UK - General Fruit machine @ pubs

[vinylweatherman]

The behaviour of UK AWPs and club machines, (anything that's compensated, basically), is still exactly the same as it was back in 2004.

The hi/lo gambles are still rigged, the machine still decides what number it's going to spin in AFTER you've made your decision. There are still blocks with unwinnable gambles, if anything, they're worse than they ever were as the jackpot on UK AWPs is now £70 with a legal maximum of two repeats (hence an effective £210 jackpot) - back when we did Fairplay the jackpot was £25 and the maximum streak was in the order of £100.

One change the Fairplay campaign did achieve, and one that remains to this day, is that all UK AWPs have to have a sign on them that says, 'This machine is compensated and may at times offer the player a choice where he has no chance of success.'

I thought it was 2 jackpots, not a jackpot + 2 repeats. This explains your £156 streak

The problem now is that the pro player needs far deeper reserves for a "force" than they did with the £25 jackpots. There is also a choice of stakes between 25p and £1. I see this as useful if you want to kill time on one machine whilst waiting for others to get a bit more play before going after them. Play slowly at 25p whilst checking out the others. I used to park my arse in the cafe with a coffee and something to read, but at a table with the best view I could find of the machines. Enforcement of the parking at services is far more aggressive because it is no longer done by the staff, but a third party that has an interest in charging as much as they can to make a profit. Some are even camera enforced, not even having an attendant to politely knock on the car window to remind you the time was almost up, nor one that would rarely be around off peak as the cost of employing one was more than the revenue that could be raised.

This limits single sessions to 2 hours or less, or pay £10 for the car park. Rarely have I seen offerings worth the tenner and 24 hour stakeout tactic.

Arcades are not much good, I kept getting thrown out

 

[ChopleyIOM]

There's really no need to monitor a lot of machines, as quite a few have pretty clear tells and shows.

Also, your analysis of how the different stakes work is a bit off.

Some machines maintain one overall target percentage across all stakes, whereas some split them across one or more of the stakes, and some even compensate play at one stake from play at another stake. (So for example, cautious 'time wasting' play on 25p stake could just be enriching the £1 stake.)

There's a whole family of current AWPs where the 25p and 50p stakes are linked, and the £1 stake is maintained separately. In addition to this, the machine maintains an invisible (to the player) streak pot behind the scenes, which is slowly added to over time from all stakes and can't be forced. (These machines also 'number' very clearly like the old JPMs used to do ages ago.)

This means it's possible (sometimes!) to:

1) Take a £70 jackpot on 50p stake
2) Take another £70 jackpot on £1 stake
3) Get lucky with the invincible pot and take £140 out of that too

It's happened to me a couple of times.

 

[vinylweatherman]

There's really no need to monitor a lot of machines, as quite a few have pretty clear tells and shows.

Also, your analysis of how the different stakes work is a bit off.

Some machines maintain one overall target percentage across all stakes, whereas some split them across one or more of the stakes, and some even compensate play at one stake from play at another stake. (So for example, cautious 'time wasting' play on 25p stake could just be enriching the £1 stake.)

There's a whole family of current AWPs where the 25p and 50p stakes are linked, and the £1 stake is maintained separately. In addition to this, the machine maintains an invisible (to the player) streak pot behind the scenes, which is slowly added to over time from all stakes and can't be forced. (These machines also 'number' very clearly like the old JPMs used to do ages ago.)

This means it's possible (sometimes!) to:

1) Take a £70 jackpot on 50p stake
2) Take another £70 jackpot on £1 stake
3) Get lucky with the invincible pot and take £140 out of that too

It's happened to me a couple of times.

Fixed stake was much simpler.

After my experiences from 1996 to around 2004 I thought the "good old days" were over, and so I have never really gone back to study the newer £35 and £70 jackpot machines.

I have always known that some machines cannot be forced, whereas with others it is easy and progress pretty obvious. I thought the higher stakes merely shortened the length of time needed for forcing, and didn't really think about the possibilty of cleaning up on 50p, and then reforcing at £1 for another pot.

It seems many places ONLY have the different variants of DOND, with little else other than the £500 machines. I also noticed on those rare short trips that almost every DOND was almost completely dead, and that the force was pretty easy, but only gave a flat £70 on the few occasions I tried it.

Interestingly, when seeing a machine that was last played at £1, and playing a bit at 25p, I got a nice run at first before it died. Maybe this was £1 play enriching 25p play

My main worry now is that whilst going around checking out the fruities, I will miss out on something FAR better online, such as a 10K streak off a £5 stake, which makes £500 off £2 and £210 off £1 look pretty mean.

Maybe G4 will allow me to have my cake and eat it

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Doing ridiculously well out of the AWPs at the moment, I pretty much have my own town locked down and generally get out once or twice a week to take the value out of the machines in the pubs here. (Only takes an hour or two, and the local ale is very pleasant, so it's not really a chore.) There is one other player around who knows what he's doing as evidenced by the state he's left a couple of machines in, but generally speaking it's all good.

It was the works do out in Douglas on Friday (home of Microgaming Headquarters!), which presented a fresh territory to me as we went on the compulsory pub crawl.

