Slashdot Mirror
Cheating Fruit (Slot) Machines
ebbdr writes "Ever think that fruit machines cheat you? You would be right, at least in the UK. This article provides proof that fruit machine outcomes are predetermined and that the players inputs have little, if anything to do with it. And it lets you download the emulators and machine code required to test the hypothesis for yourself...."
Hmmm, outside of San Francisco I don't think this story will have much draw in the U.S.
It thinks it's running on a real physical fruit machine and acts in exactly the same way in all circumstances (except money doesn't actually come out of your PC).
Whew, thank god they put in that disclaimer, or I would've wasted the next 7 hours sitting here waiting for that one big payout from my PC.
for the love of god, does anyone have the ROMs for the machines in vegas?? i'd love to see what the hell is going on there
I can't seem to find -where- they got the ROM from? Seems like a crucial part of it to say what particular model/version.. I mean, even the screenshots have different quality graphics.
Not to say they're lying, but I'm not convinced of their "proof". Anyone else see something I missed?
what could a rom show you, randomizing algorithisms?
The Random Number Generator (RNG) can be
made to change its percentage by simply changing it's seed number. There
are several ways this cam be done.
1) Change the Eprom Chip with a new program and/or seed number which any
computer technician can change a chip.
2) Use an Eprom that has a cyclic program that will keep changing the
seed number after predetermined numbers of cycles.
3) Posibly change the seed number through a signal from the master
computer or mainframe. There is no doubt that all these machines are
hooked up to the mainframe for monitoring and/or recording data for
expert review. It is known fact that comp cards and players records
are fed back to the mainframe, why not other data.
It is for this reason why I am an advocate for all Gambling to come under
a Federal or State controlled Gambling Commission. All of what I say is
not intended to infer that there is any tampering with slot machine
programs and controls. I can only say from my experience as a computer
programmer, that if the possibility exists, the probability resides.
Therefore only an astute Gaming Commission that can oversee these
computers and their control, will clear up this doubt and mistrust about
slot machines.
slot machines rigged? thats really messed up, no wonder i never win on those damn things....
I don't know how it is in Britain, but it's well-known that U.S. slot machines pay a fixed percentage that is set by the house. The symbols that come up on the reels aren't random, and aren't advertised as such. So I'm not entirely clear why this is news.
...
Maybe these kinds of machines are different in Britain, or maybe they're advertised differently
Odds are you are going to loose. It doesn't take a rocket scientists to figure that out, or reverse engineering a slot machine for that matter. If you don't like those odds try playing some tic tac toe. You may not win everytime but at least you can force a draw.
Heh, I remember the gool ol' Random Runner, before it had its programming upgraded. It would offer you exactly the same gamble as the article mentions, ie. two flashing lights with 'win' and 'lose', you hit a button and one of the lights stays on. What you did on the Random Runner was keep the button depressed. If you lost, too bad, but if you won... the next level bet would start but you'd win automatically, and the next bet, and so on.
Random Runners were popular with proprietors as well, as it was easy to obtain ROMs for these machines that would drastically lower the payout. Seeig this kind of machine is like a red flag for inspectors; they'll be sure to inspect the ROM in the machine.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Gambling is entertainment for people who are bad at math.
If you play, you've already lost.
Is this news? I saw a thing about slot machines at least 2 years ago on TV and it told how slot machines have programs in them that determine if you win or not and how the probability is preset.
...because if this had happened in the US, lawyers would have already delivered a C&D to get the website shut down, and the guys who uncovered this would've been slapped with a huge DMCA lawsuit over their duplication of the functions of the machine on a PC.
The issue of massive, provable fraud (of which Joe Average is the victim) would have been glossed over in favor of the copyright infringement nonsense (of which Huge Heartless Corp is the "victim").
Q) What is a lottery (in the US sense of the word)?
A) A tax for people bad at math.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
The authors have made an awful big deal over something which isn't really that important. In a computer controled gamble, the processor has to pick the outcome at some point. When you first put your money in and spin, the outcome is determined after you decide to play. For that second bet, the outcome is determined before you decide to play. Essentially, the gamble is in whether or not to take that additional bet, not going higher or lower. The companies are not comitting fraud, they are just dressing the second bet with the high/low feature to make it more interesting.
If the random number is generated at the time of, or based off of the time when when you press the button for high or low, then it isn't cheating, but could have cheating like results. I'd like to see a better examination: ie on the same rom we tried it 100 different times on each button and lost both, and the odds should be 79% losing: or some such thing.
They saved the entire state of the machine -
including the random seed. No wonder they
always got the same outcome...
Too many people gamble where I live. They think its equal playing fields. At least have the knowledge before you put down all of your life savings, know how the game is played and the odds.
At the in Rama Ontario, they have a place where people can trade in their cars and home ownership for MONEY to gamble. Its a sick cycle. Must be stopped because half the area around there have their home owned by the casino now. Its the worst thing that has ever happened to the community.
People, realize that casino's don't exist so you can win. They aren't there to give away money. They take it. Plain and simple.
I've thought about this myself. The whole key to a slot machine or a fruit machine is that you need to be able to set the "payout" percentage, typically something high like 98%. 98% means that the player gets back $0.98 on every $1, assuming he plays an infinite amount of times.
The only way to guarantee this is by determining what the payout is as soon as the money's in the slot. The "pick high or low" and all of these other things are just meant to help keep the player interested, so that the player keeps playing.
Slot machines use other tricks, too: You can play on multiple lines, or you can play multiple coins for higher bonuses. Obviously the bonuses are multiples of the number of coins you play, so they have zero effect on probability. Multiple lines increases the probability you'll win per spin, but it doesn't affect the probability per coin, which is what matters to the proprietor.
This isn't a scam or cheating or anything like that. It is the same principle behind coin-op arcade machines: You pay to play. On a machine that has 98% payout and takes quarters, that means you pay (theoretically) half a cent every time you spin. In reality, you spend more or less than that depending on random outcomes, but over millions of plays on thousands of machines it means a good twopence on the pound for the Brits and two cents on the dollar for Americans.
Companies, that is. Not for the players.
The "proof" is based on predictable repeating sequences of moves from the machines. Couldn't this be caused by the emulator environment causing (or using) identical seeding for random number generation?
Of course that doesn't answer the assertion that the outcome of any "gamble" is predetermined, and thus it isn't a gamble at all but "tell me your decision". But: there's no comparison with one (in fact, several) actual machines, so it's not clear this is the same real-world; if the machine randomly arrives at the win/lose decision, does it make it any less fair if it does so before you press the button?
Isn't this simply showing that the player's inputs are used as the seed to the random number generator? So, yes, the game isn't truly random. Is it stealing from you? That would require decomposition of the ROM, not simply producing situations where the input (the keypress) results in failure situations no matter what input.
It could also be that the emulator has a fault in it. While a real system might start up with random memory, the emulator might be zeroing everything out, resulting in less than expected randomness.
But, if someone would be so kind as to dis-assemble the ROM, then we'll know for sure!
Jason Pollock
They of course don't show if a situation exists where the player will always win. My guess is there probably is one.
It's well known that hash tables can repeat certain patterns given certain inputs. I could see one of these machines setting a random seed into the hash table for the first spin and then following results from there for every subsequent spin instead of generating a new random number for a new entry into the table for every spin.
Sounds like someone was lazy to me.
"And in almost all cases, no matter what you chose, the result would be the same"
isnt this what you want it to do, you want it to have already decided the result, and then if you pick the right one, it pays you.
I was speaking to a guy who worked at Aristocrat (the largest manufacturer of poker machines in Australia) and he said that the government forces an 80% return, meaning a lock on probability. So over the long haul if you put in $100 you can expect to be $20 poorer. This was quite a while ago however, and things could have changed.
There are some machines that fall through the cracks and for some reason have better payout ratios. Case in point was a mchine called "Elf Magic" which would pay out EVERY SINGLE TIME I PLAYED IT. Needless to say you can't find that machine anywhere now in its original guise.
What is a concern now is that small pub's and club's are only profitable because of poker machines...it is their only means of survival.
WARNING: This sig does not contain a joke
...lemon!
I keep telling people to play the change machines instead, at least you're gonna break even on each slot session.
Obviously, Casinos are a tax for being bad at math. The people playing the games are the ones most likely not to be able to afford them. We did a whole unit on this in statistics (this was why statistics emerged as a subject of study). When you look at expected payoffs, you realy lose.
Yes it is pre-determined, but pre-determined randomly. The odds are (whatever) that you will win or lose. You have a chance of winning. That chance has a certain probability. Just because the outcome is determined before the wheels stop spinning doesn't mean it's cheating/fraud. The spinning wheels are just for aesthetics.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
You mean all those spams I've been getting titled "Fruit Machines from #120" aren't for fruit *vending* machines?
I'm shocked.
Here in British Columbia, the BCLC (lottery/casino licensing) openly admits all machines are linked to their head office.
-- Exerpt from their website below
In addition, all slot machines are monitored by a central computer system. This system, CasinoLink, is located in BCLCâ(TM)s Data Centre in Kamloops and allows BCLC to monitor all slot machines in all casinos in the province.
CasinoLink controls when each machine is available to be played, records each time a machine is accessed and keeps track of all financial transactions for each machine.
I saw this posted on The Register yesterday, but I wasn't convinced by the argument presented. Exactly how accurate is the emulator that they have running the ROM? Being able to execute the ROM doesn't necessarily cut it. For example, is there a good quality random number generator in the machine that isn't being emulated properly? A disassembly of the offending machine code showing where such cheating has been implemented would be more convincing. I imagine that the code isn't too terribly obfuscated, so it should be doable.
Without a doubt the gambling companies are bastards, but the evidence presented in this case seems weak to me.
OK, so they can reload the previous state, but if the odds of winning are really long (as opposed to absolutely zero) then they could reload the previous state many times, not win, and have no real proof of cheating. The real proof would come with a line of code that went something like this:
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Would it be possible to predict the next outcome with this in a real machine (without it having been reset)?
I thought it was common knowledge that those things were programmed...
They can be set to take certain percentage, or even give back a payout. They usually take around 5-10%.
One major casino strategy is to put slot machines that give a 2 or 3% payback right at the front door, so people win a little, stay, and go over to another machine that take 15% of what they play.
Much like all the other games you play in casinos, the house will always win if they want to.
To debunk the metaphysicist, one needs only to take him outside and throw a rock at his head. If he ducks, he's a liar.
What they're saying is that, say you pick high, the machine will then roll a number that is below the number on the screen, and vice versa. So your choice determines which way the machine is going to screw you, basically.
On some lotteries the expected value on a dollar
goes over one dollar. And so what, it's
worth a buck to dream about 80 million bucks.
They are money-taking machines. They can be set by the casino to pay back a percentage of the amount taken in (In Nevada, I think the minimum is 75%, but I've seen some that advertise 98.8%... usually downtown vegas) The trick is, this is over time so if you play at the right time, you can hit the machine in a winning streak. Whether you are going to win or lose is determined before you even put the coin in!
just an "optimization"
Part of me thinks that having some outcomes be predetermined, as long as the statistical payouts are honored, is okay.
