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Tickets for Tracking Players in Casinos?
aws910 asks: "I was in Las Vegas recently, and I noticed that most machines now give barcoded tickets as payment instead of coins. These tickets can then be used in other machines as a wager instead of paper money. A basic slot strategy is to move from one machine to another, and play machines in certain areas of the casino floor to improve your odds. With the ticket system, It seems all too easy for someone to build a system to track a player from one machine to another, giving the house the ability to kill the player's (already slim) edge. If a machine knows how much you've already won as soon as you sit down, do you think it will give you good odds? I couldn't find any articles on it. What does Slashdot think about this?"
for a reason
If you are playing slots in a casino, it is because you feel you have too much money, and want to get rid of it as fast as possible, while gaining no benefit from it.
It doesn't matter if they track you as you move from one slot machine to another - you will lose either way.
I doubt it's legal for them to change the behavior of the machine based on who is using it. I'm not familiar with Nevada's gaming laws though.
Many casinos issue cards for frequent customers. The cards allow you to build up points, redeemable for comps and such.
These systems already provided plenty of tracking. So the tickets are just a logical extension of this system really.
Assuming I already used a card, I would be happy to slip a ticket in my wallet rather than carry around buckets of heavy coins.
I think that people gamble because they're addicted, stupid, or drunk. Often a combination. All three of those states are notoriously impervious to math, especially statistics.
And besides, what "slim" edge? There's no edge -- anything that gives a player an edge is called "cheating" by the casinos. If there were a reliable way to exploit any "edge" in a casino it would go out of business in a week.*
*And yes, I've read all the stories about people with fiendishly complicated systems who do actually make shitloads of money, but not only is this very difficult in the first place, it's getting harder. The complexity of the exception proves the rule in this case.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Besides... moving from one machine to another does not improve your odds any better then those idiots who bet black when X number of reds have appeared in succession on a roulette table... The only ones who this will "help" are the casinos themselves (better tracking of prolific players), said prolific players (getting comps, etc.) and of course the tax man.
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
(Why anyone considers casinos worth spending time/money at is a discussion left for another day.)
In any other game the 'Law of averages' is a fallacy which will help you lose money if you believe in it - but in slots the machines are programmed to work with a certain win/lose percentage. I'd imagine any reactive behaviour would probably be illegal, but the gaming regulators may take a while to catch on.
I wonder if, given enough tickets, one could figure out their encoding scheme and print one's own tickets. Of course, they'd figure it out sooner or later, review their video footage, and come bankrupt your brother-in-law's tractor dealership...
I'm pretty sure the Nevada Gambling Comission/Board would have an issue with devices listed as separate games acting in concert to provide an overall odds. They spend a lot of time and money to ensure as much 'randomness' as possible, yet design the games to have very definite odds. I don't think they're about to overhaul the whole system.
Are you joking? I thought this board was supposed to inhabited with math-clueful types.
Just so we're clear - there's no player edge on slots - it's advertised to go up to 97.8% payback and is more usually at 90%
stay frosty and alert
you do know that the casino takes in more than it pays out, right? that's how they make their money.
statistically speaking, you leave with less than you came in. it's like day traders.. occasionally someone has some good luck but the vast majority of small-time day traders and gamblers lose money. It's in the numbers and you can't change it.
So what if one machine pays out less or more than the other? They've got the system as a whole turning out exactly the profit margin they want. You think Microsoft and other monopolies have it nice because they can adjust fees and licenses until they get the revenue they need? That's nothing compared to casinos.
Hopefully you realize that gambling is a form of entertainment, and nothing more! In this case it doesn't matter which machines have bigger payout, does it?
Good luck.
Only an idiot plays slots. They have the highest house odds of any casino game.
Looking at my Station Casinos Preferred Membership Card, I can tell you exactly what the cards are for. It's to get you to come back to the same Casinos. The cool thing about the Station card is you can use it at any of their Casinos. And they have quite a few. The card gets you stuff like free plays, discounted drinks, and automatically registered for a jackpot drawing. My father-in-law hit it for 35 grand recently on a dollar slot. This is the only card I'm familiar with, but I'm sure they are all pretty much the same thing. My card is valid at Boulder Station, Palace Station, Texas Station, Sunset Station(my fav), and Santa Fe Station.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
I thought the basic slot strategy was continue to press the "spin" button until all your money disappears? In that case, this card idea makes it so much easier!!
