RNG question

[shadowman]

 Yeah but Southpoint is closer so you save in gas and traffic hassles what you may have earned in the casino.
 
To be honest that was a big motivation and the fact I can get 5x points at Tuscany twice a week while the point multiplier days at SouthPoint are twice a month (one 2x and one 3x at most).

[ginxxxx]

Using only randomness as an assumption instead of hot or cold spells on a machine (I was trying not to use the word "cycles"), the probability of getting 2 or more royals in a 4-hour session on a single line 9/6 Jacks or Better machine (at 600 hands per hour) is about 0.0017 or about 1 time in about 589.5 4-hour sessions.  Even if you have had that many sessions in your vp career, with pure randomness, it would be reasonable not to have experienced multiple royals in even one session...especially if you had a high chance of quitting after receiving the first royal.
 
Royals are very unlikely events.  So having two royals is even more unlikely.    It would take 1765 such sessions without multiple royals for one to have enough evidence to reject a hypothesis of randomness and say that your conclusion was "statistically significant."  Even then we would have about a 5% chance of being mistaken in our conclusion.
 
This is certainly not to say that hot and cold spells (or a machine repeating hands in regular cycles) could not explain the same phenomenon.  But, unfortunately, without significant objective controls placed on an experiment with the hypotheses to be tested formed BEFORE the experience starts and without a number of trials larger than one might reasonably be able to replicate, our sensory experiences and memories are generally not enough evidence to reject randomness.
 
It is certainly reasonable for one's experiences to suggest hot or cold spells; it's just unlikely for those experiences to conclusively prove cause and effect.  That being said, even with randomness, it cannot hurt to switch machines after a royal...unless the machine you are moving to has a poorer pay schedule.
 
  Sometimes there's just no 'splainin' a machine.  Once we were playing at Golden Nugget and my husband wanted to quit his machine,  I encouraged him to move over to the machine next to me.  A Lady had just cashed out a RF.  He didn't want to try it, but I insisted...Within his first $20.00 of play he hit a royal.  Go figger!

[spxChrome]

Well the way I understood/was explained  is that the first 10 cards are dealt out.  The original deal and the cards behind it are already choosen.  The rng does not go back and select say 2 new cards you throw away, it merley reveals what is already there behind what you do not hold.  Many reasons for this method from a programmers perspective.

[MikeA]

Well the way I understood/was explained  is that the first 10 cards are dealt out.  The original deal and the cards behind it are already choosen.  The rng does not go back and select say 2 new cards you throw away, it merley reveals what is already there behind what you do not hold.  Many reasons for this method from a programmers perspective.There was a time that card selection logic was as you describe SPXChrome.  That is no longer done though there may still be some old OLD machines out there that still do it that way.

[shadowman]

You can find the 3 different versions of how the cards have been dealt in Linda Boyd's book "The Video Poker Edge". She interviewed IGT to get the information. The first method they used back in the 80s is the one spxchrome gave above, it is called the parallel method. In the 90s they switched to a sequential method where 10 cards were still being dealt but the second five cards were saved and the replacement cards taken sequentially from those five. Unlike the parallel method the draws cards were always the same independent of what as held. Finally, starting around 2000 (Game Kings) they switched to the current method of selecting only five cards on the deal and keeping RNG running until draw is pressed and then selecting the replacement cards. 

[cddenver]

You can find the 3 different versions of how the cards have been dealt in Linda Boyd's book "The Video Poker Edge". She interviewed IGT to get the information. The first method they used back in the 80s is the one spxchrome gave above, it is called the parallel method. In the 90s they switched to a sequential method where 10 cards were still being dealt but the second five cards were saved and the replacement cards taken sequentially from those five. Unlike the parallel method the draws cards were always the same independent of what as held. Finally, starting around 2000 (Game Kings) they switched to the current method of selecting only five cards on the deal and keeping RNG running until draw is pressed and then selecting the replacement cards. 
 
Periodically the subject comes up of whether game manufacturers control the results of the RNG, or whether the results can be predicted by players.  The changes in dealing methods over time wouldn't have been made if the results were being controlled anyway.  Instead, it shows me that IGT has been increasing the level of randomness (unpredictability) over time.