One for the UK Gambler, One for everyone.

[ianbeale]

Hi all,

So I have taken a bit of time off from actually playing my favourite slots and have looked more into the numbers and maths behind it, this is where I would like some input please.

Firstly,

I can walk into a UK High Street bookmakers and spin £100 inn seconds on a FOBy Roulette Machine.

How come I can, as we speak, only bet £5 a spin in a mainland casino on a slot machine and potentially win £10k (recent upgrade from £2 max bet for a jackpot of £4k)?

Now I know they are different games, and the max spin I game do on a bookmakers slots is £2, but the figures baffle me in terms of the relativity of it all.

I can sit and watch Youtube videos until my eyes bleed, of slot players in Vegas where is appears to be no limit on the max bet if you have the right machine.

So can anyone in the know, explain the rational behind our laws here. Of all the places, I would have thought that a fixed bricks casino would have options that a bookmaker can only dream of. It appears to be the opposite.

My second question is,

How do we all feel about the reoccurring trend (without a doubt for me) where you play online with a bonus of some sort, and you get to the 75% complete (of the wager requirement) and its a constant downhill, busting out with minimal wager still to go.

My most recent example is this:

£50 deposit that is matched with a £3k wager term, normal enough. I play and play, I hit a high of £550 and a low of £124 ish until I have maybe £670 left to wager with a balance of £225 ish. From this point onwards it is straight downhill to zero, finishing with about £67 to wager.

Does this happen to everyone else? Its almost like a button it pressed that says "take it all".

Now obviously I win with some deposit bonuses and make cashouts, but honestly for me, this is where I have hit big enough early or mid term and "rode" the downward trend.

However its not like the downward has not been present before as my previous example shows a huge swing.

To me it is almost a given that I will see a fraction of the balance I have with 25% left to wager than I hope for, I am not naive to the fact that variance will take some of the balance but nearly every time, the RTP literally goess through the floor.

This is where I need to number's bods to step in please and tell me is it statistically more likely to to face a downward trend based on the previous amount of wager that has been played?

I know people will say that "I have won big in the last few spins of a huge wager" and so have I, Ruby Slippers 4 wild bubbles and a 5th wild x 2 comes to mind as my one and only.

I'm intrigued by all of your views and please any none UK players that want to contribute to the 2nd question, fire away.

Thanks in advance for your opinions and input.

 

[sigothx1]

Fellow uk resident,

on your first point, our government love to spout how much they care about problem gambling, They dont, the 8 or so bookies on every main high street shows that, they put limits to supposedly curb problem gambling, doesn't actually do anything but make politicians look good, As for vegas, you cant compare vegas to most casinos in the UK, firstly they have games and licenses we dont have, Were so far behind in bricks and motar casinos its quite funny.

Vegas is what it is, considering the majority of people go there, go there to gamble, its in that states interest to allow mega jackpots and the like, No-one travels to the UK to gamble in our brick and motars, yes they come for poker, but not slot or table action.

Onto your second point,

I can tell you straight away previous wagering does not affect wagering to come, This is correct at accredited casinos, some rogues do anything to not pay ect, but in terms of weighting games i doubt even the rogue outfits know how to do this, Especially since most casino software is licensed, meaning casinos can use there games but have no direct control on them, only the operator does, thats to the best of my knowledge at least.

But i have had sessions where ive got to 80% all fine then tank my entire bankroll, its just part of the swing that is slot gambling, ive also had deposits where from the first to the last spin of a £7500 wager was a winner, and i cashed a couple thousand, its just a swing, and us gambles are a superstitious bunch, "surely it couldn't drop that fast!" ive said it to myself, but unfortunately it makes no logical sense for a casino to weight a game ( not that they could ) as you would simply not deposit there.

My advice for what its worth, When your playing to make WR's, change your slot to the lowest variance game you can, Super jack pot party on WMS for example, Or munchkins on MG sites, trying to make a WR on immortal romance with the figures you had would be reckless at best, What slots did you play at the end? what stakes?

with a £225 balance and only £670 WR, if you played one of the 2 slots i mentioned at 20p spins, youd have made it with something, i cant guarantee that, but id wager youd finish the WR with something left more times than you wouldnt.

 

[ianbeale]

Thanks for the reply.

To reply to your game query, I am guilty of being a high variance player most of the time. I believe some IR was in there along with 300 Shields (explains itself)

However I also noticed that is not just downward trend but also that the features and bonuses also dry up.

