slot tournaments - play faster ?

[sscrabble]

I like entering slot tournaments - but have noticed that on some of the time limited ones I am way behind in numbers of spins - if I am getting 40 spins in the time limit - I notice others are getting 50 plus - I am playing at max speed on my laptop - not using autoplay.

My question is - why ? I presume it must be down to either the speed of my internet supplier , or the speed of my processor. Thinking of upgrading my computer anyway - so anyone know what difference , if any , a faster processor will make -- I do not want to pay extra if it is not going to make any difffence

 

[catapultaudio]

Hi mate,

Which slot tournaments are you referring to, and how do you know how many spins other players are getting? I have seen this topic mentioned before, possibly here on this forum, as a player was complaining of a group of 'elite' players managing to wager all their coins much faster than they thought was possible and gaining a major advantage as a result.

The discussion seemed to conclude these players probably had very fast internet (definitely a big contributing factor), or possibly very fast/overclocked computers (possibly a factor, BUT if your internet speed is the bottleneck adding a faster CPU will not help you).

One thing I have noticed, particularly with Microgaming software, the download casino client when set to 'Fast Spin' is MUCH faster than the flash/web version - in the web version 'Fast Spin' just seems to prevent the 'heart-stopper' reel effect, whereas in the download client the entire sequence of the reels spinning is reduced to a split-second animation, meaning you can easily triple your spins per minute.

One final point - the very top tier of professional computer users will be interfacing with the casino server directly, thereby completely removing the slot machine interface from the equation - using this method it's possibly to play several hundred, if not thousand, spins per minute! I would imagine the casino's don't like this at all though, and could very well ban people who use such tactics, even if it doesn't automatically grant you an amazing advantage.

 

[sscrabble]

there are several microgaming tournaments on some microgaming casinos - they allow 1000 rebuys (at $3 each !!) - 3 minutes play but too many coins to spend whenever you get a bonus round - if someone manages 50 spins a round and you only manage 40 get 25% more coins , so its like 1250 rebuys for them - you cannot compete !

the tournament games do not have a 'faster' option - it is presumably microgaming's intention to set a level playing field --- but it isn't !!

Would be interested to know if the processor and/or download speed have a 'percentage' effect - any game players know what % impact they have - it is presumably the same on online computer games as well as casino games.

I have a 20mb (max - I know they never actually provide that !) wireless connection but could upgrade to 100mb - and an inspiron 1721 laptop which is about 1.8ghz / 256k

 

[09237653]

Basicly, the faster your computer the more spins you will get, faster internet may also help.

Some people may have used tricks even written their own client to allow for faster spins, the servers can send results much faster than the games take to spin, most time is wasted waiting for the reel animation.

Time limits on mg tournaments are getting pretty stupid, used to be 5 mins, now 2-3 mins is common.
Two hour tournaments with 1000 addons and two minutes play time. an average free spins round in a game like loaded sure-win or avalon takes way longer than two minutes, so if you happen to hit the free spins you'll usually only get about half your free spins, if your lucky.

At least the 32red daily freeroll and the Microgaming network $50 loaded freerolls, have 10 mins allowing for all coins to be spent, and this makes for a much fairer game.

IMO time limits should be removed, the mg client gets slightly slower with every update, and many people's computers just aren't up to the kinda of top end gaming spec required to run these games at a decent speed.

My tips for getting more spins:
1, drag the corner of the slot to shrink the size of the game window down.
2, turn off all sounds, this skips jingles that play when you hit bonuses.
3, constant clicking of the game screen, on free spins AND normal play, this skips the sounds and win counting up.
4, in some cases opening and closing the game can be faster than waiting the bonus to end, examples: hitman computer bonus, mad hatters free spins (this may not work if your computer takes ages to load the games back up)
5, get a faster computer multicore with dedicated graphics card (top end gaming spec is what mg seem to be aiming for)

 

[catapultaudio]

I had a look round a couple of Microgaming casino and found Red Flush have a daily tournament with one of these crazy rulesets (3 minutes, 3000 coins, 2$ rebuy for the same again....)

I was also particularly interested as I also have an Inspiron 1721 - 2.0ghz Core2 Duo, 2GB ram on Win7. I have a desktop too, Core i5 2500k OC @ 4.4ghz, 8GB Ram, Crucial RealSSD, so not quite latest spec but still a bit of a performance monster. Internet wise I am using a neighbours BT Fon which I have access to through my girlfriends BT home broadband, Speedtest.net reports 5.5mb down/1.5mb up - that's fairly average and probably similar to what most people with 8mb adsl will receive.

I hooked up to Red Flush on both machines simultaneously using mine and my girlfriends casino accounts and ran the tournament - both machines achieved a very similar spin rate, with each overtaking the other at times. The one variable I might be missing here is the effect of a discrete GPU (graphics card), as both machines are using onboard or onchip display card.. but overall I would say your specs are more than up to the job.

btw, with regards your internet, if your running 20mb over wireless right now then upgrading is unlikely to get you extra performance for casino gaming. 100mb over wireless is a real stretch even with nice equipment, you would need an external antenna at the very least (as opposed to the one in your laptops lid) to get close to 100mb sustained throughput.

