Best guess

[faygo]

So, when I am motoring along at ludicrous speed, how fast is that? I can't believe I've read every word of all this. pokeherguy, better luck in the next 150K hands.

[Tedlark]

faygo I too am clinging to every written word here. Its good to see something from Eduardo, been a while since he's posted.

[New2vp]

Pokeherguy, getting back to your results, I can see that I didn't drive home the odds by putting it all into one number.  Unless I'm missing the probability math somewhere, the way to synthesize six numbers into one is to put 6 Choose 2 = 15 in the numerator (the number of ways to choose four things out of a population of six) and put each of the four odds + 1 in a product in the denominator.  This won't be exactly right but might even understate the odds as the numbers in the different categories should be somewhat negatively correlated with one another.  That means the probability of an event such as you described would be about 15/[ 194 x 7871 x 3336 x 991 ] or one chance in about 336,542,626,442.If 150,000 hands represented a year's play and the nearly 7 billion people in the world were all to play this game perfectly, we would expect each person to play 50 years before we would expect to see these types of numbers even fractionally more than once.If nothing else is wrong with these numbers, you are one seriously unlucky dude to get results like this on a fair machine with perfect play.  And since three of these categories are quads, the strategy would have to be really bad (ludicrously bad to coin faygo's and Spaceball's usage) for the strategy to be the culprit.

[pokeherguy]

Its not hard to keep up with the top three (royals, Aces w'kicker, Aces and 2,3,4's w/kicker) considering I'm playing $2 denomination and DDB. The rest (2,3,4's and misc. quads) is a little tougher and was nothing more than making a mark on my trusty little pad as to how many times I had the 2,3,4's and misc. quads. The visits and the amount of time played are not much of a problem. The amount of hands played is a bit open for discretion. On more than one occasion I've been told by people that they had never seen anyone who played as fast as me which is probably true because I've watched other players and to me is was like watching paint dry. I don't mess around much when I play and have been playing for many, many years. I'm pretty much an 800 plus per hour player. This is bad but to give an example I hit a $1,600 handpay and had burned $1,200 on another machine before I got paid. What ya gonna do, take the good with the bad, nobody twisted my arm and forced me to play. The ups and downs are what make the game so much fun. On a side note, there was no question for a while fewer people were playing but I'm starting to notice more folks playing again.  

[Eduardo]

Those results make me cry. Is this at the place you suspected a long time ago? I probably wouldn't play there any more whether it's legit or not. Maybe you don't have a lot of options though?

[cddenver]

So, when I am motoring along at ludicrous speed, how fast is that? I can't believe I've read every word of all this. pokeherguy, better luck in the next 150K hands.
 

There's that squishy guy again, at the end of your post.
 
I can find similar numbers in my own records, but occurring over a smaller number of total hands (about 100K).  And I've never had those bad runs for individual quad types happen at the same time, as PG is showing. Hands are independent events; a good (or bad) run of a particular type of nice hit isn't going to translate into good (or bad) runs of other quad types going on at the same time.  By definition, any extreme case is going to be rare; multiple ones at the same time among independent events are much rarer still.
 
Most people who keep records of their play don't actually count hands as they play, as it adds to the mental workload.  We really can't use time played as a common denominator in these discussions, as people naturally play at different speeds, and play games with different numbers of lines that cause differences in the number of jackpots hit in a given time period.  So being able to convert time played to hands played is necessary for any meaningful discussion, and while the conversion doesn't have to be perfect it does have to be close.
 
There are several ways to estimate speed of play.  In a previous discussion a year or so ago, didn't someone mention there's an online VP speed-tester?  I've never checked that.  I have a sim of my own that lets me adjust the speed to match the actual machines I play, which is somewhat subjective.  I've had a friend time me during real play for short periods, which is inexact when extended to longer amounts of play.  I've got exact time played and quad/SF/RF records over many 100K's of play, assuming that I'm at the long-term average for nice hits lets me calculate hands per hour.  Those different methods each show me I'm playing at 800 hands per hour.
  