As you say, it is no doubt down to bad luck but its funny how the same games are fairly balanced for 80% of the session and then spiral down right at the end,

Lets say that I am playing 300 shields solidly with a £500 balance and £2k to wager.

I play 50p/60p spins throughout my gaming to answer your other question.

Now I play 1k spins on 300S at 50p, I hit say 3 maybe 4 features, I dont think that is overly optimistic or pessimistic. Now chances are due to that games nature, the features will be dire and I get nowhere near the 300 multiplier, that I expect.

But, you may get a few half decent line wins (what there can be on 300S) or a say £25=30 bonus feature. Things are fairly even, the features come in in an acceptable number of spins on average for this slot.

However, lets say I am now down to £200 with £900 to wager, not a cert finish but potentially. Now the "switch" comes out to play, the features dry up ( I went over 700 spins to get one and it paid about x4 bet).

Yes this can happen and long streaks without features can and do happen that's a given, it just seems very odd that is always seems to happen when there is a big potential of a cashout and the casino has provided bonus funds to help get you into the position you are in.

Cynical or a bad loser? Maybe, but I am not 100% sure on this. Yes we all have days when we feel "robbed" and that is why its a gamble, I just feel at times that the gamble element is really reduced in these situations.

I would be interested to know from as many people as possible, when they feel they make the biggest gains in balance through a win when using a bonus?

Do people A hit early (well say within the first 30% of wager)

Do you B hit around the middle market (well say from 30-70% of wager)

Or C, hit within the last 30% of wager terms.

I expect a varied response as we all have our "moments", but for me personally, it is without a doubt A as a majority.

It is almost like, "here is a bone, can you leave some left for later? knowing full well the bone will taken away later as you have "had too much"

Many thanks again

 

[Richas]

Hi all,

I can walk into a UK High Street bookmakers and spin £100 inn seconds on a FOBy Roulette Machine.

How come I can, as we speak, only bet £5 a spin in a mainland casino on a slot machine and potentially win £10k (recent upgrade from £2 max bet for a jackpot of £4k)?

Now I know they are different games, and the max spin I game do on a bookmakers slots is £2, but the figures baffle me in terms of the relativity of it all.

I can sit and watch Youtube videos until my eyes bleed, of slot players in Vegas where is appears to be no limit on the max bet if you have the right machine.

So can anyone in the know, explain the rational behind our laws here. Of all the places, I would have thought that a fixed bricks casino would have options that a bookmaker can only dream of. It appears to be the opposite.

Well it is a bit of an historical accident in some ways but the stakes are not so unbalanced as most think.

The machines in bookmakers are joint B2 and B3 machines. B3 is a max £2 stake and £500 jackpot, you can also find B3 only machines in Adult Gaming Centres (Arcades) and even service stations with an AGC licence. The important bit is the jackpot cap £500. The B2 games like Blackjack, three card brag and roulette also have a maximum payout of £500. So for a single roulette number £13.85 max. You may be able to bet £100 on a single spin but not at odds of greater 5/1

It is the max payout that is the main limit on such games so the recent rise for B1 (Casino machines from £2 max stake and £4k max jackpot to £5 max stake and £10k jackpot on that machine and up to £20k on a linked jackpot within the casino.

The machines are limited to 20 per casino in the UK. The casino legislation is designed to make them employment centres, the idea is that table games give more employment. The politicians want to keep casinos as elitist places where the plebs do not go, no machine shacks serving lower income groups so they have restricted the machines.

Now the bookies machines are a bit of an historical accident. Bookies have been facing a decline in revenues over the counter with their numbers falling from about 16,000 to about 9,000. The lottery hit them 9and th pools) particularly hard. As part of a tax deal to cut them some slack the old tax on every bet placed was scrapped and replaced with a tax on the Gross Gambling Yield. The government agreed to this because their revnues were falling and jobs were going and the idea was that the bookies could compete with the lottery.

This the bookies set about doing by taking bets on the Irish lottery and hourly numbers draws and more. The bookies then also brought in some roulette machines where the RNG was server based. This made them a different type of machine, one that was not by the letter of the law necessarily illegal. the old Gaming Board was no best pleased and set about planning to take the bookies to court. This went on for a year or two until a compromise was reached, capping the stake at £100 and the jackpot at £500. The compromise was partly the legal grey area and partly that the machines were keeping the number of bookies (and jobs) stable but they were also boosting tax revenues as the OTC continued to fall (racing and dogs down football up a bit).

Then this all gets put in to law by the 2005 Gambling Act which started to be applied by the new regulator in Sept 2007.