On the other hand, there should be some reasonable randomness in the system if they want to call it "gambling". In a more random system, there could be a night of heavy use where the machine loses money. That wouldn't seem possible with these machine's so closely watching their payouts.
I'd think that the machines should be checkable to make sure that they're making proper payouts, and that the way they work should be public knowledge, to avoid user confusion.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I don't know about the UK but I know that in the United States slot machines are required by law to pay out a certain percentage of money that goes into them. I.E. each machine must pay out at least 90% or the casino will get in legal trouble. I don't have any links about this but I think I remember reading something about that on howstuffworks.com. Oh, and this is why I prefer blackjack. :)
I am sure that you can save the state of the machine in such a way that it doesn't matter whether you press higher or lower, you will always win.
I guess it gets more headlines in slashdot if you say it is proven that the machine cheats and you will always loose. (even though in the long run this is true anyway since the payout is a fixed percentage.)
From the article: "And in almost all cases, no matter what you chose, the result would be the same.",
Almost? Hmmmmm.
Anyway, what does it matter? Everyone knows that those machines have always given out less than they take in. What difference does it make what method they use? My dad has an old British slot machine that is 100% mechanical. Even it has dials inside that allow you to increase or decrease payouts to players. Anyone who buys a slot machine intends to make money with it. If it was a gamble to own the machine, nobody would. Vegas slots are all wired together to collectively "rip you off". Is this really a news flash to anyone?
If you can't afford to lose the money, you shouldn't put it in the machine.
Apparently the 'proof' that sliot machines, fruit machines as those wacky brits choose to call them, is that, if you 'freeze' the state of a fruit machine at some point and then repeat the next step, the machine will generate the same outcome.
If I'm not mistaken, a RNG, once seeded, will generate the same sequence of random outcomes given the same seed. What's been proven is that the RNG isn't reseeded after every roll of the wheels.
Does this mean the outcome is predictable? Hardly. And not by a long shot does it mean the fruit machine is cheating. Since it's not possible to go back in time and respin the wheels in real life, the fairplay campaign has proven absolutely nothing.
Well, let's be fair. They've proven that a fruit machine, after a cold reboot, seeds its RNG the same way every time. As a result, if you were to play the machine in exactly the same way from a cold boot twice, the outcome would be the same. As soon as a player starts doing things differently, the outcome will once again become unpredicatble. (For those not familiar with European fruit machines, they're a bit more interactive than the American slots. You'll often have the option to 'hold' certain reels, or to play double or nothing on a win, for example.)
Seems to me that all you have to do is work out a winning sequence for a given machine at home on your emulator, or, if the RNG is different for each machine, on the machine itself, then make sure you're the first one in the casino every morning when they turn the things on. You'll clean up every time.
Now who's cheating?
I want the fire back.
The section doesn't really seem appropriate, unless someone builds a web-controlled robot that plays these things, of course.
Reading this article I can't help but wonder what this group is thinking. Just because the outcome of the next roll is figured out ahead of time doesn't mean it wasn't randomly generated. It was just randomly generated earlier than anticipated.
It's a good thing I play blackjack...
Why not just stone the winners instead?
(it's not offtopic, if you've read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery)
A lot of slot machines in the US do offer higher rewards when you play the maximum number of coins. For example, the top reward for getting three sevens when you played three coins will be more than three times the reward for getting three sevens when you played one coin. I don't know if playing three coins makes those maximum rewards less likely to appear than when you only play one coin though.
In the examples they give on the web site, they've provided a RAM file for you to put the emulator into a particular state. They claim that when you load the RAM file and continue the play, you'll always lose. That's supposed to be proof of the fraudulence of the gambling machine. I'm not convinced without more information. Wouldn't it be true that the random number generator's seed would also be in the RAM file? If so, then it clearly follows that you'll get the same outcome every time.
It could be that this particular RAM file just happens to be in a state where you'll always lose, simply due to the current state of the random number generator. Proof of cheating can only be seen if EVERY time you get to a particular place in the gambling you lose. That's not possible without decompiling the code executing in the gambling machine, because it's quite possible that payouts or other events only happen, say, 1/10000th of the time. It would take an awfully long time to discover the frequency of payout through manual testing in such a case. Even if one were to run through, say, a million plays to empirically determine the frequency of certain events, you'd never actually have complete proof of the machine's behavior. Looking at the code is the only way to be absolutely sure of how the machine actually behaves.
A few years ago someone won over $600,000 from a machine at the Montreal Casino by analyzing patterns in the numbers that came up. The sequence repeated because the machine wasn't seeding the pseudo-random number generator properly. More info in Risks Digest.
I am learning the play BETTER Texas Hold'em Poker
and so I got a few books from the library. In one
of them there is also a section on Slot machines
and I glanced at it. It states that since most of
the new machines use computer chips now, the
outcome is determined before the lever is pulled
(or button pushed). Let me look... okay here it is:
"The old term for slot machines, 'one-armed bandits,' so
named because the reels were activated by the slots handle
on the side of the machine, is no longer appropriate. For
one, most players don't even use the handles anymore --
that is, if the machine even has a handle! A simple press
of the button gets everything going.
For another, where the reels will stop is not a mechanical
function, as before, but is calculated by computer chips
using random number generators. The function of the
mechanical device that spins the reels now is only to display
the result calculated by the computer, not to deterime it."
This is from the book "Easy Money: Your Guide to Beating 10
Casino Games" by Avery Cardoza (2002), page 34.
If I'm not mistaken, this is the same guy who was promoting some sort of campaign against high video game prices. At the time there were a few subtle voices suggesting he was a simple self promoting shill, and judging by the website, he has not disproved them.
./. But it probably will outlast fairplay's cries of foul play.
The fairplay campaign was supposed to last the 1st through the 8th. Yet the last news update was the 2nd. Not even halfway through the supposed boycott, it appears he gave up. No further encouragement or updates, not even a fradulent statistic showing how his campaign has succeeded in some fashion.
Instead I would wager he's spent the intervining six months scrouging up some other claim against the 'gaming' industry (hah) involving fruit machines. I'd never heard of them before, though I haven't been known to frequent the bars either. His claim is as usual overexaggerated. This function is no different than if you purchased a scratcher style lottery ticket. Your fate has been pre-determined. I don't know if this somehow runs afowl of UK law, but if it was I'd imagine that the gentleman behind fairplay would have mentioned it. Additionally, its not clear exactly who owns the ROMS he's linked to, as the link appears to be a simple MAME fansite.
I doubt that site will last much longer thanks to
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
The problem with digital gaming machines is that it is too easy for the programmer to add twists to the algorithms that tweak the odds. It seems odd that they would bother, since the laws of probability come out in the casino's favor, they don't need to tweak the algorithm, just do a little basic math first.
As I recall, the Nevada casinos are required to post the expected payout and odds on the machines. For example, the expected payout might be 98%. That means the casino collects on average 2 pennies every time a patron shakes the hand of a one armed bandit with a dollar bet. The casinos don't need to pull any tricks beyond calculating the expected payouts for the different states of the machine and make sure the expected payout is less than one.
It is disconcerting knowing that there are machines which go even further.
As I understand, a well run gaming commissions tries to assure that casinos don't bend the rules any further than that.
Gah! More people who apparently have not read the article, or, at least, I assume not, as you seem to have missed the point.
The RNG isn't in question. I'd say the real dubiously legal stuff here is that is misleads the customer about probabilities. Take the example they give. The reel has the numbers 1 to 12 on it. It picks 10 and asks you to guess higher or lower. Now, you'd expect that the chance of a number being lower would be 3/4 and the chance of a number being higher would be 1/6. According to the article it's not, because it's predetermined whether you win or lose.
Of course slot machines are fixed to make it more likely you'll lose, but they shouldn't mislead the customer. When I play roulette I would be able to work out the odds. If they used fixed tables to make sure I lose more often, that would be illegal. There's not too much difference with that, than with these slot machines. You're asked to guess higher or lower, when in actual fact it makes no difference. The customer is deliberately misled. You could argue that it's a con.
Many people have been asking how one would obtain the ROMs for these machines.
It is quite easy. You can buy the machines off Ebay in the UK, and it does not take much to dump the contents of the board to a PC.
And many people have also been bringing up the possibility of a bug in the emulator. I can tell you from experience that the machines are rigged. There are certain situations where you will always lose. But there are also situations in which you will always win. And this has lead to a proliferation of How to beat Fruit Machine CD's on Ebay.
I had a friend at the pub at which I used to work, who would be winning about 100 pounds a week from the fruit machine we had in there. ÂBasically he was walking home with the rest of the pubs earnings.
So in conclusion, there are many points in a game where you are guaranteed to lose, but there are also a few points where you must win. If you play the game for long enough you can work all these points out and usually walk away with a bit more than what you put in. Just don't get greedy, as the machine will know.Â
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
FYI, in the UK, most fruit machines are in pubs or small arcades. They will be found at casinos, but it's not like in the US.
:-)
Basically, they're everywhere. Good for a pound or two - and sometimes buys you the next pint.
â¦that this is just another example of cultural decline.
As far as I'm concerned, gambling is the stupid tax, even if it's not government operated.
Sure it's outrageous that there is no randomness to the game, but it forcing you to lose in certain cases should be no shocker. You are supposed to lose money and anyone that believed in the first place that "luck" or any other tripe makes you special and will let you beat the machine that was put in place to make the proprieter money is an idiot.
People who play slot machines in the first place deserve what they get. You lost money because you are stupid. Don't whine about the machines cheating. Even if every play were different, their software would still be designed to take your money.
From personal experience on playing "fair" (or what seem to be fair) "true skill" machines, I am good about winning them (try playing the minigames on kirby super star for SNES, they're all good for honing these kinds of skills). I know that according to chance, there was no way I could've lost that game as many times as I did. Like this website mentions, some games only let you have "true skill" on the lower part of the ladder, and it cheats when you get too close to winning... this game I was playing had to be the most blatant about it... it played with you, enticing you by leaving it on #5... so you might think that you have a 50/50 chance of winning if you put two more quarters in. After playing at least $10 worth (I really wanted that portable tv!), I knew it had to be cheating... there was just no way that I could keep getting numbers that WEREN'T enabling me to go higher than 5. It would always go AT 5 or below. And immediately after being on 5... it would ALWAYS kick me down...
being that I got back to #5 alot, my conclusion was that it truly had to be cheating... it's really hard to trust prize winning or gambling machines if you don't have access to their sourcecode. I would love to rip apart this machine, emulate it, save and load state over and over to see if I have a fair chance on #5 ;)
moving on to the point:
In Nevada, I believe they might review the source code for gambling machines, but I don't believe prize winning machines go through the same scruitiny... it's really unfair, I think.
The example they have is that, if you follow the sequence on this page, the machine reaches a point that's supposed to be a gamble, but in fact you cannot win. And it's not because the output is predetermined, or the seed is the same and it happens to be a losing bet. It's a high/low gamble, so you should have a chance to win regardless of what the seed was. But if you pick high the machine picks low, and vice-versa. An 'honest' machine would pick the same number regardless of which button you picked.
