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Psychology, Design and Economics of Slot-Machines
6 writes "Technology isn't just about design and hardware; sometimes it's about psychology, politics, sociology, and economics. The website of Stanford design prof Michael Shanks is hosting a student project by William Choi and Antoine Sindhu, a fascinating online course about slot machines. From the site: 'Much research has been devoted to studying gambling behavior from various points of view, including the psychological, social, economic, and political bases and implications of gambling ... [just the same,] focusing on slot machines reveals and inspires the study of many sociological issues that have come to express themselves specifically and notably on these machines. Here, we examine a number of these issues, attempting to link slot machines to them in an effort to better understand and explain them.'"
If you give a rat a bit of food every time it presses a bar (or on every n presses) -- it'll learn to press the bar the requisite number of times when it is hungry. If you provide a food nugget on a varying number of presses, e.g., 1 press=win, 3 presses=win, 10 presses=win, 4 presses=win -- it'll punch the bar all day.
At least, that's how I recall a psych prof of mine from college explaining why slot machines were so profitable.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I read a New York Times article on this subject a while back -- it was about professional slot machine designers. It referred to an insidious concept with the charming title, "cherry dribbling." Basically, it means figuring out the ratio of payouts to losses that defines the optimal rate to pick a slot-machine player's pocket. Pay out too much and obviously the slot-machine owner will lose. Pay out too little and people begin to feel like suckers and stop playing. Get it just right -- super happy profit!
Add a lot of bells and whistles to amuse people while they're getting fleeced and it's almost like they're enjoying it. (But most importantly, make sure that when they put a $1 in you credit them only $1.)
I'd have to look up the article to find what the ratio was, but the margin was surprisingly slim.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
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Just like a real slot machine, we found that the online simulator had a very high frequency of "near misses." Nearly every one in four reel spins had two of the same symbol, and the third matching symbol just slightly off on third reel. This is precisely the technique used in real slot machines to keep people addicted--it creates the illusion that you have "almost" won. In addition, small payouts happened with surprising frequency, replenishing the pool of available money and keeping the game dynamic.
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I work for a company that makes video and mechanical slot machines. This quote is just plain wrong. In fact, intentionally displaying "near misses" is illegal in pretty much every single gaming jurisdiction. It is simply the perception by the player.
Additionally, a game with many small payouts is normal! Games that pay out many small amounts and rarely a large amount are known in the industry as "bleeders." However, it isn't an intentional scheme that is devised to separate the player from his money. There is a concept of machine "volatility" -- the math for a set of reel strips can be devised to be more or less volatile. Less volatile means frequent small payouts and very very infrequent large payouts. More volatile means there aren't a lot of small payouts, but a large payout is a little bit more likely than on a less volatile game. In either case, the machine hold percentages can be the same (or whatever the casino configures -- as long as it is legal in that particular jurisdiction. In my experience, most places will configure paytables with the lowest legal payout percentage in that particular jurisdiction -- especially if a game is new on the floor.)
I've spent some time with slot machine code -- I actually love the old reel machines (which are generally the only ones you can own based on most state laws), and I've done some minor consulting with casinos in Las Vegas. The near misses are not encoded into the machine.
It is easy to believe the machines are built to take your money, but it has nothing to do with preset expectations. They truly are random, but each wheel has a specific number of possible results. Each wheel is independently picked from a random number generator with numbers picked at the instant you hit the spin button or pull the lever.
All 3 or 4 wheels might have a number of possible positions, numbering as high as 1024 per wheel. The first half of those numbers (say, 0-511) will be "blank" hits, so the wheel will stop on a blank. Then another 256 or so might be a symbol with a low payout, and then you get progressively less hits on the higher paying symbols. As you move further down the wheel, you get even fewer high paying "hit" numbers. The big payout only occurs on one or two numbers per wheel.
When the right combination of random numbers occurs, you win a payout. The chance is slim, with most machines paying out a percentage avering 85-92% over infinite spins, based purely on the mathematical chance of hitting a specific combination of random numbers in a spin.