On another note, have you considered actually investing the money in short term stocks or doing some intense day trading? The thrill is the same as gambling, except the odds are actually in your favor to make money. Not to mention the experience you'd gain at picking stocks; something that will benefit you WAY more in the long run than the ability to pick slot machines.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
The casinos do not care if you win or lose - all they care about is that they win. It is necessary that people occasionally win, otherwise nobody would play. They don't care whether it's you, or someone you saw. The odds will be set so that even with the odd big payout, they still profit.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Suppose a slot machine has a payout schedule such that, on average, the machine pays out 97% of the amount it takes in. Somebody will win the occasional big payout but most people will lose, and the losses will tend to more than cover the wins.Why should the casino care whether the payouts go to you rather than the next guy? All they care about is that the overall odds are in their favor, and they are. Somebody will win the jackpots, and it might as well be you as much as anybody else. You don't scare them.
When you say "A basic slot strategy is to move from one machine to another, and play machines in certain areas of the casino floor to improve your odds.", you are talking nonsense. Switching machines doesn't change your odds*, so the casinos don't need to do anything special to foil that strategy. You can't combine negative expectation bets to get a positive expectation bet.
(* actually, there's an exception to that rule, and I've made money exploiting it, but I gather you're not talking about wonging into machines with unusually high per-machine progressives. That's gotten pretty hard to do lately due to stiff competition and "anti-flea" features built into the newest machines by the manufacturers. But it was fun while it lasted, eh?)
I play Nerd-Folk!
They aren't messing with the odds. They aren't fools. It's extremely risky, and they don't need to. The odds are already fixed in their favor more than any other game there.
However, the tickets are an extra (and legal) moneymaker beyond increased efficiency.
Unlike coins, they aren't redeemable at other casinos, making it just a little harder to take your funds elsewhere. Customer retention is good.
Like a gift certificate, there will be some percentage of them that go unredeemed, becoming pure profit for the casino. Free money is good.
I resent the tickets, and refuse to use them. If I get one from a machine, I'm done. I'll cash it in and go somewhere else with coins where I can pay my ten percent tithe for watered down drinks. Besides, tikets don't make that lovely noise that the coins do. I don't mind the tracking cards though.
Slot machines are huge moneymakers. A decade ago, I remember hearing from a Vegas lounge musician that his trade was dying because most of the casinos were eliminating their lounges to replace them with slots, because slots are so lucrative.
Re. cheating in Vegas. In _Beat the Dealer_, Thorpe observed cheating dealers in blackjack games for as little as fifty cents. That's an individual dealer though, a human being with accountability. A casino can't say, "Oh, that's just a rogue slot machine, not OUR responsibility."
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
No wonder Vegas makes good money if someone that has a good degree that hopefully includes mathematics, statistics, and probabilities
You were kidding about that strategy comment right ?
Flip a coin 100 times - all heads... what is the chance of flipping it again and getting 101 heads in a row ???
If you want a game where you can have strategy learn to play blackjack well, REALLY well. The only game where you can statistically beat the house over a LONG period of time - it just requires a graduate level degree in mathematics and statistics to do it in your head
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
...then why don't you simply just change the tickets for cash at a change booth and then gamble with that cash?
Hey, it's hardly rocket science, is it?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I don't see how you can ever trust a computerised gambling device anyway. How can you tell if it is based on a random number generation or has a stratergy programmed in? A program will know exactly which cards it has given you and which cards it has left, surely it will always be able to produce a combination to beat you. With all these online flash gambling sites, who checks that they actually have mathematical odds or are just set up to beat you every time?
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
For example, here's a system that worked a few years ago:
(1) Find a bank of "Piggy Bankin'" slot machines.
(2) Walk down the row, pushing a button on each machine, causing it to "wake up" from attract mode and display how many coins are in the bank.
(3) If the number of coins in the bank is greater than 30, camp out at that machine and play one coin at a time until you "break the bank", then immediately cash out. and stop playing.
(4) go find another batch of Piggies, or hover in the background while people play these for a while so as to build the banks back up so you can tear them down again.