Of course, the legal/ethical issue is more complicated than the simple mechanical issue. The basic problem is that machines are never fair, and cannot ever be fair because their purpose is to redistribute money from your pocket to the machine owner. The large number of people who seem to think that gambling is ever fair are deluded or naive. And the problem with the specific machine referenced above is that it has the extremely difficult task of mapping a percentage payout (they mention it's probably 70%) to a more fair operation (high-low with a pair of dice). Therefore, it has to cheat sometimes to ensure it doesn't payout too much. Which is perfectly legal, and really is the only way to do it. If they actually get a law passed saying that machines cannot cheat in any circumstance, it will mean the end of gambling, because no owner in their right mind would take a real gamble, where they could lose all that money they've been raking in.
Something I have a vague recollection of from my lectures in Psychology can be applied to gambling machines.
Apparently, the most effective way to get someone to keep doing something is to provide a reward at random intervals [of button pressing, lever pulling etc.], centered around some average. It doesn't matter how large the reward is, just as long as it is something. Most studies were carried out on rats, but humans are so similar to rats that you might as well generalise.
For "Fruit Machines", you can encourage people to play by rewarding them randomly, but on average, say, about every 20 button pushes. The amount returned from the machine doesn't really matter in terms of how addictive the machine will be, so a 99% payout would work as well as a 80% payout.
But then again, who ever listened to a psychologist and believed what they were saying?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
The results are determined by algorithms. User input has nothing to do with it.
The odds are stacked against you.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Is it just me, or is slashdot doing little more than copying BoingBoing threads?
Come on, UK slot machines is 'News for Nerds'?
I didn't know you could by fruit from machines in England...
In the study involving rats there were three groups:
Group 1: Every time they pressed a lever, food came out.
Group 2: When lever was pulled, they sometimes got more food, but most of the time, none at all.
Group 3: Did not get any food when they pushed the lever.
Groups 1 and 2 constantly pushed the levr in order to get food. Goup 3 stopped pressing the lever after the lack of food. At one point, the researchers stopped providing food. Group 1 stopped pressing levers, given tht there was no food. However, Group 2 thought that the big payoff and kept pushing levers anyway.
>players inputs have little, if anything to do with it
The inputs being, what, to pull the lever? Based on my limited casio experience, this does ring true...
Some machines seemed to pay out at first, then less so once the player was "hooked" on the machine. The key was to move from slot to slot, getting free drinks as you go of course.
Oh that and bring Rain Man along to count cards.
People who know all the patterns and quirks for a machine will be much, much more likely to win than someone who walks in with no experience of it.
Some people actually become fruit machine buffs. I actually know someone who was barred from a local snooker club, because he worked out one of their £250 jackpot machines so well. He was a regular in there, and would wait 6 or 7 days after he'd last seen or heard that the £250 jackpot had been won (it was usually him that had won it), come in with 40 or 50 £1 coins, and almost every single time he would win the £250.
Apparently the machines will only ever give the largest prizes out once they have accumulated a certain ammount of cash in them.
With a truly random fruit-machine (with a preset payback-percentage), the chance of winning would be the same each time you pressed the spin-button. This is obviously not the case.
Instead the machine probably uses a kind of pre-programmed sequence of wins and losses. I think these sequences has been carefully programmed to make the player believe that he would win if he plays just a little bit more. With truly randomness there should be a possibilty of playing like 20 times without winning or winning 10 times in a row, but instead they make sure that the player always wins now and then. There could be a random-number determining that now there should be 2 to 5 losing games and then one or two winning games.
There was an example where when the player had the option to hold when two cherries appeared shows this. If the player chooses not to hold, a cherry will appear in the last reel, but if the player holds the two cherries, a red 7 appeared. This feature is obviously put in there to make the player play more.
It wouldn't surprise me if the makers of these games has studied which win/loose-patterns make the players play more. Unfortunately, I think most people playing these games will never understand this.
Just my two cents...
There are two issues here: the predetermined outcome and the apparent "near win".
The site author takes issue with the fact the outcome is decided before the lever is pulled / button is pushed. This is alarming only if one expects the computer to model the physical behavior of spinning reels rather than just the outcome (statistically speaking) over time. As long as the machine pays out what it should, over time, then when the machine determines win/lose does not matter.
As for near wins, they're just to keep the player hooked. If you make slot machines you don't want losing players to feel like losers; you want them to feel like "near winners"...that with the next play the player will finally be a winner. Think of it like dating. If the woman plays you well you'll keep coming back for more dates even if you aren't having sex with her.
A secondary issue is the lack of regulation. Without any guaranteed payout there is no way of telling if these machines are paying as they should.
On a related note, here's a demo of a gambling game, Cash King Checkers (I've never seen this in a casino though). Somewhat addictive at first.
And his cheating Apples
read my blog
musings on politics and technol
In short : Blackjack rules. At least, the odds are genuine !
I've never heard anyone complain of these slots being rigged:
The Gold Casino
At one time they said something about using a "mersenne twister" to generate their pseudo-randomness for all the games. Hosted in Sealand so unlikely any "gaming board" covers thier behavior...
Eight submissions, eight rejections. Am I grousing? Well, some really deserved to be rejected!
However, a few really did not, like the one I posted this evening.
Ok, here it is, short and simple: If you run SuSE Linux there is a new support forum online. It could become what debianHelp is to Debian users.
You can find it at SuSE Forums.
There. I said it. Now I'm going to go and find a new homepage. Slashdot is obviously too slewed toward other distros.
First off, the article (yes, I read the article). The author's biggest peeve is that the outcome of the "double or nothing" option on the fruit machines is determined before the user even chooses. Big whoop. Whether the magic number is determined before or after you choose is meaningless; it does not affect the odds.
Second, a previous poster mentioned the RNG. In IGT slots (and I would imagine most modern ones), the RNG device is a super-sensitive measurement device that detects tiny vibrations in the chassis. This is a much better way of seeding a number generator than any software-based solution. No, banging on the chassis won't increase your odds, but it will cause the machine to tilt and will probably get the attention of a security guard. ;) Also, the machine uses this entropy to re-seed itself thousands of times per second, not just once in the beginning.
Lastly, there's the method for choosing if you win or loose. As soon as you press the "spin reels" button (or pull the handle on machine that still support that), the outcome is already known. Let me repeat: THE OUTCOME IS KNOWN before the reels start spinning. The actual spinning of the reels is just eye candy.
This part takes a bit more explaining: say each reel have three symbols on them (we'll call them A, B, and C; in reality, the reels have maybe a couple dozen). In this example, C is the most favorable; you get a jackpot if you get three C's. You would think that this would mean that you would have a 1 in 27 chance of hitting the jackpot (3^3). Nope. The internal mechanism works like so: Okay, you have 3 symbols on each wheel. Inside the program, there are 3 arrays of symbols, but the number of elements inside the array is much more than 3. Say these are the arrays:
- Reel 1: AAABBBBCCCCC
- Reel 2: AAAABBBBCCCC
- Reel 3: AAAAAAAABBBC
The machine picks a random element from each array. Do you see what's going on here? There are more Cs in the first reel array, making it very likely to hit a C on the first reel. Next is a slightly less chance to hit C again. The third time is nearly impossible. Yet it builds you hope up, thinking you're about to hit the jackpot.Is this deceitful? Yes. Does it prey upon the stupid? Yes. Is it illegal? Nope. These methods produce a certain payout percentage, and the techniques for producing them are "public" knowledge, usually regulated by your state's gambling office.
In conclusion, stick to blackjack.
However, it can be turned against the house...
This assumes that the seed space is trivial. I'll bet you another penny on that.
As a casino employee, I can tell you that casinos are some of the most depressing places in teh world. It is amazing that these people come back, some of them every day (one customer told me he has been there every day for 18 months) and lose and lose, but when they win the sligtest bit they feel like winners. Hey moron, I just watched you put a ton of money in that machine and you're excited about $250? Wow, you're only down $300 now!
The thing about casinos is that people think, oh maybe I'll win the nix spin/hand whatever, so they keep playing. Then when they do win, suddenly they thing they're "on a roll" and poof their goes the money they just won plus some more.
You want to know what is even more amazing? At least half of the people who work there are just as adicted to gambling as teh customers. You would not beleive how many of my fellow emploees spend their days off at the casino down the road. See, a lot of them were former customers of the casino i work at, lost a bunch of money and were forced to get a job, so they got one at the casino. One would think that this would cure them of their addiction, but I suppose it is like an alcoholic working at a bar.
Long story short, don't go to casinos. if you do leave your credit cards and checkbooks at home.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Isnt this just like pall-- I mean Trusworthy Computing? Dont you trust the game machine software people's proprietary code?
BTW, copying those copyrighted ROMs is a violation of the DMCA.
It's totally possible to tweak probabilities to get the desired overall payout average. The fruit machines in the story are a scam.
Flaw 1. Suppose the predetermination takes place at the beginning of a 'game', by which I mean a spin of the reels and any 'features' {payout / gamble sequence; 'nudges'; sub-game &c.}, or a sequence of such spins with intervening 'holds'; the end of a 'game' occurring when the option to 'hold' is not offered.
So, I spin up a pair of cherries and get a hold. This is still part of the same 'game' by my above definition, and the outcome of that game is determined. {in this case, we assume, at nothing; but there is a possibility that some combination of 'hold' and 'cancel' operations could trigger an alternative outcome.} If I hold, the remaining reel will show something other than a cherry, no further hold will be offered and the 'game' is over. If I renounce the option to hold, the third reel will spin to a cherry - a simple but effective little mind trick. I have won nothing, and the game is over.
In the high/low scenario referred to elsewhere on the web site, it looks like the maximum return is fixed at £5. The player has the option to collect this amount as it stands {and thereby terminate the 'game' unless a 'hold' is offered}, or take a high/low gamble and definitely lose. If they choose to play safe and collect the win as offered, they can; if they are greedy, they will be punished.
In the club machine scenario, it looks again as though the maximum return is predetermined at the beginning of the 'game' {recall, a game includes any sequence of win, gamble, feature exchange &c. and all subsequent spins with intervening holds}. The maximum amount winnable is predetermined at the moment the reels land; the player is offered a series of choices which will lead to a certain maximum payout, or disappointment, according to a known sequence; after which, a new 'game' will commence.
The maximum outcome of such a 'game' could be determined in some truly random manner, but whilst the game continues {holds, win/gamble sequences, features and the like} the player's decisions can only negatively impact on this outcome.
Note: We must consider a pseudo-random sequence as being predetermined, unlesss re-seeded from a truly random source. It is entirely possible that such re-seeding occurs at intervals no more often than a 'game' as described above. This would not be detectable by the experimental method described.
Flaw 2. We cannot be certain that the programmes described are correctly emulating the machines mentioned. However, we can assume that it is an awful length to go to in order to perpetrate a hoax, so as a corollary if someone has actually gone to the trouble of creating this programme, then it may as well be accurate. There is likely no less effort expended in a falsification.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
There are flaws, pure and simple, with this report.
While they may accurately describe that whether you pick "higher" or "lower" the computer will roll the opposite, that is NOT necessarily cheating.
The computer does not have true random behavior, no computer ever had. They use a mathematical formula to pick numbers in an order that has random properties. When you gamble on these machines, it does predetermine your outcome, because pseudo-random number generators are ALWASYS predicatble, provided you know the seed (current state) and the formula.
