and a few other twists. They determined that they had a 44% advantage over the house.

The group was headed by Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard, and included John Boyd and James P. Crutchfield. Their story is told in the book The Eudaemonic Pie by Thomas Bass (1985). Ironically, I did not discover the book through my interest in gambling, but through my studies of nonlinear dynamics (Chaos) in the 1980's, back when I actually had a memory. :25-

---

With today's powerful computers, it would be simple to use UV lasers or other means to quickly determine the decay rate of the ball and the rotor and predict which "section" the ball will land in. The diamonds on the wheel are not ornamental, but are there to provide a scattering effect to randomize the final resting place of the ball. A proper program will take them into account when calculating the physics.

Also, different wheels have slightly different characteristics, so any good program would require tracking several spins of a wheel and recording its outcome to allow the program to compensate for that specific wheel's characteristics. However, this shouldn't take anywhere NEAR 1000 spins; perhaps a half-hour to an hour of tracking.

Using physics to accelerate (in time) the decaying orbit of the ball and the slowing of the rotor is not a ridiculous cheat. In fact, it's a solid method to beat roulette that uses physics, not a betting strategy.

Of course, the program being offered for the iPhone may be a Piece of S#^t -- and probably is if they require 1000 spins to customize their program for one wheel. I'm also not sure how an iPhone could accurately track the ball passing a certain point on the wheel housing, or do the same for a specific point on the rotor, unless they're asking the user to do it manually like the physicists did back in the 1970's, and they had to practice for months to get it right. :47-


For anyone out there who thinks that this might be a good idea to try outside of a theoretical experiment, remember: IT'S A FELONY. Just walking into a casino with a cheating device is a felony in the state of Nevada, and the casinos today have sophisticated equipment to detect UV and IR signals and other electronic devices. iPhones and other toys aside, in a word: DON'T!

Ok, so this has probably already been answered in a few other places but I can't find it, so bear with me...

Lets say we are playing a game (I usually stick to WMS's newer games) that have a STOP reels feature on the video slot- say Wizard of Oz or Zeus or something like that.  How does this affect the RNG when you disrupt the normal slot process like this.  It seems as though sometimes (although I know it is probably a false assumption) that by stopping the reels, you can change "your luck" and start getting some bigger wins!  When you stop the reels, does the exact combination that originally would have come up, actually still come up?

Thanks!

Jim,  RNG's pick numbers where 0 >= n < 1.

For Staz and others, that means numbers like this:
0.000123789
0.3416948970
0.9050000
0.010000002
etc.

As one can see, these numbers have nothing to do with choosing a number between 1 and 72 (or 256 or whatever). There is no cycle other than the inherent problem that no computer algorithm can be truly random. The slot manufacturers rely on human interaction to remove any possible bias.

These numbers have to be converted into a set of integers that match the desired range, and that takes place after retrieving the outcome of the RNG. Their exact method is unknown to me, but rest assured that it's one that is unbiased. Personally, I shift the decimal place of the random number by some arbitrary amount (though simple multiplication of a factor of 10) and use the remainder of modulo division by the span of digits I desire to obtain an outcome.

For example: To get a number between 1 and 15, multiply the random number by 1e8 and divide by 15. Modulo division will return a value between 0 and 14, so I add 1 to get a number between 1 and 15. If I need a number between 1 and 256, I do the same thing, but divide by 256.

Even if I get the same number from the RNG, I will end up with a different outcome depending on the range of numbers I need.

Example:

RNG outputs 0.34756079

1) I need to pick a number between 1 and 64:
    0.34756079 * 1e8 = 34756079. Modulo by 64 gives a remainder of 47. Add 1 and I get 48, which I will map to virtual stop 48 out of 64.

2) I need to pick a number between 1 and 72:
    0.34756079 * 1e8 = 34756079. Modulo by 72 gives a remainder of 23. Add 1 and I get 24, which I will map to virtual stop 24 out of 72.

3) I need to pick a number between 1 and 256:
   0.34756079 * 1e8 = 34756079. Modulo by 256 gives a remainder of 239. Add 1 and I get 240, which I will map to virtual stop 240 out of 256.

You can see that the same random number will put me in completely different parts of the virtual stop table, depending on how many stops I need. Modulo division guarantees that each of the final integers have an equal chance of appearing.


There is no need for "cycles". What's happening here is that laymen are confusing a statistical term for a lay term.

All machine malfunctions voids pays and plays......