If the bank was at $40, your expected income was $20 (subtract 20 from the bank to get the expected value), and it should take less than 20 minutes of play to "earn" it.
Sadly, you won't find banks of original Piggies anymore, and even if you did, you wouldn't find them with large untapped jackpots because too many other advantage players know about them. So I'm not giving anything up by telling you about it now. There are other similar opportunities around, but (a) they tend to be short-lived or otherwise limited in scope, and (b) players who exploit them too aggressively tend to get barred.
I play Nerd-Folk!
there's an edge in casinos.
free booze!!!
fck, if we had that kind of casinos within 400km radius i'd be there every other night playing slots with pennies...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Geez, this is not news, Vegas (and other resorts) have been doing this for awhile. If you are staying at a hotel you are encouraged to use your equivalent of the grocery-store shopper card. This serves two purposes, (a) hotel guests spend more money gambling in their casino owned by their hotel and (b) Vegas can optimize their payout... (oh and (c) you spend more when it's virtual cash). They can track consumer behavior and demographics. All the more reason to only play with cash and forego the comps. The same goes for grocery-store cards.. consumers get screwed in the long run.
I mean (of course) not that they modify any odds, but that they can "comp" certian guests and give free meals, shows, etc. to guest to 'perceive' they got something for all the cash they lost at the slot machines and more likely to return and/or spend more gambling. And after all the 'odds' we are speaking about is really return on investment (negative in most cases).
As far as Nevada gaming commision goes, slot machines don't have to meet any 'perfectly random' requirement. Machines can be (I mean ARE IN FACT) designed to payout differently depending on how full they are, where in the casino they are (ie. by the entrances/exits), what time of day, what time they were last serviced. What the casino must maintain is an overall average payout (usually around 95% on the strip and 98%+ in the suburbs).. Which means best case you are losing money over the long run.
However, many professional gamblers make a living playing video poker which *if* you play *perfectly* can payout >100%.. I've heard that 40hrs/wk in front of a video poker machine can earn you at least $20k/yr (asuming you have enough cash to ride out a losing streak) (Oh and don't believe what you hear on Travel Channel or ABC about casinos and resorts, they are designed to bring in customers
No. Try nickels, you ever see a penny machine? They all take about 50-250 per roll :p That's $.50-$2.50 per spin, man!
;)
Find a nice three nickel machine. $.15 a roll, and for some damned reason, the cocktail waitresses *always* hover around them.
Hmm, it's probably because they know we're only there for the free booze, and tip more often than the bastards at the $5 machines.
Tickets are being used now instead of coin to simplify in-house accounting. Keeping 2000 machines full of coins take a lot of man power that isn't needed with the ticket-in ticket-out system. Plus its so much easier to carry a ticket than a couple hundred nickel tokens.
As for the odds games typically pay out between 75% and 95% of what goes into them, the same odds you get on the video lottery terminals in your local bar. The payout is averaged out over hundreds of games, so switching machines isn't going to help you win.
I love the casino business.
If you want to win a slot jackpot, go to vegas with $50-70k and play $50-100 machines only. Play the same machine until you run out of loot.
Slots are required to pay a certain amount over a period of time... switching machines reduces the chances that you'll hit a jackpot.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I realize someone probably has commented on this already.
The NGC as strict rules regarding slot machine operations and regular surprise spot checks to insure that only NGC authorized chips are in use in the slots.
Think of them as giant videogames, the game is run my ROM chips that control the payoff rate of the machine. There is no magic button that the casino manager can hit to cause a machine to pay/not-pay. A casino in violation _will_ recieve stiff fines (stiff enough to actually make a casion think) and possiblity of shutdown.
In any event this is kind of a moot point since most people are playing for a free buffet and use those cards.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Actually what they don't tell you is that the 97% payback is over the life of the machine! So a machine could be around for 20 or 30 years, and most machines are taken out of circulation way before that.
I can't believe its not butter!
I hate to tell you this, but most casinos already track what you play in the slots. But as far as I know, they use it to give you bonuses to play at the casino. They track how much you play and how much you win, and the more you play the more comps (bonuses) you can get.
