Machine Malfunction... Fishy Result!!

[rolanddude]

Disclaimer...  Although I have rarely visited this site since the regulars and I had us some fun discussing strategy a couple years ago,  I would like to ask you guys and gals for your help/thoughts on understanding what happened to the machine I was playing this past Saturday morning @ Hard Rock in Tampa.  I'm not looking to cause a fuss, start a debate, or endure more name-calling because of my friendship with some who were once active in the VP community...  with that being said...  Does anyone here care to share their opinion on the following story?I was playing on a STP 5 Play Bonus Poker (Super Times Pay) machine this past Saturday when I was dealt a pair of deuces.  I proceeded to hold the 2's.  The first one held and the second one wouldn't... The screen was locked, the buttons were locked...  It wouldn't deal, draw, or respond.  I called an attendant over and she opened the top and slammed it shut... still no reponse.  She opened it again, pressed a reset button... slammed the lid... no response.  She called over a young fellow who proceeded to tell her that the machine needed rebooted.  I told the guy that I was in the middle of a hand... he wrote down my credit amount and then opened up the machine, wrote something on a notepad inside the machine and killed the power then rebooted the machine.  He slammed the lid and we waited... The IGT logo appeared. Then, not unlike any computer, the screen went black and then lines of "code" appeared followed by a line of text that said the BIOS info...  what happened next really got my suspicions into overdrive... A line of text appeared that said "Resuming thread #(alot of numbers here)" then "Thread confirmed" Then immediately after that the machine showed my exact hand back on the screen in "mid-hand" (except the 2 that I held before was not held on all 5 hands) waiting for me to draw...  How is this explained?  Did the "Resuming Thread" line on the reboot indicate that my current hand and future hands were pre-determined? Regardless,  I ended up winning $135 bucks soon thereafter and cashed out...   I just thought that when a "computer" rebooted...  it didn't have the capacity to remember things like this.  Why else would they put a disclaimer on EVERY machine that says... "Any machine malfunction VOIDS all play"???   Your thoughts are appreciated...   thanks...    Joe Carter  

[backsider]

I have not heard of a Hard Rock there. Is it a state run or Indian casino? If its the latter then you can probably expect anything out of them and I wouldnt play there again. But you are right, when a computer reboots then it clears memory of its most recent application. If that protocol reappears after the screen identifying an actual reboot, there is something fishy.

[rolanddude]

It is an Indian owned casino...  Seminole Hard Rock I have played there for a little over 2 years and have done quite well...  If the machines are "rigged" then I must be a lucky one.  Now I have the thought in my mind again that things are NOT random on these machines.  It is eating at me!!!

[marie meijer]

I cannot help you with this situation, roland. However, at MGM Detroit, Sat., I held the first four cards as they were FOYAL. I took my time drawing for the fifth card, hoping for that elusive royal. The fifth card did not connect but my FIRST card saved  disappeared! Had that fifth card connected to the royal I would  have called an attendant and gone through the hassle of hoping the machine would be in my favor. I would have hoped this could be proved that I had indeed received a royal, when the machine was opened. I had read of this happening in Vegas when a card to the royal did not hold and eventually, the player received credit for that royal. I have also read that it might sorta depend on the mood of the attendant as to whether they will check out that allegation of a royal. Perhaps it depends on the particular machine or brand of machine if this could be traced. Any input on this subject?

[baldie]

I would think it's along the same lines as a television.  Remote off and on and the same channel and volume settings appear.  I believe it's called non-volatile memory or the ability to retain data during a power failure (it must be erased or overwritten).  The thread message might be some type of CHECKSUM comparison.Robert 

[rolanddude]

The television comparison isn't a good one in this instance because it wasn't an off/on situation... It was a "Re-Boot".   When he slammed the lid down the screen said "Please wait for system reboot..."  Then the IGT logo screen appeared followed by the screen cycling through many different colors.  After that there were many lines of data slowly scrolling up the screen... after a couple of minutes (maybe even 3 or 4) the scrolling stopped and there was an outline of a square box on the screen below the last few lines of data/code.  It paused there for about 30 seconds.   Right up above the box is where I read... "Resuming previous thread # ( 10-15 numbers here)" with dots slowly extending out from the text.  Then it read (in the same spot) "Thread confirmed".   That is when the regular screen appeared with my hand intact waiting for me to draw.  It did not hold, as I said earlier, the 1st deuce that I held before the "FREEZE".   To me it implies that a thread of many hands (the first five cards dealt) along with their "draw-to" cards (up to 5 more cards to be drawn) are "Pre-determined" whether by random generation or by intricate programming on the designer's part to make it seem random.  If it was resuming a "previous thread"... hmmm...  why have a "thread" when it supposed to be random.   If a thread has a # assigned to it...  then it is identifiable by that #...  can be recalled...   doesn't it sound like there are "threads" that already exist (somewhere on the gaming software chip)  that are going to be used at any future time for the replication of specific poker hands (one after another) that we can see and play and hopefully win??  The ONLY thing random would be the "Thread #" the machine is on when you sit down. Just my attempt to try and explain the need for threads...  I have a computer craps game that uses threads...  I can go in and see the different thread #'s and the specific dice rolls that are associated with each thread.  Each thread is of different lengths (some are over 5000 rolls long... others as short as 150 rolls) and there are thousands of threads available.  Yes, there is a component of randomness, BUT , it is not in real time if I am correct in understanding the term "Threads" on number generators... Am I wrong on this? 

[Eduardo]

I don't know. Maybe after each deal and draw the hand is added to the "thread" in memory along with an ID number so past results can be looked at, and it found the most recent entry in the thread in memory and was about to go back to it.

[rolanddude]

Eduardo, I think what you are referring to are called "logs".   And I was IN THE MIDDLE of the hand... it shouldn't have registered a result to look at... It plainly said "Resuming thread #.................."  AND...  it took an awfully long time to load it in... For a machine that can supposedly cycle through and produce hands/results at millions per second...  It does not seem likely to me that it would take this long to "re-generate" it's last hand played...???  

[damule]

The television comparison isn't a good one in this instance because it wasn't an off/on situation... It was a "Re-Boot". Am I wrong on this? Yes, you are wrong.It's an excellent comparison. Those who have DirecTV and have the DVR service may have experienced the need to reboot the system due to it losing signal, freezing, moving slow, etc. When the DVR, which contains a processor, is rebooted all the memory is still intact: favorites are saved, recorded shows are saved, and the system returns the last channel and volume selected.

[rolanddude]

Damule... (BTW... Hello again! Hope you have continued to do well.)I have DirecTV and it has frozen before when I was watching a recorded program and I have had to turn it off and back on. My recording was still in my list of saved programs after the "reboot" as was everything else... but it did not come back on in the middle of my show. It came back on tuned to the last channel I was watching before I started watching my recorded program. Try it... you'll see...Be that as it may... my question about "Threads" that are apparently embedded in poker machines is a serious one ... What are they really? When do they originate? Are they randomly called upon by the CPU from a large database located somewhere in it's ROM or RAM (not sure which would be the case)?  Another thing... when I play (especially on single line play) a session at about 700 hands/minute and I press deal and the machine pauses for about a second or so before showing my hand... Could I have played to the end of one of these "threads" and it needs that extra little amount of time while loading in another "random" thread from within its database?... It's got me suspicious to say the least... LOL!!     Maybe the RNG inside the machine produces these threads and stores them for future use... or maybe there IS a way to manipulate the results one gets from a VP machine...