Theory question about probability in online casino games

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SPG

Soldato
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Thankfully I am wired to find this all very odd, I just cant see the fun in it.

For some reason its interesting to look in from the outside but why when its designed as such you will LOSE.
 
Soldato
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Assuming the slot is truly random, then I would expect my experience with them to be much more consistent, but it's not.

We are talking hundreds of spins here, not a handful. If you played through hundreds of spins on roulette you'd expect to lose just over 2% of your cash that's all.

What makes the results 'inconsistent' is variance, not lack of randomness. Slots have relatively high variance among casino games, because a large proportion of the payout comes from big wins. On a slot you can win 100 times your stake (or much more if there's a jackpot), but you'll also lose your stake frequently. So the amount you lose in 100 spins depends heavily on whether you hit a big win or not.

However, even with low variance games (like blackjack or red/black bets in roulette), it's surprising how long the winning/losing streaks can be whilst remaining 'normal' from a statistical perspective. If you do enough spins, the results will converge around the house edge, but hundreds isn't nearly enough. You'll probably need tens of thousands - or even millions - of spins before the result consistently matches the house edge.
 
Caporegime
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I once saw 26 reds in a row on an online reputable casino.

And nothing weird about that. It's just as likely as red/black 12 times.

Yeah that's completely wrong.

It's just as likely as any given specific sequence of 12 reds and 12 blacks (I think you meant 13 reds & 13 blacks).

But there is only 1 sequence satisfying the criteria of "26 reds in a row", whereas there are multiple sequences satisfying the criteria of "12 reds and 12 blacks", since you did not specify the order they should occur in.

Also there's a very simple way of looking at this. The probability of a 2 red sequence is higher than that of a 3 red sequence. This trend continues the more consecutive reds you want to specify. Thus by the time you get to a 26 red sequence, the probability is dramatically lower than, say, a 5 red sequence.
 
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Caporegime
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I assumed Greebo's comment to mean 13 reds then 13 blacks in that order, I'm sure he's well aware that any combination of 13 reds/blacks without specifying the order is more likely

What people do tend to get wrong (which you seem to have there too)is that observing that specific sequence, say 13 reds then 13 blacks over the course of a game is still more likely than observing 26 reds in a row.
 
Soldato
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If I understand the theory correctly, the slot is random. So it should not matter what you have won. But I often see slots go on losing streaks and sometimes they go on winning streaks. Is this true randomness or is something else going on?

Someone I know works on software development and has done so for some online casino games places.

From what I have been told, the system is not random. Whether you win or not is based on various information streams and pre determined trigger scenarios based on income in vs income out for the casino (apparently).

He could have been full of **** though! :D

That said, I used to know a guy who manufactured fruit machines like what they use in pubs, and looking back he echoed a similar sentiment on the units being 'rigged'.
 
Caporegime
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Someone I know works on software development and has done so for some online casino games places.

From what I have been told, the system is not random. Whether you win or not is based on various information streams and pre determined trigger scenarios based on income in vs income out for the casino (apparently).

He could have been full of **** though! :D

That said, I used to know a guy who manufactured fruit machines like what they use in pubs, and looking back he echoed a similar sentiment on the units being 'rigged'.

I used to work in a pub and we had 3 high value machines which got changed every month.

According to the guys delivering the machines were set to payout a jackpot in the first £20 put in.

The pub owner would even play every machine himself to empty the jackpots after they got delivered.

If he wasn't in i made sure I emptied them :)
 
Soldato
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For a slot to be profitable with a 95% payout and jackpots in the hundreds of thousands of pounds, the vast majority of players need to lose. A 95% payout doesn't mean you'll get £9.50 back from your tenner. It means collectively, players will get (as an example) £9.5 million back from £10 million wagered. Inside that £9.5 million you'll find every prize, from the 20p win through wins of a few hundred quid, and a meaty jackpot.

Matched betting isn't beating the bookies, as the bookies are the one offering the matched betting. If they didn't profit from it, they wouldn't allow it.

The bookies don't allow matched betting. They regularly ban people that do it. Hitting bonuses all the time erodes the bookies' edge.
 
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Caporegime
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One strategy I used to use was to load up European Roulette, which is a game that allows you to spin without betting. Put it on fast play and keep spinning until you get 5 red or blacks in a row. only then start betting on the opposite colour on a martingale basis. I used it for a while and made some tidy sums, although it took a lot of patience and there were still times (very rare though) that it would reach the table limit. If you were betting after 5 consecutive spins at £1 bets, you would have to hit 10 of the same number to hit the table limit. There is just a 0.074% chance of 10 in a row. Word of warning, after a while they will clock on to this.
 
Associate
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with the percentages you guy are nearly there but not quite.

The 96/97% payout is based on what is called total staked / total bet. This is the total of a culmination of all stakes wagered.

You buy in for £100. And play £10 spins. If you only played 10*£10 spins and then cashed you would achieve you £96. But if you won £100 then played that through as well, your total staked would be £200 and then on average you'd lose £8 returning £92 This then goes on and on. So the longer you play, the more you will probably lose.

In general most people will choose to walk at around %20. And that is the difference between house edge and win percentage.

PS. There are no strategies to win. There are of course ways to change the house edge in your favour, but that then is classed as cheating and is illegal.
 
Soldato
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Someone I know works on software development and has done so for some online casino games places.

From what I have been told, the system is not random. Whether you win or not is based on various information streams and pre determined trigger scenarios based on income in vs income out for the casino (apparently).

He could have been full of **** though! :D

That said, I used to know a guy who manufactured fruit machines like what they use in pubs, and looking back he echoed a similar sentiment on the units being 'rigged'.