:-) So take off the tin foil hat since as far as I know, they can't legally skew the slot machines either for or against you no matter how much you play.
For example, I play at Casino Niagra once or twice a month on average. (I live in new york, so Niagra Falls isn't that far away.) Every month the casino sends me a mailing that has 2 $10 coupons in it. I have heard that other people can get either 2 $20 or 2 $50 coupons for the casino each month depending on how much they spend in the slots. And how do they know how much they spend? By inserting a card and being tracked at the slots basically. So if you spend more, you're rewarded with more freebies. While on the other hand, if you don't use your card they think you don't play and stop giving you the coupons as a result. But honestly, for $20/month for free, I'm willing to be tracked.
Now I assume that the same type of thing is done in Canada that's done in Nevada, though I can't say for sure. But in Los Vegas, a machine has to be random to be legal. A casino can't skew the results of a machine to play out better to one player or another. It can control how likely the machine is to pay out as a whole (usually the more a machine costs to play, the more likely you are to win, though the odds are still in the house's favor), but it's illegal to change it from person to person. (if someone wants to correct me on this that's fine. I since live in NY I could be wrong about this.)
As for the printed slips, those are annoying. We have 3 casinos within about 2 hours from here. Casino Niagra, Seneca Niagara, and Turning Stone Casino. I like Casino Niagara the best since it uses both coins to play, and that's how you get your winnings. It's tangeable at all times, instead of only getting money when you visit a cashier. Turning stone I like next because it's completely electronic. Your winnings/losings are all stored on your casino card which you take from machine to machine, so it's easier to carry around. Seneca Niagra uses the printed slips and they're a bit annoying because if you win, you have to take your slip to a cashier to collect your winnings. You can't just go from machine to machine as easily. It kinda sucks that way but there's nothing you can do about it.
So in closing, don't worry. The casinos aren't out to get you. They are just after your money, and you pretty much turn it over freely when you play the slots.
-Through the server, over the router, off the firewall... Nothing but 'Net!
"giving the house the ability to kill the player's (already slim) edge" The author must have delusions of grandeur. There is no player edge period in the slots.
Doesn't matter if it's a lifetime or not. 97% means that on average for every $100 put into the machine, $97 will be paid out. Casino's love the naive ones who actually think they can beat them. To my knowledge the only casino game's you could possibly gain an advantage in are blackjack and possibly baccarat for the very skilled card counters. I have more fun gambling on the stocks and the payout is much better ;-)
A Casion wants you personally to win. They make their money by getting a lot of people in, and most of them lose, but they love nothing more than when you win, and go home and tell your friends. Think about it, those who go to vegas and win are always telling their friends and family how much they made, often over a year latter they are still bragging. There is no better advertising than word of mouth from winners. Best of all, individulals can lie, saying things (in complete ignorance) that would be illegal for them to advertise. Those who loose tend to take it in stride "I lost, but not that much, and I had fun", and soon after forget about it. They can loose when you win because you will encourage others to go and loose.
Remember they make money from the numbers. The odds are designed so that some will by random chance beat them and make money, with the goal of getting those people to go home and get more "winners" in. Most people will loose of course, but they want you to hear about the winners, something they can only do if there are a few winners. (Of course many winners come back and loose more latter than they won, which helps them even more)
So how long until some innovative person brings a digital camera, photo's someone elses ticket, prints their own, then 'cashes' it before they do?
More to the point, how long until an 'innovative' casino takes advantage of the ephemeral (no chips/coins to count) nature of this and causes computer records to change things in their favor. Yes the various gaming comission types and auditors would frown on it, but done cleverly enough it could be pulled off (and probably already is).
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
A basic slot strategy is to move from one machine to another, and play machines in certain areas of the casino floor to improve your odds.
Eh, excuse me, but I really doubt you can change odds on slots.
AFAICT, the best you can do in a casino is playing 21 with basic strategy, modified by counting cards. It requires enough concentration, though, that's it too much like real work.
Plus, if you're too good and obvious (low bets until near the end of the deck when your bets get really high) you'll get escorted out.
