Prelude to Post of Dr. William G. McCown Q&A

[New2vp]

State a casino misconception and then talk about
what causes it.Frank, you can use the following list (that I have adapted from an old post) for
additional casino misconceptions.  In the next post, I've taken a shot at what, beyond ignorance, causes the misconception.  I do not use
"ignorance" to be pejorative, just to indicate that the misconception in
many cases can be alleviated by education.  I will leave it to others to describe alternative rationale for actually believing these classic video poker myths.  Recall Standard Deflection/Reflection Technique 2-5.Extol the BS-master's pet theories whenever possible, including but not limited to:    a.  Video poker machines do not employ fair random number generators.    b.  One cannot win by being an AP and following the math and playing with the edge.  (After all, if the BS-master was unable to win this way, it couldn't be that he was deficient in his application.  Since the BS-master is so smart, it must follow that anyone who wins with standard math techniques is necessarily not truthful.)    c.  One can win only by employing short-term multi-denominational progression techniques and these multi-denominational progressions win even on negative expectation machines.    d.  Employing multi-denominational techniques will result in a high percentage of large wins that offset small losses, despite the fact that simulations demonstrate the exact opposite.    e.  Long-term techniques only work for the casino; short-term techniques employed over and over and over and over work for the player.  Corollary:  there is no limit to how long short-term techniques allow the player an advantage in the long term.    f.  When discarding one card and holding four, there is a much higher probability than 3/47 that the rank of the replacement card will be the same as the rank of the discard, despite the fact that this can easily and has been debunked by actual observation.    g.  One can use patterns of past results to determine when a video poker machine is likely to hit or be "hot" or become "cold."

[New2vp]

a.  Video poker machines do not employ fair random number generators.    b.  One cannot win by being an AP and following the math and playing with the edge.  (After all, if the BS-master was unable to win this way, it couldn't be that he was deficient in his application.  Since the BS-master is so smart, it must follow that anyone who wins with standard math techniques is necessarily not truthful.)    c.  One can win only by employing short-term multi-denominational progression techniques and these multi-denominational progressions win even on negative expectation machines.    d.  Employing multi-denominational techniques will result in a high percentage of large wins that offset small losses, despite the fact that simulations demonstrate the exact opposite.    e.  Long-term techniques only work for the casino; short-term techniques employed over and over and over and over work for the player.  Corollary:  there is no limit to how long short-term techniques allow the player an advantage in the long term.    f.  When discarding one card and holding four, there is a much higher probability than 3/47 that the rank of the replacement card will be the same as the rank of the discard, despite the fact that this can easily and has been debunked by actual observation.    g.  One can use patterns of past results to determine when a video poker machine is likely to hit or be "hot" or become "cold."Many of these misconceptions can be explained by subjectively attaching too much or too little probability to events that have been experienced.  Whereas careful analysis and mathematics would allow one to dispel most of these, many do not the patience and/or the aptitude to employ the same.a. and b.  If one read about experts being able to "beat" video poker, perhaps they began their career without understanding more than expected return needing to be more than 100%.  Perhaps they made mistakes that they didn't realize or just ran into a bad run and were burned.  It is much easier, especially for those with some personality characteristics, to "blame" something else rather than themselves.  After all, how many really understand "Risk of Ruin" calculations, or even if they do, how many understand that they could still fail even if the RoR was less than 10%.  It is clear that most do not completely understand variance or how video poker distributions deviate from normal, bell-shaped, distributions.  So "blame" the messenger rather than one's own analytical weaknesses.c.  The "doubling up" method of winning (or the video poker correlate, increasing denomination after a loss) has a high probability of working.  If one uses experience without mathematical analysis to test the theory, there is a large chance that one will win, especially if you are able to move up several denominations.  Of course, this will generally result in relatively small wins until the time that it doesn't work.  In that case, the person will lose big.  But experience is easier than analysis and until the big loss, this is an easy theory to put one's trust in.d.  This one is harder to explain unless one resorts to anecdotes (or "dreams") about what could happen.  E.g., for example, what happens if you hit the royal flush on a high denomination?  Huge win.  Of course, with analysis, this is not a likely result.  But we all would like to believe in "get rich, beat the casino dreams" just like we would like to win the MegaMillions lottery.e.  This one is silly.  But it might be again a lack of analysis ability.  If short-term techniques win for players then they have to realize that if they add them up, that would eventually be a long-term technique.  So, it is silly to think that short-term can work when long-term cannot.  But experience might suggest otherwise...until the inevitable big loss comes.  A short term technique applies in the situation in which one is never going to gamble again, but that is not what is usually considered here.f.  People can focus on a single card when drawing only one.  Of course, they are hoping for a bigger than average win when they do so.  At least a straight is a possibility, though it could also be a draw at a flush, full house, straight flush, or even a royal flush.An outcome of getting the same rank on the draw is nearly always a disappointment.  When it happens it will likely be remembered.  And it happens often enough that once in a while, you will see two or three such draws in a reasonably short period of time.  Disappointment brings with it an opportunity to blame and suspect that something is amiss.g.  Maybe it worked once.  If you get a big hit after observing something unusual, you might decide to convert to believing this one.

