casino integrity

[gregorio]

billyjoe, I take no offense at your comments. One of the big problems we have these days is that folks cannot seem to accept a different opinion without being offended and nasty. The whole point of this discussion was to get imput from everyone.  I live in North Carolina, and this year alone, i have played vp at casinos in Florida, N. Carolina, Tunica, Biloxi, Atlantic City and Niagara Falls,NY. My own experience has been a decrease in the number of winning/breakeven casino trips and an increase the cost of a gambling visit, over the past 5 years. I am and have been a diamond member for a number of years. The only thing that status means at any casino is that one loses more money and gets extra perks for higher losses. Higher status is not an indicator of wealth or skill.    I do consider myself a reasonably knowledgeable vp player, and i am well aware that there are many more losing sessions than winning. Every game a casino offers favors the casino. While i do not count the comps we receive when i compute my results for a casino visit, i recognize the rooms, free planes, food do have a value. In my opinion, pre the recession, all the extras made a casino trip a pretty good value for the dollar lost. My contention is that the payouts now are now so reduced, there is much less value than before.  I began this discussion with a simple question, if one thinks the cost of a casino visit has increased, what does one think has caused it to happen. You are obviously of the opinion that nothing has changed over the past 5 years. i wish i had the same experience as you.  There is no doubt in my mind that VP machines changed over the last 5 years or so. I've been playing VP with a few friends about 15 years now and we all agree on this subject. Of course none of us has definitive proof of any casino wrongdoing,but we feel it is only because there is no one to blow the whistle. As far as many, if not all, gaming commissions are concerned VP is the same as slot machines and that's that! I don't care what some people quote from some archaic gaming regulations. There are two kinds of gaming in the casino: slots and tables ( we don't count keno any more) and VP is now slots. I raised this point on this forum a while back: why does it say "SLOT" on a spin poker machines,but "POKER" on  regular draw video poker. That's because spin poker, just like all other gimicky new VP games like Ultimate X, STP, Multi-strike, Wheel poker,Crazy times and many others are nothing but slot machines and I guess by law they had to be differentiated. But they are all nothings but slots, except perhaps some single line draw poker. But........ who wants to play it? Boooooring! I  play only multi hand VP, fully knowing it's nothing but a slot machine.  But.......it's exciting. I could just as well play regular slots and I do. But old habits are hard to break.

[onemoretry]

or beat the odds on the PARTICULAR selection cycle when you make your selection.]
Exactly! At the precise moment that you hit the draw button. no matter how fast things are cycling, there is one outcome of the 47 possible ones that is the royal!

[BillyJoe]

[QUOTE=billyjoe] or beat the odds on the PARTICULAR selection cycle when you make your selection.]
Exactly! At the precise moment that you hit the draw button. no matter how fast things are cycling, there is one outcome of the 47 possible ones that is the royal![/QUOTE]
Sorry - not true. This would only be the case if the deck was 'static', using the 47 available cards in every cycle. But in the time that it takes you to make that selection, sequences of possible cards have been whizzing by, minus the 5 cards that you were dealt. Each 'cycle' DOES NOT start with the same, static 47 available cards. Your pool of cards to choose from, selected at random, may have 40 of the five of diamonds (not to pick on that particular card for any reason) presented in a row, if that is an available card to your draw.

This is why, in the 'old days', when you hit DEAL, the VP machine selected 10 cards (5 that it displayed, and 5 that it used as replacements), you were dealing with that 'static' 52-card deck. Did it seem like there were more 'winners' back then? HECK YEAH - because there may in fact may have been, although it was still a random selection. Today, the selection is still random, but the pool of available cards selected at random may be overflowing with 'bad' cards, since there are just more of them.

Get the picture?

[onemoretry]

[QUOTE=onemoretry]
Exactly! At the precise moment that you hit the draw button. no matter how fast things are cycling, there is one outcome of the 47 possible ones that is the royal!
Sorry - not true. [/QUOTE]
Really? So, you are saying that there are times when you have other than a 1 in 47 chance of success in drawing one card to complete a royal?

Wouldn't such tampering with the odds make the machine illegal in most jurisdictions?