Team playing might defer the inevitable, but the casinos are wise to that, too.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I've never heard of a card counting scheme for baccarat, unless you count playing the bank in Europe, I always thought it was interesting, that you go in to the big fancy room and play a game with pretty decent odds, I think the house take is below 5%. A little bit worse the pass/no pass line bet (without odds) or a decent blackjack strategy (no counting). I think the grandparent post's point was that a machine could be set to make most of that 97% payout in one or two big wins (with more like an 80% payout excluding those wins), which might not happen during the installed life of the machine.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
giving the house the ability to kill the player's (already slim) edge... What does Slashdot think about this?
Slashdot thinks that people who play slots lose between 5 and 15 cents every time they pull the lever on the one dollar "pretty blinky light machine."
Slashdot also thinks that people who believe they have an "alread slim edge" in slots are probably the greatest thing ever, since they pay for all the cool hotels and stuff that the rest of us stay at when we're in Vegas.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Trust me. I put $100 into a machine over the course of less than an hour and $97 did NOT come pouring out.
It is over the course of a long period of time (like a year, or machine lifetime perhaps.) Statistical bell curves and all that biz.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
They have no incentive to modify the odds in the way you suggest
Customer management, in this case, could be a little more complex than you seem to believe. Gambling is most addictive when the pattern of reward is very specific. A customer has very little idea how everyone else is doing, and a very good idea of how he is doing.
In order to keep him gambling the most money, it makes sense to present him, in particular, with a pattern of reward that encourages him to lose the most money. For example, I would avoid presenting a single player with too many straight losses in a row, as I do not want him to give up. I'd also prevent too many wins in a row, as the extra wins above the first few are not providing added incentive to play (and are costing money).
The ideal plan, from behavioral studies, is small rewards fairly often and large rewards at long, very random intervals.
I don't know if casinos are planning to do this, but, if it's legal, I assume they're savvy enough to try.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
The one time I've been to Vegas and on a few trips to Atlantic City as a kid, I've always noticed how excited people can get by the sound of plinking coins.
The old ladies spending their social security check on the one-armed bandit will hear a neighbor get a big payout and start playing more fiercely. When they do win they have a crazy Golumn-like look in their eye as they're filling up that bucket full of winnings.
Is the cost of handling coins so high that it's worth forfeiting the extra revenue from that psychology? Even if the machines make an electronic plink sound when you win (along with the bells and sirens) I can't see the alure being the same.
Of course, maybe it's just easier to hit the '$5 bet' button if you don't have to load 20 quarters into the machine.
Personally, I think the best games in Vegas are in the basement of the Excalibur.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...dim bulbs like this who believe the player has an edge. For goodness sakes, look at the odds listed for the machine: 97% on average, 99% for "high roller" machines. How does that translate into a "player advantage"?
In the short run, random runs may give the player a larger than average win or loss, but play long enough and you will confirm the math behind slots every time. The *only* games where you can gain an advantage are Black Jack (and only by counting cards: see articles about the MIT boys who won big) and Pai Gow Poker if you know that you can be the bank, and only is very rare casinos where the "rake" (% taken from your winnings) is very low.
However, I do thank you for subsidizing my trips to vegas with your losses.
Sig under construction since 1998.
just not at slots.i l/-/0521 009626/qid=1065538350/sr=8-6/ref=sr_8_6/104-687825 5-5252721?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
sports and pari-mutuel betting offers the best odds that can actually be in your favor if you "handicap" the event correctly.
Indeed, an impressive bit of work was done recently on doing exactly this with jai-alai written by a mathematics professor at SUNY Stony Brook.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/deta
This does not equal predictable odds for you. The payout is based on the Casino's preference and in Vegas,
the total casion's payout percentages are btwn 86.7% & 93.4%.
The reason Casino's have implemented tickets or magnetic swipe cards is so that they can actively track the
amount of cash going in and around the casino. This allows them to play with the odds and to watch for
cheaters. Before they had this tech, it was basically an educated guess as to how much money was in the
slots or at the tables. In return for giving up your privacy, you get comped. Its a trade off that mostly
benefits the casinos, but who doesn't like free drinks?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...then play BlackJack instead. The odds are much better for the player. Slots are the worst odds there are for the players, and the biggest moneymaker for the house. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they'll do whatever technical trickery they please to squeeze more money out of the one-arm bandits. At least with BlackJack, the odds and the math are well-known, and you can't really tamper with the game. You can actually win at BlackJack if you have half a brain, and a smidgeon of willpower to not ask for a hit when the dealer still must take one more card.