Further, they do not mention that when you are a winner, it also doesn't matter if you pick "higher" or "lower". The point is, the computer picks whether you win or not before you hit the button, and it uses the correct odds. If you bet further, it simply animates the result. This is not cheating, because the odds really are what you would expect them to be.
Personally I do not like gambling, but I disagree with the conclusion that the author of this report has drawn. (I have a degree in computer science and this is mearly someone thinking they made a discovery. All they really discovered is that a computers don't really have random numbers.)
It's amazing to see how many supposedly smart people here can't seem to understand the difference between fixed odds (legal) and fixed outcomes (fraudulent and hopefully illegal).
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The odds are always stacked in favour of the house. i built a similar emulator in a college java class. apprently, vegas pays out 96% (for every dollar you spend, you'll only get 96 cents back). I built mine to emulate machines in my home province (Alberta). By rigging the machine to only pay out 92%.
I may not have learned much about java from that assignment, but i did learn to stay away from the slots.
I'd rather you tax the Casino and not step on the freedoms of those who would like to gamble.
No Neo, you have already made the choice, you will not win.
a bit of virtual choices eh?
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
A lot, if not all, of the machines are SNMP enabled and send traps back to a server running monitoring software. The server triggers alerts based on traps for machine malfunctions, payouts, full till, stuff like that. There's an Austrian company that makes software for this, I imagine there are other manufacturers too.
And since I know you'll ask: Yes, I've seen all this. No, I didn't have enough time to figure out how to make any of this work to my benefit.
I work at an online casino, and this is exactly how our games work. When you press the button to spin the wheels, the result of the game is decided then and there. This includes the results of any bonus games. The amount of your win was decided by the spin, and the bonus game itself will show whatever it needs to to show you that total amount.
Our terms and conditions for each slot spell this out however, stating the the results of the bonus games have no effect on the actual win amount. Presumably other online casinos work the same way, and I don't think it's too big an extrapolation to state that most physical slot machines work the same way.
Gambling is rigged? That's news? :)
The numbers for Vegas I heard were that as a player you have a 98% chance of loosing in the big casino's, and a 95% chance of loosing in a small casino.
I've been out to Vegas a few times now, and spent more time keeping my eyes open an observing things, than actually gambling.
The oddest thing I ever saw was the ball on a Roulette wheel move back up while it was spinning. We all know the general idea.. The wheel spins at a set speed, the guy drops the ball on the conical wheel, and as the speed of the ball slows to match the speed of the wheel, it slowly drops down.. I saw the ball go up about an inch.. I don't know how. Maybe the wheel sped up. Maybe there was a magnet at the top or bottom. With the sensors that are obviously on the table and wheel, it wouldn't be impossible for the casino to predict the landing of the ball. If there's going to be a big winner on a particular number, it's worth it to them to "encourage" the ball to go elsewhere.
I won't even go into the card games.. There's too many years in tradition of cheating for me to even consider.. Card counting, marked decks, dealer slight of hand, etc, etc...
The computerized slot machines are the best.. I can't see a better way to cheat the gambling public.. No longer is it a set of wheels that spin with any sort of input from the user.. It's a program that spins the wheels, or even graphically simulated wheels.. Duh, like could someone write a program to cheat a little?
Of course, the levels of cheating are how Vegas makes money, and how the big casino's can make more profit than other casino's.. Just about everyone I've talked to that's gone to Vegas had a few big wins, and a whole lot of losses, but by the end of any Vegas trip, they always come home with a lot less cash than they started with.. Well, with the exception of the son in National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation (oh ya, that was a piece of art).
I was particularly fond of the car give-aways in Vegas. The sign above say 10 slot machines would say "We gave away 10 of these cars in 2002". Sweet.. So, you have 10 machines played every 5-10 seconds or so 24 hrs/day, 365 days/yr.. I wish I owned a casino..
25 cents * 10 machines * 6 plays/minute * 60 min/hr * 24 hr/day * 365 days/yr = $7,884,000 per year.. Sure, try to be one of the few winners, they're still collecting millions from the loosers.
I swear when I was sitting in the casino watching the slot machines, I was seeing distinct patterns.. I didn't spend enough time watching, and I didn't have anything to record with (would the casino's allow that??), but I'd see the same sets of results after every 50 to 100 plays..
It's all a big game of give and take. They let you win occasionally, and then take it all back.. It's a fine art for them. They have to give enough to keep you interested, but take as much as possible.. So, you'll loose 10 plays, but you'll get a single 1x win to keep you hopeful that you can still win.. Occasionally they'll throw in a bigger win to keep the excitement up, but their takes will never let you leave with much, if anything.
(Get the feeling I left Vegas down a few hundred bucks again).
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Over the number of games played, the weighted payoffs of all outcomes will approach the required odds. How the machine achieves the odds is arbitrary. In this case, the game decides the outcome in the beginning (probably to try to stick to a payoff curve). Thus any button pressing is just formalities, you pick your risk/payoff and it tells you what the coin toss was.
It would be too difficult for it to incrementally adjust the probabilities to account for different in-game activities, and stay on-target for staying close to the minimum payout.
As to whether this is unethical, consider this:
No one is ever going to be given a chance to go back and time and make 'the other choice' on such a fruit machine. So to the user, it's all the same. The machine isn't being dishonest since you're not supposed to know how it makes its decisions; it's a black box to you. This kind of analysis is only possible using an emulator, but pointless.
From a mathematical point of view as well: IT DOESN'T MATTER ONE BIT. a) you don't know the initial state of the machine in real life, b) you can't tell the outcome until after you've made all your choices.
So according to b), it doesn't really matter WHEN the machine actually decides whether you win or lose because the payouts are carefully designed to be equally in the machine's favor no matter what stakes you choose. And all this is just mental masturabation because since you don't know a), knowing the algorithms involved doesn't give you jack shit. It could be asking an elf if you were ugly and paying out based on that, and it wouldn't matter because you don't have a)
You would have no way of knowing you were being "cheated", and really you aren't, since it doesn't matter because you have no "introspection", you can't "Win" at a slot machine.
Things like saying (quoting from the website) "If I only held those cherries, I would have won", that it wouldn't have mattered because the computer would have made you lose anyway... is not recognizing the fact that YOU CANNOT GO BACK IN TIME ANYWAY!!!
SO WHY EVEN CONSIDER "MODELLING" THAT LOGICAL FALLACY THAT SOMEHOW YOU CAN DO "BETTER" AT A FUCKING WHEEL OF CHANCE?!?!
You think the game designers have nothing better to do then make their money-sinks into devices that model some sort of fictious, expected, or antiquated behavior?
Calling it fradulent is not understanding how the machines work. Fixed odds is EQUAL to fixed outcomes, especially when it comes to computer based games of chance.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I write software for slot machines. I can confirm that it is not the display that awards prizes, but the prize that selects that display shown to the user.
Who is the first person to handle a fledgling slot machine game? The product manager? The software engineer? The graphic artist? No, it is a mathematician, deciding the selection and frequency of pay-outs. A table of prizes is created and the reels of the game (the number of stops on each reel is tweaked to adjust the outcome) are displayed to correspond to the probability of a given pay-out.
When you see those billboards that advertise "the loosest slots" what they mean is that the software at that particular casino has been configured to pay out, say, 95% instead of only 94%.
The gambling industry is the only one I know of to set it own profitibility. The earnings of the casinos are assured as long as the customers play.
All this said, so what? Even if they don't understand the math behind the games, most people are intuitively aware that "luck" is not a basis for a business plan, and that the casino always wins in the end. I don't see what all the furors is about.
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
If I roll a dice and keep it hidden from you and ask you to guess what number that came up and then show you the dice.
Or if I ask you to pick a number and then roll the dice before your eyes.
In both those cases you have the same chance of picking the right number.
If you have a machine emulate that and pick one of those two methods it will behave differently if you run the program from a memory state saved just before you picked your number.
In the first case the number was already generated, in the other case it will become different every time you run the program.
They don't know what method the fruit machines use.
That article proves nothing.
Also they state that they have a number between 1 and 12 and they can get it to a state where it gives you a number and whether you pick lower or higher, you loose. Well, guess what. That is perfectly logical. One in 12 rolls the number will be the same as the number showed to you and then both higher and lower will be wrong. You shouldn't have tried to win the bonus round.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
at least our voting systems will be open sourced so we can't be scammed in this way. oh, wait... damn.
So if what the previous poster said about IGT's truly random seeding/number generation is true, then that would imply that winning/losing is truly random. How then can a machine be 'set' to say 90% payout if the machine supposedly operates using truly random numbers?
I would not be surprised to learn that casino owners program machines to play with themselves to change the odds or other nasty tricks. Anything for that extra edge. American businessmen are becoming scummier and scummier with each passing day.
Of course the whole industry is dependent on having a certain amount of honest casinos who let the occasional gambler to win. Without any wins, there is no way to establish that precious little addiction that the casinos crave. As such the casinos will probably dig themselves into a tragedy of the commons situation where more and more casinos opt to cheat until they kill their industry. But I guess people are stupid enough to bet on lotteries with a 60% expected pay out.
Gambling means that you have a chance (however slim) of winning. This is not gambling, it's fraud -- you have no chance of winning.
Mathematically, you are correct that the result is the same when averaged over a large number of people. However, that is completely irrelevant to the individual people playing the game, each of whom thinks they have a chance of beating the game.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Do you agree to these axioms?
.5...
1) You can't tell the outcome of the game until you push the button.
2) The payoff chances are algorithmically designed to reach a payout percentage as set in the machine.
3) You can't rewind time.
According to 1), there is always some FINITE chance that you will either win or lose, no matter how much "information" the game shows you about your current state. (For example, the hidden number in the Hi-Lo guess)
According to 2), the system must do a good job of maintaining payoff probability; if it's too high, it'll be bad for business, if it's too low, it won't meet regulations.
According to 3), it doesn't matter what the outcome is, any evidence you can gather from the machine to show what you should have done is worthless, since you can't apply it to the previous game.
To achieve 2) and provide incremental feedback or changing probabilites during the game at each choice is a challenge. But because of 3) and 1), it is possible to pick the result at the outset and it can still be a plausible conclusion no matter what the user does.
It completely follows from logic, there is no discrimination, so how is this unfair? Has it taken the "thrill" out of it?
Keep in mind the thrill is there to get you to spend even more money than you would if you knew how the machine operated. Why don't you play a video game instead?
Also, consider this:
I choose whether you win or lose at the beginning of the game. Then I spin a wheel with numbers on it, and say to you: "I'm thinking of a number. Is this number of the wheel higher or lower???" If the number is very high, you will say lower. Of course, I'll tell you it's higher if I already thought you were going to lose.
But, considering each spin is equally likely, and my chosen outcome was decided with the flip of a proverbial coin, then over N trials there is nothing unfair about that game, you have the same possibility of winning if instead of choosing WIN or LOSE, I spun a wheel with numbers on it and didn't lie to you. In each case it's
Go ahead and work out the outcome spaces for each type of event, and count the number of winning and losing spaces for the player. You'll find that if the event is the chosen by two uniform random variables (coin toss + wheel spin, or wheel spin+ wheel spin), the outcomes are identical. In the first one, the wheel spin is a formality, it boils down to the coin toss. In the second one, guessing the sign of the difference between a hidden and visible wheel spin is also 50%, so it's just like a coin toss. Same thing.