[pokeherguy]

{If nothing else is wrong with these numbers, you are one seriously unlucky dude to get results like this on a fair machine with perfect play.  And since three of these categories are quads, the strategy would have to be really bad (ludicrously bad to coin faygo's and Spaceball's usage) for the strategy to be the culprit.}
 
{Those results make me cry. Is this at the place you suspected a long time ago? I probably wouldn't play there any more whether it's legit or not. Maybe you don't have a lot of options though? }
 
No it's nothing like any of that and I'm not that unlucky if you take my overall history of playing the game into consideration. For years I played 98.98% payback and worse and came out ahead so it makes sense that the other shoe has to drop sooner or later. I can recall being in a casino and hitting quad Aces 5 times in less than 15 minutes so it stands to reason when ya get that far ahead a dry spell has got to come also. I played 2 full years with 1 Royal Flush but hit everything else more than I should have. To me timing is a big part of the game, if I'm in the right place at the right time sparks will fly. I've had streaks when I couldn't lose and just the opposite. I kind of looked at it as a positive because it meant I was due which has kind of come to pass. Already this year I've played a bit less and have 2-Royals and Aces w/kicker twice. I'm still in a little 2,3,4's funk but am hitting my fair share of other quads.

 

[Eduardo]

Well it does sound like you have your head around it. You know... some people do get all the luck and hit those hot streaks without much of the "other side of the coin" in between. But not many, and certainly not people who play a lot in their lives. But it sure would be nice. Of course, even more people never experience the really good stuff at all if they are typical quick session players that play very rarely.
 
I hope your luck this year continues and even picks up!

[pokeherguy]

{Most people who keep records of their play don't actually count hands as they play, as it adds to the mental workload.  We really can't use time played as a common denominator in these discussions, as people naturally play at different speeds, and play games with different numbers of lines that cause differences in the number of jackpots hit in a given time period.  So being able to convert time played to hands played is necessary for any meaningful discussion, and while the conversion doesn't have to be perfect it does have to be close.
 
There are several ways to estimate speed of play.  In a previous discussion a year or so ago, didn't someone mention there's an online VP speed-tester?  I've never checked that.  I have a sim of my own that lets me adjust the speed to match the actual machines I play, which is somewhat subjective.  I've had a friend time me during real play for short periods, which is inexact when extended to longer amounts of play.  I've got exact time played and quad/SF/RF records over many 100K's of play, assuming that I'm at the long-term average for nice hits lets me calculate hands per hour.  Those different methods each show me I'm playing at 800 hands per hour.}
 
I completly agree with you but in my opinion most of the folks who post on this site seem to be a little above the average video poker player. I'm sure I could ask the average player and they wouldn't have a clue as tohow many hands they played per hour nor would they care. I don't know anyone who keeps an actual count on the number of hands played per session but I did do pretty much the same as you. I had a freind with a hand counter time me for 15 minutes and multiplied it by 4 a while back. He came up with 211 and I even lit a cigarette so 800 seemed like a fair number per hour. But just to verify this I started playing today at exactly 3:00P.M. and quit at 6:00P.M. then checked my total dollar amount in and out for the day. Turns out I played 2,428 hands which comes out to 809 per hour. I played around 178 hours in 51 trips so I guesstimate around 144002 hands played. I looked at one of casinos I go to on occasions and I went there 15 times and played around 42,500 hands. I recieved 20 handpays, 3=Aces w/kicker and the rest Aces and 2,3,4's w/kicker. Didn't really think I did so well there but maybe I should go back to playing more there. They got on my bad side a while back because of sticky buttons and poor graphics on some of the few machines they had that offered $2 denomination. 

[cddenver]

I had a freind with a hand counter time me for 15 minutes and multiplied it by 4 a while back. He came up with 211 and I even lit a cigarette so 800 seemed like a fair number per hour. But just to verify this I started playing today at exactly 3:00P.M. and quit at 6:00P.M. then checked my total dollar amount in and out for the day. Turns out I played 2,428 hands which comes out to 809 per hour.
 
Thanks for the explanation on how you determined your speed of play.  I've never thought of checking with a casino for my total $'s played in a day; that's a good way to do it.