Slot machines are mathematically one of the worst thigns you can do with your money at a casino. And that's assuming they're fair chances as published and no manipulation is going on. For that matter, you gani zero advantage moving between slots or any other hokey little slots theory. Slots do not get hot and cold.
11*43+456^2
As a designer of one of the leading slot ticket system I know first hand the back end uses of tickets. They can't track people unless they have a player card inserted at the same time. There are so many regulations about using barcoded tickets that it boggles the mind. The hold percentages for slots vary from one jurisdiction to another. For example the hold percentages, the amount the slot will take in, is 97% or higher in Reno and Las Vegas ( depending on personality chip installed ) but in New Jersey its completely different ( I don't recall right now what the exact percentage was but it was much higher. )
There is a personality chip inside slot machines ( its a little eeprom ) that controls the percentages for each play. Yes its true that the machines know if you've won or lost before they spin the wheels but its just for fun anyway right?
I think everyone is missing the point with gambling. Its more about the experience than about the money. Any poor slob any poor his life savings into a machine. ( Some jurisdictions, like Kansas City, prevent users from making this mistake, or at least try to ) But how often can you go out and be treated like royality at a restaurant or other establishment. Any casino is all about appearance, customer loyalty, and then about the almighty dollar.
I'm just presenting a different point of view having been in the casino industry for 13 years now.
Just a little FYI on the slot machines actually work. Many people have the misconception that each time you pull the lever the slot machine moves onto it's next random number in line. Therefore it is possible for someone to "steal" someonelse's jackpot by pulling the lever right before them. The way slots actually work is while they are sitting idle, thier random number generator is actually pumping through numbers like crazy. It only stops when someone pulls the lever, and this is the number chosen for that particular pull. This means it is possible to miss a big jackpot by a fraction of a second.
Er, no. The piggy has a per-machine progressive - when a certain random event occurs it "adds a coin to the piggy bank." When you get the "break the bank" symbol it pays you whatever is in the piggy bank. The bank starts out at a value of 5, 10, or 15 coins, and on average the bank generally breaks at around a value of 19 coins, making this bonus neutral with respect to payout. Sometimes, through random chance, the bank happens to get very large before it breaks. If you happen upon a very large bank, you aren't in any sense "due for a win" - you still have to wait the same average time before the break-the-bank symbol appears as anybody else would - but you are guaranteed that when you get it, your payment is larger than average. The larger-than-average expectation from this one bet makes up for the generally negative expectation of the machine as a whole.
There are other games for which your "the machine is DUE for a win" does apply, though. On machines with the "diamond mine" bonus, for instance, you might find a machine that is likely to pay out sooner than its neighbor, because the nature of the bonus is that the payout comes when a mine fills up, and you can see how close that is to occuring.
Those who want to exploit such opportunities are well advised to read this book, but I'll warn you in advance the pickings are pretty slim. There are enough knowledgable professional and semi-pro advantage players around that the opportunities don't persist long. Everywhere that profitable slot machines exist, there are people lurking in the background waiting to play them the moment they show a tiny profit opportunity. If you wait and only play slots that show a $20/hour ROI, you'll never get to play because somebody else will have jumped on the opportunity the minute it was a $2/hour ROI.
I play Nerd-Folk!
I work in the Slot Technical department of the first casino in the world to have a 100% ticket-in/ticket-out floor. I can tell you with absolute certainty that your fears are completely unfounded.
There are many advantages to using tickets instead of coins. The primary reason is that it saves us a ton of money. A stack of 200 tickets sitting in the printer can last for days. If the same machine has coins, it might have to have its coin hopper filled multiple times a day. The labor savings from just that are incredible. It also prevents people from having to wait for an attendant to fill an empty hopper when they cash out. Happier customers stay longer, spend more money, and come back more often.
Coins have to be collected, counted, wrapped or bagged, and redistributed, and they are very heavy. My casino has two people to handle the paper distribution. It would take 40-50 additional people to do all coin handling.