Anyway, the one thing I can confirm is that the time and coins allowed are set totally unreasonably - neither machine managed to wager all coins before the clock ran out and in the case of the laptop, I hit two bonus rounds very early on so finished at #12 after just my free entry, with nearly 80% of coins left and 7 free spins still outstanding. It's obvious the casinos are setting this up so that people will keep chucking more money in trying to wager all their coins, which is going to be very difficult with only 3 minutes more and another 3000 coins - I still have 2300 and 7 free spins to use up before I can use any of the coins I have just bought !

I think I will stick to the 32red tournaments... but, having looked at this myself now, I am tempted to grab a copy of FireBug, have a look at the traffic between me and the server, and see what advantage using my own script instead of the casino client would give me ...!

 

[sscrabble]

see what advantage using my own script instead of the casino client would give me ??


how does that work ?

 

[catapultaudio]

When you hit 'spin' on your favourite slot, your computer makes a request with this information (note, I've stripped a bit of irrelevant information out to make this post an acceptable length):

Header:
Accept text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Host xplay7.gameassists.co.uk
User-Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:20.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0

Data:
<Pkt version="5"><Id mid="xxxxx" cid="xxxxx" sid="xxx" verb="AdvSlot" sessionid="xx-xx-xx-xx-xx" clientLang="en"/><Request verbex="Spin" numChips="1" chipSize="1" activePaylines="0"/></Pkt>

The header shows what browser you are using, the server you are sending the information to, and in what format. The data packet is an XML string with tags to tell the server what information to send back, in this case, that you are performing a spin, are playing one coin at size 0.30, along with who you are and what game you are playing - everything the server needs to send back a random outcome in the game you are playing. The response is a little bit more involved...

<Pkt><Id mid="xxxxx" cid="xxxxx" sid="xxx" sessionid="xx-xx-xx-xx-xx" verb="Spin" /><Response><Framework state="0" /><Player balance="19970" totalWin="0" userID="xxxxxxxx" transNumber="1332382" /><Slot win="0" triggeringWin="0" state="0" reelSet="0" reelPos="11,21,52,8,29"><VisArea numRows="3" numCols="5" numPaylines="1"><Row symbols="3,8,8,4,6" reelPos="10,20,51,7,28" /><Row symbols="7,12,2,10,8" reelPos="11,21,52,8,29" /><Row symbols="4,1,9,5,12" reelPos="12,22,53,9,30" /></VisArea><Wins /><NextSpin nextActivePaylines="0" nextNumChips="1" nextChipSize="1" /></Slot><BonusGames lastBonusPlayed="-1" /><TokenManagers><TokenManager name="GreatHallofSpins" numTokensToCollect="0" tokenIDsAwarded="0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0" multiplier="360.000000000000000" /></TokenManagers><Achievements><Achievement name="Gold Status" isComplete="0" wasJustAwarded="0" winCombosRequired="0,1,2,3,4,5,9,10,11,15,16,17,21,22,23,27,28,29,33,34,35,39,40,41,45,46,47,51,52,53,57,58,59,63,64,65,69,70,71,75,76,77,78" winCombosAcquired="58,59,78,22,71,53,23,65,52,46,57,41,70,5,77,16,63,47,15,40,17,35,10,34,64,11,9,29,69,27,39,45,51,2,28,4,21,76,33,1,3,75" /><Achievement name="GreatHallofSpins" isComplete="1" wasJustAwarded="0" tokensRequired="20" tokensCollected="20" /></Achievements></Response></Pkt>

If you look through all that junk carefully you might work out the game is Thunderstruck 2, and the response contains every piece of data imaginable including every paytable achievement (what a waste of bandwidth..!!) but the important stuff is the reelpositions and of course, how much (if anything) you have won.

But the key thing is, if you were wanting to write your own client, you don't even need to know what to do with any of this data as all of the logic is performed on the server - this is necessary by design as it would be unsafe to allow any calculations to be performed on the customers computer and sent back as the data could easily be manipulated, therefore, all you really need to do is keep sending the 'spin' packet over and over until all your coins are used up, and the server will then place you on the leaderboard correctly .. which in the case of these joke tournaments, would be pretty damn high I would imagine - today for example Red Flush daily tournament is on Thunderstruck, with 5000 coins and 3 minutes - completely impossible! I didn't hit a single bonus round and still finished with over 3000 coins on my desktop (Core i5 2500k @ 4.4ghz, 8gb ram, ssd) computer.

Just one thing though - somebody mentioned above, the tournament slots are sliightly different than their normal play cousins - no quick spin for a start. Well, as far as I know the tournaments can only be accessed from within the download casino clients as well, meaning Firebug cannot be used directly to monitor the traffic as I have done here - it's still definitely possible though, I know most of these softwares just use an internet explorer frame inside the application to handle the web browser stuff, rather than writing there own browser functions - so I have no doubt somebody can tell us how to monitor the traffic in exactly the same way...

So I take back what I said - if somebody knows the format of the XML needed for these tournaments you could almost certainly gain a big enough advantage to win a good percentage of them with very little effort ... ! Which begs the question, why are they running them with the rules set up in this way ? Who has actually won money from one of these such tournaments anyway?