That's what this game is doing, so why get all up in arms?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
This sequence is not random at all, but completely predetermined. Re-seeding merely jumps within the sequence to some point along its length. Re-seeding must be done at intervals to ensure some degree of randomness. Traditionally this has been done using some measure of time elapsed between switching the computer on and starting the program running; the units used must be small compared to the variance of this interval.
True randomness would require some totally random event, such as the time interval between particle decays in a radioactive substance, or thermal noise in a semiconductor junction. {The static picked up by an unconnected input of a sound card would be an example of this phenomenon, but would also include local noise sources such as mains hum and local RF interference.} In the case of a fruit machine, the time between player operations, and the sequence of hold and cancel operations, if applicable, can be used as entropy sources.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
But if everything with the slot machines in the article is predetermined, so as to mean that nothing is random, then isn't it theoretically possible to predict what's going to come next given the rom rip off they have (however they obtained it)? Or at the very least, if you can't make a clear prediction, make just a few so you can create better odds for yourself?
Without proof of where they got this rom, I have to think that perhaps it's a hoax.
This is probably illegal, as the machine is strongly implying that your guess will affect your chances
It is clearly unethical, because the companies are selling something different than people think they are buying.
Illegal? That's a different matter. Ethics are only a minor concern in law. Legal or not legal has to do with laws on books, precedents and political power. The reason lawyers are so rich is because they excel at finding legal ways to partake in unethical activity.
I realize now that there may be a different issue with regards to the double or nothing feature specifically of the slot machine in question.
A double-or-nothing feature is indictative of a 50% chance to improve the score. Anything more than 50% would artificially raise the value of the actual prize seeing as then it would always be profitable to double the money, and you'd win more often than not.
A guess-if-its-higher-or-lower thing is probably geared to a 70-80% chance of winning. So it makes the double-or-nothing seem more lucrative. But if the guessing game is rigged to have a 50% probability of winning, then it has misrepresented the chance of your ability to improve your winnings by making "the correct choice", or any choice by the matter.
It sounds like it was a feature that was added on at the last second. Then the author realized it was fucking with her probability tables, so she made it only let you win half the time, so the double-or-nothing didn't affect the overall payoffs.
I wouldn't call it cheating, just dumb.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If the player plays an infinite number of times, he ends up with zero. What 98% means is that the expected payout per turn is 0.98, thus if you start with D currency units then after N turns you expect to have D * (0.98)^N currency units left. You'll notice that regardless of D, that approaches zero as N goes to infinity.
Next, how do we know that the code provided in the emulator IS the acutal code the machines are running? If the gaming companies are scamming I'm sure they didn't willingly hand over the code to the sites author and if he reverse engineered it then he certainly opened himself up to a whole slew of UK copyright violations. How do we know the author isn't some anti-gaming advocate who wrote this "proof of concept" specifically to support his point? We don't.
As someone who's worked as a software developer for a gaming company (albiet not a fruit machine) in the past I can tell you that they go through great lengths to make sure the machines are as fair and random as possible. The risks are simply too great for them not to do so. But I, for one, will be watching this story closely to see if it hits the courts. I think that will be the ultimate test of it's validity.
Anthony
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Ten years ago the cycles were a lot more reliable. I used to hang out in an arcade on Leeds railway station during rush hour.
The way to play was to pay attention to how much other players were dumping in machines. If a machine had received 75% of the jackpot without paying out, as soon as the current player left, go over and put in up to 50% of the jackpot value. Play until you win a jackpot (ignore/gamble smaller wins). 80% of the time, you'd get it. The hard part was to walk away if it hadn't paid by then :) But if you stuck to that, you were pretty much guaranteed to come out up overall. I used to make around 20 quid ($30) a night when I played - over a couple of hours, so the payback wasn't that great :)
But then the cycles gradually got longer, with longer baron patches followed by an occasional triple jackpot (paid over three pays to avoid breaking the law!). At that point it was no longer statistically worth while playing.
The manufacturers though are experts at intermittant reinforcement. It took me a while to quit while losing.
Now I live in California so I don't have to worry about being able to do anything dangerous, addictive or interesting because the State very kindly makes all my bad habits illegal :) To paraphrase Eddie Izzard, "We all go down the library for a wild time" :)
.02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
A fruit-related study from the UK, huh? What'll those crazy limeys come up with next? I think I've just created the world's worst pun. Come on. Let's see who can match it.
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it." - G.B. Shaw
Free Fruit!
We're only gonna die from our own arrogance, that's why we might as well take our time...
FairPlay would probably be sued under the DMCA for 'stealing' the copyrighted ROM to which they have no rights.
Now I'll go try it on a Radeon...
I only read the first two or three pages, but from what I've seen, it doesn't sound like the machines are cheating, any more than, say, lotteries cheat with scratch off tickets: when you buy a scratch off ticket, it is predetermined whether it is a winner or not, after all.
Let's take a simple 5 symbol slot machine. With a mechanical device, the player can know they're a loser when the second wheel stops. A video slot machine can keep the suspense going right up until the last symbol... oh look! Two bars! Three! Oh sweet Jesus a fourth bar! That's 5K if the next bar comes around!
At this point, speaking as a programmer, I'd make damn sure that the winning symbols just drifts past the window before flashing the "Deposit another $5 to NUDGE?" button.
Since you have total control, the programmer can make the sucker believe they are coming arbitrarily close to winning without actually paying out anything. The idea is to give the sucker a lift, a high, a thrill. A glimpse of that "big win", that will keep him/her putting the money in.
Not illegal. Just behavioural conditioning. The same thing B.F. Skinner did with pigeons.
In his experiments the pigeons were taught to repeatedly peck a switch to get a small food reward. If the food was delivered after set number of pecks (even dozens), the bird would only peck away when it was hungry. But if the reward (food) was delivered after a random number of pecks, the bird eventually came to peck at the button continually, even frantically.
A slot/fruit machine is nothing more than a behavioural conditioning machine that skillfully supplies small, random rewards, all the while sustaining the belief in the player that the big reward is just waiting for the next game.
Illegal? No. Ethical? Well, gambling is a tax on the stupid.
The machine must pick the numbers *after* you have made the decision, otherwise it's misrepresenting the game. Probabilistically, the two are equivalent, but in reality, they aren't. If I make a decision about which option to take, I'm doing so because we (me and the fruit machine owner) made a contract. The rules of the contract are explained somewhere on the outside of the fruit machine. If the fruit machine doesn't pick numbers after I made my decision, it's in breach of contract, pure and simple.
It thinks it's running on a real physical fruit machine and acts in exactly the same way in all circumstances (except money doesn't actually come out of your PC).
I feel sorry for those that have one of those ultrasexy Pioneer slotload DVD-ROM drives and wants the fruit machine experience on their home PC...
On a related topic, does anyone make a slotload burner? Better yet, are there any plans for a slotload version of the Sony DRU-500A/DRU-510A? I would (almost) sell myself on a street corner to have one! Trayload is so nineties...
This has been true for years, not just for fruit machines but also quiz machines. And it's a great thing - if you know the machine, 50p will tell you if it is in the mood to pay or not.
A couple of well timed quid in quiz machines where stupid people hang out bought me a lot of my university beers.
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Slot machines don't have cycles. Whether they pay out or not is entirely random (or at least as random as it is possible to make them). Your chance of winning does not increase even slightly if other people have poured piles of money into the machine already.
Here are some other common myths about slot machines.
This sounds a bit like the part in Super Mario Bros 3 on the Nintendo, where you get to pick from a set of three boxes to see which power-up you collect. I was playing the game on an emulator, and I saved the state before picking a box, then reloaded the state to try all the boxes. It turns out that the item you win has already been predetermined, and all three boxes contain the same thing. I guess it saves memory and processing time if you only have to pick one random number instead of three, and the developers must have never considered that people would one day be able to emulate the game on an ordinary PC.
Rmemeber they want to keep you in the Casino. There are some tricks you can use to keep your payoff slightly above normal house odds. It turns out that many machines that aren't in use for a few hours tend to have better payoffs than machines that are in use. I expect the idea is that when people have too much "bad luck" they may try one more machine on the way out. If that machine pays off, the are more likely to stay. The problem with this is that it only seems to work on minimal payoff and only at the times when people are vacating the casinos. I've seen this on the slot machines in Missouri, Melbourne and Christchurch. At these times, I've won something like 70% or more but it tends to be limited to about 10 machines in a local area. Most modern casinos have all their slot machines all wired together. Of course if you keep dropping money in the machines, they quickly go back to their normal low payoff.
This infromation has been freely available for years. Anyone who did not realize it, is a moron. they completely descrobe how all slot machines are made at www.howstuffworks.com . And they are correct. How do I know you ask? My company makes them.
because I just put away 180 bucks at a local casino, and I may have been able to see this article earlier.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
The article you point to is for slot machines. We're talking "fruit machines" here, and there is a difference.
They are not truely random. I should know, I was addicted to them long enough :). Search on google for UK fruit machine sites to read up on particular quirks of various machines.
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
hmm, i recall how my brother told me about something like this 10 or so years ago.
He said, that there where Students in our home town, that snuck an walkie-talkie into the casino, and reported every result of the gambling machines outside, trying to analyze and precalculate the results.
That was the first time someone told me about the machine-random-problem, so it stuck.
I would be outraged. But not because I felt I was being cheated, but that such a huge effort was being launched into deceiving me. In fact, that such a huge effort was being made into making everyone at the table have house-odds of winning, which is lame. If they just let people play, the idiots lose their fat wads, while the more astute stay longer. (maybe blackjack was a bad example?)
Also, you can tell the house is cheating anyway (How is that bozo winning as much as me??!), which is different then what was happening here.
You can't tell the machine is cheating unless you re-wind time or use an emulator. And, the machine manufacturer wasn't going to expect that would happen, so the game only makes the illusion of choice. Is that the machine makers fault? In fact, it's kind of retarded to call what's happening a "cheat". It's only a cheat if you take a shortcut that has sideffects.
There are no side-effects in this case. The guy who posted that "expose" is just tooting his own horn.
You know, like if there were two ways to invert a matrix, a real way, and a "fast" way, but they gave you the same answer, and the "fast" way was faster, would you be outraged if it chose the fast way over some other way you learned in school? I wouldn't!! Normally, this would be fine. But then someone exposes it, and blows it out of proportion.
Most such machines use exactly that strategy: decide first, then make it look like you have control. Even the later mechanical one-arm-bandits used that technique.
The only difference between the two ways you could frame the situation is that in one case the person knows how the machine operates. They'll come to realize they're at the mercy of a PNRG which has none of the analog, "almost-maybe-next-time" feel of a roulette wheel. They'll be shocked to learn that the machine works really hard to make it look like there's a modicum of manuverability or hope of "beating it", which resonates with the player, only to keep them there dropping quarters for longer.
And then they get all insulted the machine is lying to them? That's them just not understanding 1) how computers work 2) how Casinos work.
