New machines unplayable.

[Tedlark]

I had a long dud streak yesterday for the first time in months at Bally’s AC. I had a great fifty minutes, then busted in forty. I really jacked up play in a delusional state. Forget JOB going forward. For crying out loud, I have a better time on BP and I don’t need ten damn coins to see the jackpot. I won’t play at Harrah’s AC because it’s just dollar 9/6, a doomsday bust route. Maybe I’ll just make Sunday Bally’s trips and hibernate in the sports book!

So tech, answer me this: With regard to FAA's post, would you be clamoring that something would be "wrong" or "amiss" with FAA's "great fifty minutes"? The answer is, probably not but you'll be quick to say something is "wrong" or "amiss" with FAA's reported dud streak.

[stevel96a1]

I know we have all talked about this a bit on and off. I just wanted to give you some point of view where the guy on here Tech58 and I play in Mid Michigan. Indian casino and pretty nice place over all.

As I reported in other posts, the casino near about July time frame took out all the older up right machines for new state of the art machines. 6 banks of machines. Just after that they reprogrammed all the bar tops and some older slant top machines.

I got a chance to chat with Tech Friday. Between him and I we know 10 VP players that play here. Tech tells me he knows a husband and wife that stopped coming to the casino due to how bad VP has gotten.
He said even Keno people have seen this change for the worst as Keno is on these 6 banks of machines removed. He tells me he also can tell somethings for sure different. More dead hands, less good hands.

My buddy has stopped playing the new IGT machines and will only play the 8 Bally machines we have left.

I got to know a very good VP player over the past 2 years. He comes up from Detroit 2 to 3 days a week for over night stays. He tells me every month he would hit a Royal on the old machines like clock work. He played the new machines and took him 4 months to hit one. He also said one day he was playing BP, played 3000 hands with no 4 of a kinds on the reprogrammed machines. I know many of you will say that can happen, and I agree it can, we have never seen this off play before till the new machines where put in.

For me it's not about Royals as much as you can't get play out of the machines now. Tech tells me he would play for hours on the machines and rack up points, I agree with that it was no problem. Lose but not get wiped out over and over. Now these machines wipe you out in no time flat. Stevel96a1 has posted about this very thing where he plays.

This is the only way I can explain the true difference from old to new. On old Machine deals would be a winning pair off the deal and two pair off the deal out of 10 hands. Now you get the same winning hands but they are harder to hit. The new machines deal you a pair not a winning pair, and you might get two pair holding a pair. The winner off the deal are much less and you have to draw good for a winner. The old machines would pop up winners out of 10 hands pretty constant. Not any more on new machines.

These new machines and reprogrammed machines go 12 to 15 hands no winners many times an hour. After 6 -7 hands you think its got to give you a winner, nope it goes on and on. Four of a kinds are very slow in coming.

The only thing keeping me playing is them rolling pots I been lucky to hit. Play has been so bad for wife and I that we are looking at lowering our bets and play on one card for 2020. No one can keep getting wiped out trip after trip. Last week I put 200 bucks in and played 10 quarters a hand, gone on these new machines in 10 minutes on 9/6 JOB. At one point in the last 4 months I was dropping $600 an hour on 5 bucks a bet 9/6 JOB. The machines have been going empty. Friday at 3pm I walk in the non smoking room these new machines a bank of 12, 11 seats empty.

I can only report whats happening to me and what others are saying about the new machines. If you have old machines at your casino, play the hell out of them before they put in new ones.

i don't know the history of each make and model of every video poker machine from past to present but the machine that makes me avoid is the new one with the game selection on top, where as you can pick keno, 1$ blackjack$ video poker, that machine was installed this year 2019 sands bethlehem sold to wind creek which i believe is a indian casino thats right but i have yet to see a magic geeny appear LOL, the machine i play on is the regular one older LCD screen which i assume they did not tamper with since opening of 2009 i didnt sign up until 2014 and i didnt get into video poker 2017(when i saw my wife hit a 2k winner TDB playing dollar it was very fast hit ) they did move machines around in that gaming houses and they did install new software added on keno,blackjack, and slots, so i try to stick with what i know

i did some reading on other forums about how the RNG engine shuffles cards 2200 per second and how others shuffle cards million times a second, when i was in vegas i played the slant top FPDW which appeared to be newer machines in palms, my wife won 500$ caught 4 deuces twice and finished ahead a lousy 37$, me on the other hand won 87$ on my first 2's and it was time for sleep
the next day i lost 250$ playing slant top at palms FPDW and went over to other section up right older model and hit the royal and a few 4 deuces, the variance between the slant top vs up right was noticable

i think it all comes down to wider variance, i complained how i lost 20 max bets to the makers of casino verite in 2 shuffles back to back and he told me blackjack is a game of wide variance i played many many blackjack games from the 80s to today and some shuffles on 8 deck have small variance,
its the same concept for video poker each video poker software will have wide variance and narrow variance again not saying novembest 31st android version is cheating or shuffling too fast nor am i saying win poker 6 for windows has a smaller window variance

its like the old japan saying "were going to have to test it and prove it the only way to find out"
obviously older/newer machines are not labaled "atm machines" and it is gambling but again i know my gut says which machine will last longer on a 100$ BR, stick with what you know and what works

[Carcounter]

I have had the same experience at the Borgata in AC. The older machines, which have been in place since the casino opened have consistently operated in what I believe is a fair pattern. The newer server based Game Kings have consistently drained money. I keep records and this is for real. i don't play the server based games any more.

