King Cashalot

[jamiester]

I would, however, like to know why you think this is not fair, since:

1. Your chances increase at the same rate as everyone else's. There is no bias in favor of or against any player.
2. The odds cannot be (or shouldn't be) able to be manipulated by a human, and do not swing high/low - odds only decrease over time in a standard fashion until the jackpot is hit (ie there are no fluctuations).

This was answered well by guesswest. It is not fair to anybody who plays at a lower jackpot level than anybody else. If they set their machines up this way, they would never get anybody to play after a jackpot was hit. Also, if the odds of a combo change, this means that the EV changes over time. I don't know about you, but I don't want to play a game whose EV changes in a way I can't predict. If something like this were true, these machines could tighten or loosen up based on any number of input. It would be very unfair.

So I agree with Jamie that it isn't fair. I do disagree tho that there is no reason to set up a machine like that. A machine rigged in this way will eventually take the same amount of casino profit as one that isn't, but programming slots in such a way would kill the variance completely. That's a good thing for an online casino that doesn't have the kind of start-up capital that the huge Vegas casinos etc do.

This is a very good point. I didn't think of that. I guess I should have said that there is no point in creating a situation of changing odds TO ATTRACT PLAYERS.

5 reel machines are always weighted. The positions of the reels are controlled by a microcomputer chip. There is not a single 5 reel game in the world that I know of which is free-wheeling.

No video slot machine spins independently or naturally. It does, however, post a random result based on the RNG, regardless of whether it is a normal or progressive slot, and regardless of any weighting.

Weighting only takes place outside the RNG, and so long as it:

By the way, for another example of weighted slots, how about those machines that build up "eggs" or "dynamite" or whatever, and once you hit the limit, the "jackpot" bursts and you get the credits?

I am not sure what you are saying here. 5 reel video slots do not have to be weighted, because there is no restriction of the physical reel. The virtual reel can simply be displayed. Some 5 reel machines MAY be weighted (I can't imagine why) but the statement that all of them are weighted is categorically false. How do you know the reels are weighted? Have you mapped out the reels and recorded the results and found disproportionate occurrences of certain positions/symbols?

Video slots don't actually "spin", but the RNG should behave perfectly randomly and if the virtual reels are represented by the animated reels, then functionally, video slots should give results exactly the same as an unweighted physical reel of the same dimensions and sequence.

Why would a company need to weight a video slot when they can just create more symbols on the animated reel? (Not to mention the fact that when you weight one symbol, you weight the ones immediately above and below by the same factor, albeit on a different set of paylines.)

I am not sure what your last example has to do with weighting. A certain percentage of the payout is dedicated to the bonus and is paid out when it is hit. Where does weighting come in?

[spearmaster]

Go ask the Wizard of Odds, he is probably the person with the most expertise on slots.

http://www.wizardofodds.com/slots

Also, Vegas Reference

http://vegasreference.com/games/slots/

Strangely enough, they seem to disagree on weighting of slots - and yet I can tell you this for a fact - Michael Bluejay manages the Wizard of Odds site for the Wiz

I do want to point out that both sites, when talking about slots, are referring to land-based machines, NOT online slots. The assertions they make about slots do not necessarily apply to online games.

What the Wiz says:

However this is not true of single line machines, which most slot machines are. The fact is that on single line machine each stop is electronically weighted and the probability of the reel stopping on each symbol is proportional to its weight.

...

Multi-line slots, both with physical as well as video display reels usually do not have weighted reels. Otherwise the process is the same as above. In video display slots representations of actual reels are used, which can be quite large, 60 symbols or more.

What Vegas Reference says:

The reels are weighted so that some symbols are more likely to hit than others. For example, the slot may pick a random number from 1-127, which might select the symbols as in this hypothetical table:"

I repeat - both of these people are talking about land-based slots in Vegas.

Online - it's easy enough to tell - map the reels and see what comes up. For a progressive, if you're talking 30 stops, it's definitely weighted.

I'm going to leave it right here. We've had this discussion before (well, at least Jamiester and I have) and I'm not going to keep repeating myself. You can choose what to believe. And we can agree to disagree. But I continue to believe that I am correct based on my past experiences.

[guesswest]

Thanks much for digging out those links spear, very interesting reading.

Both those examples of 'weighting' refer to a very different thing to the kind of weighting that was being talked about here. The kind of weighting mentioned by both those guys just means that even tho (for example) there are 100 characters on a reel, one particular character might be 500 to 1 to show up because of weighting. Like I said I have no problem with that at all, it's just an easy way of creating a game without having a slot machine that physically takes up half a mile of floor space. It still offers fixed/constant odds on any particular combo, at all times, and it means that all reels effectively spin independently. Most importantly it means that the machine isn't sentient, that if you have a 'near miss' that it actually is a near miss, rather than some meaningless pretty looking display that was predetermined to pay nothing.

That kind of weighting is a completely different thing to a slot machine reacting to the size of a progressive jackpot by changing these odds about, making the jackpot combo more likely to appear when the progressive figure was large - and thus changing the frequency of every other combo artificially also. That's the difference between weighted and fixed, as it offers different odds and thus different expectation at different times. It means every spin is artificial.

I'm pretty sure land based progressives in reputable jurisdictions do not do this. To use the example of Megabucks again, I just did a bit of googling on this. A statistical average on Megabucks hitting is 1-2 weeks but it recently went 10 months without being hit. It's also been hit days apart. I'm not a good enough mathematician to calculate that exactly, and even if I was I can't be bothered - but my instinct is that that's the kind of deviation you'd expect to see with a fair game, and the kind of deviation which strongly suggests it's spinning on real/fixed odds. I don't know that the MG software artificially controls progressives/slots, but if it turns out they do I have a big problem with it, for all the reasons already mentioned

Anyhows, accept thats spear's done on this one, thanks for sharing your views - just wanted to throw that in myself, and maybes someone else has something to say on it

[spearmaster]

OK - your point is taken. I had no idea Megabucks was falling anywhere NEAR that often!