I haven't taken a pschye course, but I'm well aware of the perception of control's function in the gaming experience. But if the user can't tell he can't effect the outcome, WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE!? The only reason why we know that it doesn't use some sort of unneccesarily sophisticated probability model to account for every user input is because a bored dickhead dumped a ROM and used a replay attack. Big f'in deal. People will still be attracted to them like flies, as most of them couldn't give 2 shits. All they need to hear is someone striking it rich down the row to get them motivated again.
Personally, I'm not outraged (can you tell I didn't just "find this out"). But I also think video poker and the like is just stupid. I'd go to Vegas for the shows, not to play video games. I can do that at home.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Though I doubt I am one of the friends of which you speak, I have written slot machine ("pokies") software for Tatts Victoria.
I can confirm that it's heavily regulated, and the RNG used is carefully analysed for randomness, with the the payoff tables (and to a lesser degree, the ordering of the symbols on "fruit machine" types) controlling the payout (which usually varies between 83% and 91%)
The results are only "pre-determined" at the time of the user starting the roll, but are completely random nonetheless. In other words, when the user pulls the arm (if the machine has an arm), the results of the roll (and any related results, e.g. from a "double-up") are randomly pre-selected, then the reels are spun to those positions.
What struck me most was the incredible security and redundancy the system has. In Victoria, the legal accounting requirements are very stringent, and the manufacturers themselves have a long list of attacks they have to be proof against (from long experience - everything from massive magnetic fields to electrical cattle prods have been used to defeat a slot machine's defenses).
For example, not only is the casing solid steel, locked and with mil-spec proofing against EMI, the CPU board and coin trays are both locked within separate steel compartments within the unit, and each requires a different key to unlock. All locks have failsafe mechanisms to record opening, and the cabinet door has a randomly-pulsed optical sensor as well.
Particularly, the win-loss game data is recorded into triple-battery-backed static RAM, in multiple CRC'd locations, with the same data being recorded simultaneously onto physical counters, printed in duplicate to a roll of paper (on some machines), and sent in real-time via encrypted LAN to a central host, which must verify all large payouts. Every coin and every game must be accounted for under any circumstance, particularly power failure in the middle of a game.
The coin sensors and payout mechanisms were equally sophisticated, and had to accurately deal with punters feeding large numbers of coins very rapidly into the machines, whilst still defeating "coin-on-a-string" style attacks.
It was an interesting project, but involved considerably more than I first expected. I can say that, after many all-nighters testing, I have come to truly dislike the sound of a slot machine :-/ (Ironically, for some years my next job required me to go to tradeshows in Las Vegas - from the very moment you step off the plane, you're assaulted by pokies on all sides)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
There's absolutely no need to make payout decisions before play starts.
Maybe not before play starts, but there are other reasons to make payout decisions at the start of the game.
One of these is the requirement in some countries that the machine be able to completely duplicate its anticipated behaviour in the event of a power failure.
Suppose you were a punter who'd just rolled 4 aces on a 5 roll machine, with the last ace spinning down into place - and the power fails. When power is restored, the machine must be able replay that same game in its entirety.
This does not mean that games need be determined before the player even starts the game, only that once started, it must be finished.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I hate to bust there bubble but as old regular player of the eastenders machine i can safely say that that emulator isnt emulating it correctly.
Every single hi-lo gamble I have done on the emulator has lost, and thats not the case in real life. It also seems to pick a 2 99% of the time on the first spin of the eastenders sub-game, which is also wrong.
You cant base on argument on something that is obviously not working right. But you know what, the whole argument is flawed anyway, everybody knows that in the long term you will lose, and if you dont know that you shouldnt be playing them. Fruit Machines (yes, Mr. American, so called because they have fruits on the reels, sheesh!) are a game of chance, if you hit them on a win streak you will make money, if you dont you wont. It also helps if you know how to play them, how to let them spin after holds, what drop sequences will pay out etc. Play them blindly and you will most definitely lose.
To say there is some hidden big secret about them is stupid. To play them at all is even more stupid.
The rules of the game are explained, but I very much doubt the wording states that your choice explicitly determines the outcome. Legally the machine must give a completely random result, and it has to do it in a way that can be duplicated if interrupted (for reasons I've explained elsewhere in this thread).
Doubtless people are misled into thinking their choice affects the outcome, but they are not being ripped off. They simply need to read their "contract" more carefully.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Ok since /. is filled with geeks who THINK on their own rather than believe in stupid superstitions and other crap we've all seen our relatives and friends succumb to, let me just give one simple advice.
If you truly want maximize your chance of winning in Vegas (and just can't leave without at least gambling), just calculate the MAXIMUM you're willing to lose, and BET IT ALL in one hand. Not 100 hands, but ONE.
Mathematically this makes sense. In all casino games you have a disadvantage (if you think otherwise you're a fool). Each time you play, that advantage creeps up on you. The longer you play, the closer you'll get to that number (law of averages). So by minimizing the number of hands you're actually increasing the likelihood of variation.
Tried explaining this concept I don't know how many times to non-tech people, and damn it, most just don't get it. Sad...
Note: been a few years since my statistics class so forgive me if I'm using incorrect vocab.
eTrade SUCKS
So, when's this thing going to be implemented in MAME? I'd love to hook it up in my box... Maybe even rig up a coin dispenser...
The flip side of this is that, if you win, you can choose either HI or LO, and still win.
I can confirm that the slot machine software does in fact pre-determine the results of the double-up in advance, at the moment the user starts the game. The result of a double-up (win or lose) is completely random, fifty-fifty, so people are not being ripped off, but replaying the game will give the same win or lose result regardless of the "hi or lo" choice.
The reason for this is entirely so that, if the game is interrupted for some reason (by e.g. a power failure), the results will be exactly the same - which is what is being observed by the emulator. This is the only way to be completely fair.
This might upset some people who hold onto the belief that slot machines are in some way a game of skill, but they're not - they are pure chance, and are legally required to be (at least in Victoria, Australia, when I wrote slot machine software a few years ago).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
ah... nice! All that expensive hardware and scientific method wasted on gambling.... again.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
In a previous job, we used to see pokie machine PCBs all the time. One client was particularly proud of his and went though it section for section and described what each bit did.
There was actually a section dedicated to producing random numbers using hardware. This created 'true randomness' as he put it.
Another insight was how the PCB had on board ethernet. All the machines in the state had to report each game to a central office where it was described on a single line of wide carriage printout. The fan-folded paper went into a locked box which government officals came and collected every month. (I thought this was pretty cool)
Slot machines don't have cycles. Whether they pay out or not is entirely random (or at least as random as it is possible to make them). Your chance of winning does not increase even slightly if other people have poured piles of money into the machine already.
SOME slot machines don't have cycles, maybe MOST, but there are plenty that do.
Here I am expecting to read about how to install a wall hack onto a pokey machine....
*imagines how much easier the game would be if you could see the otherside of those pesk cards*
in early 90s. The idea was to build it from common 286 parts and TV than to buy very expensive imports. There was a guy who soldered convertors vga -> tv. I studied several foreign fruit machines and all of them were taking some money in the long run, so when I wrote mine I made similar algorithm. It could eat money for a long time, then give away a lot, but its internal account was steadily growing. A year or two after I left that company they implemented networked version where owner could alter all parameters on they fly, as he thinks it must be -- may be that guy is getting too angry, it's time to give him some money back?
Note that it isn't illegal here in Russia (gambling area is not regulated at all). And I think that anyone who gambles is total, complete idiot and deserves robbery at any gambling place.
These produce sequences of numbers known as PseudoRandom Binary Sequences .
Note that a lot of integrity checking, spread spectrum spreading codes, and encryption codes such as CSS use these codes. They are fast and generate statistically random codes.
Although these registers are often implemented at the hardware level, they are also quite easy to code.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
The emulator sounds like it is operating correctly - the game, and all double-up/nudge results, are determined at the start of the game. The article proves that this is pre-determined, but not that players are being ripped off. The nudge results (at least in the slot machine software I wrote) were exactly a fifty-fifty chance, regardless of choice (and this was a legal requirement - slot machines are games of pure chance; no user skill element is allowed, regardless of how it appears).
The game on the page you mention wins four nudges and loses the fifth, but the page itself is misleading. It suggests choosing Low then High then Low again in order to win the first four games, but it fails to mention that it does not matter what you choose! You can choose High then Low then High again, and the numbers will be different but the result will be the same - you will always win the first four games and lose the fifth, regardless of your choice.
(Disclaimer: I'm too lazy to download the emulator and confirm this myself, but logically (and from my experience) it must be so - I'd happily make a bet of it ;-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
As you say, the "gamble" in the middle of the gameplay is not which one you choose, but whether you play at all.
This might not be what the player expected, but they can't complain they're being ripped off - the results are as purely random as they expected, in fact more so, since the user cannot affect the outcome. Naturally IANAL, especially a British one, but I do know that in Australia the law requires that the user cannot affect the outcome.
Clearly the issue at hand is not whether the user is being ripped off, but merely illegally misled. One would have to carefully examine the wording on the machine to be sure. Morally, you could argue that being misled as to the nature of the game is wrong, but I prefer to think that, since it's common knowledge that "the house always wins" (especially so with slot machines), anyone who plays slot machines deserves everything they get (which, 87% of the time, is an emptier wallet).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
On an electronic device, there are great chances that the whole game is predetermined in advance by the seed of the pseudo random number generator. (Even in most of the case user interaction/timers can add a bit of randomness in there)
So you could argue that in fact the machine knew 8 hours ago what will happen right now if doing an "simulation" of thoses 8 hours of play based on its random-generator seed. So it's not only fraud for the gamble feature, but fraud 100% of the time?
I think the exemple of the hidden dice is a good one. Because in electronic world we're running pseudo-random-number-generators (and biased ones, we want the casino to win!), the computer can always know in advance if the guy will win or loose.
As long as for the user the randomness seems good and there are no big cheats like "if user won >$100, then he'll almost never win one $ again", it seems fair to me.
As many people here have posted, the point of the article is more about people being misled as to the nature of the game.
Perhaps someone in the UK could give us the wording on one of these machines? I would lay money that the game is only ever described as purely a "game of chance". I'd expect that the wording on the machine never actually states anywhere that the user's choice makes a difference, only that by using the "nudge" feature, they could "double their winnings"! (which is quite true).
I'd bet that nowhere does it explicitly claim that the user's choice directly affects the outcome, other than by deciding whether or not to play.
BTW, the RNG used is more considerably random than you describe, at least in the machines I'm familiar with. The RNG is reseeded not only by the clock or by an external souce (such as a network host or real-world entropy input), but is commonly reseeded many times a second, between games.
In the example they gave, they supplied a RAM snapshot where the RNG was at a known state - a cold boot would almost certainly give you a different seed each time. Anything else is of course a major vulnerability, and you can be sure this is well-known to slot machine manufacturers.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
A fruit machine is an AWP - Amusement with prizes. This means that they don't have any skill element. Quiz machines are generally SWP - Skills with prizes. These *DO* have a skill element. This is stated under the british gambling laws, the websites of the manufacturers and lots of other places.
I can't understand why the original poster didn't mention this. Well, apart from the fact that it would invalidate their unfounded rant.
tim
Yeah right...
