Probability & Percentages

the hunt

Dormant account
Joined
Jan 21, 2006
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sussex, uk
This is something that has played on my mind for some time now.

Ive always wondered EXACTLY how the paypout percentage etc is audited or functioned at an online casino.

I understand ruturns are based over many hundred of thouands of pounds etc but....

For example:

-Is it worked in everyone who plays the casino as a whole?

or

-Worked per person, or per person per game?

-Does the fact that I lost lots last time mean I have a better chance the next day?


I know its all quite complicated but any enlightenment would be appreciated.
 
the mathematical "law of independant trials" dictates that each spin/hand/whatever is a unique event. The machine has no 'memory' and therefor your past results have absolutely no impact on your future results.

thinking anything else is strictly incorrect "gambler's" thinking.

the payouts also are not unique to any one person, but an overall average of all players in the casino.

For example, many times I see casinos claim things like "98% payout for blackjack". Well, if you play correct blackjack strategy it should be more like 99.5%. This means that there are gamblers out there who by playing incorrect strategy throw the payout numbers off of what the true house advantage of the game is
 
the hunt said:
I know its all quite complicated but any enlightenment would be appreciated.
It's very simple: financial return in relation to total player wagers.

If total wagers were $1,000,000 and the casino made a profit of $30,000 on those total wagers, that would be a return of 3% to the casino, or a 97% payout to the players.
 
Just remember, if you deposit $30,000 this year, 97% payout does not mean you'll get $29,100 back. It means that once you've wagered $1,000,000, on an average you'll have lost all of it and got nothing back. The casino can still claim they paid you 97% winnings. You wagered 1,000,000, won 970,000, lost 30,000 - oops, that was the 30,000 you had:eek: vanishing in a puff of mathematics! Casino wins 100%, claims 97% payout, and is correct!

Cheers,
SM
 
Yes, that's a very good point, well worth reinforcing: the game payout has nothing to do with the payout you receive relative to your deposit.

You can have a 99.94% payout, like Crypto single deck blackjack. Deposit $1000 and wager a little over 1.5 million with perfect strategy, and you will on average still lose 100% of your deposit, 0.06% game loss rate notwithstanding.

This is why casinos love to trumpet those "97% slot payout" headlines: very few punters understand what this means, and assume that $100 deposited will return $97 on those slots. Then they scratch their heads wondering what happened when they consistently lose the lot - wasn't that game supposed to pay out 97%??
 
thanks guys for explaining it fully. As much as you info helped, pleeeeease dont think im a casino/mathmatical noob or come to think of it a fool who stand at the slots going


"oi, I put in a tenner, wheres me minimum payout of seven quid guvna?" :D
 
casinomike said:
the mathematical "law of independant trials" dictates that each spin/hand/whatever is a unique event. The machine has no 'memory' and therefor your past results have absolutely no impact on your future results.

Each spin is a unique event but from the moment you start, all your spins are already programmed.
It looks to us like each spin is an "independant trial" but for me it is not the same, because the software "knows" already what your 100 th spin will be.

I wonder however, when we start playing again the next day, we continue where we stopped, or we start a "new" already programmed run?
 
retlaw said:
Each spin is a unique event but from the moment you start, all your spins are already programmed.
It looks to us like each spin is an "independant trial" but for me it is not the same, because the software "knows" already what your 100 th spin will be.

I wonder however, when we start playing again the next day, we continue where we stopped, or we start a "new" already programmed run?
It's not like that at all. Some software provider (e.g., Boss Media) use an external source of randomness which cannot be predicted by software. Even those that use purely software generate random numbers continuously, and you get the number that happens to come up when you hit "spin" or "deal".
 
GrandMaster said:
It's not like that at all. Some software provider (e.g., Boss Media) use an external source of randomness which cannot be predicted by software. Even those that use purely software generate random numbers continuously, and you get the number that happens to come up when you hit "spin" or "deal".

I played on an RTG casino the game Cleopatra's Gold and hit 3 Pyramids which gave me a bonus round of 15 spins.During that round I lost connection,with still 11 spins to go.
When I did get connection with the casino again,I did not get the free spins which were left.
I complained and got the following answer :

Dear ,

The techs have checked your games, as did I, and everything is square.
This is exactly what they said:

"When a player hits 3 pyramids, the bonus games are automatically entered
into the database. The player hit 3 pyramids on game number 398102814.
The next 15 games (games 398102815 through 398102829) are his bonus games.
The player does not see this immediately. The game client on his computer
already has the information to play out the games as they already exist in
the database.

So the player's account is paid for all bonus games when 3 pyramids are
hit on the game."


They also did send me a spreadsheet with the results of my bonus spins to prove it.

