trip from hell

[mightwin]

Gee Frank - you must be fun on a date.  Do you bring up all sorts of facts and argue your point past boredom? Raven's OPINION that it was the trip from hell.   With your lifetime records, your knowledge and experience - you see the big picture.  Some of us little people cannot and will not (ever) separate the math and randomness - whether it be proved in the medical journals or not - from our feelings. It's disappointing when you are used to winning on a trip to Las Vegas and the last trip seemed like you couldn't even buy a winning moment or even borrow the feeling from a person waiting on a handpay close to you. Raven - hopefully you enjoyed at least part of your trip.  You mentioned liking the room at the Wynn (even with the problem).  I personally like the tubs and take a nice long hot bath while there.  Nice time visiting with the relatives?  I hope you will consider coming back in the next year or three.   If it was last weekend - Nascar was in town.   When I didn't live here I would go to the casinos around Albuquerque and it seemed like they were always packed.  You had to settle for a machine you didn't like, or play vulture until someone left the machine you really wanted.  Because you can walk to the next casino (on the strip) it seems like there isn't that many people inside in comparison. I'm sorry to attack you Frank, but it seems any opportunity to remind us that a "few" hands isn't good enough for a real scientific answer.  You might forget that the $100 spent on playing for a short period of time DOES feel like the machine ate it without so much as a thank you. I'm climbing down from my soap box.  Sorry for the rant.  But I feel better. Royals to all.

[Frank Kneeland]

TruncatedGee Frank - you must be fun on a date.I'm sorry to attack you Frank, but it seems any opportunity to remind us that a "few" hands isn't good enough for a real scientific answer.  You might forget that the $100 spent on playing for a short period of time DOES feel like the machine ate it without so much as a thank you. I'm climbing down from my soap box.  Sorry for the rant.  But I feel better. Don't worry about it. I re-read my early post and it was a bit "misplaced". While out on a date tonight, I thought of a much better analogy to put across what I was trying to express.Imagine for a minute that you always played 2538 hands on the same machine everyday and that it was totally fair and totally random. Some days you would get no Four of a Kinds. Some days you'd get 1. Some days you'd get 2...etc...And some days you might get 10 or more.Math predicts this!It would be incredibly odd if you always got exactly SIX everyday, which is the average. It's normal for things to go in streaks; bad, and good, and average, as this is the very definition of randomness.Overall, since you play this same machine everyday, you'd take it all in stride and not worry about "bad days".Now imagine that you play 2538 hands a day, but you always play at a different casino on a different machine. You experience identical results as above.Suddenly, these totally normal random results would cause you to have "lucky" casinos and places where you are sure they have "unfair machines". At one place you'd fell like you were on fire, and at another place you'd feel they should have just mugged you in the parking lot and saved you some time.The point is this would happen (and is expected to happen) even if the machines at each of the casinos you played were identical, fair, and random.Hope that explains it better.~FK

[onemoretry]

Gee Frank - you must be fun on a date.  Do you bring up all sorts of facts and argue your point past boredom? Raven's OPINION that it was the trip from hell.   
 But, there was more to the post than the fact it was the trip from hell. Statements that the casinos are raping the players, no one is winning,etc., along with the comments in a subsequent post, suggest that the Las Vegas casinos are cheating. I think Frank's comments were right on.  If you can't accept the fact that fair machines can produce almost impossibly good or bad sequences, perhaps a different hobby is for you. Two days ago, my wife and I played side by side at Seneca Niagara.  After about 45 minutes, playing 50c 5 line 8/5 bonus poker, she had had zero quads, and was down $600-$700.  I, on the other hand, was on an almost unbelievable roll, with 14 or 15 quads, including quad aces and dealt quad fours, and was up by about that same amount - those are typical of the sort of extreme sequences that can occur.  We all love the good ones, and hate the bad.

