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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
[i]
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.
[/i]
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.)
It's a student project, and it shows. The article is superficial. The first two sources listed are Wikipedia and HowStuffWorks. There's a page on the Simpsons. You get the general idea.
Considerable work has been done on gambling psychology, but they didn't find it. There's an online Journal of Gambling Issues, with papers like Slot machine structural characteristics: Distorted player views of payback percentages. There's an annual trade show, Global Gaming Expo, and even an institute of higher learning devoted to the subject, the International Gaming Institute, part of (inevitably) the University of Las Vegas.
Their "experimental work" consisted of playing "freeslots.com". They didn't even notice that the "free slots" programs are set to have an expectation greater than zero when played in free mode. In fact, it's quite difficult to lose at "freeslots".
Industry analysis of player psychology has gone way beyond the stuff mentioned in this student paper. The big breakthrough was when slot machines started accepting player affinity cards. Today's casinos have the player's entire history, at the per-click level, on file, and considerable effort goes into mining that data. Some studies have compared what players have thought they won versus the casino's history of their track record. Many players don't even know that they're losing, let alone how much.
If you want to read about this subject, start with Super Casino, an 1999 inside look at some major Las Vegas properties.
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 was thinking today: If someone wins at a slot machine, they tell other people and get them interested in the trip to a casino. Now when people lose, they don't go bragging like they do when they win so negative publicity is low. It's always,"Hey I bought a motorcylce with my winnings." or,"I played all day on one dollar."
God spoke to me.
The last time I was in a casino, I realized that out of the thousands of drones sitting at machines, not a single one was smiling. Aren't they there to have fun? Must be something like grinding and farming in an MMORPG...lots of unpleasant time spent "having fun".
I repeat: Thousands of people. Zero smiles. Legions of bleary-eyed bleak-souled drones.
I have no moral problem with gambling, and it doesn't bother me that there are four casinos within two hours drive of my house...but I just can't understand why any of those people are there, doing that. They sure don't look like they're having fun. (And, you may ask, why was I there? Restaurants.)
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
You're calling other people crazy yet you've found a way to turn this discussion into anti-Microsoft hate propaganda yet again like the countless others. You're not even talking about how great something is, you're talking about how much it sucks, constantly. If you hate it so much why do you focus on it to the point where you can't have a normal conversation about anything BUT this single topic?
It's what happens when people build their entire persona around a single idea. The best thing to do with people who exhibit a singular focus is to ignore them, lest you get sucked into their psychological pathology inadvertently.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I went to Atlantic City this one time, and saw this car sitting there with a handful of bank cards lying in the seat. Whipped out my slim jim and popped the sucker open. Got a free car and a few hundred bucks' worth of cards out of the deal. Bet the owner wished he'd stayed home. I was so amazed by my luck that I stopped by the Ripley's museum to see if they wanted to buy my story. The losers said that they weren't interested because apparently this kind of thing happens all the time there. So, I sold the car and the cards to some guy at a chop shop, headed to the nearest casino, and blew the whole wad on the slots.
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.