New machines - bad results

[kfed]

My favorite local casino, The Riviera in Black Hawk Co, recently replaced a bank of 9 triple play machines at their bar. The old machines were about 7 or 8 years old. The game that most of us played was a 25 cent, 9/5 DDB progressive. I've had good luck on the old bank - even hit the progressive on Labor Day for $18,622!. However, these new machines have been a total disaster. As of yesterday, no royals have been hit in 2 weeks, which is totally out of character. I heard one lady complaining to a host that she put $1000 into that bank and never hit a single 4OAK. The progressive is now over $26,000 and yesterday, when I walked in the door, there was not a single machine being played. The bartender said the regular players have abandoned them in favor of another bank of older machines that don't have the progressive. I tried them - dropped $500 and had 1 4OAK (happened to be aces). Has anyone encountered a situation like this before?

[SaraTG]

   It happened to me also once.  I use to have fair results on the Triple Ace Poker game when you could bet 20 credits and the cards had a 3-D look to them and the payout tables were slightly different.   Then one day I went in and it seems the casino "upgraded" the software.   It was obvious the software they installed was for casinos where you could change the denomination  from .25 to .50 or $1.  But since they only allowed .25 bets you were stuck at just 5 credits. Plus the cards now look like regular 2-D poker machine cards.  Long story short they pay off no where near as well as they use to and you no longer can hope for that saving 4OAK in the bonus round with 20 bet to win back a big losing day.

[ko king]

Seen the same thing happen years ago, there were about ten $1 denomination vp machines at the Grand Casino that this happened to. I hit my share of royals on those machines and knew a couple that played all the time there that had hit 52 royals in one year on those machines. Harrah's bought the Grand Casino and the machines were replaced, we all continued to play but the royals were pretty much gone. The couple I knew quit playing there after they only hit a total of thre royals that first year, I hit 1 royal in ten years of play there and only saw one hit by another player during those ten years.  

[shadowman]

I've heard it a thousand times. "These machines don't pay out like the used to".
 
Of course, they did. With random machines there will be people who do much better than average until they don't. When the luck leaves them they believe the machines changed.
 
I once tried to explain this to someone who was complaining. They got angry with me for telling them the truth. People will experience extended periods of winning and losing.
 
Oh yeah, when some one says that around me now I just say "Oh" and ignore them. I can imagine if they said that to someone else experiencing poor luck they would get confirmation of their belief. Hence, people come away saying "it's not just me".
 
Now, that's not saying there can't be hardware/software problems with VP machines. People should always be on the alert. I just believe they are very few and far between. The majority of situations is explained by randomness.