Some examples:
   Reel strips incorrectly fitted to the reel showing a valid payout but of course the machine does not recognise this......
   Reel tilt error - theoretically due to someone inserting a shim to stop the reel from spinning thus creating the appearance of a win....
   Hopper keeps paying out more coins than paytable says - theoretically due to the wrong chips / glass or mis programmed denomination.....

   Bill validator giving the wrong number of credits for a bill
   Progressive hitting on non top award......
   Progressive showing higher than expected award.....

The latter three I have a real problem with as this is a programming error by a casino employee and not a machine created error......

It doesn't. It is solely a gimmick designed to speed up your play, because the faster you play, the more money the casino makes. The outcome is determined within milliseconds of your initiating the spin -- long before you even see the beginning of the spin on the screen.


Yes. Video slots don't depend on physicality. There really are NO symbols in front of you: you are watching a computer animation of pixels. Just because there is a virtual stop listing in the program that determines which symbols will finally end up on your payline, that doesn't mean that the symbols that are animated (drawn) to fly by beforehand have to be in the same order as the virtual table, or even match it at all. They are only a show for the customer's entertainment.

The only symbols that finally matter for a multi-line video machine are the three that end up in the window when the spin is concluded. These are taken from the virtual stop table and must match the random outcome selected when you first initiated play. When you press STOP, what happens is that the rest of the animation (the "show") is cut short. From the moment you press stop, the computer begins drawing the final three symbols that indicate your outcome.

Watch very carefully the next time you play. You will see that the last three symbols drop into place just after you press the stop button, and that the symbols that are in the window at the very instant that you press stop go away (unless one of the reels just happens to be showing the correct symbols, which can happen every once in a while.)

The RNG has alerady done it's stuff at this stage. When you press the 'stop reels' button, you are simply cutting short the elongated display put on for your enjoyment.

If I was being suspicious I'd say this button was added to speed up your play and increase the number of spins per hour!

**oops, stat beat me to it!! **

The other post didn't beat you too that.......

It was just a pre-programmed pixilization that was pre-determined before you hit the enter key.......  :72-

 :200- :200- :30- :30- :208- :208- :208-

I've been so busy answering posts here that I haven't gotten out of the thread to see what else is happening on NLG today. :5-

:31-

P.S. For Jim,

By the way, RNGs typically use a bit-shift algorithm very similar to those used in generating encryption keys.

This link might interest you. Don't forget to click on all the links to the left. :71-
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/rng/index.html (http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/rng/index.html)

Ok I am going for it lol --out on the limb again ..
please understand something --I DO NOT ENDORSE THIS >>> IT IS A FELONY !!

keep in mind many of you think  I AM A NUT CASE AT TIMES -THANK YOU !  

 I TAKE IT AS A COMLIMENT!!

as STAZ said in a previous post why has no one ever  made  a devise to cheat the RNG . ??

I AM NOT GOING THAT ROUTE ! I HAVE DOCUMENTATION THAT WILL SAY YES ITS BEEN DONE
TIME & TIME AGAIN ON VARIOUS MACHINES -THATS WHY MANY TIMES DIFF SFTWARE FOR SAME MACHINE HAS BEEN PULLED -BECAUSE OF A HIC -UP IN THE ORGINAL SOFTWARE . thats all I will say on that subject !


other than a true fact !>>> ANYTHING MAN MADE<< CAN BE IMPROVED UPON  -OR HAS A BACK DOOR ETC BAH BLAH LAH

===========================================================================
the route I am traveling is this ..

many will undersand this right off --others will scratch there head ? others wll say Rocket is on a rant & is full of s%%T

here we go the >>>percentage cycle<<< of said slot machine >> copied from above works fine <,

a particular payout paytable say with 64 stops per reel. odds of hitting the jackpot 64x64x64=262144 possible combinations


now a few ways to look at this ??

 is it a cheat method ??

or is it I JUST KNOW THE REAL FACTS OF THIS ONE SLOT MACHINE ??

LEGAL ---NO !!