Now the bookies concession was a typical British compromise, a bit messy. The bookies and the taxman were OK but the Adult Gaming Centres the pubs with their Amusement With Prizes machines and especially the casinos hated this new competition. They have between them helped organise and fund a prominent campaign against these B2 machines. Led by a game inventor with special hatred fro FOBTs because he asked their makers for over a million pound for his patented games and they told him to take a long walk off a short pier because games cannot be patented in the UK or EU. He did not like this very much.

The casinos don't really need B2 games (though they have about 80 of them now) because they have unlimited betting on those self same "casino" games on their tables. What they hate is that people might choose to play there games not in their premises. these are significant revenues. It is about £1bn on the B2 games and about £500m on the B3games.

So there is not really a planned logic to it and the bias is not as pro bookmaker machine as the campaigners would have you believe. Casinos offer both slots and all casino games at higher stakes and jackpots than th bookies.

 

[dunover]

Hi all,

So I have taken a bit of time off from actually playing my favourite slots and have looked more into the numbers and maths behind it, this is where I would like some input please.

Firstly,

I can walk into a UK High Street bookmakers and spin £100 inn seconds on a FOBy Roulette Machine.

How come I can, as we speak, only bet £5 a spin in a mainland casino on a slot machine and potentially win £10k (recent upgrade from £2 max bet for a jackpot of £4k)?

Now I know they are different games, and the max spin I game do on a bookmakers slots is £2, but the figures baffle me in terms of the relativity of it all.

I can sit and watch Youtube videos until my eyes bleed, of slot players in Vegas where is appears to be no limit on the max bet if you have the right machine.

So can anyone in the know, explain the rational behind our laws here. Of all the places, I would have thought that a fixed bricks casino would have options that a bookmaker can only dream of. It appears to be the opposite
.
Richas has provided a concise and correct explanation below, saves me the trouble!

My second question is,

How do we all feel about the reoccurring trend (without a doubt for me) where you play online with a bonus of some sort, and you get to the 75% complete (of the wager requirement) and its a constant downhill, busting out with minimal wager still to go.

My most recent example is this:

£50 deposit that is matched with a £3k wager term, normal enough. I play and play, I hit a high of £550 and a low of £124 ish until I have maybe £670 left to wager with a balance of £225 ish. From this point onwards it is straight downhill to zero, finishing with about £67 to wager.

Does this happen to everyone else? Its almost like a button it pressed that says "take it all".

Now obviously I win with some deposit bonuses and make cashouts, but honestly for me, this is where I have hit big enough early or mid term and "rode" the downward trend.

However its not like the downward has not been present before as my previous example shows a huge swing.

To me it is almost a given that I will see a fraction of the balance I have with 25% left to wager than I hope for, I am not naive to the fact that variance will take some of the balance but nearly every time, the RTP literally goess through the floor.

This is where I need to number's bods to step in please and tell me is it statistically more likely to to face a downward trend based on the previous amount of wager that has been played?

I know people will say that "I have won big in the last few spins of a huge wager" and so have I, Ruby Slippers 4 wild bubbles and a 5th wild x 2 comes to mind as my one and only.

I'm intrigued by all of your views and please any none UK players that want to contribute to the 2nd question, fire away.

Thanks in advance for your opinions and input.

As for your second question, you have the average maths of the Bonus Offer - Usually bonuses are EV- which means you are on average going to bust out on them if your session is near the advertised 96% in the term you've played.
You basically get the house edge (0.04 or 4% or 4p) and divide your WR by that. Say you take 100% SUB off a £100 deposit at 40 x B WR then you must wager 4000. 4000 x 4p = 160. Therefore you would expect to bust having used 160 of your 200 total bankroll up so will be left with 40. You lose.
As you get nearer your WR you will expect to see your balance decline - that maths favours the casinos and that's what they expect. The effect (I suspect this is what you have noticed) is magnified if you have a good initial peak in RTP off the back of a good run of spins or a big win. You then have the double whammy of the inevitable trough that follows plus you're conscious of the WR target seeming a long way off as you hit the trough.

The opposite sometimes happens. Look at Chopley's last video, his high-variance Microgaming endeavour. He had accepted defeat, the inevitable bust as his balance was badly down and seemed he would never meet WR and cash out. Then, having little balance left but also relatively little WR he hit the two big wins of combined 1000+ x stake on TFROL.
Then he was in the opposite scenario to you - his balance was virtually the same as his remaining WR so he couldn't lose and was guaranteed to meet WR and cash out with a profit.

It can go both ways on random slots....