This is the reason why I think the spins are programmed.
Unless it is only for bonus rounds on RTG software????
 
Each spin is a unique event but from the moment you start, all your spins are already programmed. It looks to us like each spin is an "independant trial" but for me it is not the same, because the software "knows" already what your 100 th spin will be.
This should be incorrect - however, judging from the response you got from RTG, they obviously have a different way of doing things. Also, this may apply only to spins in a bonus round - this had definitely better not be happening during the course of normal slots play.

I will investigate this. With Microgaming, if you were to disconnect in the middle of a bonus round, you would be returned to the exact same state upon re-entering. I don't think the results of their bonus rounds are predetermined like in RTG's case, judging by the thousands of bonus rounds I have played, but there is no easy way to tell.
 
spearmaster said:
This should be incorrect - however, judging from the response you got from RTG, they obviously have a different way of doing things. Also, this may apply only to spins in a bonus round - this had definitely better not be happening during the course of normal slots play.

This definitely applies to (I suspect) the majority of the non-free spin bonuses, like selection bonuses etc. (Of course, whether it applies or not, your selection has absolutely no outcome on the return%)

Frankly I wouldn't be so surprised if it applied to the free-spin bonus games as well. And we've just had sufficient documentation that the free-spins in RTG software are not real spins, just a pre-determined bonus win, represented as "spins". Not that I think it makes much difference...I guess it would be nice to think they are real random slot spins.

I will investigate this. With Microgaming, if you were to disconnect in the middle of a bonus round, you would be returned to the exact same state upon re-entering. I don't think the results of their bonus rounds are predetermined like in RTG's case, judging by the thousands of bonus rounds I have played, but there is no easy way to tell.

Yeah, no way to tell, but I'd agree that they are probably real spins. I think our little project (see Probabilities thread) would be one way to find out.

In B&M casinos, the slots even tell you whether the free spins are using some different reel setup compared to the normal spins. You'll see a sign saying "bonus reels in use" or some such warning. But the laws governing B&M slot machines do not cover online slots.

Cheers,
SM
 
From my experience with MG free-spins, they are indeed actually identical
to 'normal' spins. It would be very misleading if they are not.

In the case of RTG there are two possibilies:
1) the free-spins are 'normal' freespins, but they are all collected at once and then shown.
2) the free-spins are bogus just showing combinations that match wins decided by other methods.

Even it the best case 1) I do not like it! It is not fun to play when they machine knows far ahead excacly what will happen. It is kind of 'rigged'.
 
Last edited:
Zoozie said:
1) the free-spins are normal freespins, but they are all collected at once and then show.

But then they are not normal freespins any more! One important element of randomness is completely discarded - the moment in time of the start of the spin. If the spin results are collected internally by the machine, say from 15 consequtive random numbers, then it won't be any different from the machine knowing another 100 spin results for you in advance...

So Zoozie I agree with your conclusion - either way it's not nice.

Cheers,
SM
 
See my post in the Winner Screenshots thread (Link Outdated / Removed). A great friend and colleague of mine asked me if I was actually correct about MGS bonus spins saving state during a disconnect - and I promised him I would test today.

So test I did - and you will pick up exactly where you left off before the disconnect, unlike at RTG.

Re: Slotmachine's theory about the moment in time of the spin being lost, I tend to believe that the randomness is the same, with the exception that you are not pressing the spin button yourself. What the Viper software probably does is auto-generate the button press at the earliest available time - still giving you essentially a random spin.

After all, think about it. Just how likely is it that I would hit a huge spin like I did on a predetermined bonus payout? Especially the same day that I enter a discussion about the state and randomness of bonus spins?

And before anyone raises any funny questions about a "switch", I highly doubt anyone from that operation has even seen my post in this thread, or even read this thread. After all, I was at the ICE conference and saw the operator there seconds after I arrived - and no mention of this thread was made by either of us, because I didn't think about it (having not thought about them in relation to this thread at the time), and I doubt she is checking the forums while travelling so it is highly unlikely she could have seen this and asked her staff to flick an imaginary switch LOL.
 
spearmaster said:
Re: Slotmachine's theory about the moment in time of the spin being lost, I tend to believe that the randomness is the same, with the exception that you are not pressing the spin button yourself. What the Viper software probably does is auto-generate the button press at the earliest available time - still giving you essentially a random spin.

I agree, but I was mainly referring to the RTG free spins where the software seems to determine the result of all the bonus spins at once. It may be fair, but it's not a nice idea. There is much entertainment value to me in that each spin is unique, and nobody, not even the software knows what's coming next. Could be zippo, could be jackpot. Takes away some of the fun to think it's all happened already..

I guess this is getting a bit philosophical..:)

Cheers,
SM
 

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