"HYPOTHETICAL"----A casnio slot floor staff   works at the casnio -- 8-hour shift lets say . they bring in a new IGT 5x pay 3-coin machine S2000 hooked up to a progressive board .

the machines payout chip is 95.5% lets say -- so in the course of day -- the floor person goes to the machine various times per day to open it or turn jackpot re-set key and ENTER INTO SLOT LOG BOOK WHAT & WHY THAT DOOR WAS OPENED !

if the slot floor person was good and just thumbed through that book ?? they may see dozens of hand pays ??
a coin jam if equipped ?? etc etc but they certainly can see the written history of the said machine on a daily basis.

we all know that the 95.5 % is for the LIFE OF MACHINE OR 100,000.00 PULLS  if that person kept a close eye on that machines log book and others and found it NEVER HIT ---THE TOP AWARD !!

we do know the MAGIC NUMBER could of come and gone several times -while the machine has sat there running at idle mode 247 for 3 yrs  --


would it be to ones advantage that the floor person tell a friend who is a customer that slots
in bank 5 ------hypothetically only 3 of the 12 slots in that row hypothetically have never hit more than 1200.00 bucks ?


of course its great info --because not only does the paper trail prove it in the log book . you have a slot in good odds that it has never reached its HIGH PAY CYCLE IN ITS LIFE  -that is calculated into the reel chip % in this case 95.5% not bad -not the greatest --but at some point will yeild fruit you would expect . only through satistics and human interaction and of course the lady or man reading the log books passing on the info .. does it mean it will work ??

I myself would rather know the pay history of a slot vs. not knowing the pay history .

ITS FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOLKS ..

A millisecond after you press the bet button...the results of the spin are already decided.  The spinning reels you are watching on screen are for amusement purposes only.  If they wanted to, they could just flash the results on screen the same second you press the bet button...but no real fun in that right?  Thus, stopping the reels mid-spin does not effect the outcome.

One way to actually see the "Stop" button doing this is recording the
animated reels "spinning" with a good quality video camera
then watch it in super slow motion.

Rocket, it's certainly true that a slot can be compromised.

With today's slots, it would almost certainly have to be done by someone working for the slot manufacturer, by someone in the casino with enough seniority to be able to put a gaffed chip into a machine without the gaming commission or the casino knowing about it, or by a gaming commission official, such as in the case of Ron Harris.

I really believe that the larger machine manufacturers and casinos have far too much to lose to risk doing such a thing, although an employee might try it for personal gain. A casino employee might try it for the same reason. In those cases, as with Mr. Harris, they perpetrator would elicit accomplices to go to the gaffed machine(s) and play for the money.

I won't speak to Indian Gaming. Personally (an opinion only), I think that in many cases they have too little oversight or regulation, and any that are self-regulated remind me of the fox guarding the hen house. In cases where they don't have to answer to any outside authority, I wouldn't bet a plugged nickel in any machine. But that's just my personal opinion.

I also won't speak to small one-man operation bar-casinos in other countries or illegal gambling parlors in the U.S. Common sense and history suggest avoiding such establishments.



If a class III machine is not gaffed and has never hit the top award as you say in your post, then there could be something wrong. Casino's use the bookkeeping information for more than just bookkeeping. Any suspect machine's history can be subjected to a chi-square test to see if the deviation is within expected norms.


Now, when it comes to class II machines, cherry masters, and POGs, Rocket, I defer to you. :131- :131-  I know that some bartop machines do keep track of past payouts and adjust their outcomes to meet an owner's preset percentage. Of course, you will never find those in a Nevada or AC casino.


Stat :31-

Just to add a little bit to what Jay already said, my memory is a little fuzzy on this since I read about it a long time ago, but I seem to remember reading that there was a case in Tunica (again, based on what I remember, but it may have been a different city) where a machine had a problem with its reels and they coasted to a stop and happened to stop on or very close to the top award.  The patron demanded to be paid the jackpot, the casino insisted that the machine had malfunctioned (the reels were broken), and Gaming got called in.  I believe that they determined that the player put his money in and spun, and the result displayed was the jackpot so that even though the game had malfunctioned, the end result was the appearance of the jackpot and he had to be payed.  Thus was born all the signage (and shortly after that printed on every piece of glass), "Malfunction voids all pays and plays."  If that sign had been in place, the player would have only been due his wager back.

If someone remembers the story better than I do, or if they can provide a link to the story, I'd be appreciative.

 Stat   :131-     Yes, I did get your Algebraic terms, as for the rest of it, lets just say I know when its broke, and I know how to fix it. I enjoy a good challenge when it involves hardware, I'll let the software to the people who enjoy that area of expertise. Thanks for all the explanation.

Jim

I'm in the boat next door.  :95-  I always rely on you when it comes to hardware. :131- :131-

Stat :31-

reading through all these post i finally get a good understanding how these slots work.......so next time when i walk away from a machine and someone hits a jackpot on it i wont feel sick to my stomach saying i should of played it longer......cuz it prob wouldnt of came up if i was playing it.....

