Online Video Poker (maybe)

[DiamondGeezer]

Well I'll keep an open mind and retract my "zero" then (Black Swans and all that ). Maybe 4OAK can amaze me and prove it but unless he has been playing on obscure proprietory softwares then it would be pretty astonishing. I will certainly tip my hat to him if he can come up with the goods. But given that VP has been tested extensively in the player community over many years it would be a huge shock. And as you hinted above 'variance sure can be a bitch.'

[4 of a kind]

This thread isn’t about my personal outcomes or beliefs. It’s about trying to find out how the game video poker is being offered to us online.

As this thread confirms we at least know of two different versions, (class 111) and (class 11). Like binary128 mentioned before both are perfectly legal, one being controlled based on pre-determined house hold settings, and the other being controlled by random card draw.

Like I said before I’m not certain if I could tell the difference playing a class 111 game or a class 11 that was pre-set with the same expectancy percentages as a class 111. Yet, if I was playing a class 11 with the proper return settings, I’m confident I would know the difference rather quickly if it suddenly was reduced. Okay, maybe not that quick but after two years of the same, it might be time to back off and start scratching your head.

Can I prove it???? Of course not… Does anyone here actually think I could produce a decades worth of all the video poker hands I played? If I had them of course I would send them to the wizard of odds for analyzes. Unless he could make a judgment comparing annual dollar losses, I don’t think he could be much help. And yes, I know the wizard did do analyzes for RTG but that was over a decade ago, so give that a break.

Just like some members here are confident and secure where they choose to play, I’m not that confident and secure any longer, which is why I decided to stop. I could be completely wrong with my assumptions and I’m willing to chalk it off as a bad run (variance), but not till I’m convinced of how my cards are being dealt to me.

For the most part the vast majority of gamblers are clueless when it comes to the actual inner workings and or statistics of the games being offered. Many seem to forget that most of the members here are pretty much up to snuff with gaming, and don’t realize how small of a percentage they actually are when compared to the masses. Most gamblers don’t have a clue where to go or what to ask about even if they knew.

Serious well educated gamblers (not sure how smart a person is that knows they’ll eventually lose) not only love the action but are willing to lose 100k with the hopes of getting 200k in return and are just as happy to get 50k back. But, this type of gambler needs to know everything their up against, regardless which game they choose to play.

I’m not saying that there is any difference between a low roller or high roller when it comes to gambling for entertainment. But low rollers treating a Friday night playing online no different then going out to dinner really can’t be compared to the player willing to risk 10k over the weekend. With that being said I don’t mean the 10k hi roller is any better then the low roller or any smarter. Trust me there is plenty stupid ass hi rollers all over the place. What I’m trying to say is the majority of hi rollers do research and confirms what their up against before losing their money. At the very least they get a lot more action for their money.

I already knew before I even started this thread that no confirmed facts would be found out one way or the other. At least we know that all video poker programs are not all created equal.

I also would like to add that binary128 representing Galewind software, and jstrike representing his software, that even without confirmed fact I would be willing to give their software a go of it. Their honesty, transparency, and hands on can’t be over looked.

[DiamondGeezer]

4OAK I agree with you that it's totally unacceptable you can't get answers to your most valid questions. That is an excellent reason not to play in my opinion. This industry is far too opaque and is a bit of a shambles really. I just can't believe Playtech, MG and RTG et al don't have technical reps on this forum. And what about Alderney, eGOGRA and all the other regulators/testers?

The truth of the murky casino world is all the real testing is undertaken by the players themselves. When English Harbour were caught out on the VP doubling it was a player, Lawnet, that exposed them. If you have the skills to do it you can do a lot of testing on games like BJ and VP. The systems are fairly open and it is possible to create feedback loops similar to what jstrike was talking about above with reference to his own casino. This is why i think it is very unlikely VP cheating could go undetected for more than a short time.

The reel problem (geddit?) is not card or table games but slots as these cannot be verified by players. A VP theoretical RTP can be verified to a very high degree of accuracy but with slots it is not possible due to the bonus rounds and theoretical RTP can never be verified. So if there is cheating going on then it's far far more likely to happen with slots than VP or card games because only a regulator or tester with access to the source code could detect it.