[Frank Kneeland]

I think Frank's comments were right on.  If you can't accept the fact that fair machines can produce almost impossibly good or bad sequences, perhaps a different hobby is for you. Two days ago, my wife and I played side by side at Seneca Niagara.  After about 45 minutes, playing 50c 5 line 8/5 bonus poker, she had had zero quads, and was down $600-$700.  I, on the other hand, was on an almost unbelievable roll, with 14 or 15 quads, including quad aces and dealt quad fours, and was up by about that same amount - those are typical of the sort of extreme sequences that can occur.  We all love the good ones, and hate the bad.onemoretry gave a real life example, perhaps I should do the same.Rather than talking anymore theory, I'd like to offer an actual experience. Back in the 90's I had the pleasure of playing on one of the strongest positive expectancies I'm aware of in the history of video poker at Harvey's in Lake Tahoe. They were 6-5 $ JoB machines, but they had 4.5% METER-RISE with a full 2% going on the generic Four of a Kind. 1.5% went on the SF and 1% went to the RF. The 4K reset to 125 coins, like a normal Job, but for every hand you played it went up 10 cents. That means every 10 hands the 4K went up a dollar. We use to start playing it when it got over $250 on the 4K and by the time we hit it the meter was often over $300-$400. In adition the RF and SF progressed, so a typical play might have meters like (RF = $6,000 SF = $1,200 4K = $250)Our typical edge when playing them was well in excess of 6%. That's 106%+ Nothing that good currently exists in the world of VP. This was the best of the best...and guess what, that still didn't translate to everyday being a "winner".We still had bad days where we didn't hit anything...and we didn't worry about it, nor didn't it effect our overall results. All things being equal and fair one expects to have incredibly bad days on even the best of machines.Imagine for a moment if you had been on vacation, sat down at the bar at Harvey's played for an hour, hit no Four of  a Kinds and concluded that the machines there were terrible and chosen never to play them again. You would have been walking away from what was the closest thing to a printing press for money that the VP world has ever seen. Well guess what, I saw people do exactly that. They'd storm out saying stuff like, "These machines just aren't hitting" and walk away from a $500 Four of a Kind.Conversely, one could think a machine that was terrible, was good to play if they happened to get "lucky" and hit something big quickly.The normal expected variance of all VP games totally obscures the true return of machines on time-scales of days or even weeks, so if you make conclusions based on how you are doing today, or how you are doing this week, you're really basing your decisions on nothing at all.It's metaphorically identical to flipping a coin ONCE and deciding that the coin is unfair because it came up heads ONCE...except for VP it takes several months of constant play per single flip.

[mightwin]

Let me ask everyone a different non-gambling comparison. Let's say you went to a restaurant that has won awards and everyone's saying is the best.  What if you personally didn't like it, therefore disagreeing with the popular opinion.  Would you feel that your money and time was wasted?  Or, would you give it another try to see if you just happened to be there on an off night? For Frank - you would have to think back to when you were spending your own money on your meal.  (Or you used  comps for something that would have been better used on something or somewhere else.) I believe we have all spent money on something in our lives that we have been disappointed with. Las Vegas has changed over the years.  I remember the low price deals from back in the day.  Steak and Lobster for under $10 was an amazing deal - right up to the moment you tried to cut the steak that resembled a shoe sole and wondered why the lobster was the size of a medium shrimp.   I believe that time changes people and places, sometimes better, sometimes not.  But again, that's my personal opinion. Royals for everyone.   

[royal flush]

thats what hurt lv in recent years they make every activity a "profit center" a couple driving from los angeles 300 miles each way for a weekend at the top staying 2 nites at a midlevel place for 150 a nite seeing a show like "O" for 125 per ticket meals can spend over a thousand bucks without gambling at all. then they killed most of the playable vp and 21 most the average on vp was 2% below optimum and 1% below optimum meaning most players dont play correctly and can not count cards. the death of vp was accelarated by folks like bob dancer selling his flash cards and books educating the weak playing tourists en mass. and 21 was killed by the mit crew. this shows the stuped casino thinking that everbody was going to be able to count cards and have the discipline to follow the "flash cards". caesars world ceo mr loveman was first to kill vp removing even 9 6 job and nsud. they should realize most of the public does not know the difference and resigned to the fact they cant win and accept that a few of us will beat the game