That is EXACTLY right!! :89-

K+ Staz

haha!
 I wish someone would tell this to one of my buddies...!!

About 7 or 8 years ago, he blamed me for making him play another machine.
Some lady sits down at the machine he was just playing and hits a biggie!
To this day - I still have the blame for that!!! :97- :72-

Just send him a link to this thread. :71-

I'll have to print it out for him...he's computer illiterate... :8-

save the trees and tell him yourself.  Will his mind change on the issue?

W

Just convert it to 1337 before you print it out, as I've done here. Then he'll NEED a computer to read it.  :200- :97- :97- :97-



P.S. Wayne's right. Save a tree. :89-

lol         
It's been so many years and he's over it really.
He just mentions it once in a while to get under my skin.
Showing him this or trying to explain it to him is out of the question...
It would be like trying to tell my mom how to get her stupid VCR to stop blinking "12:00".
(yes, she STILL has that VCR I gave her for Christmas about 20 years ago!)

Gee I would just go and set it for her. :79-

I'm surprised it still works. :5-

(http://i51.tinypic.com/9vjhax.jpg)

Darn, that is Hypnotic!  :89- :89- :89-
 :122- :122- :122-
I will check PayPal and see if it worked! :208-

CH :95-

But with an unset clock, tomorrow will never come!  :5- :127-  :208- :208-

 :103- :103- :103- :103- :103-
that is aggravating as heck lol

I need to send it to a few people  :97- :97- :97- :97- :97-

of course saying there is a cryptic meaning to it

In that case, you should change it to read 3:00  :96- (The Sopranos)  :97- :97- :97-

Oh! EVERY BLOODY TIME I go to the house the darn thing is blinking....!!!  :37-
I've must of set it for her about 200 times by now!!! lol
She never uses it anyways.
Her cable box now an auto reset clock on it.  :96-

Ah, can't help anyone with setting a VCR but I do know a thing or two about RNGs. Someone mentioned Class 2 games a couple of pages back. There are two main kinds of these, the pari-mutuels and the so-called "finite" games.

In pari-mutuels you're playing essentially a class 3 game with the outcome produced by an RNG as described above, BUT (big but) you're playing against the other players, not against the house. There are various ways of organizing this, invisible to the player, but the net result is that a group of slot machines plays mathematically like a bingo game. Better minds than mine have worked out how to do it, and sharper lawyers than Johnnie Cochran have managed to convince the state legislatures that it's just like bingo. You can tell when you're on one of these if the machine won't let you play unless there are other people playing on the same bank.

The finite games are more like real slots, and these I have worked on. The thing here is to make the machine behave mathematically like a roll of pull-tab cards. The machine stores a complete "deal", a certain number of games paying off a known total amount. Say it could be 10,000 games and pay off $9000 (dollar game). In fact it's often more like $7000, or less it it's operated by a state lottery. Anyway, the game has these 10,000 outcomes preset in memory. It shuffles them electronically using a standard RNG method, and then it "deals" them out, one at a time, until they are all gone. It then shuffles again and starts over. On these machines you often see (in barely readable, tiny fuzzy writing) the number of winners listed against each award in the pay table, to satisfy some lottery law, though of course it never tells you how many have already been won - you could be playing out the last 1000 outcomes that have not a single winner at all. From a player's point of view it's just like a Class 3 slot in that you have no idea what's going to come up next, but the RNG did its work in the past - the next game outcome is already known and nothing the player does can change it.

It's been a while since I was last in one of those depressingly dismal Class 2 places. I don't recommend it. Strangely enough, when it's the only game in the state, you sometimes can't get in the parking lot and have to go on a waiting list to get a machine.

Wow, how did I miss this thread. Good stuff and no dildo's, sex toys, etc.
Well there is the blinking VCR.  :72-

Saw on TV a few months back they had a show on this Spanish family that had traveled Europe using physics to determine roulette wheel bias. They made good money! They came to Vegas and didn't have as much luck with the 00 and 0 american wheels.
The casinos would change/move their wheels around to different tables to confuse them. Good show.