Contrary to popular myth, we can't change what a machine does on the fly, nor do we need to. A slot machine has a theoretical mathematical hold percentage that is in our favor. It varies from day to day and week to week, but over the life of the machine it almost always comes very close to the theoretical. We don't need to cheat. We can give you back 99% of what you put in and still make money. Most of the time you'll take your 99% and put it in again. Then we'll take 1% of that. And you'll do it again. And again. That's how we make money.
We don't need to track you with barcoded tickets, we do that with player's club cards. We entice you to use cards by giving you comps based on how much you put into our machines. You don't have to use a card if you don't want to. The only reason the tickets have barcodes is so that the bill validator can read it. The unique number on the ticket is there so that the machine can query the back-end system to validate it as a good ticket. Nothing more.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
Money. It's all about the money.
It costs money to have change girls walking around 24/7. It costs money to have someone sitting in the change booth waiting to dump your bucket o' change into the counter and hand you the cash equivalent.
Now, you can sit down, put $20 into the machine and play to your hearts content and never touch a coin (which means they reduce the number of free moist towelettes they hand out to wash that 'coin residue' off your hands). If you happen to win then you take your barcoded receipt to a fancy change machine, insert the receipt into the bill acceptor and presto-chango out pops cash money.
Total number of employees you had to directly deal with? Zero. Total amount of money spent employing those Zero people? Zero dollars.
Don't believe me? Buy any book about Vegas and read it. Money is the only reason anything ever happens in Vegas.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
I have a friend, a very beautiful young woman, who likes to gamble. (I know, I know, maybe knowing her disqualifies me for slashdot. But we are just friends.) Anyhow, she is not only beautiful, but outgoing, charming, engaging. And she believes in psychic powers. She believes she is lucky, and believes that she can make useful guesses about when a slot machine will pay off.
According to her she does win. Is this possible? I watched a documentary, part of the "forbidden places" series, about the surviellance you subject yourself. Is it possible that she wins more than her share?
I tell her that the surviellance bosses may tune her machine to pay out more than normal because she is so talkative and charming, that they know she will talk the other guests into putting more into the machines...
Heh, I forget exactly who said it originally, but I've always seen most casino gambling/state lotteries, etc, as a tax on people who can't do math.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
First of all, with very little exception, you NEVER have an edge over the house on slots.
Certain slots MAY be set to pay out > 100%, but they are almost always low-limit (i.e. penny or nickel) slots.
AFAIK, all slots in state-regulated casinos in Nevada pay out at least 90% (as opposed to unregulated slots on Indian reservations which may pay as low as 70%... I'm not criticizing the Native Americans, just adding that for completeness). That means, over a long period of time, for every dollar you wager, you'll get back around 90 cents.
Furthermore, each slot machine has a ROM chip in it that determines its pay rate. Those ROM chips are very strictly regulated... the casino has to go through a lot of paperwork and hassle to change them. More concicely, the casion can not change the pay rate of a slot machine without physically modifying the hardware -- it's not legal for them to do it in software.
Remember, I'm talking about state-regulated gaming in Nevada (since the poster was talking about Vegas). Other jurisdictions may have different laws and methods.
The technique of moving around from slot to slot is simply a mind game that gamblers play with themselves to make them think they have better odds. Over the short run, this may pay off, but over the long run, the house wins. Period.
Remember, geeky readers, that casions earn the vast majority of their profits from slot machines. They have very low overhead and are quite possibly the worst wager in a casino. They can be entertaining, even addictive, for certain people, which is why they are so popular.
In the end, remember that the casinos exist to make money. Any apparent advantage over the house that you may see is just that -- an apparation. Even in Blackjack, where a talented card-counter can gain a small advantage over the house, casinos are countering by adding more decks to the shoe and using random constant-shuffling machines to nix your advantage.
The house always wins in the long run.
...and very likely can't, by law (as you suggest).
I was only responding to the notion that they would have no interest in doing so (see top post). It's likely, rather, the casinos will use identity tracking for research and/or other kinds of compensation.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
While I don't doubt that the bar-coded tickets can be used to track players, I can guarantee you that they aren't used in a way that can affect the odds for the player.