All of the information I have found online disagrees with this. Now it 'feels' to me that you are right, but the research says that the random number generator (RNG) is the only thing that influences the payout on any one spin, and that all future spins have no memory of the past spins, or of any other information like your account balance, previous wins or losses.

I am surprised there is not more information out there. Slots have been around for a long time, and lots of people must work on slot software for a living.


with the percentages you guy are nearly there but not quite.

The 96/97% payout is based on what is called total staked / total bet. This is the total of a culmination of all stakes wagered.

You buy in for £100. And play £10 spins. If you only played 10*£10 spins and then cashed you would achieve you £96. But if you won £100 then played that through as well, your total staked would be £200 and then on average you'd lose £8 returning £92 This then goes on and on. So the longer you play, the more you will probably lose.

In general most people will choose to walk at around %20. And that is the difference between house edge and win percentage.

As I said, I only play with free money. And it works like this:

Lets say you get 100 free spins with 10x wagering requirement. If I won £10 from my free spins, I would then have to wager through £100 before I could withdraw whatever I have left after doing this process.

I would calculate the estimated average losses as 96% X £100, i.e £4. Starting with £10, I would then expect to have £6 left after wagering.

Clearly £10 can disappear in the blink of an eye due to the variance, but with larger sums one would hope to see a return. Often don't though.
 
Caporegime
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Of course they are rigged :p How popular do you think machines which regularly ran out of money to pay out would be with publicans?

they don't to be rigged in order to make a profit, you're missing the point a bit - the OP's first question is valid and interesting if someone who knows the details of slot machine manufacture/operation can answer
 
Caporegime
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All of the information I have found online disagrees with this. Now it 'feels' to me that you are right, but the research says that the random number generator (RNG) is the only thing that influences the payout on any one spin, and that all future spins have no memory of the past spins, or of any other information like your account balance, previous wins or losses.

I am surprised there is not more information out there. Slots have been around for a long time, and lots of people must work on slot software for a living.




As I said, I only play with free money. And it works like this:

Lets say you get 100 free spins with 10x wagering requirement. If I won £10 from my free spins, I would then have to wager through £100 before I could withdraw whatever I have left after doing this process.

I would calculate the estimated average losses as 96% X £100, i.e £4. Starting with £10, I would then expect to have £6 left after wagering.

Clearly £10 can disappear in the blink of an eye due to the variance, but with larger sums one would hope to see a return. Often don't though.

Which is the annoying thing about free spins.

I once won £645 on the second spin but by the time I had gambled the required number of spins to be able to withdraw it, it had decreased to £400.
 
Caporegime
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Here's an interesting one:

Would it be hypothetically possible to decode the data sent to your PC and affect what choices you make? For example on a slot called Super Monopoly Money you get "free parking" which is a symbol on the reels which gives you a choice of 5 options. You have no idea what they are and selecting one can reveal wild / bonus / other symbols / whatever.

Now I suspect that your choice has no effect on what the game gives you anyway as it's all predetermined, but if it wasn't, would you be able to "see" what the game gives you as choices by decoding the data?
 
Soldato
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Which is the annoying thing about free spins.

I once won £645 on the second spin but by the time I had gambled the required number of spins to be able to withdraw it, it had decreased to £400.

£400 is an excellent return from free spins after wagering. My best so far is about £70 which I've gotten on two occasions, out of about 10 tries.
 
Soldato
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It's rather amusing seeing the sheer number of posts going on about "sequences in roulette results". There's no such thing as a sequence in roulette results lol, whether actual or theoretical. And whats funnier is people going on about red/black (anyone who actually understands roulette will know why).

Anyway, "Sequence" in the results would require the results to be related. However, each roulette result is an independent and completely isolated event and certainly not sequential to the previous result, and certainly not if you're talking about an outside bet lmao :D (outside bets are alternating on the actual wheel for goodness sake, again if you know roulette you will understand).


The only thing in roulette which can be considered sequential, is where the ball is rolled from, and the direction it is spun. Direction has a basic alternating sequence, the start of the roll is sequential to the last result. After these two things are satisfied, the point of roulette comes into play, which is a physical randomisation process - which thus renders the result independent to the conditional factors on which a particular game was initialised.
 
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Caporegime
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I think you're missing the point re: the posts about sequences, you seem to be making a semantic argument that actually doesn't apply. You can refer to a sequence of i.i.d. variables in statistics


Anyway this is a good roulette system to reduce the house edge:

Caro’s Roulette System #1

First, never bet simply red or black. Also don’t bet odd or even. These are equally poor, consistently losing wagers.

Second, don’t be suckered into betting zero or double zero, despite what some experts may suggest. This may seem like you’re betting with the house, but for technical reasons you are actually betting against the house — and you are taking the worst of it.

So, in order to negate the house advantage, you MUST stick to straight non-green number bets. All odd red numbers turn out to be bad choices, based on over two trillion computer trials. Don’t bet them.

All even black numbers fair poorly, and cannot be bet, for much the same reason, which I won’t explain here.

Let’s get straight to the money-saving advice. Any bet you decide to make MUST cover only even-red or odd-black numbers. There are no exceptions.

Finally, you need to be very disciplined in excluding the number 30 and the group of consecutive numbers that begins with 11 and continues clockwise through and including 14.

This system may seem mystical, but I take gambling quite seriously, and this works for me.
 
Soldato
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I think you're missing the point re: the posts about sequences, you seem to be making a semantic argument that actually doesn't apply. You can refer to a sequence of i.i.d. variables in statistics

I agree. If I observe ten statistically independent events then they are related by being in the set of events that I observed. And the results have an order and can be considered a (time- or index-based) sequence.
 
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