[binary128]

This post is just an assortment of bits and pieces.

In an earlier post by iNetBet Promos:

... Take for example the game Aces & Eights: Our Paytable for this game is set to High. This gives an expected return on this game of 99.78% on max bet. If the paytable was changed to low (reducing the payout of 4 OAK Other and Full House) then the expected return would reduce to 97.72% ...

I infer from this that they can request from their Software provider different pay tables for the same Video Poker game. In this example, they can request a "High" pay table or a "Low" pay table for the game of Aces & Eights.

Please allow me to emphasize: there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this. As iNetBet Promos pointed out in the rest of their post, they believe that they operate Class III machines, which means that you can use the Wizard of Odds' Video Poker Analyzer to calculate the Theoretical Maximum RTP of any and all of their Video Poker games, so nothing is hidden.

I simply found it interesting.


Another snippet:

... With a class II type slot, we could predict what we'd make this year ...

I started to think; "Aren't all Slot games, by definition, Class II machines?"

And in that thinking I determined that they aren't (or, more accurately, that they might not be).

Consider what I/we have learned about Class II machines. Disclaimer: the following conclusions may or may not be accurate, because they are based on the limited data which I/we have on hand.

For Class II machines, some finite quantity of games are defined and stored somewhere on a server. Using whatever software calculations the programmers applied, this finite set of games (let's say a million) in total represents a pre-determined, and pre-approved, Actual RTP, let's say 93%.

If it was discovered, however, that when this 1 million game set was first created and analyzed it had an Actual RTP of 91%, or an Actual RTP of 95%, then they would generate more games, or replace some games in the set, or modify some games in the set, or whatever, such that the result was 1 million games with a total Actual RTP of 93%.

Games from this set would then be sent out to client machines on request.

Which is not how totally random (what I will now term) Class III Slot machines work at all. Given a Slot with a Theoretical RTP of 93%, a 1-million sample set might have an Actual RTP of 97%, a 2-million sample set might have an Actual RTP of 92%, a 3-million sample set have an Actual RTP of 91%, a 4-million sample set have an Actual RTP of 99%, and like that.

Yes, this slot's Actual RTP will eventually approach its Theoretical RTP, but the sample size involved might be in the tens of millions.

Again allow me to emphasize: I place no value judgments on any of this. Bottom line: a Class II machine at 93% Theoretical RTP is functionally equivalent to a Class III machine at 93% Theoretical RTP. The only difference is variance, which could work for you or against you.

I simply find it interesting to consider that there might indeed be Class II and Class III Slot machines available in the world. Maybe others will have a greater, or more accurate, insight than mine.

Chris

[DiamondGeezer]

For Class II machines, some finite quantity of games are defined and stored somewhere on a server. Using whatever software calculations the programmers applied, this finite set of games (let's say a million) in total represents a pre-determined, and pre-approved, Actual RTP, let's say 93%.

If it was discovered, however, that when this 1 million game set was first created and analyzed it had an Actual RTP of 91%, or an Actual RTP of 95%, then they would generate more games, or replace some games in the set, or modify some games in the set, or whatever, such that the result was 1 million games with a total Actual RTP of 93%.

Games from this set would then be sent out to client machines on request.


Chris

I don't think this is quite right somehow, I think we need to go back to the beginning and look at why these machines came about in the first place.

Non random fruit machines came about in the UK in the 1960's I think and were invented so that owners of Chinese takeaways could own a machine with a limited liability and that was also practical to operate. How they worked was they were set up so they couldn't pay out unless they had enough coins in them to be able to pay a jackpot. I don't think you need any sort of game set but a measurement of how much is going in and out of the machine, with the reels reflecting this process. It was all about the coin in and coin out hoppers.

Perhaps strangely the online ones seem to operate in a similar way in that each player seems to be assigned their own machine. So you can fill your own machine up with cash and eventually jackpot it. It will remember it's state in between the players visits to the casino.