Incorrect - slot machines are provably random. There is indeed a real chance that you could win the jackpot, and that chance is as unpredictable as they know how to make it.
However, the probabilities are strictly controlled. Statistically it is quite possible to predict in the long run how many games result in jackpots, in exactly the same way that the results of flipping a coin cannot be predicted individually, but are obvious over a large number of samples.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
IIRC, some machines are weighted for numerous small payouts, to appeal to one type of player, and other machines are weighted toward less frequent but larger payouts, to appeal to another type of player.
Additionally, the % return is chosen according to the expected amount of usage. A small club might choose a lower % (higher return) to make more from the machine, while a larger club with more players might choose a machine with a more attractive (to the player) % of return - he would make less from the machine, but since players might view the machine as "paying out more", they might play it more often. In Vegas, the sheer scale of the operation (thousands of players 24 hours a day) make it feasible to use machines with far higher percentages, approaching (but never reaching) 100%, and the high returning machines simply attract even more players.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Statistically it doesn't matter if the game is predetermined or not. The question is purely philosophical. You can be upset of the fact that the choices the machine presents you are merely for show, but the user experience is identical if the machine "played fair". A random number is random regardless of when it was selected and who selected it.
One slight difference though: A cheating machine may reach the desired payout radio faster (after fewer plays) than a 100% random machine. A random machine may have periods where the payout ratio drifts from the norm giving out more or less money than is statistically likely (Within what's statistically significant), but only in the short term. Eventually it evens out. A cheating machine can and probably does make sure that the payout ratio is fairly steady. In fact, in many countries, it is by law required to do so.
The onl people who may be upset by this are either not thinking straight or believe that there is something called luck beyond mere statistics and that this machine cheats you of it.
Anyone who puts money into a machine like this and expects not to be cheated is a fool, regardless.
A witty
Why is the title 'Tragedy of the Commons" for your post? The tragedy of the commons is based on a prisoner's dilemma for a common resource, i.e. each farmer 'cheating' by allowing their cattle to graze on a shared, *common*, field more then is agreed upon.
;).
Its a term used when rational choice goes wrong, not a generic term for 'bad'
quote from article: the law is being broken and you are being cheated wrong and right. First start at the cheating part. Yes, in some extend you could say that machines are cheating towards the players. That is, if you look at a per game(credit) base. Chances are not as you would expect for that game. Depending on the country where the slotmachine is placed, this fact should be noticed on the machine. This so called cheating thou has a reason and that reason is the law. Take for example Spain. Over there machines must payout a minimal percentage of 75% for every 20,000 games. If it only pays out 74,99 % after a test of 20k games, the test failed and no permit will be given for that machine. With a purely random machine this could never certain. Off course, if you put 100 machines at one go in a test, the average will be around this percentage, but tests are done on one machine and no averages count, only absolute figures for such cycle of 20k games. In some countries, such as the netherlands (I'm not sure for england), there must always be a factor of randomness in all events in the machine. Take for example the reel with 12 numbers, showing 10. The machine will predetermine what the outcome is, based on a random factor. Thou this random factor aint based on the 12 numbers, but on the level of the machine. So, if a machine has paid a lot lately it will be most likely the outcome will be negative, but its still with a random factor. Then there's also the host, who has some wishes and demands. Imagin the jackpot of a machine is given on average of 5000 games. Put 100 of these machines in line and let them play 100,000 games. The outcome would mostlikely be, that certain machines will have give 50 times the jackpot, while others gave few to none. Both extremes are bad for the host. The machine with 50 jackpots will have a payout percentage of over 100%, which the host has to pay. The machine with few or none jackpots will be uninteresting for players, as they will notice. All together, the machines are still random, thou with boundries, to fit law and wishes of hosts. grtz, Chris
quote from article: the law is being broken and you are being cheated wrong and right. First start at the cheating part. Yes, in some extend you could say that machines are cheating towards the players. That is, if you look at a per game(credit) base. Chances are not as you would expect for that game. Depending on the country where the slotmachine is placed, this fact should be noticed on the machine. This so called cheating thou has a reason and that reason is the law. Take for example Spain. Over there machines must payout a minimal percentage of 75% for every 20,000 games. If it only pays out 74,99 % after a test of 20k games, the test failed and no permit will be given for that machine. With a purely random machine this could never certain. Off course, if you put 100 machines at one go in a test, the average will be around this percentage, but tests are done on one machine and no averages count, only absolute figures for such cycle of 20k games. In some countries, such as the netherlands (I'm not sure for england), there must always be a factor of randomness in all events in the machine. Take for example the reel with 12 numbers, showing 10. The machine will predetermine what the outcome is, based on a random factor. Thou this random factor aint based on the 12 numbers, but on the level of the machine. So, if a machine has paid a lot lately it will be most likely the outcome will be negative, but its still with a random factor. Then there's also the host, who has some wishes and demands. Imagin the jackpot of a machine is given on average of 5000 games. Put 100 of these machines in line and let them play 100,000 games. The outcome would mostlikely be, that certain machines will have give 50 times the jackpot, while others gave few to none. Both extremes are bad for the host. The machine with 50 jackpots will have a payout percentage of over 100%, which the host has to pay. The machine with few or none jackpots will be uninteresting for players, as they will notice. All together, the machines are still random, thou with boundries, to fit law and wishes of hosts. grtz, Chris
And that would be to dissasemble the code, they have the roms, emulators exist, someone out there is capable of doing this.
It would be very interesting, though most likely not legal!
As for my point on their argument, anybody whos played fruites enough and has some ammount of inteligence knows that the machines cheat anyway, but they still play them. Why? Because it's a different game they are playing! You can obviously actually win money from these machines and knowing how they operate is half of the battle.
Plus they are meant for fun. AWP = Amusemenyts with prizes, they have no guarantee on gambling because they are not gambling machines they are for amusement only. The prizes are just a bonus.
However this only applies to the £20 machines (or is it £25 now, can't remember) The CLUB machines - £300 jackpot are goverent under different lawsd.
+----------------- | What is the question!
All the more reason not to trust closed source voting machines to be fair.
The Danish name for a fruit machine translates into a one-armed thief. Now show me a slot machine that doesn't steal the gamblers money, that would be news.
/A
All this code had to be removed for US exports.
None of this is particularly secret (no NDAs etc were required).
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
BTW, I used to travel to Las Vegas to work several times a month, and often chatted with a "slot mechanic" who lived in Phoenix. He fixed the machines, set the odds, and was absolutely forbidden to set foot in a casino in Nevada except in the company of a casino official (they usually brought the slots to him, except in cases of a huge payout). He told me which machines to play ... the ones at the ends of the aisles along both sides of the route leading from the front door to the check-in desk are usually set to pay off small and often. The casino wants incoming guests to see winners. For bigger, but far less frequent payoffs, it's the machines in the middle of the rows.
And so much better on the discs. Try feeding a slotloader a 3-incher and see what happens, or try keeping your fingerprints off of a DVD-10 while slotloading it. Not easy. I'll stick with my trays. When constructed properly, they last and are easier on the discs.
Slot machines don't cheat people, people cheat people.
A message from the National Gambling Association
I haven't read all the comments, I can't be arsed, so this might already have been said.
In the UK there are 2 kinds of "gambling" machines. AWP (Amusement With Prizes) and SWP (Skill With Prizes). AWPs are simply as their name implies. Amusement machines that you're meant to enjoy playing, and if you're lucky you'll get some cash back. SWPs involve skill. They are usually things like grabber machines. There are a few SWP fruit machines but these tend to be found in clubs and offer far higher prizes (apprx £250). However, these will only give you a proper gamble chance when there's enough cash in the box to cover the operators profits. The gambles tend to be very hard high speed types too.
I understand the greivance of the creator of the site in question. It's more about trade descriptions that fraudulent machines.
To me the big issue is the supposed SWP grabber machines. Grabbers that only have ultra weak grabs except for a few predetermined times. Having three kids, I've had plent of opportunity to see this for myself. Most grabbers have the solenoid visible, and you can see it struggling to keep hold. On the few times you manage to win a prize, the solenoid is visibly stronger.
The key to winning on these machines (and fruits) is to watch somebody else fill them with money then give up. That's when you play. Once you have won a prize, walk away.
My name is IMPESTA'. I've just read the great article against fruit-machines that trick the gamers into fake gamblings. I worked almost 10 yrs ago for a company in Europe that distributed slot-machine made by CIRSA (www.cirsa.com) (mainly the models "Minibravo" and "TuttiFrutti"). We also had in stock some other brands using touch-screen monitors , and powered by a JAMMA board with custom chips. While the CIRSAs were mechanical (run by a lame 8086 chip with a small EEPROM) , the others were run by a MC68xxx with a classic EEPROM as every other game-board. My task was the electronic repair of faulty parts , and also , the FLASHING of EEPROMS in the new machines as well as the upgrade of old models with new firmwares. I can confirm you that : 1) Being mechanical or not , ANY models i had repaired was MEANT to WIN a pre-programmed percentage of money. The "win-rate" was set up on the board using dip-switches or by the BIOS of the Jamma Board , as well as other nasty settings for the jackpot etc. 2) The real goal and design of the machines was in all case to be a "money-maker" machine , NOT a "gaming" machine. 3) Another one of my tasks was of course the full-test of the machine , that means PLAY with it for at least 1 hour. There were some rare cases of machines that "paid" too much. These were considered "faulty" and we had to reflash the EEPROMs to FIX the **ISSUE**. (usually we had been called by the pubs themselves , angry by the fact that ppl was actually WINNING too much money.. and shouting me on the phone "your machine is broken , come here and replace it !"). 4) In many case was the owner of the pubs asking us to LOW the minimum winning-rate , to be sure of making more money. 5) Being an organized company , every customer had a full documentation of the MONEY he was going to make , based on a complex statistical study that shown exactly the average winning-ratio per customer plus lots of other details. 6) Every machine had various firmware ROMs version , expecially the new ones , and in some cases the new releases fixed some models that were reported to "pay" too much. In conclusion , the deal between our company and the customers was merely a deal were we GUARANTEED a minimum amount of money if the pub's owner decided to put our machines in his pub. The fact that we were able to do that was because CIRSA itself programmed the ROMS that way. --> pre-programmed alghorithm to FRAUD customers ! I've never ceased to be DISGUSTED by the market of gaming and slot-machines , but was also for me impossible to PROVE the scam in any way , due the fact that all i had were the eletronical manuals of the machines and nothing else. Nothing that could ever prove the presence of pre-programmed tricks against the law and the customers. (well , i could have been smart and dump the ROM code for future use but i was young and stupid at that time..) Cheers IMPESTA'
In the UK the machines must pay out a certain amount (78% IIRC) but this can be averaged over a period of time. "Streaks" can be programmed in which the machine will pay out a lot of money in a short period. There is a lot of information at this site.
Gareth
A) Track Pay-ins and payouts
B) Ensure payouts large enough to maintain quota.