Re: near misses - in the past, and possibly still on some machines now, both online and land-based - a near miss was equal to any no-win spin, and was often rigged to show the near miss more often because it was for all intents and purposes the same result.

I understand that this is probably not allowed in Vegas anymore, maybe not Atlantic City as well - but I am dead certain that it still happens online.

Weighting of progressives - we'll leave that one for now. Because I am not a mathematician, nor am I the software programmer, I am in no position to say either way whether this is really happening or not, other than from my own experience. And this is not even likely to be the same from slot to slot - for example, Cashsplash regularly falls once-twice a day. I would think that this is typical of the type of progressive you favor as the jackpots odds are not likely to be that high and thus unlikely to have the type of weight I have been talking about.

Hell, maybe none of them have weights like I describe. But my past experience in playing (a bit) and watching/monitoring (a lot more than anyone else) says that either some of these jackpots do have this type of weight, or else someone is manipulating the odds by hand - for sure it is NOT what you are expecting.

[Simmo!]

Sorry to butt in but regarding the original topic, some guy called Tim F won the Cashalot for $1.2 million! I think at Jackpot City - well, i say that cos they are advertising the fact he won

[Bruce Hamilton]

...some guy called Tim F won the Cashalot for $1.2 million!

Wonder if they'll pay that over the next 20 years, like a lottery...

[spearmaster]

Wonder if they'll pay that over the next 20 years, like a lottery...

All Jumbo Jackpots (Microgaming) are paid out in a single lump sum.

[jamiester]

Strangely enough, they seem to disagree on weighting of slots - and yet I can tell you this for a fact - Michael Bluejay manages the Wizard of Odds site for the Wiz

I do want to point out that both sites, when talking about slots, are referring to land-based machines, NOT online slots. The assertions they make about slots do not necessarily apply to online games.


Online - it's easy enough to tell - map the reels and see what comes up. For a progressive, if you're talking 30 stops, it's definitely weighted.

I'm going to leave it right here. We've had this discussion before (well, at least Jamiester and I have) and I'm not going to keep repeating myself. You can choose what to believe. And we can agree to disagree. But I continue to believe that I am correct based on my past experiences.

I hadn't seen Bluejay's site before. I do want to point out that the quote of Bluejay's you cite above was in reference to 3 reel slots only, NOT video slots, so I don't think they disagree. (Interestingly, however,the Wizard contradicts himself on this subject on his own site!)
Also a quote from Bluejay's page you linked (talking about progressives):

The odds of hitting the jackpot are the same on every spin. It doesn't matter if the machine has been played for months or years without hitting the jackpot, the odds of hitting the jackpot on the next spin are ALWAYS the same. No slot is ever "due" to hit a jackpot. The universe doesn't work like that.

It is also cool that he mentions the Casino.net actually publishes the odds of their progressives (and they are static). That is very cool of them!

Near misses - On video 5 reel+ slots there are no near misses as there are no blank spots on the reels. Well, there are near misses, but they can't be programmed in to appear more often than chance would dictate.

You talk about your experience in watching slots and I am sure you have a lot. But that is just anecdotal observation. You really need a statistical analysis of results to be able to make a claim of changing odds or whatever.

You are going to believe what you want, I guess, but I think we should point out if you saying things that we feel are not true or don't make sense. No offense intended.

[spearmaster]

I repeat - Bluejay is talking about land-based slots in Vegas. That does not make them any more fair than other slots elsewhere - just that they meet Nevada standards.

Also, he is correct in saying a slot is never due. Even under the scenario I described, it does not make a slot any more due - otherwise there would have to be a point (in theory) where a slot MUST pay off in order to meet its published or unpublished odds. That is what a fruit machine in the UK would do.

Any variance in odds of hitting the jackpot would still be very limited - it would never go from say 10 million to 1 to 1 million to 1. It might, however, slide from 10 million to 9 million over a fairly lengthy period of time. There obviously has to be some sort of limit on how much variance in odds there could possibly be.

Now - if one person is playing the slots, and no one else, obviously his odds would remain quite long and the jackpot might last forever - it's the increase in the number of people playing, and subsequently the amount of chances generated, which will eventually crack a jackpot under the right circumstances. This is the same under any normal scenario.

Anyway, back to the point - Michael Bluejay is talking about land-based slots. I am not aware that he has any direct experience with online slots - however, the Wiz does have experience analyzing online slots for sure - so he would be the best person to put this question to for an informed answer.

Me, I'm just offering my opinion. And by "watching slots", I mean watching progressive slots, ever since they evolved on the Net starting with CashSplash. However, as you say, to be conclusive, you would need statistical analysis - which I don't have, which is why I say it's my opinion, and not stating that anything is fact

Near misses - I was actually referring to three-reel slots I haven't heard anything about a 5-reel slot being programmed for near misses - and it doesn't always take a blank to cause a near miss

[Daffy]

Spear-"Because the player doesn't know that, and because MGS will never reveal how their progressives are set up - nor will any other operator - it stands to reason that people will still play progressives, newly reset or not, because there is still a chance that they will win the jackpot."

Hard to believe that in 5+ years no one has divulged the progressive info...no disgruntled former employees.

Possibly they put it together like a "secret" pyramid...several programmers working independantly on a portion...no one knows the whole product.

the dUck

Edit-I guess I could tell all about how I built the racecar...but I wouldn't have a clue how the driver was going to drive it.