Seeing those "near hits" is only because white "loser" spots on the wheel are always surrounded by symbols. Those near misses are almost always symbols that would pay SOMETHING, but rarely do you get 3 symbols that are near misses of the jackpot.
This summer, I spent a considerable amount of time in LV -- I was on a consulting project each month and stayed at the Paris casino. Over two days, I decided to "track" the play on a given slot machine, by attempting to jot down the results. The machine is certainly random, and if you watch a machine long enough and write down the actual results (landed on white space between red 7 and blue 7, landed on red 7, landed on cherry), you can eventually come up with the percentage chance of hitting a particular symbol. You need thousands of spins on a particular machine, but you'll get those percentages eventually.
In a game with less of a mathematical payout chance than 100%, the casino doesn't need to cheat. It's already guaranteed a profit on the lifetime of the machine. Some players do win in Vegas -- those who walk away after their first penny of profit. Everyone else eventually has the math get the best of them.
SIDENOTE:I don't condone gambling, but I do like the entertainment value of meeting up with a few friends and spending a few hours at the craps tables. $25 bets over a 4 hour period, betting the pass line with full odds, has a very low risk of losing your money (1.4% risk of ruin with a $2000 bankroll). The comps you receive in exchange more than make up for any loss. That's the only game in Vegas I think still has a slight player's edge, with comps and freebies added in.
I have actually built an online casino for a third party in Monaco and they aked us to rig the slotmachines so they would pay out more than their natural randomness would do, because they want their clients/addicts to have as much fun as possible for as long as possible before they run out of money. We even had a button that they could press in the management pages that would trigger a Jackpot within 50 games or so to keep the customer happy. When someone was gambling they would monitor how much money he had lost and if it became too much, they would grant him the jackpot so he could play a few more hours before that money was gone too. Of course the software was coded never to pay out more than a fixed percentage but the percentages were all in the 95-98% range.
Asheron's Call 1 had some of the best "Slot machine loot" of any MMORPG I know. I used to make $15 an hour on ebay with the normal stuff I'd find, then when an ultra rare came along, it could net me upwards of $100. Too bad the Chinese came into the fray so soon. It was pretty lucrative to play and sell stuff on ebay. Some people made enough to buy real houses with their income. Now you're lucky if you can dredge out $5 an hour because the games are so unfriendly to tradable loot and Chinese gold farmers.
God spoke to me.
It is in the best interest of casinos for their games to be fair. They want their machines to follow the rules exactly, and be as random as possible - the math takes care of the rest. If they weren't following the rules, Nevada and the public would get them shut down very quickly.
I really don't like the way such places try to manipulate people. The near misses aren't manipulated by the machine's operation, but the game's layout is designed such that near misses are a natural result. The methods used by casinos very much the same crap as supermarkets micromanaging item placement to trick you and your children into buying more items and more expensive items. I dislike that more than the idea of going somewhere to lose money.
By the way, I'm one of those Vegas winners you speak of. I was bored and waiting for a show so I sat and played quarter video poker. I got a royal flush on the 4th hand - $1000. Walked away immediately, and haven't gambled since then. Lost a total of maybe $30 in my life before then on similar cheap games.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Near misses manipulate the player's sense of odds
Manipulation of payout odd placement These are all well known to experienced gamblers. It's idiotic to call them tactics against a "mark" when the "mark" knows full well they're being used. Drugging patrons. Here is where I have first hand experience that shows you're on crack.It has even been reported that casinos have attempted to manipulate the air circulation in order to affect the behavior of gamblers. They may add extra oxygen to the circulation to keep gamblers more alert, As an electrician I worked closely with the guys maintaining the heating and AC systems in the casinos. The amount of air blowing out the open doors of your average casino nearly makes it impossible to keep it cool inside, much less maintain a certain level of any substance in that air. Besides the fact that it's a felony to adulterate the air like that, the fact is that you could not economically add enough oxygen to the air to make a difference. You get better results keeping people alert by turning the thermostat down a couple degrees.
or even add pheromones that make people feel more relaxed and at ease. You know that no scientific study has every identified any human pheromone, much less a specific one that makes people "feel more relaxed and at ease", right? Well no, of course not. You're a nut case. If it doesn't support your theories, it's a lie or a conspiracy.