Each slot machine is equipped with a chip that determines the payout for that machine. The gaming control board of each gaming jurisdiction usually requires that the casinos register each machine's payout with them. If the casinos want to change the payout, they have to notify the gaming control board of the change, and then manually open all of the machines and swap out the chips. There is no such thing as dynamically changing the odds on a machine.
The bar-coded tickets were primarily introduced for two reasons:
#1. Players won't have to haul around buckets of coins and don't have to feed coins into machines, which soils their hands and also means that they'll play fewer spins in a given period of time. Fewer pulls of the handle = lower profits for the casinos.
#2. "Administration" costs for the machines go down for the casinos with the ticket-based systems. They no longer have to employ as many change people to fill the machines, or employ as many people in the cage because they won't have to count the coins that players bring up to cash in. In addition, I would guess that the type of tracking you talk about is also possible. When a machine takes in a ticket that was printed from another machine, I can start developing a relationship showing which machines are frequented by the same type of player.
One drawback of the ticket-based system (for the player) is that it is a lot easier to lose a paper slip worth $600 than a few buckets filled with $600 in coins!
Five Dolla Moddy-Moddy?
Slaughterhouses (used to?) employ a "judas goat". Slaughterhouses are new and frightening environments for the animals about to be slaughtered. So they would employ tame animals, used to the environment, who would fearlessly lead the animals about to be slaughtered into the holding pens. These were known as the "judas goat".
Exactly... this is a common practice used by most gambling parlors, principles which uproot the ridiculous idea that casinos rely on statistics to make money. It's all the same set of fools who believe prices rise and fall in a linear mathmatical function of supply and demand.
Slaughterhouses (used to?) employ a "judas goat". Slaughterhouses are new and frightening environments for the animals about to be slaughtered. So they would employ tame animals, used to the environment, who would fearlessly lead the animals about to be slaughtered into the holding pens. These were known as the "judas goat".
Exactly... this is a common practice used by most gambling parlors, the same principle which uprooted the ridiculous idea that casinos rely on statistics to make money.
It's all the same set of fools who believe prices rise and fall in in a mathmatical function of supply and demand.
most stupid thing i've ever heard
I'm not sure how the law is in Vegas, but in AC NJ they have to still be random. So while technically possible, they are not allow by law to make you lose because they have you tracked as making money. They have no need to target specific people any ways. Because they only give a certain percent payoff, usually something like 97% or 98% so they take in x money and give back .97x monies. In the end they don't care who gets it back. They just hope that person foolishly puts the money back into a slot again so they can get back that money to. 2% doesn't sound like much of a take, but people keep on putting their winnings back into the slot machine so after several hours the take is much greater than 2%.
Blackjack, people. Better odds and more social.
Interested in learning more about video poker? Check out The VP Home Page.
-- Former editor of Video Poker Player, current slashdot geek and advantage player
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
(from Knowifi)
"Knowifi's Casino Marketing Event Manager (cMEM) allows you to track the movement of guests throughout your property. Give your convention or event guest a promotional item with an embedded WiFi tag and find out where they travel on your property and how long they stay in each venue (casino, food & beverage outlets, entertainment, etc.). Now you can have accurate information about whether your promotional events drive customers to the casino.
"Here's how the system works:
"Event attendee information is entered or uploaded from the convention system, event listing, registration system or entertainment system into the cMEM database. Attendee information can be anonymous.
"Event attendees are issued a promotional item (hat, key chain, comp, coupon, etc.) with an embedded WiFi tracking tag.
"Either standalone or as part of an existing WiFi network, access points are positioned cover key zones throughout the property (e.g. casino, buffet, hotel, entertainment, etc.).
"As guests move through the zones, the WiFi access points detect the guest and sends data about their movement to update the cMEM database.
"At the conclusion of the event, the event manager prints out reports that analyze the movement of the guests for that event throughout the property.
"Now property marketing managers can use actual data, instead of pro forma estimates, to determine whether their promotional events are driving casino traffic!"
One time I was at a convention in Vegas about ten years ago. I was suprised to see a friend who I didn't believe was a gambling type blow about $150 gambling on arrival. He then took his "Frequent Gambler" card back to reception and secured a 50% rebate on the room for the rest of his stay. He didn't gamble again. Net win, around $350 or so. As he was attending on his own dollar, that was a nice plus.
See my journal, I write things there