RNG's
What most folks don't seem to understand is that, at least with the Universal's, a number is generated for each reel. So a three reel game would have three numbers. They could be the same number or not. When I say "generated" it means like Stat said earlier, the number needs to fit the virtual stop map. So an RNG produces, say, .0140089, and that number is run through some math to produce a number between 0 and 255 for a 256 stop table. That final number is an address in the eprom where a reel position is stored.
A standard reel has 22 stop positions. Eleven are symbols and the other 11 are blanks. The eprom sees them as locations 0-21. Zero being the first position on the reel strip and 21 the last. A three reel game will have a virtual stop table for each reel. So my virtual stop table has 256 numbers consisting of zeros through 21's. If the jackpot symbol is the last symbol on the reel strip than it is position 21. Chances are there are few number 21's in my three tables as they are high payouts. There will be a lot of number 20's and zeros as these sit next to the 21 and are the blanks next to the jackpot symbol. So you will see that you just missed the jackpot symbol as they come up often!
The RNG and the math after it want to create an even balance of numbers between 0-255. It's the amount of zeros through 21's in the 256 number table that determine the chance of losing and winning.
Hope that helps.

Op-Bell and Uniman, thank you both for filling in some of the blanks.  :96-  :131- :131-  :3- :3-
K+



Op-Bell, I have to slightly disagree with the way you phrased that. The RNG may be random in both cases, but the use of it's output is not the same, and so the player's expectation cannot be (or at least, should not be.) It's not a question of past vs. future selection.

In the class II, there are a fixed number of outcomes randomized into a true cycle (not a theoretical one), and although their order is scrambled, only one of each can occur until all have occurred. In class III machines, there is a fixed universe of outcomes with a predetermined weighting, but every outcome is possible in every trial. Class IIs are using dependent trials and class IIIs , independent trials, so someone who plays a class III machine can rest assured that (s)he has the same chance of hitting every single payout on every single spin.


As an exercise, a class III machine could be designed to select a long series of outcomes in advance so that the player could not change what was to come, as in your example. But if it did so using a reasonably unbiased RNG following class III requirements, all outcomes would still be available to a player according to the weighting of the symbols, which would not be the same as what happens in a class II machine.

---

From the operator's point of view, the class II machine provides the security of a guaranteed house hold in both the short and long term. The class III machine could end up holding much more or less, or even paying out over 100% for a time, and the operator must rely on having many machines and a high volume of play over time to provide the expected income.

I still consider the class II finite slot a fraud (that's a personal opinion, only). When the average Joe plays a scratch off ticket, they understand that some of the prizes may have already been won, especially after a particular game has been out for a while. Slot machines are viewed differently by the public.

I don't think the operator could care less. What a Class 2 machine gives you is a fig leaf that allows you to pretend it's not gambling, since they operate in places where gambling is illegal - except for state lotteries, which everyone knows are not gambling, otherwise they wouldn't be allowed. If there were Justice in the world the state lottery people would all be serving lengthy prison terms, since the odds they offer are considerably worse than mobster games like the numbers racket. But they go to church on Sunday and preach about the "evils" of legalized gambling. F*ing hypocrites.

Your personal opinion concurs with mine, including the bit about the public perception. I've watched people playing Tab Force machines, which are basically just sophisticated readout units for pulltab cards with a bar code on them. They get excited when they win and think the machine is hot, whereas in fact the outcomes of the games they play are encoded on the piece of cardboard they're holding in their hand They would get exactly the same results on any other machine in the place.

I was thinking of small time operators who might not want to take the risk of short-term deflection, but you're probably right for most establishments.

:244- :244- :244- I couldn't agree more. The California State lottery pays back an abysmal 50%.  :101- I'd take the mob's odds any day over that. :14-  :71-


That's why I try to debunk these myths when I hear gamblers talking about them as if they were true. People deserve to have access to the truth so they can make informed spending decisions. Keeping gaming machines shrouded in mystery is no better than the deceptive practices of other businesses.

I've visited online casinos that provide the payback percentage of every slot game on the help screens. I would love to see that mandated in Nevada casinos. At least with table games, the odds can be calculated by anyone by observing the payouts and the rules, or by going online to a site like the Wizard of Odds.

One of the activities I enjoy when visiting casinos is to look for new table games and/or rules. I ask for one of their color brochures, write the payouts down if they're not included, and then adjourn to my room to calculate the payback. When it comes to the newer games, they usually have too much of a house edge for my taste, but every once in a while I am pleasantly surprised.

Truth be told, I generally won't place a single wager on a new table game or game modification until I've run the numbers. It's not that I'm looking to win, but to know that I'm going to get good value for my money, or at least to know how much I'm betting in to the teeth of the tiger if I choose to do so.

Of course, I usually stick to the one game I can beat... :129-  :129-           :100-  :96-

Stat :31-