Casinos vehemently deny these allegations; Of course they do, just like they deny that they're spiking the drinks with methamphetamine and using hypnotic eye blasts to make people keep gambling.
however, companies marketing these technologies do exist and do make sales to casinos. If you have evidence these companies are selling to specific casinos, why have neither you nor anyone else gone to the gaming commission and had them shut down? Because all you have is claims by the companies that they've sold to unnamed casinos, right? Huh. Sounds more like typical deceptive marketing for products that don't work because, as noted earlier, adding oxygen does nothing and human pheromones are a lie.
"Free" drinks and ordinary odds are not deceptive like the above is. The mark is unaware of the powerful emotional manipulation at work. This is not a friendly game of cards, it's fraud.
Seriously, you're nuts. Casinos don't need any of those tricks. The gambling industry is pretty darned transparent. It has to be. It's tightly regulated and closely watched. It doesn't need to engage in deceptive practices to make money. Face it, they don't have to trick people into gambling. People like to gamble already. They need only stand there and and take their 3%.If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Me: The idea that casinos operate under "minimal government regulation" is so ridiculous as to be completely laughable.
You: No, it isn't. You should see the regulations other companies have for gambling machines - they specify the entire payout structures, the hit likelihoods, the amount of noise the machines are amount to make, the volume of brightness allowed to be put out in lumens, all sorts of stuff. All the American gaming services do is require regular random testing of the machines, honest posting of stats, no rigged machines, and a cap on expected draw. America has about the most open and liberal market possible while still intending to verify the honesty of a proprietor.
I worked as a Gaming Agent in Washington state and actually helped set up a brand new, 2000-slot casino, so excuse me if I know more about this than you do.
All new video lottery terminals (slot machines), games, and templates are checked and verified by the Washington State Gambling Commission. They have a Testing Lab specifically set up strictly for that purpose. If those machines do not pass the test, then those machines are not allowed anywhere in the state of Washington. If those games do not pass the test, then those games are not allowed anywhere in the state of Washington. If the templates do not pass, then they are not allowed in Washington.
http://www.wsgc.wa.gov/egl/mission.asp
At the Tribal level, machine processors are kept under 24-hour lock and key and surveillance. Each processor for each slot is individually, electronically checked and confirmed against state signatures. The machines come straight from the manufacturer in sealed trucks. The machines are installed under the eyes of Tribal Gaming, Slot Maintenance, Security, Surveillance, and the manufacturer's technicians. They are tested by Slot Maintenance and the manufacturer, observed by Tribal Gaming, Security, and Surveillance. The machines can only be put into play once Tribal Gaming and the State Gambling Commission has checked and verified that the machines are operating properly.
Washington state has some of the most strict laws around gaming and slot machines in the nation:
Laws http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.46
Rules http://apps.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=230
Those laws and rules are underneath the federal laws around gambling and above the individual Tribal Compacts which also regulate gambling. I studied and learned all of those laws and was tasked with the duty of enforcing them. As a member of the Tribal Gaming Agency, we were at the casino 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. By law, the casino was not allowed to remain open if one of our staff were not on the premises. We had complete and full access to every area in the casino at any time we wanted, regardless of the wishes of casino management or workers. At least half of our agency were former police officers. Were we badged members of Tribal Government with the authority to arrest and detain suspects.
Saying there is "minimal government regulation" of casinos is abjectly false. Saying that this industry is not highly regulated is also abjectly false. Your arguments are disingenuous at best, and outright lies at worst.