When the arcade machines moved to chips in the late 70's and 80's various people began to devise cunning ways of tricking the machine into thinking it was full when infact it was not. Sometimes it was pressing a sequence of buttons on the machine and other times it might be making illogical moves at certain times in the game cycle such as rejecting wins or features. I believe one was as simple as turning the plug on and off at a certain point. At it's height there were guys going round with carrier bags full of coins and some big money was made by a few.

So the online versions have come from this method but with much tighter code. Allegedly . Jstrike had better get his coding right on his Class 11 machines or he could end up getting a nasty surprise, like the one 32Red got when a player managed to win £50K one night . If you ask the player involved (who posts here) nicely he will tell you that story I'm sure .

[DiamondGeezer]

Again allow me to emphasize: I place no value judgments on any of this. Bottom line: a Class II machine at 93% Theoretical RTP is functionally equivalent to a Class III machine at 93% Theoretical RTP. The only difference is variance, which could work for you or against you.

I simply find it interesting to consider that there might indeed be Class II and Class III Slot machines available in the world. Maybe others will have a greater, or more accurate, insight than mine.

Chris

There are a group of Class II machines on MG called AWP's, they are a lot of fun. The problem online is because it is your own individual machine it will always be empty when you first play which means variance can never be on your side.

OTOH if you could somehow fool it into thinking it is full when it isn't then you would be quids in .

[binary128]

... I'm thinking about putting together a kinda...I don't know, a Player's Bill of Rights, or something like that. Like something casinos could only sign onto if they followed all these rules, and it wouldn't be like a regular certification, it would be something where all of the info has to be shown to everybody, in a format they can use to run their own statistical checks, and not just shown to eCOGRA or somebody where it's buried and smoothed over in the end-of-month statistical paybacks. And the important features aren't randomness or RTP, they're about a hand-by-hand analysis of how things went down, because that's where you can really tell if something's fair or not...a couple hundred hands at a time.

JStrike,

Re: the Player's Bill of Rights. If you haven't already, take a look at My Closing Comments for my thread "Return to Player - Critiques Requested."

I think that some of the things that I have listed in my expanded paragraph "For question #1, ..." would work here.

But I temper all of this with the PITA factor of question #2 - specifically, how much work do I want to do to ensure I'm playing a fair game but still focus on actually playing that fair game.

Chris

[Nifty29]

There are a group of Class II machines on MG called AWP's, they are a lot of fun. The problem online is because it is your own individual machine it will always be empty when you first play which means variance can never be on your side.

OTOH if you could somehow fool it into thinking it is full when it isn't then you would be quids in .

Only some of them work that way but not all.

Treasure Island and its clones and a few others start "empty" (99% of the time anyway), but games like Ski Bunny etc can give you 1000x on the first spin - which happened to me when I had never played that game before at that casino or that casino group.

[binary128]

There are a group of Class II machines on MG called AWP's, they are a lot of fun. The problem online is because it is your own individual machine it will always be empty when you first play which means variance can never be on your side.

OTOH if you could somehow fool it into thinking it is full when it isn't then you would be quids in .

DiamondGeezer,

For this post, and your previous post, I bow to your superior knowledge.

Given the proper instructions on how these AWP machines function I'm sure that Galewind would be able to build them.

At the moment, our game build "To Do List" is mostly table games - Spanish 21, Let It Ride, Sic Bo, multi-hand Blackjack, maybe a multi-hand Video Poker or 2, maybe Red Dog or Casino War, and like that.

Are these AWPs something we should be considering?

Chris

[DiamondGeezer]

Actually I cribbed all that stuff of Vinylweatherman . He is the expert on AWP's and incredibly did win £50K at 32Red when he 'forced' a machine to megastreak by playing it in a certain way. It's a bit of a joke round here that he likes to tell that story but it is a brilliant one.

No need for AWP's/Class II's really. No 1 priority is 4 Line VP, then 10. A VP progressive would be a very good move too. And some more table games and slots. Guess you'll be busy!