A year of Quads - 2011

[Frank Kneeland]

I was wondering if we can look at volume of play from another angle...Though it is certainly possible to play 1.3 million hands in a year on single line machines as SPX has stated, it would require playing 5+ hours a day (weekends off) with no vacation for the entire year. I have never heard of non-pros playing this much. Further, if he did indeed play this much and ran as badly on 4K's as he believes he has he'd also be down about $150,000 on quarters. I can't imagine anyone continuing to play in the face of such steady and huge losses.So I will ask:Is this how much you play?What denomination?(if quarters) And are you down $150,000 more than you should be?If the answer to either of these questions is no, then there has to be an error in how you count your hand volume. If the answer to these questions is yes, then you may have another problem, but we'll handle that later. You cannot have fallen this short of expectancy on four of a kinds without a proportionate and commensurate loss of return, especially on the game you were playing. If you don't have a large boot print in the centre of your butt something is wrong with your numbers.~FK

[damule]

If the answer to these questions is yes, then you may have another problem, but we'll handle that later.

~FK


 
 
Best line I've read on the forum in a long time. Way to go, Frank!

[Frank Kneeland]

I'm assuming you didn't count each hand and that you derived your hands played by counting points and dividing. Could the error be something simple like counting each point as a hand and not factoring in the 1.25 for 5 coins, or something like that?Perhaps you got multiple points on some days and didn't notice, causing an over-estimation in hands played. To play 1.3 million hands in a year, VP would have to be practically be your whole life since it would require almost full time job hours and recovery time as well. That much play is gruelling on the body. Trust me I know.And to do this for 3 years while talking a 5-10% negative deviation in return is almost unthinkable.

[backsider]

Im not getting this. A player who knows what hes doing and keeps records, posts how things arent going the way the math says it should over what looks like the longterm to me and just because it goes against what the math says there has to be something wrong with him, his recordkeeping or the machines. In my thread I post how getting a royal by holding four does not happen as often as the math says it should, and the same set of smarties claims Im wrong somehow. In my case Im not claiming anything about the casinos except that Ive never hit a royal by holding four and the hold happens a lot, but spX has recorded results right from the casinos. Why does he have to be wrong? Is it that this touches too close with my beliefs that the machines arent really as random as some think they are?  May I suggest those with this type of gaming possibility bias stop worrying about what they want to believe and start trying to figure out whats really going on. And please, stop claiming everyone but you are wrong just because you dont agree with what they say they experience. 

[edog743]

 wow

[shadowman]

Im not getting this.

 
Finally, something I can agree with ...

[Frank Kneeland]

Im not getting this. A player who knows what hes doing and keeps records, posts how things arent going the way the math says it should over what looks like the longterm to me and just because it goes against what the math says there has to be something wrong with him, his recordkeeping or the machines. In my thread I post how getting a royal by holding four does not happen as often as the math says it should, and the same set of smarties claims Im wrong somehow. In my case Im not claiming anything about the casinos except that Ive never hit a royal by holding four and the hold happens a lot, but spX has recorded results right from the casinos. Why does he have to be wrong? Is it that this touches too close with my beliefs that the machines arent really as random as some think they are?  May I suggest those with this type of gaming possibility bias stop worrying about what they want to believe and start trying to figure out whats really going on. And please, stop claiming everyone but you are wrong just because you dont agree with what they say they experience. Well you opened with, "I'm not getting this", so I guess we can't fault you too much. No you aren't getting this at all.It's not that we are saying SPX is "wrong". It's the implications of what he's saying in the event that he's right.If he is right, then he's been losing twice the average yearly income in America for the last three years running and playing machines that are clearly gaffed and apparently still playing them knowing that they are unfair and non-random. Not to mention the Herculean effort required to play 1.3 million hands a year...and the psychological torment constant losses of that caliber that would instill.What he has described would be Video Poker Hell, where even if you got 4 times the number of Royal Flushes you should get, you'd still go home a loser almost everyday.So this leaves us with two possibilities:1. It is as bad as he says, in which case, why the hell has he been playing for three years straight almost everyday in a task that's tantamount to burning money. (25-30 hours a week, average daily loss of $250)2. It's not as bad as he says, likely due to a simple math error.If he is right, this is proof positive he's been playing non-random machines. If so, that's very important information and we need to check his data to confirm it.Either way, right or wrong, his data is actionable. If any of this occurred in Nevada, gaming should be contacted and he could have a viable lawsuit on his hands if he chooses to file charges. Non-random machines are illegal in Nevada and if he can prove his stats he's got a good case.I'm not assuming he's wrong, so please don't put words in my mouth. I'd like it to turn out he's right, that would be an interesting result indeed. So let's try to prove it, shall we...For this we need to know exactly how he calculated his hands played, where he played and what his results were (at least ballpark totals).The goal is not to dispute his claims or disprove anything he has said, we are trying to confirm it.~FK

[brmcc74]

New VP= So what you are saying is that RNG 's are tested to payout at a certain level? How can this be if they are random. Defeats the purpose doesnt it? Im asking because Im curious. Maybe there is a tollerance of some sort?

[New2vp]

New VP= So what you are saying is that RNG 's are tested to payout at a certain level? How can this be if they are random. Defeats the purpose doesnt it? Im asking because Im curious.Sorry, I didn't answer you sooner because I've been busy with a couple other projects the last couple days.  But I think you did get to the heart of it with your own follow-up post.I see Frank has posted and I haven't read those yet, so I apologize if I am repeating some things (though he usually has a different way of explaining things than me and often sees different things to comment on).RNGs do nothing but provide a series of numbers that are used to identify which card will be next.  If the chance of any unseen card coming up is equal to the chances of all the other unseen cards, programmers can go through all possible results and simply average up all the outcomes.Thus, well-working RNGs will produce a specific EXPECTED value assuming that a player selects the cards from dealt hands which have the best average outcome.  But that is different from the ACTUAL values that one will witness over any specific run of hands.The results from any group of hands will likely be different from another group of equal number.  Each group will have a likely different payback percentage.However, as the number of hands increases, the average DIFFERENCE between the ACTUAL PAYBACK percentage and EXPECTED PAYBACK percentage is PROBABLY going to get smaller and smaller.  As the number of hands gets larger, the PROBABILITY that the ACTUAL PAYBACK and EXPECTED PAYBACK percentages will be within any specific TOLERANCE gets larger and larger and approaches 100%.So, if the results from an RNG are too different from expected, larger than what probability theory would suggest, either more extensive tests would be run or a different RNG would need to be substituted that didn't possess the bias of the previous RNG.

[New2vp]

Frank, another possibility is that the percentage of other smaller-paying hands is large enough to offset some (but probably not all) of the losses from the paucity of quads.  I don't have experience with VLTs, but I've read that they simply pay a certain percentage of each type of hand.  And there is no way of telling those percentages from looking at the pay schedule.Certainly we all hope that spx has not experienced the magnitude of losses that you have referred to.  He is a frequent poster and seems to be a pretty nice guy.  And I seem to recall that he plays at higher denominations than quarters.