[faygo]

Excellant summary. 

[backsider]

Im almost certain Frank has a diagnosis for those who get easily jolted by someone they previously thought they had superiority over, those who in a frenzied-driven response just cannot put their thoughts together in a single 5000 word post, those who continuously make posts that they know no one else will ever read because of their rambling length, and the funniest of all? those who sadly end up replying TO THEIR OWN POSTS!

[Frank Kneeland]

I'm sorry but I'll have to recuse myself from this thread at this time. This will be my last post in this thread.If I were any of you, what I'd do is ignore all the negative stuff, the he said she said that has gone before, and focus on the most interesting talking point that came out in this thread.How people by observation attempt to prove to themselves that machines are random and RNG's are fair, when every scrap of scientific evidence available, and every study ever done on the topic says that the human mind (all human minds) can't accomplish this task in-head. It's just not something we as humans can do.This leaves us wondering how anyone, by observation can be sure of anything???The answer is by use of error prone heuristics. If you can identify and understand the metal short cuts that are being used by people to be sure about things no one can be sure about, you'll have found the hole and will be one step closer to plugging it.If you can stick to this one single talking point, stay focused, and keep an open mind, you all may learn something. Something important! Something useful!I'm very disappointed that a thread with this much potential for insight and revelation devolved so quickly.If you approach a study of heuristics with the mentality of, "that could never happen to me", you have missed the fundamental knowledge that heuristics are employed by all and are the providence of all normal thought. One must instead adopt a mentality of, "This is new information, it effects everyone, and I can better myself if I learn it, because I am human."When I started studying it I learned things about myself, and I'm still learning, and the moment I become sure I've learned all I can, I will have fallen pray to an error prone heuristic, and reverted to being wrong. ~FK

[backsider]

I can apologize for devolving into not fully understanding what's trying to be accomplished here, for sure, and for being the cause of New2vp having to release & relieve himself here once again, thereby causing this threads demise.

OTOH, this could only be an observation.

[edog743]

Backsider is it not about time you quit blaming everyone else for your narrow minded I am right you all are wrong threads. Your stuff is getting very old and tiresome.

[backsider]

Backsider is it not about time you quit blaming everyone else for your narrow minded I am right you all are wrong threads. Your stuff is getting very old and tiresome.

Yes, and I apologized above. That doesnt at all preclude me from being right at certain times though. It's an opinion-based internet, and if you had the open mind that you try to show youd have also chewed out New2vp for wasting his time and all the bandwidth talking to himself in this thread.

[faygo]

Backsider is it not about time you quit blaming everyone else for your narrow minded I am right you all are wrong threads. Your stuff is getting very old and tiresome.
 Reflections are like echos.

[edog743]

New and I have had our differences on alot of subjects. Yes he is long winded, maybe somewhat anal retentive, and an all around pain in you backside pardon the pun. The differences New and I have were and are all about other things than V.P. Which is well documented in other posts. With all that being said I do not think I would question anything he says about V.P. or math. You might want to take that into consideration. I also find it sad that You struck up a friendship of sorts with Mr. Kneeland then when he did not agree with you. You rapidly threw him under the bus.