[Frank Kneeland]

Let me ask everyone a different non-gambling comparison. Let's say you went to a restaurant that has won awards and everyone's saying is the best.  What if you personally didn't like it, therefore disagreeing with the popular opinion.  Would you feel that your money and time was wasted?  Or, would you give it another try to see if you just happened to be there on an off night? For Frank - you would have to think back to when you were spending your own money on your meal.  (Or you used  comps for something that would have been better used on something or somewhere else.) I believe we have all spent money on something in our lives that we have been disappointed with. Las Vegas has changed over the years.  I remember the low price deals from back in the day.  Steak and Lobster for under $10 was an amazing deal - right up to the moment you tried to cut the steak that resembled a shoe sole and wondered why the lobster was the size of a medium shrimp.   I believe that time changes people and places, sometimes better, sometimes not.  But again, that's my personal opinion. Royals for everyone. Mightwin, you have brought up what is perhaps the most important aspect of this entire discussion and that's how conventional wisdom and what works in nearly all other aspects of life fails inside a casino.In a restaurant: Bad Food = Bad Food     |     Good Food = Good FoodOne can conclude from nothing else other than their results, in this case a terrible meal, that they did not like this restaurant. Is it possible that the bad meal was a rare aberration and that on future trips the food would have been great? Perhaps? I wouldn't chance it!Really good restaurants test all their ingredients and consistently put out good food all the time. (or nearly all the time). Order a stake at the best stake house everyday for a year and you'll get at least one bad one...that's life...and the randomness (in food quality) we experience in restaurants. (It's minor) Here pattern recognition is a good thing and helps us.[SEE Footnote 1]The best casinos with the best games could not hope to achieve anything like the level of stability one gets, or should get in a good restaurant. The logic of a bad meal equating to a bad restaurant breaks down in a casino where...Bad Result = Not Enough Information   |   Good Result = Not Enough InformationA single bad meal in a restaurant might well be an indication of a trend and would indeed be something you should take into consideration when planing your next dinner. A single, or even multiple bad results in row tells you next to nothing at all about the game you were playing, or how you played, and especially whether or not the machines are fair. [SEE Footnote 2]If one applies the same level of deference to personal results in a casino that they do in a restaurant, they'll just be mislead.Pattern recognition is like a winter coat. It keeps us warm outside in the cold real world, but in a heated casino, it's best to check it at the door, or else you'll end up sweating.When I ran the large team we felt pretty confident that VP machines were fair and random after tabulating and cross referencing the results of 50+ players after a full year of daily play with hyper accurate records. For an individual a lifetime might not be long enough depending on how much they play. Our idea of a decent sample was the equivalent of 100 years of constant action for a normal individual. Does that put things in perspective?~FK
Footnote 1: My roommate has a problem with pattern recognition (prosopagnosia) and will order the same
dish he didn't like multiple times at the same restaurant, because his
brain does not associate what he eats with where he eats. He has to ask me, "Did I order this before, and did I like it?"Footnote 2: @new2vp: Could you chime in with how much play would be required to
know with 99.9% certainty that a VP machine was not random? I know it's a
hard question, which is why I'm pitching you the ball. Oh and least give a flavor for how hard the math is and how impossible it would be to do in your head and without meticulous records.

[ravenbynight111]

[ravenbynight111]

 Lots of good reads on this topic. Lot of guys talking math,it only applies in the long term in the eyes of most pro video poker players.I would love to come back and say I killed them in Vegas.The truth of the matter the machines were ice cold in Vegas. I talked to some locals and got the same story. When you walk into a casino on Saturday night and have your choice of any machine, spring break, NASCAR, was in town.There should be no way you can play any machine in a casino.Try a Saturday night in Lake Charles at lac. You can not get a table game video poker machine or a slot. That is every Saturday night. Why are the  Vegas casinos empty.3 reasons I think that is. 1 the economy, 2  The customer base is mainly younger adults that want to drink and hang in clubs. 3 No one is winning so there are staying away. Maybe going to a small casino on the boulder hwy, spend a evening out with the wife. Have a couple of drinks maybe a free buffet. The locals know the truth and there are staying away. This is my own personal observation.