[wildman49]

I have had the same experience at the Borgata in AC. The older machines, which have been in place since the casino opened have consistently operated in what I believe is a fair pattern. The newer server based Game Kings have consistently drained money. I keep records and this is for real. i don't play the server based games any more.

Car I like how you said fair pattern. I agree them old game kings had fair deals. Also good draw patterns.

The new 5 card draw on these new machines are hard to understand. Many bad starting 5 cards makes for many dead hands in a row.

Really all we can do is stop playing the new ones, but in my case the older and bar tops have been reprogrammed. I am having a hard time finding ones that don't wipe me out.


It's been 5 months and I am at a loss for what and where to play now.

[wildman49]

Ted I can see how your at a loss for understanding what we are seeing. You play 10 hand so if you saw something and tried to get us to understand what's happening we have no clue since we don't play 10 hand.

The 2 things I try when them dud streak starts is hit max bet a few times instead of the deal button. Trying to change the RNG. If that doesn't work I then cash out wait a bit then put ticket back in. Just trying to find a better spot in the RNG.

[jetermacaw]

First let me state I’ve taken the advice here and stopped playing certain machines in AC. It was a tough decision but has payed off. As most of the regulars here know my game of choice was QQs. With my bankroll I would always earn a minimum of 500 tier credits, but most times 1000. This was accomplished with a variety of win, lose or break even trips. On a visit 3 years ago in June the 4 QQs machines were shut down. Playing mostly the 2-3,5, or 10 hand machines I had 26 Royals. After the machines were put back in service I only had 1 more Royal the rest of the year, but the bigger downside were the tier credits. Many was the time $100 in, 500 tier give or take. After the shutdown 20 tier credits was the norm for $100 in. Didn’t want to believe the obvious, thought it was just a bad run except the same was being experienced by all the other regulars. Stopped playing QQs and haven’t looked back.

[Carcounter]

I have had the same experience at the Borgata in AC. The older machines, which have been in place since the casino opened have consistently operated in what I believe is a fair pattern. The newer server based Game Kings have consistently drained money. I keep records and this is for real. i don't play the server based games any more.

Car I like how you said fair pattern. I agree them old game kings had fair deals. Also good draw patterns.

The new 5 card draw on these new machines are hard to understand. Many bad starting 5 cards makes for many dead hands in a row.

Really all we can do is stop playing the new ones, but in my case the older and bar tops have been reprogrammed. I am having a hard time finding ones that don't wipe me out.


It's been 5 months and I am at a loss for what and where to play now.

I understand completely. When the older VP machines are inevitably taken out of service at Borgata, I guess I'll scout some of the other casinos for the older machines, but will probably not play them if paytables aren't good or if the environment is uncomfortable.

[Eduardo]

I don't know whether what you say is true is correct or not. I would love to know. But I know we hear a lot of people who "feel" something isn't right. A bunch of people "feeling" something is pretty meaningless to me, even if they have played a lot. Because we also hear from people, especially advantage players who would seem to have the most to lose, that they trust the machines completely.

So why not take a moment and get to the bottom of this? I think it would take less play than you think.

It sounds like you have plenty of dissatisfied players who should be willing to help. What would be a good measurable experiment to make a call on this? What are we to measure exactly?

If you can get your 10 people to each record stats on just 1,000 hands we would probably have something to work with. The more hands the better. Then some of our smarter math people here can help determine if the odds of those measured results fit into expectations or not. And people who don't trust the record keeping of the participants would know what they can measure themselves in order to come to their own conclusion.

So what is the thing to measure here? DUD hands? What are we looking at... the number of non-winning dealt hands? That seems pretty easy to write down.

Maybe the number of dud hands out of every 100?

So you could simply write down

12/100
20/100
9/100
7/100

Then we could look at both the "streakiness" of the game over cycles of 100 and also the overall total.

It's dealt hands, so strategy or skill of the player makes no difference. Even the pay tables would seem to not matter based on what people are saying. Unless "dud hands" refer to your final hand instead of the dealt hand?

I would LOVE to see these sorts of results from you guys who are skeptical. And I think you would love to know whether your intuition on the subject is correct, or if we are in fact just dealing with randomness.

Along with the above results, we would probably also need to know which casino, what type of machine was being played on. Also the game that is being played, since the number of dud hands on jacks or better will be different than deuces etc.

So what do you say... are you willing to give this a run and let us know what you find? Any suggestions to improve the data gathering i mentioned above would be welcome. You can do it any way you want, but let's see some real numbers instead of feelings.

[Jstark]

What I don't get, is why the people who are making these claims about VP machines, rigged blackjack shufflers, etc., aren't hiring lawyers and filling class action lawsuits against these companies for cheating. Complaining about it on online forums is useless.

[Waiting4RF]

I talked to a Harrah's tech who said the VP games are not server based in AC. The only server type of games are the ones that have a progressive. He pointed to a multistate slot machine. He said sever based games are not approved for New Jersey. If the VP games were server based, then the displayed paytable on VP machines would change to vary the return.