By the end of the day I'd comfortably paid for all my food, drinks, taxi home, and still had more money in my pockets than I'd gone out with.

I'd like to take the credit for working the buggers out for myself but I can't. There's a dude in the UK who uses AWPs as a second income and is happy so share what he knows with me (since we live hundreds of miles apart there's little risk of us stepping on each other's toes I guess ).

It's a breathtaking combination of what is clearly coding incompetence in some cases, but equally clearly just coded-in corruption in other cases.

Not all machines are 'doable' of course, but in reality it only takes a handful in an area to make it a worthwhile venture. Best thing with a lot of the machines is that the company behind them has stopped making traditional reel-based AWPs, so they'll never, ever, get rechipped.

 

[dunover]

Doing ridiculously well out of the AWPs at the moment, I pretty much have my own town locked down and generally get out once or twice a week to take the value out of the machines in the pubs here. (Only takes an hour or two, and the local ale is very pleasant, so it's not really a chore.) There is one other player around who knows what he's doing as evidenced by the state he's left a couple of machines in, but generally speaking it's all good.

It was the works do out in Douglas on Friday (home of Microgaming Headquarters!), which presented a fresh territory to me as we went on the compulsory pub crawl.

By the end of the day I'd comfortably paid for all my food, drinks, taxi home, and still had more money in my pockets than I'd gone out with.

I'd like to take the credit for working the buggers out for myself but I can't. There's a dude in the UK who uses AWPs as a second income and is happy so share what he knows with me (since we live hundreds of miles apart there's little risk of us stepping on each other's toes I guess ).

It's a breathtaking combination of what is clearly coding incompetence in some cases, but equally clearly just coded-in corruption in other cases.

Not all machines are 'doable' of course, but in reality it only takes a handful in an area to make it a worthwhile venture. Best thing with a lot of the machines is that the company behind them has stopped making traditional reel-based AWPs, so they'll never, ever, get rechipped.

Crikey! An old thread dug up from the archives. I remember the Fairplay Campaign and didn't know Chopley was involved. So this old thread has been a revelation. The irony here is that Chopley was campaigning against fixed characteristics of slots of the AWP variety which if he had succeeded would now have killed his golden goose. Funny how things turn out. Many players railed against the Fairplay campaign fearing that if it succeeded we could end up with just random games, N. American style.
Was in a large Weatherspoons last night. 5 AWP's. In one hour, I saw not a coin go into them, no-one watching them and them being used to rest against. Funny how things have changed. On the way there to meet friends, I passed an amusement arcade. I haven't been in one for over 5 years. Empty, the cashier drinking coffee with a friend, looking bored witless. How things have changed.
I know who Chopley really is but have never met him AFAIK, merely by personal messages, but he was 'a name' a few years back that cropped up frequently on the web/fruity scene. I know who VWM is and have seen him but don't believe he would know me. It's years since I smashed an AWP up or poured acetone into one, and all the better for it.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Crikey! An old thread dug up from the archives. I remember the Fairplay Campaign and didn't know Chopley was involved. So this old thread has been a revelation. The irony here is that Chopley was campaigning against fixed characteristics of slots of the AWP variety which if he had succeeded would now have killed his golden goose.

If you can't beat 'em join 'em and all that

 

[dunover]

If you can't beat 'em join 'em and all that

Evidently.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

This is what a 'smashed' UK AWP can do after it's been, well, smashed.

This is on £1 play with a £70 jackpot (so just 70x stake, although it is possible to play it at 25p or 50p per play as well), it costs £73 to get the smallest win on the paytable, and it lost on the first gamble..... (Imagine 73 consecutive losing spins on a random slot.....)

I had a guy ask me in one the local pubs the other week what the 'trick' was on the machine I was playing, as he observed, no one apart from me ever takes the jackpot out of it.

The best advice I could give him was 'Don't play this machine mate'.

 

[dunover]

This is what a 'smashed' UK AWP can do after it's been, well, smashed.

This is on £1 play with a £70 jackpot (so just 70x stake, although it is possible to play it at 25p or 50p per play as well), it costs £73 to get the smallest win on the paytable, and it lost on the first gamble..... (Imagine 73 consecutive losing spins on a random slot.....)

I had a guy ask me in one the local pubs the other week what the 'trick' was on the machine I was playing, as he observed, no one apart from me ever takes the jackpot out of it.

The best advice I could give him was 'Don't play this machine mate'.