[Frank Kneeland]

 Lots of good reads on this topic. Lot of guys talking math,it only applies in the long term in the eyes of most pro video poker players.I would love to come back and say I killed them in Vegas.The truth of the matter the machines were ice cold in Vegas. I talked to some locals and got the same story. When you walk into a casino on Saturday night and have your choice of any machine, spring break, NASCAR, was in town.There should be no way you can play any machine in a casino.Try a Saturday night in Lake Charles at lac. You can not get a table game video poker machine or a slot. That is every Saturday night. Why are the  Vegas casinos empty.3 reasons I think that is. 1 the economy, 2  The customer base is mainly younger adults that want to drink and hang in clubs. 3 No one is winning so there are staying away. Maybe going to a small casino on the boulder hwy, spend a evening out with the wife. Have a couple of drinks maybe a free buffet. The locals know the truth and there are staying away. This is my own personal observation.

I'm glad you are enjoying the thread, some interesting things have come out to be sure. Above you made some interesting observations, on which I have very little comment. I'd like to offer a plausible explanation for your earlier observations about Vegas casinos tightening their machines at certain times, like when Nazcar is in town.I believe what's responsible for this observed effect is something called confirmation bias. When we form a belief our minds instantly start sifting, sorting and filtering all incoming information to support our current belief. Dis-confirmatory evidence is ignored and confirmatory evidence is embraced. I have two fascinating studies to offer.(Info from NOVA episode)The rate of spontaneous remission for cancer patients is roughly 4%. For some types of cancer the rate of regression is far higher. For instance some studies put spontaneous remission rate for breast cancer at 22%. Naturally, this rate is identical amongst theists and non-theists. Here's the differences, if a theists visits the holy waters of Lourdes in France and experiences spontaneous remission they will be absolutely convinced that it was the curing waters that saved them, even though every scientific study done says there's no effect. If you believe the waters will heal you and then you are healed...well I think you get the idea. (Info from the book, The Believing Brain--summarized)Scientists meticulously collected pro and con information on capital punishment, with careful attention to balance it neither for or against the issue. They then recruited subjects with an even balance of people on each side of the argument. The subjects were first asked how sure they were on their position. They were then asked to read all the material the scientists gathered. After reading the material the subjects were asked to rate the material on its bias towards a particular side of the argument. The people that were for capital punishment mostly felt the information was biased against it. And predictably the people that were against capital punishment thought the info was biased for it.More surprising is that both the people that were for, and the people that were against capital punishment reported being MORE sure of their position after reading identical information.Then they tried a slight variation, again with the exact same information. They told the subjects that the information was biased towards a particular side and then asked them after if they agreed. 85% agreed regaurdless of which side was chosen or towards which side they told them was biased.If the idea/belief was already formed the totally fair, unbiased and perfectly balanced information was perceived as biased, and only served to confirm whatever the subjects already believed. Not a single subject reported reversing their opinions, and all of the subjects felt more confident about their decisions after reading net neutral arguments for both sides.Where both of these stories relate to video poker is that people have A LOT of beliefs, like your's that casinos do something to machines beyond changing the pay-tables to make them pay out less, or other beliefs...and if people form those beliefs, their minds will do an excellent job of only noticing things that confirm them. It's a process of reinforce without refute. Once you have an idea you become primed to notice things that support the idea and you unknowingly fail to notice or give proper weight to things that contradict the view point. It's exactly like the people in the study that all came away emboldened by completely neutral information.  Only a scientific study with double blind protocols, control groups, peer review, etc... could really prove it one way or the other. What worries me is when I see people so completely sure about things that it's impossible to be sure about.And for the record: I'm certainly not sure you are wrong! I'm only sure that you shouldn't be sure you're right.It's been really nice sharing and thanks for sparking such a good thread Ravenbright.~FK