[spxChrome]

[QUOTE=billyjoe] [QUOTE=onemoretry]
Exactly! At the precise moment that you hit the draw button. no matter how fast things are cycling, there is one outcome of the 47 possible ones that is the royal!
Sorry - not true. [/QUOTE]
Really? So, you are saying that there are times when you have other than a 1 in 47 chance of success in drawing one card to complete a royal?

Wouldn't such tampering with the odds make the machine illegal in most jurisdictions?[/QUOTE]


I can totally see the pool of junk cards being higher. That would make sense and it would still be legal cause its still a random draw. Point is there is a loophole to everything. Fact is everyone is has noticed the decline as of about 5 years ago.

[wildman49]

[QUOTE=onemoretry] [QUOTE=billyjoe] [QUOTE=onemoretry]
Exactly! At the precise moment that you hit the draw button. no matter how fast things are cycling, there is one outcome of the 47 possible ones that is the royal!
Sorry - not true. [/QUOTE]
Really? So, you are saying that there are times when you have other than a 1 in 47 chance of success in drawing one card to complete a royal?

Wouldn't such tampering with the odds make the machine illegal in most jurisdictions?[/QUOTE]


I can totally see the pool of junk cards being higher. That would make sense and it would still be legal cause its still a random draw. Point is there is a loophole to everything. Fact is everyone is has noticed the decline as of about 5 years ago.

[/QUOTE]If true then the 99% PAY TABLES can not be achived?

[onemoretry]

I can totally see the pool of junk cards being higher.


And, the pool of non-junk cards will be bigger, as well. The ratio of 1 in 47 will stay the same.

[gofaster87]

I see streaks all year round, but at the end, it seems to average out. If anything Im always over royaled. I play up to 1.5 million hands/year and average 35, my lowest, to 47 royals/year, my highest, for the last ten years. Ive been on some really bad streaks that make me question the honesty of the machines or casinos but eventually it comes around and makes up for the losses. If we want to talk patterns in machine play, I can honestly say that my brain sees differences in the vp at different casinos. It may be an illusion, but certain casinos seem to not hit full houses or flushes worth a damn while the other place hits them frequently. I look at it as a keno puzzle. Everyone I meet claims to see patterns in keno and tries to chase them. It never happens. VP is the same just when I try to chase or see a pattern the outcome of the session proves otherwise. So i try to believe most vp is fair.

[BillyJoe]

[QUOTE=spxChrome]
I can totally see the pool of junk cards being higher.


And, the pool of non-junk cards will be bigger, as well. The ratio of 1 in 47 will stay the same.[/QUOTE]
Whatever. The fact is, no. If you start with 1 good card and 46 bad cards, select over and over again, at the speed of the RNG processor, you will end up with far more bad cards than good cards.

If you have the time, try it with a few decks of cards on your kitchen table, and see what the distribution of your pool of cards looks like at the end. You are still making random selections, but I bet you will find far fewer than 1 in 47 good cards in your pool.

It's just math - and a lot of luck.

[BillyJoe]

[QUOTE=spxChrome] [QUOTE=onemoretry] [QUOTE=billyjoe] [QUOTE=onemoretry]
Exactly! At the precise moment that you hit the draw button. no matter how fast things are cycling, there is one outcome of the 47 possible ones that is the royal!
Sorry - not true. [/QUOTE]
Really? So, you are saying that there are times when you have other than a 1 in 47 chance of success in drawing one card to complete a royal?

Wouldn't such tampering with the odds make the machine illegal in most jurisdictions?[/QUOTE]


I can totally see the pool of junk cards being higher. That would make sense and it would still be legal cause its still a random draw. Point is there is a loophole to everything. Fact is everyone is has noticed the decline as of about 5 years ago.

[/QUOTE]If true then the 99% PAY TABLES can not be achieved?
[/QUOTE]
Over an infinite number of hands on a particular machime/paytable - sure. The only thing that a better paytable does is return to you more of your bet when you catch a good hand. The distribution of returns will gravitate toward the mathematical norm, as dictated by the paytable. But that 99% assumes perfect play, and max bet ON EVERY HAND.