This explains the dearth of players I mentioned in W'spoons last night. Where's the enjoyment in that? 70 is one week's unemployment benefit in the UK. I know he had won as there were coins in the tray even after the 73 had gone. This video demonstrates the utter stupidity of playing AWP's for the majority of people. Thing is, the less people who play them, the slower the turnaround for those whom make a regular few quid from them.
One day we'll look back on this craziness and wonder how it came about, and was ever allowed to continue so long.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Crikey! An old thread dug up from the archives. I remember the Fairplay Campaign and didn't know Chopley was involved. So this old thread has been a revelation. The irony here is that Chopley was campaigning against fixed characteristics of slots of the AWP variety which if he had succeeded would now have killed his golden goose. Funny how things turn out. Many players railed against the Fairplay campaign fearing that if it succeeded we could end up with just random games, N. American style.
Was in a large Weatherspoons last night. 5 AWP's. In one hour, I saw not a coin go into them, no-one watching them and them being used to rest against. Funny how things have changed. On the way there to meet friends, I passed an amusement arcade. I haven't been in one for over 5 years. Empty, the cashier drinking coffee with a friend, looking bored witless. How things have changed.
I know who Chopley really is but have never met him AFAIK, merely by personal messages, but he was 'a name' a few years back that cropped up frequently on the web/fruity scene. I know who VWM is and have seen him but don't believe he would know me. It's years since I smashed an AWP up or poured acetone into one, and all the better for it.

Where did you see me? and when?

 

[ChopleyIOM]

This explains the dearth of players I mentioned in W'spoons last night. Where's the enjoyment in that? 70 is one week's unemployment benefit in the UK. I know he had won as there were coins in the tray even after the 73 had gone.

This is on his own machine, the guy owns what is basically his own personal arcade in his gamesroom. A lot of the AWPs in there are genuinely for amusement (classics from the 80s and 90s), but he's not averse to buying a modern AWP to completely master it, get out in the pubs to smash the same machine to pieces, and sell his own on when he's done with it. (It also helps that for each 'base machine' there will usually be several clones of it, with just the name, theme, artwork and sounds changed, the machine and code itself is identical.)

AWPs are definitely in decline though, although the jackpots go up to £100 next month......

 

[vinylweatherman]

This is on his own machine, the guy owns what is basically his own personal arcade in his gamesroom. A lot of the AWPs in there are genuinely for amusement (classics from the 80s and 90s), but he's not averse to buying a modern AWP to completely master it, get out in the pubs to smash the same machine to pieces, and sell his own on when he's done with it. (It also helps that for each 'base machine' there will usually be several clones of it, with just the name, theme, artwork and sounds changed, the machine and code itself is identical.)

AWPs are definitely in decline though, although the jackpots go up to £100 next month......

That's a good way to research methods and emptiers. It can cost a fortune otherwise, but in most cases it was knowing the right people that got you the emptiers whilst they still worked. Finding one yourself was a great coup if you were the first to discover it, and could control the information. I tended to befriend other pro players, and sometimes I was given information. Not all of it was good though, plenty of tin foil hat wearers offering information that didn't stand up to rigorous trials. I also tried to piece together what was going on by playing nearby machines and taking a sly glance or two to my left or right. Some players would not carry on if anyone was playing too close to them, and it was often obvious that they were stalling in the hope that you would go away and let them empty in private.

My early success was based not on emptiers, but on mastering the old "skill climb" features, which allowed me to drive the machine over RTP such that no one else really had a chance on the skills, and then waiting for the RTP to lower such that the skills became easier again. I then noticed a few obvious precursor patterns to the streaks, which along with a check for "backing" when inserting coins helped me decide whether or not to force.

The end of my "golden era" was when these skill climbs became "rigged", but easy(ish) for all, followed by the end of the streak precursor patterns that resulted from the much higher jackpots in terms of multiple of stake.

The tricks and emptiers are still around, but who fills the machines up again? I too have noticed hours go by without a single coin going in a game, especially in pubs. It's not so bad in the services, but even there I don't see crowded gamezones all feeding machines like I saw in the 1990's.

I did think of buying a few machines to research play, but I don't have the room to have more than half a dozen at most, and the ones that are best researched are the new releases, and they are not cheap!


It's a shame they don't release copies for free online play as a promotional tool, as this would be another way to research the games. It IS possible to research play all the MGS AWP offerings this way

 

[dunover]

This is on his own machine, the guy owns what is basically his own personal arcade in his gamesroom. A lot of the AWPs in there are genuinely for amusement (classics from the 80s and 90s), but he's not averse to buying a modern AWP to completely master it, get out in the pubs to smash the same machine to pieces, and sell his own on when he's done with it. (It also helps that for each 'base machine' there will usually be several clones of it, with just the name, theme, artwork and sounds changed, the machine and code itself is identical.)

AWPs are definitely in decline though, although the jackpots go up to £100 next month......

.....and exponentially the play generally will decrease in turn. As it has done since the 1996 stake rises began the trend as VWM says.

 

[dunover]

Where did you see me? and when?

Sir Ben Ham. Chieveley Services. Early noughties.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Sir Ben Ham. Chieveley Services. Early noughties.

I do not get the Sir Ben Ham reference

Although I did occasionally play at Chieveley, I tended to focus more on the M1 and M6, and the main M4 services.

I would almost always have been carrying a plastic carrier bag, and would always have a car. The car gave me an advantage as it seems many regular faces I saw relied on getting lifts, or were locals who came in from a nearby town. I could gain information from the South, and be using it at Southwaite and onward into Scotland in a couple of days.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Well if they will keep bringing these supremely doable machines over to the Isle of Man, I'll keep having my free money out of them

Easy £100 raise on this one, only had to put a single credit in to see if it was in a doable state or not.

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