It's in the manual. It's in the disclaimer at the casino front desk. I'm glad a mathematical formula verified it, but it wasnt a secret.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Mathematically, of course, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever whether the program makes any use of user input (whether you go high or low, etc.), because none of that affects your probability of winning. Of course, the program could be implemented either way--i.e. it could simply determine whether you win, and adjust the display appropriately, or it could determine an outcome, and then compare it to your "bet." But I wouldn't be surprised if user input that doesn't affect probabilities is ignored, because that is the most straightforward (and therefore less bug-prone) way to program it. It doesn't seem to me that either way is "cheating," so long as the machine is paying the correct percentage. Still, I can understand why people could be upset to discover that their input was being disregarded. Whether it is legal depends upon exactly how the law is written, but it is a subtle point, and I wouldn't be surprised if the law doesn't address this particular issue specifically.
I've never seen a machine that guaranteed a particular statistical distribution of winnings. So long as the stated probabilities are correct, they are free to use any statisistical distribution they choose.
Well, duh. The problem is that a sequence that gives the same average "payout" may also be aranged to strip money from people the fastest way possible. Enticements that would not come naturally can be used to get the suckers to dump their money in at unatural rates. The results are not the same in that money comes at a faster rate per time.
The real cheat, of course, is using fictional income to cover illegal earnings. Trust small minded crooks to want to maximize their haul and cheat each other, but there's no such thing as a profitable gambling house. If the place ever made a profit, it would be taxed! So you have to spend all that money from your drug sales and pimping and God only knows on your friends. Pity isn't it? At the same time, why not cheat your customers at the arm?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Whether or not they are programmed to have cycles, they will seem to do so. This is because human beings are very poor at judging randomness. Real random sequences have more and longer "runs" than people intuitively expect. So if you play a genuinely random machine, you will perceive it as having "hot" and "cold" cycles. For the same reason, it would be a waste of effort to program a gambling machine to do this. People will think it is even if you don't bother.
...since copyright extends to 95 years after the death of the author, are you predicting you will die next year? ;-)
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
1) You really can't say they're being deceived because the machine doesn't make any claims as to what your chances of succeeding by making each choice is! The _user_ makes up his own expectations about how the machine works, and I think it's just too bad if that doesn't jive with reality. ;-)
... ALWAYS. Right?
::big hug for the anonymous coward for getting to the core of this issue::
It's like when there's this really hot guy I like, and then I find out he's sleeping with someone, meanwhile I went out with him the a few nights ago, and I didn't even ask him if he was seeing anyone, and then I feel deceived? Not a healthy attitude; egocentric if you ask me.
And assuming humans must act as if they have free will... should it matter if we have or it not?
I say no, and here's why... "Free Will" means you have the ability to choose whats best for you or who you care about. Clearly you wouldn't choose any other way, right? You always want to make the best decision you possibly can
So you have a choice, but the choice is obvious once you evaluate the situation. So really, even if you didn't have a choice (per se), that choice is imperative by your desire to choose the best thing, a fact of human nature.
So realizing you don't have free will, REALLY, isn't a big deal. You can't destroy your always-pick-best mindest because of that, otherwise you'll be miserable. Humans have this thing called "denial" you know, which means it'll let them function and continue evaluating choices, even if the endpoint is imminent. The way to rationalize that is: you can't just lay back and let it happen then, you still have to actively make the choice, even if there's no way to do otherwise. You will realize that the lack of free will does not excuse someone from making choices, because otherwise no optimal choices will be made. Only the weak would use the excuse of no free will to justify apathy.
And no one can stay apathetic for long, it's quite boring.
So after the initial shock, things would be back to the status-quo, even if you could prove the absence of free will. I have more faith in human nature than most!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Personally, I think the effects of Indian casinos has been extremely negative. The casinos create one tiny group of extremely rich people, but leave most native Americans in poverty. For example the casinos in white American cities (where there is less tribal identity) get lots of traffic. The larger reservations don't have the foot traffic. Casino money feeds misinformation campaigns, etc..
I know people are trying extremely hard to keep the casinos regulated and to keep the games fair, but who knows if regulation works. We see that auditing in accounting doesn't work. I imagine that it is even harder when you are dealing with sovereign entities. The modern US business climate and philosophies are about bending rules, and we are gradually losing our ability to trust any industry.
In some places the law requires that machines have a certain minimum probability of paying out. In other places the law merely requires that the probability be displayed on the machine. In either case the only requirement is that the machines have a certain expected return, not a certain actual return. It is, in principle, possible for a given machine to never pay out (although unlikely given the relatively high probabilities of hitting low payouts).
The common property is the public's trust (or public gullability).
The tradegy of the commons is not a subset of the prisoner's dilemma. The prisoner's dilemma occurs when the cost loyality to your fellow conspirators is much less than the cost of betraying them. The tragedy of the commons happens when you have a common resource that people feed on, but no one bears the cost to maintain.
I used that as a title because it is a fad in academic circles to drop reference to the tragedy of the commons and the prisoners dilemma in every single context of every single debate as if the tragedy of the commons was the primary organizing principle of the universe.
Actually, I don't think it was the next day that the coin was knocked over in that episode. I think the paper had a morning edition and an evening edition. Also, it was the same guy that knocked the coin over when he tossed in another coin for the evening paper on his way home from his job at the bank. He didn't die, he just couln't hear thoughts anymore.
As long as for the user the randomness seems good and there are no big cheats like "if user won >$100, then he'll almost never win one $ again", it seems fair to me.
Had you read the article, you would see that this is almost precisely what they claim.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Tragedy of the Commons a.k.a the free rider problem, is indeed a subset of the prisoners' dilemma problem, both are one in the same in that they are the brand of game in which rational choice leads to a nasty equilbrium.
There is always a choice to 'cheat' in prisoner's dilemma / Tragedy of the Commons, wither to rat on your friend, or choose to let your cattle graze longer. The problem is that nasty outcomes occure when everyone chooses to cheat.
As well the prisoner's dilemma is a brand of game, not limited to the prisoner's dilemma example per say. Examples of 'prisoner's dilemma' include running red lights (If am the only one to do so, its ok, if everyone does, nasty out come), littering, etc.
"One could argue whether rigging the machines is rational"
;)
The whole point of the Tragedy of the commons is that it occurs when *rational choice* leads to a nasty outcome. (i.e. it is in the farmer's interest to let his cattle feed extra, thinking everyone else will abide by the rules; but in fact everyone cheats and the common resource is depleated (nasty outcome)).
If they are acting irrational, then that is something other then a tragedy of commons situation, probably best described as them acting like cheating assholes
Ok, simmerdonna people, this is a big fat duh; at least here in the US.
"Video lotteries" have almost ALWAYS been adjustable to a specific return value. This is true whether you're in tavern playing a "fruit machine" or in Ceasar's Palace playing Goliath. It was already proven, countless times in countless cases around the world, that this is perfectly acceptable practice (basically, as long as a person can actually win).
The average return is between 35-45%. During some periods (late winter, for example), the average drops between 20-30%. It's all carefully balanced and monitored by a number of comissions, from local to federal to international.
Thank you, and have nice day.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
As I recall Euclidean Geometry exists on a surface in hyperbolic geometry and hyperbolic geometry exists on a surface in Euclidean geometry...so you can treat one as if it were a subset of the other.
Likewise, I have no doubt you can find a way two twist things around so the tragedy of the commons is minor application of the prisoner's dilemma.
I recall this being an issue about a decade ago. Since the prisoner's dilemma involved different weights of punishments, traditionalists were opting to treat the prison's dilemma simply as an example, but the advantages of starting with the prisoner's dilemma is unquestionable.
The prisoner's dilemma does a better job of showing that individual choice, democracy and the free market are fundamentally flawed. While the tragedy of the commons simply indicates the existences of imbalances needing to be fixed.
Since you can find a way to make the two statements equivalent, I agree, it is much more politically correct to call it the prisoner's dilemma since that does a better job of indicating the academic view of free choice.
Why would anyone set up one of these machines of they were not expecting to make money from it?
Why would anyone play one of these machines if they were not prepared, on average, to lose their money?
It has to be that way.
Slot machines, lotteries, horse-racing; all are a tax on stupidity, plain and simple.
Save your money, ignore these entertainments unless you value your cash less than the "enjoyment" you get from the simple act of playing them. Do not expect to win.
I mean really! This is news? I figured this out just by watching the damn things in arcades by the time I was eight years old.
You could pick up some easy money by waiting until someone pumped a hell of alot of loose change into one of those things. When they get disheartened and wander off, you walk up to it, throw some small amount of money into it and pick up the pay out.
Doesn't anyone grasp basic number theory anymore? I mean, of course they're rigged, you just have to figure out how...
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Back in the Apple ][ computer days I was visiting France and played a clunky slot.
I thought if I could program the wheels in and know how many times they spun I could write code to tell my how spins to a win.
How about looking at the game then setting the emulator wheels in the same spots and running it till it wins?
Then you know how many more suckers till a win.
Would it be illegal to win this way?
Similar stories about Vegas machines have said that the odds of winning are monitiored, accurate and regulated. The odds of almost winning are heavily skewed in favor of the player, and have nothing to do with actual odds.
It had that little lever you could slide one way or another to either steal money from your monsters, or let them win and be happy.
Dude, letting them be happy was worth it just to see the little celebration dance that went down anytime someone hit the jackpot. :)
they just have to seem random. As long as the user can't figure out a pattern, there is no problem.
Asuming you meet advertised payout. which is an average over a period of time. Which makes sense if you think about it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
lacking motivation often makes you poor. I know plenty of stupid people that have made a lot of money through sheer determination.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually the physical slot machines use stepper motors and internal algorithms now to decide where the reels will stop, rather than things like inertia, etc. This was a huge and important breakthrough in the slots industry, because it allows large jackpots. Before that, no combination could be rarer than one over the number of permutations of the reel positions. So you couldn't pay off more than that many to 1, and still have a profitable game. The slots are "less intuitive", but people prefer the higher jackpots anyway.
What it really boils down to is whether people want to gamble in situations with the odds against them or not, whether they have superstitions that they can do something that will make them win on a particular game because they know a good "secret trick", whether they think they're "lucky", etc. Machines that cater well to player's superstitions and their tastes will do well. Those that cater to suspicions of the machine being rigged or unfair, won't. Having a "choice" that doesn't really matter is bad game design, if your players find out. Often they won't, but I wouldn't make a gambling game that way if I could avoid it (or a non-gambling game either, generally!)
The poker game was a tricky one - we had to convince the state of Washington that picking a lottery ticket that determined which of 40 different pools of second-round lottery tickets you could choose from was legal also. I couldn't mimic the exact odds of dealing real 5 card draw poker hands, so I came as close as I could under Washington law (none of the pools of tickets could have a payout percentage of less than 75%, for one thing - some video poker situations have worse odds than that!) Player's choices really did matter, though. If you got three of a kind and kept them, you'd be drawing into the lucrative "drawing to three of a kind" ticket pool. If you just kept a pair, or a high card from that hand, you'd draw into a pool that didn't pay out as much, on average. It was a fun project to work on, and I got my name on a patent application (along with three other guys), so I guess I can say that stealing money back from the White Man and returning it to the Indians is fun and profitable. As for the UK fruit machines... I guess what they're guilty of might not be so much "cheating" as it is "bad game design". And a little deceptive too - but then if you think you're gonna win a machine with a 30% house edge, you'
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
How long did they stand in front of the entrance doors, until someone else happened to open it and let them in?